OUR CHRISTMAS NUMBER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11200, 21 October 1899, Page 5

OUR CHRISTMAS NUMBER.

* A RECORD SALE. It is now only three weeks since the Auckland Weekli News Christmas Number made its appearance, and already the sale has exceeded the whole of last year's issue. Of the many thousand copies printed there are now comparatively few on hand, and the demand, instead of being nearly satisfied, seems to be increasing daily, Nor is the reason for this hard to seek, as the Number is voted on all sides to be the most beautiful and interesting publication that has yet appeared in the colonies, Tho Wellington Post, in noticing the Numbet, says: — " It is a typographical production of which Messrs. Wilson and Horton may well be proud, and in its contents there are many pictorial souvenirs of the loveliest scenery this island can afford, and samples of the literary capabilities of Young New Zealand. The place of honour is given to an account of a trip ' Round the Auckland Peninsula,' in the Tutanekai, with the Governoi and Premier. It is this that gives occasion for the excellent reproductions of photographs of landscapes and harbour-side and river-side views in the Far North. Of historic interest, a picture and letterpress description is given of the first sermon in New Zealand, preached at the Bay of Islands on Christmas morning, 1814, by the Rev. Samuel Marsden, while a coloured pictorial supplement reproduces a painting by Captain M. T. Clayton of the gathering of pioneer ships in Port Nicholson, between Somes Island and Petone, on March 8, 1840. I Several prize stories are published, the most | interesting being the narration by Clara IN. Barnett (nee Hazard) of her terrible ' experiences in the Tarawera eruption (1886), | in which she lost her father, brother, two , sisters, and cousin, and narrowly escaped ■ with her own life. There is a story of local application by Rudyard Kipling, and a large representation of the work of budding I colonial authors."