GOING AROUND FOR NEWS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 320, 2 May 1877, Page 4

GOING AROUND FOR NEWS.

Says a London correspondent of a northern journal :—" It is often said that we must go abroad in order to learn what is taking place at home. Certain it is, thatwe Londoners are occasionally startled by reading in foreign papers of events supposed to have occurred in our immediate neighbourhood, but of which we were previously quite oblivious. A paragraph of this description, though not altogether ipocryphal, has recently travelled here bom the other side of the Atlantic. It relates how our London Times, 'the khunderer of Printing-house Square,' keeps a special reporter, Air. Neilson, for Lord Beaconsfield. and ' wherever you iear the Prime Miaister speaking, there rou will see an old grey-headed man with ;old-rimmed spectacles, with his notcMok and pencil.' He is one of the best, terhaps the best, reporter in the House of Jommohs Gallery, and it is a remarkable set that this gentleman has ' taken' every peech, or nearly every speech, that Coed Beaconsfield has made in or out cf

the House of Commons. He tgok Mr | Diraeli's maiden speech in the House of Commons, and Mr. Disraeli was so pleased with the fairness and accuracy of the re- i p>rt that, if we are to credit the trad'iion of the American journalist, he called the next morning at the Times office to see and thank the reporter. 'lf I ever come to the eminence I hope to reach,' s\id Mr. Disraeli, shaking hands with Mr. Neilson, 'I can only hope that I shall be as well reported as you have reported me to-day.' Mr. Disraeli has had his wish doubly. He has reached the eminence he hoped to reach, the highest and proudest position an Englishman can hold, and in that position Earl Beaconsfield has the gratification of being ' taken' by the reporter who f rty years ago took the maiden speech of Vaiin Gr.-y in Iha House of Ccnmons."