LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1894, 9 March 1888, Page 36

LITERARY NOTES.

A song that reaches a circulation of 500,000 is something to brag of. That is what has happened in the case of " Aye work awa," by Mr Joseph Wright, of the Argyle Arcade. An edition do luxe has been issued, and the circulation might reach 1,000,000, for the song may be bad by anyone wh© applies personally for it or sends a stamped addressed wrapper whereby it may be delivered by post. Mr Swinburne contributes to the "Nineteenth Century " for January an article called "Dethroning Tennyson; a contribution to the Tennyson-Darwin controversy." He has been intrusted, it seems, with the papers of. Miss Celia Hobbes, a lady languishing (unjustly) in Han well Asylum, who has devoted many years and extraordinary cryptographic astuteness to proving the Darwinian authorship of the poems ascribed to Tennyson. Mr K. L. Stevenson has written two admir. able boys' books, one of the best of shilling dreadfuls, and a number of other works which have been extremely successful, and he has been much "interviewed " in America; but he is still a young man, and it is sincerely hoped he has a brilliant future before him. Is tie yet entitled to issue his magazine articles with a flourish I— Athemcuni.

Every newspaper reader in Australasia knows " the Vagabond," under which name Mr Julian Thomas has told them of his strange wanderings among the islands of the Western Pacific. Now he corae3 directly before the public of the Mother Country with tbo story of his adventures among "Cannibals and Convicts,' 1 published in London by Messrs Cassell. His book has a deeper object, too, than mere amusement of its readers. Mr Thomas is pleading, and that right eloquently, foi British protection to his native friends in the far-off isles.— " Cassell's Magazine."

The type-writer is emu ing a revolution in methods of correspondence, and filling t he country with active, competent young ladies, who arc establishing a distinct profession and bringing into our business otlices, lawyers' ofliccs, editoiial sanctums, Sec, an element oC decency, purity, and method which is working a perceptible change. The field is widening daily ; not from crowding out of their places young men who have been claiming a pre-emption for clerical work of all descriptions, but in creating absolutely new positions. The revolution, if it may be called so, has come from the discovery to business men of an ability of which they were unaware until the great convenience and excellent work of the type-writer forced them to it. The art of dictation is almost a new art, but it is spreading rapidly and business men are beginning to understand that much of their lives has been wasted in the mere mechanical drudgery of letter writing, and that through employing a competent amanuensis they are now enabled to get off their correspondence with the least possible friction and the smallest amount of; time. Whereas, five years ago, the type-writer was simply a mechanical curiosity, to-day its monotonous click can be heard in almo&t every well regulated business establishment in the country. A great revolution is taking place, and the type-writer is at the bottom of it. — " Penman's Art Journal."

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