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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5
[miscellaneous paragraphs]
An East Coast contemporary intends to send Edison a copy of its issue containing a paragraph about the phonograph. It thinks it would cause the great inventor a good laugh. Probably it would—if he found time to open the paper. Mr Edison is a printer.
A London lady, in whose pronunciation of English the letter « h » is a rather uncertain quantity, went to a stationer and ordered a number of invitation cards that he proposed to issue for an evening party. She particularly instructed the stationer to print « 'igh tea » in the left-hand corner. When the cards came home they all bore the letters « I.T. » in the corner. The printer had concluded that his customer had invented some new contraction after the manner of « R.S.V.P. »
More facts are coming to light about Mr Desmond's short-lived Tribune— « New Zealand's National Newspaper. » Shortly before its collapse an agent travelled through the Auckland goldfields enrolling subscribers among the simple-minded diggers, and collecting their subscriptions in advance. They have never received a copy of the paper, and as for a refund of the money ———. So they vow vengeance, not against the Tribune, but upon the next newspaper-canvasser who visits the diggings.
A company of shareholders, anxious apparently to anticipate their purgatorial pains, have arranged to start a joint-stock newspaper at Marton. It will have to compete with one of the best-conducted and most firmly-established country papers in New Zealand. No private publisher would look at the speculation for a moment. The journal is to be called the Mercury, from which we may infer that it will possess great specific gravity, and it is announced to appear on an inauspicious day— the First of April.
A vile weekly in Sydney—vile in name, in appearance, and in contents—lately received a check by being refused transmission through the post-office by Mr O'Connor, the Postmaster-General. The proprietors obtained an injunction against that official, ordering him to receive and transmit the paper in ordinary course; but he ignored the injunction, stating that he was responsible only to Parliament. The case was then taken to appeal, and we see by a telegram of the 15th instant that a decision was given in Mr O'Connor's favor with costs. The Court held that the injunction had been obtained by the withholding of evidence of a material character, which, if known, would have prevented its issue, even temporarily; also, that the Court had no right to grant the injunction if it would have the effection of controlling at discretion property vested in the Minister of the Crown. We are glad to see that the sanctity of the mail is not quite a superstition in democratic New South Wales, and that the Postal Department objects to be constituted a common sewer.