CLARA BUTT AS MILKMAID.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXV, Issue 3831, 14 May 1913, Page 7

CLARA BUTT AS MILKMAID.

AMERI CAN INTERVIEWER'S

FICTION

RECKLESS DISREGARD OF

TRUTH

‘Aon fellows might do worse” said Mr. J. Nevin Tait on board the Qml'ah yesterday morning as he thoughtfully examined a couple of interviewers. “You might do worse than go to America and see how the pressmen there accomplish their interviews. I do not say it would be good to folio w their methods but it would prove interesting to you. “A minimum of news with a maximum of result—that is the motto of the American journalist. You give them two words and they make a couple of columns out of them.

“Mine. Clara Butt said frankly that she liked meeting the American interviewers. She regarded is as great fun. Everything they did was so original. She said that she did not have to wait to be asked questions as she did when meeting English pressmen. The Americans did all the questioning. They never ran short of questions and anything personal, down to the sort of socks one wears, is copy to them.

“One New York Sunday paper is the limit. It printed a most voluminous article dealing with the life of Mme. Clara Butt. In glowing, throbbing language they told of the contralto’s rise from a humble miLkmaid to the world-famous singer.’ They traced every incident of her career, and introduced human-interests stuff with such skill that the sketch proved to be the most absorbing reading. On one page they printed a sketch of her as she trudged to her national job, dressed in plain noinespnn, with the milk pails on her shoulder ; and on the other page they showed the darling of tho concert halls in ail her sartorial splendor. with* diamonds and tiaras clustering round her neck and head. It was very thrilling. “The point of the whole thing,” concluded Mr. Tait, as he gazed steadily out of the coming sunrise,” was that Mine. Clara Butt had never been a milkmaid. Also, she had never seen a cow—at least while that female bovine bad been engaged in its pastoral ambulations.”