.jpg)
Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5
[miscellaneous paragraphs]
At Carlsruhe the police fine anyone who plays on the piano with an open window.—So says a contemporary. In New Zealand the artist who could perform such a feat, so far from being fined, might charge a handsome admission fee, and draw a house every evening.
There are a good many joint-stock newspapers and job-offices in New Zealand run in opposition to those conducted by private enterprise. The great majority of the shareholders are small tradesmen whose business abilities are shown by their losing £50 or £60 capital in a single year in order to save a few shillings on billheads, and a few more in advertising. As the billheads are in many cases vilely printed, and the better class of customers never see the advertisements, the economy of the arrangement is manifest.
For a prominent public man to own and edit a newspaper is not without disadvantages. The Wanganui people are no doubt accustomed to it by this time, but there is a touch of comedy in such items as this, which are always appearing in the Herald: « Mr Ballance … faces his beaten foes with dignity, yet without apparent elation, and is ready to answer questions and vouchsafe information with that urbanity which always distinguishes him, » et cetera. It is almost a pity that the little majority of 27 was not on the other side. We should then, perhaps, for a change, have been able to read Mr Carson's opinions and criticisms of Mr Carson, as well as Mr Ballance's estimate of Mr Ballance.
An English correspondent says that it is on account of « the tyranny of Tammany » that the American papers speak of the ballot as the Australian system. He asks, « Why Australian, when the Australian is the English? » None of the papers copying this item have set the writer right. The system is not English, though it was one of the points demanded forty years ago by the Chartists. It originated in New Zealand, and was in full force here and in Australia while it was still denounced in the British Parliament as un-English. So the Americans are right, except for the trifling detail that they « locate » — as they always do—New Zealand in Australia. The tyranny of Tammany is not all-powerful, either. A mild Anglo-mania is the fashion in the States. Wealthy ladies adorn their private correspondence with the British royal arms—it is So English, you know!
Those who admire the vivid descriptive reporting of the American press—that kind which Englishmen have never appreciated—do not suspect how much of it is from imagination. Some light on American methods may be obtained from the recent dreadful misadventure of the editor of a San Francisco paper. Seeing on the bulletin board of a contemporary « Fire at the Alhambra, » he prepared a most harrowing and blood-curdling special despatch from London. The piercing shrieks of the ballet-girls, their narrow escape into the streets « mit nodings on » save tights and diaphanous skirts, were set forth in detail, and even her Majesty's message of condolence was not forgotten. Next day the paper was the butt of all its rivals; but the editor was equal to the occasion. He said the error was quite excusable—every American knew of the London Alhambra; but very few had ever heard of « the similar establishment in Granada. » This little story is to be found in the Printers' Register of October. By a curious coincidence, in referring to an old volume of our valued contemporary, we find in the issue for December, 1875, in an article from Chambers's Journal, a precisely parallel instance. « An American editor, receiving a telegram from London, running, 'Oxford Music-hall burnt to the ground,' hastened to publish the melancholy news that the principal music-hall of academic Oxford had been utterly destroyed by fire; and not content with the simple announcement of the disaster, informed his readers that the burned hall was situated in the midst of the historic colleges of Oxford, which had miraculously escaped destruction from the flames, which, fanned into fury by a favorable wind, lit up the academic spires and groves as they ran along the rich cornices, lapped the gorgeous pillars, shrivelled up the roof, and grasped the mighty walls of the ancient building in their destructive embraces, filling townsmen and gownsmen with terror and consternation, until driven back by an unfavorable wind the flames gradually succumbed to the superhuman efforts of the firemen, and the great seat of learning was saved. » Such is the manner in which contemporary history is sometimes manufactured.