"LOCKING UP."

Otago Daily Times, Issue 174, 6 June 1862, Page 5

"LOCKING UP."

It is pleasant to lock up your money box when you feel that its contents hare been well earned. Locking the stable door when the horse is cone is not quite so satisfactory. Looking up the counting-house, for the last time prior to your annual summer holiday, has agreeable sensations. There is much that is gratifying about locking your door on a winter's night, and leaving cold and damp and wind and dreary thoughts in the street—if you don't get troubled in your mind about some poor wretch who may seek the shelter of your door step. But the most interesting and generally most agreeable locking up newspaper people feel ts a locking up about which the general public know little or nothing. One of the most important phases through which a newspaper travels in the course of production is its " locking up." You don't know what I mean, Mrs. Pnrtington % You think it strange that a newspaper should be locked up prior to publication, Mrs. P. 1 If you lived next door to a publishing office which sent forth a newspaper at an early hour in the morn-, ing, yoi^would soon know what locking up is. When you were suddenly aroused from a refreshing slumber by a knocking'and a hammering and a clamoring, and you asked your yenerablu Mr. P. what in the world that dreadful noise was, he would tell you (if he knows anything about such things) that the printers were locking up. And when this knocking was succeeded by a dragging about of some heavy material and a shuffling of feet, and then another knocking of a shorter duration than the former, he would tell you the formes were on the machine. [No, Mrs. P., the formes are not to sit upon.] And when yon were sensible of a bumping and a rolling and a.rattling of machinery, he.would tell you " they are at press"—one of the very few blissful moments in the labor of those who conduct newspapers. When the editor lias written his multifarious ideas, and supervised and edited the contributions of his crowd of correspondents; when the reporters have transcribed the last of their notes, and all this has gone through the compositors' hands, and grown into columns of dull looking type; ■when this has been read and corrected, and arranged under its respective heads of foreign news, literature, general, local, &c.; when some of it has been printed off, and the last pages are being matte ready for the press; then conaes the period of locking up, which all concerned in the production of the paper look forward to all the time between each diurnal or weekly issue. This locking up is the fastening safely together the columns of the paper in iron frames, which printers call chases, the completion of which operation releases what may be called the thinking part of the establishment, and leaves nothing to be done but the mere mechanical work of printing the paper and sending it forth to the world. The process of locking up is accompanied by much hammering with mallets and much planing with planers, in order that the typo may adhere firmly together, .and be even on the surface. .Bolls chiming on a summer evening, the melody of birds, the whispering of the winds through trees hi summer, the rippling murmur of running brooks, make charming music, but after the fatigues and anxieties of a publicaiion day in a newspaper office, the clamour and clash of locking up is sweeter and more soothing than tither bell music, bird music, brook music, or any other kind of music whatsosver.

To one uninitiated in the mysteries of the art which Caxton did so much to perfect, the extraordinary commands nnd inquiries of the overseer, whose duty it is to " make up," as the final arrangement of the types before going to press is called, would be exceedingly puzzling and sometimes ludicrous. " W ho's on that horrible.tragedy !" is a query somewhat startling in its nature, as is also the command to " finish that dreadful murder, which is keeping two galleys waiting." (Galleys, by the bye, are what I may call frames, made sometimes of wood, mostly of metal, to receive the type, before it is placed in the iron -embrace of the '' chases"—very different things, Mi's. P., either to ships of the galleys where crime is punished in France.) But these are ordinary commands and interrogations in a printing-office a short time before locking up. Yet I have seen a stranger standing in utter bewilderment at a running fire such as this—"Let that ' Colliery Accident' be revised,; and pull that ' French Ambassador in Turkey,' and1 set up 'An outlawed Bankrupt,' in brevier, caps;, finish that ' Great Battle between the Austrians aud tho Allies,'" and a host of similarly inexplicable orders from overseers to typos; whilst the reader nsks for a proof of " The explosion in a Coal Mine," as though he wanted to see a collection of dead bodies nnd mangled limbs ! and the editor, intent on his leaders, demands another proof of " The Settlement of the Eastern Question" (as though ho very much doubted such a desirable consummation), at the same time suggesting that the ■'cross head," of Mr. Gladstone shall be replaced by a "full head," which, by the by, is anything but a reflection on the intellectual powers or congenial temper of that distinguished statesman, however paradoxical this statement may seem in connection with tho suggested re-arrangement of Mr. Gladstone's cranium. . ,

I can assure my readers that this settlement of Eastern question, this finishing of murders, this revising of accidents, and proofs of awful calamities, is perfectly intelligible to the printers, and means anything but the committal of dreadful deeds, or the final arrangement of European questions. And such commands and observations do not create a laugh from their apparent extravagance, but the work goes on amidst the blazing glare of gas with wonderful speed, everybody intent on what he has in haud, until those great chases are put round the long leaden col iimns of type, and the locking up begins. Then faces relax from their 'previous sternness ; compositors wipe the perspiration from their brows; editors, subs, reporters, put on their cloaks and take up their walking-sticks, and light their cigars and go home, and soon afterwards the newspaper—the history of the world for a'day or a week, as the case may be— the story of our progress and civilization, our crimes our charities, our battles, our victories, oursins of omission and commission—is in the hands of a crowd of readers, perhaps not one of whom ever thinks about the labor of bead and hand the broad wet sheet has cost its producers. —Provincial' Papers, by J. Hatton.

In the Illustrated London Neios, of March 1 there is an engraving aud description of Mr. EWilson's large ox Tooram, exhibited at the last Port Philip Show, and afterwards shipped to England for exhibition.

The Maryborough Cotton Plantation is just now becoming a place of considerable interest, as the picking season is progressing very favorably, and the more sanguine among the shareholders begin to hope that, after all, they may get a dividend. The plant grows most luxuriantly, nml it is hoped that German labor will be found sufficient economical to leave n fair margin for the cultivator.— Maryborough Chronicle (Qneensland).

p: A Novel Idea.—The Mouitair de t'Agricul tiire publishes the following: -" In April hist a gen tleman made p. novel experiment which produced res lilts altogether unexpected. He planted four potatoes, in two of which he inserted a bean, and in each of the other two a pea. The peas and beans flourished well, and gave a good result, and the potatoes were large, not attacked by disease, nor at all discoloured in the stalks. They were also extremely productive, as'the first had fifty-eight tubers, the second thirty, the third twenty.nine, and the fourth twenty-five. The experiment will be repeated this year on c. much larger scale."