The Evening Mail. MONDAY, DEC. 11, 1876.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 200, 11 December 1876, Page 2

The Evening Mail.

MONDAY, DEC. 11, 1876.

"tWrtbars thins*, anrf a drop of ink falling Hpon a thought u»y JKuducc that which makes thousands • think."

We have received a letter signed "Reader," evidently intended to be sarcastic, but really supremely ridiculous, which most untruthfully accuses us of suppressing or garbling the Municipal reports. The writer reads us a Bevere homily upon that part of our profession upon which he modestly arrogates to hims&lf the position of Mentor, yet in very bad taste and wretched English makes certain unfounded charges against the Council and its paid officers, and under

the plea that it would v be interesting to our readers, sends us a long, windy, disconnected, and disjointed production. Our friend must pardon us for running counter to so high an authority, and allow us to be the best judges of what will interest our readers ; nevertheless, in deference to his earnest appeal, we give his closing sentence, the solution of which may prove a source of amusement to those fond of conundrums, and an excellent specimen of the whole. After stating 1 n ironical terms "your readers are under everlasting obligations to you for your splendid report regarding the Water Supply Question," he winds up in the following unique manner :—" Trusting yoii will be long-suffering enough not to suppress, I am, &c." Now we never were good at riddles, and we confess we are at fault as to the hidden satire sought to be conveyed. As our age has not reached the allotted three score and ten, we suppose our mundane troubles have not come to their end, the fact of our position and our liability to be made the target of marksmen of the " Reader" stamp being proof positive to the contrary. Whether sucli be case or not, however, it is our earnest wish to curtail as far as in our power lies the miseries of our readers, and to that end we save an infliction by declining to give the world the windy accusations of our correspondent through the columns of the Mail. Had "Reader" confined himself to forwarding abuse of ourselves, we should have been most happy to have accommodated him by giving it publicity, for we consider newspaper editors the legitimate quarry of gentlemen suffering from cacoethes scribeiuli; but we decidedly object to make our columns a medium for gratifying petty malice and private spite. While we freely give insertion to correspondence calculated to be of benefit to the town, or 'ntcrest to its residents, we decline to be made the cats'-paw for unjustifiable and unwarrantable attacks upon its officials, should "Reader" be under the impression that in refusing to make his letter public we were swayed by motives other than t'loss we have stated, we assure him he does us an injustice, and we trust in our future career we will give proof—as in the by our actions, that neither fear nor favor will deter us from doing our duty as honest and impartial journalists. As we happen to be acquainted with the hand-writing of the letter, we may inform our correspondent that we have pierced his disguised identity, and that he has resorted to a most dishonoi'able and disreputable trick to obtain its insertion, for, while he has forwarded no address, he has appended a false signature.. However, the ruse did not avail, for unfortunately we have been favored in the past with too many of his communications, written in a | similar strain, to forget in a hurry our pseudo-sarcastic friend —a fact which apj pears to have entirely slipped his memory. Should lie, or any resident of the district, whether they are " Readers " of the Mail or otherwise, have a grievance of which to complain, or a wrong to be exposed or redressed, they may rest assured that, so long as their communications are neither untruthful in character nor insulting in tone, and we are in charge of its columns, no fear of the consequences will prevent their insertion. On the conI trary, we intimate to those who seek to air their questionable wit, at the expense of truth and the reputation of worthy and respectable men, that we Jiave but one common grave for such productions —to which " Reader's " has been consigned—the waste-paper basket.