TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXII, Issue 2808, 26 July 1866, Page 4

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

We cannot do better than re-print the following from the New York Times, February 20 :—: — We receive, in one way and another, two or three hundred communications in one week. Of these we we print perhaps a dozen. Necessarily, a great many well-meaning friends are disappointed in not finding their contributions in our columns. A few words of advice to correspondents generally may be useful, alfchoughthismaybethehundredthrepetitionof the main.points :— * 1. Never expect to Bee your manuscript after send^ ingitto anewspaper. We have distinctly announced" again and again, that we do nob preserve rejected articles. Had we done so, the Time* building would long ago have been stocked as closely as a pawnbroker's shelves. 2. IJever send a communication without giving your real name and address. More than threefourths of the matter sent to us goe3 into the waste basket without being read, because we find upon them no real names. Any desiguing fellow may write Btuff to put a newspaper in a wrong position ; hence we insist upon actual personal responsibility, and in important cases we must be Bure that the - names are bond fide. 3. Don't write long essays. Give us new ideas ; give us short, practical, common-sense (and brief) notes upon the vital questions of the hour. Mind the hint to be brief— very brief. Life is short ; newpapers are circumscribed ; space is valuable ; words are many, and -writers are over-garrulous. If you are convinced that you can add an idea or an item that will benefit or enlighten your fellow-men, say it, but say it in the briefest possible space. Don't " take^ my pen in hand to inform you tha* these lines come hoping that you are well," &c. Think carefully over * what you hav,e to say, reduce your comments to the lowest passible fraction, express that by the mo»t convenient logarithm, and it may be that your little gem will find a place in the omnium gatfarum of x great newspaper. 4. Again we repeat, don't ask us to return or preserve manuscripts. Those of length that Jorbid copying are too long for printing. The first and easiest sin of an amateur writer is to be prolix. We have a clear recollection of the time when we could - not for our lives have put these few hints in less than three columns. Take the advice of an old stager. The editor who unfolds a manuscript of half a dozen pages iawardly groans at the waste of words, glances at the beginning and the ending, and rejects nine in tsn of such papers mainly because he cannot or will not wade through them. Loug letters and communications are very often published, but they are almost inevitably written by well-known friends in whom the editor has confidence. 5. We are quite willing to encourage those who have any good things to Bay. Therefore we ask them to heed this bit of advice. If theywrite, Ist the actual name and address accompany each item. A moment's thought ought to convince the most careless that it is not within reason that an editor should give the powerful endorsement of his paper and him*self to matter which the writer is afraid or ashamed to own. And once more, remember that we have not time to return or preserve manuscripts — we cannot do it. Also remember that while you are crystallizing into words the grand ideas of which you are possessed, a thousand more may be doing the same thing ; that the thousand and one valuable contributions may reach us all in a heap ; that, in spite of our enlargement, we cannot by any possibility print more than a tenth of the ten hundred ; that you have vine chances in ten of being one of the rejected. But don't give it up so ; send us, very briefly, such important ideas as may occur to you, and we wilt do our utmost to give you voice in our columns. But don't forget to give your name (in confidence, of course),-and don't expect us to preserve manuscripts.