ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1015, 22 July 1879, Page 2

ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

EXPLANATORY. TO THE EDITOR OF THE OAJIAKU MAIL. Sir, —Being absent from Oamaru on Saturday, I did not until my return last night see the paragraph relating to myself which appeared in your issue of that day. I have 110 doubt your criticism of my style of speaking is correct, and ata obliged to you for giving me the opportunity of amending a fault, but as to the' particular matter in question, viz. J, what was from some cause or other a misrepresentation of my meaning, permit mejust one word. At last Thursday's Council meeting theTimes'reporterarrived first, and with regard to this matter of Grant's, arbitration case, and the interview of the Council's Committee with the Municipal Solicitor, I made a statement after tho confirmation of the minutes, and before the inward correspondence was read. It was in the morning paper's report of this I statement that the confusion of the names of the Municipal Solicitor and Mr. Hislop occurred, and I therefore very naturally concluded that your reporter had come in after my statement and obtained his information of what had passed up to the moment of his entering the chamber from the other representative of the Press. If I was in error in that conclusion, then the coincidence of tho reporters misunderstanding me, while as I learn there was 110 such misunderstanding on the part of the Councillors present, is the more surprising. If the postscript to my letter conveyed the idea that I attached any blame to your reporter, permit mo to say that I had no intention of doing so.—l am, &c., Wm. J. Steward.