A HUMOROUS TYPE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 137, 9 June 1905, Page 2

A HUMOROUS TYPE.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —The humour of the lintoype has not yet found »n exponent. It is more sardonic than the playful thrusts of the redoubtable compositor of the old regime. ; Writers for tin; I'ress scribble in all seriousness, knowledge (deep or shal-' ■low) oozing out of t'beir finger-tips in-| ■j to the blackness of rtiky verbosity, and: j they are innocently unconscious of the I demoniac linotype lying to wait for it* ' : egotistical victim. With .a sudden spring i the vindictive linotype pounces upon it-j j prey, and runs ofl" at a tangent, yelling. i with frantic delight, making a chaotic ' jumble of the gravest subject, and shrieking with lunatic gk>e at its perfor--1 , mance. Without the compositor the life 1i of the newspaper reader and writer i would be a failure, were it'not for the ! linotype. Then this age would soon lose, all the humour that is left in it. which,! ' however, is not much. How grateful we should be. six. for the boon at which ' many of us rebel. I used to be inclinedi ' to credit all Shakespeare's anachronisms. ' to the "devil." or the compositor; I havej reformed since then. Dr. Bakewe-11 com-| • plains of the putting back of Puritan-| ism a century or two. 1 fail to see so; much difference between Puritanism and| the synod of Whitby.or St. AugustineV mission, from a linotype point of view.| The compositor, in puris naturalibusj was an admirable individual, who tn- , . I vented some of the best jokes and liap-j 1 piest flashes of genius of the past. 40(V 5' j years, and never dealt in chr*stnuts. The| ? linotype may equal but cannot excel him. - T respect good coinage, even in words: . I therefore I am obligrd to the linotype for! ,' a how hint —exmsorlerata is just ns good -! as desiderata. In fact. 1 now feel that p! we have wanted that word all the time. s! —1 am. etc.. • ' MAURICE R. IvEESING. 1 I ' i ' ————___—___