Hawke's Bay Herald. TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 1879. " THE HUB OF THE UNIVERSE."

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5398, 3 June 1879, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Herald. TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 1879. " THE HUB OF THE UNIVERSE."

"Boston State-house is the hub of the solar system. You could'nt pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar," remarked the practical John, immortalised by Oliver Wendell Holmes. To this the delightful Autocrat of the Breakfast Table adds five propositions of his own : (1) The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city ; (2) if more than fifty years have passed since its foundation, it is affectionately styled the "good old town of " (whatever its name may be) ; (3) every collection of its inhabitants that comes together to listen to a stranger is invariably declared to be "a remarkably intelligent audience;" (4) the climate of the place is particularly favorable to longevity ; and (5) it contains several persons of vast talent little known to the world. The unfortunate sub-editor of a morning paper published in New Zealand nrast often have felt the truth which John so humorously expresses, and which the Autocrat himself elaborates so epigrammatically. Curses "not loud, but deep" must often have ascended to high heaven from long-suffering sub-editiorial flesh condemned to extract the few grains of news from the bushels of rubbish which nightly come through the telegraphic wires. The correspondent in Ofcago spells New Zealand " D-u-n-e-d-i-n," and at Christchurch or Auckland his mind is equally wrapped up in his own little " city," to the exclusion of the rest of the colony, and he crams the wires with the most inconceivably petty details of a quarrel between the Inspector of Nuisances and the dustman, or some equally trivial matter. The evil was always bad enough, but since the inauguration of the "special wire" system it has been intensified ten-fold. The Christchurch correspondent of the Press Association is an especial nuisance, Wha,t is said or done in Christchurch must of necessity be, to his limited mind, of surpassing interest to Napier, and so he sends us a column about what the Lyttelton Times thinks of the Tinumi Herald, or what it says about Mayor Ick, of peripatetic Parliament notoriety, having called to order Councillor Cass, who thinks the world is flat. The Wellington Post publishes a foolish paragraph about the Stad Haarlem having loaded one ton more cargo at Wellington than at Christchurch, notwithstanding which it got away from the Wellington wharf twenty seconds sooner than at Christchurch, and straightway we receive by telegraph a leader from the Christchurch organ indignantly repudiating the foul slander, and incontestably proving that as a matter of fact the steamer had half-a-ton more cargo put on board at Lyttelton, and got away two seconds sooner. Matters are getting to such a pass that if a fly alights on the sacred nose of Mayor Ick we may expect full telegraphic details of the number of times the fly kicked, and what effect it had on the eloquence of the possessor of the sacred nose. Telegraph clerks, sub-editors, and compositors are kept hard at work all night, in order that waste-paper baskets may be filled with telegraphic rubbish, and the only parties benefited are the English paper makers, who manufacture the " flimsy " on which the nonsense is manifolded. This local feeling is all very well in its place, in causing a healthy competition between neighboring towns, but when it is carried to such excess as it is by the correspondents of the Press Association it becomes an unmitigated nuisance. There is a small town in

Massachusetts where, we are told, they ■read dope's line— "All are but parts of a stupendous Hull,"

and the inhabitants of our New : Zealand " cities " are not one whit leas egotistical and puffed-up With Ipttal conceit than those of the Massachusetts village. There is one exception to this telegftiphic lntoia, When anything really worth telegraphing occurs wft arfe generally left t?d eitt it. from the files when they Some to hand a week later. Enterprise in newspapers is good, and we don't object to pay for anything worth publishing, but we shall rejoice when the ". special , wire " arrangement comes to an ignominious end, and we are left to pay for what we use, and not for what, is merely food for the waste-paper basket.