Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5

[miscellaneous paragraphs]

Sir Edwin Arnold has composed the following epitaph for a memorial window to the late Mr Edward Lloyd:

A master printer of the press. He spake
By mouth of many thousand tongues He swayed
The pens which break the sceptres. Good Lord, make
Thy strong ones faithful and thy bold afraid.

The Music Publishers' Association at home are now taking measures to prevent not only the piracy of printed music by MS. and other methods for public entertainments, but the much commoner practice of unauthorized printing of « books of words » of operettas, services of song, &c. This latter movement has surprised certain printers, who seem to have thought that no copyright attached to such publications. We could scarcely have thought that any printer—especially at home — could have been ignorant of the risk he was running in reprinting without proper authority, valuable literary property of this class. As English copyrights are more closely watched and better protected in New Zealand than anywhere else in the world, our printers would do well in refusing such work without a proper assurance that the required permission has been given Strange to say it is the churches —all unconscious of transgression—that are chiefly addicted to this particular form of literary petty larceny.

George West, of Ballston, says the St. Louis Republic, is in possession of a curiosity in papers, sent him by a friend in Hongkong. It is a sheet, 11×14 inches, made from the web of the sacred white spider. It is as light as air and almost as transparent, but it is also beautifully printed, containing about two columns of matter, giving in English the story of how Midshipman Coplestone was presented at the Court of Pekin. Americans know much about paper-making; but it is safe to say that there is not a spider's-web paper-factory outside the almond-eyed kingdom.

Mr F. C. Gerard, Secretary of the Canterbury Typographical Association, writes:—I am directed by a general meeting of the Association, held on the 29th inst., to give an unqualified denial to the statement contained in your Christchurch correspondent's letter, appearing in your last issue, that the Board had, « after a hard fight, » carried a resolution doubling the weekly subscription of members, with the object of forming a « defence fund. » Your correspondent must possess a very hazy idea of the powers conferred on the Board of Management, or he would not have fallen into such a palpable error. What the Board did was this. Finding that the financial position of the Society, owing to the heavy strain put upon it during the past twelve months, was not strong enough to enable the Board to meet all its obligations to members under its rules, the Board, by a very large majority, and without any « fighting, » resolved to « recommend » the half-yearly general meeting to increase the subscription for the current half-year to one shilling. Not one word was said bearing upon the necessity or otherwise of a defence fund. The increase was needed to meet ordinary expenditure and to do away with the possibility of another levy. The half-yearly meeting adopted the recommendation of the Board by a very substantial majority, and the increase is being cheerfully met except in the case of a few members—about twelve in number—employed in some of the jobbing offices, and who have since sent in to the Board a written protest on the ground that the increase is not needed. On Saturday evening, however, these gentlemen were conspicuous by their absence, and consequently the meeting declined to re-open the question.— Your correspondent's reference to myself I take to be complimentary, although evidently intended to be otherwise. It goes to show that I have been assiduous in carrying out my duties without fear or favor. His other references are scarcely worthy of notice.

Mr Erastus Wyman, a New York millionaire, earned his first dollar as a P.D. He has been imparting some of his early reminiscences to a reporter of the New York Sun, as follows:—I had worked in the fields in the country as a very little boy at a rate of wages equalling fifty cents a week, but I had been paid in produce, once getting half-a-hundred of flour for three weeks' work. I had never seen the sight of money as a return for labor until the year 1848, when I was fourteen years old, and got in one pile $1.50 for my first week's work in a printing-office. The pride and joy that thrilled my slight frame on that Saturday night, when I took to my mother that immense sum, the total earnings of six days' and two nights' hard labor, has never been equalled by any other emotion since experienced in a life more than ordinarily successful. We—my mother, my sister, and myself— were having a hard struggle, living over a little grocery store on King-street, Toronto. You may be sure that the first fruits in the shape of absolute cash were the most welcome harbingers of a happy future for both those dear ones that a loving son and brother ever enjoyed. My duties were those of any other printer's devil in a small printing-office in which a semi-weekly paper was printed. I rolled with a hand-roller on a Washington hand-press for two days in the week, washed rollers from printers' ink till I was as black as a negro, delivered the paper twice-a-week in the early mornings on a long and weary route, picked sorts out of pie, and finally learned the case. For four long years I earned, as an apprentice at the case, wages enough to help sustain our happy household, never exceeding, however, $9 a week. I shall never forget the first Saturday night on which I received the magnificent sum of $5. My sister and myself walked down the principal street with this great sum, looking in at the millinery windows, intent upon buying a bonnet for our mother with what we could spare from the absolute supply of food. It was a disappointing journey, for everything seemed beyond our means; but a bonnet-shape was secured, and with a few black ribbons and a purple flower the dear sister worked a miracle of beauty out of a trifle of expenditure. Dear me, those were happy days when it took ten long hours of hard labor to earn a dollar—ten cents an hour. The satisfaction of that first $1.50, which I earned in my first week's apprenticeship in the printing-office, has never been equalled, and never will be; for in that week's experience was laid the foundation and beginning of a love for work that is at once the delight and reward of life.