A FEEBLE ATTEMPT.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 39, 10 September 1887, Page 2

A FEEBLE ATTEMPT.

OUR grandmotherly contemporary down the street has struck out in a new line this week. Its conductor has apparently perceived what has long been apparent to the general public, viz., that the keynote of its tone was a most utter dreariness and dulness. With the laudable intention of putting a little more life into the paper its editor has racked his brain to find a new feature, and after much rumpling of back hair, and a careful study of Puff’s Cigarettes, he has evolved a most ponderous attempt at wit in the shape of a column he heads “ Sling and Stone,” and which is signed “ Aim.” “ Slinging Mud ” would have served as a more suitable appellation for this laboured dreary tittle tattle, for mud is thrown right and left at anything and everything which does not happen to fit in with the jaundiced temper of the writer. “Puff” is often personal but never vulgar, often hits hard, but never offends the canons of good taste, but “Aim’s” effusions are apparently written to prove how much spite can be crammed into a little space. To pass

uncouth jests at one political oppohfcht who is in ill-health, or to allude to the financial difficulties of another may seem the height of drollery to the atrabilious paragraphist “Aim,” but whether his readers regard his efforts with the same smug self-complacency as himself; Is very much to be doubted. The ffiain feature of his sorry stuff is to cast obloquy and ridicule upon a worthy gentleman who through illness cannot reply,and who, were he in good health, would possibly treat the attacks with the contempt they deserve, The constant nagging and abuse of the Herald is, however, we are happy to say, having that effect which such a policy generally rouses, namely a feeling of sympathy with the gentleman abused, and of contempt for the reviler.