NEWSPAPER OBITUARIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1901, 10 July 1890, Page 36

NEWSPAPER OBITUARIES.

i SOME DEATH -NOTICES WHICH WEBB A v LITTLE TOO PBEVIOUS. Newspaper obituaries are not always written on the spure of tbe moment. In fact, the reverse is, as a rule, the case, and the lives of bur greatest men are" taken," so to speak, by the hand of the journalistic biographerj long before death knocks at the door. In other words, at every important newspaper office in the kingdom numerous, memoirs, shorter or longer, according to the public position of the subject, are regularly " pigeon-holed," and held ready for as when the fatal moment comes. These memoirs are often written long before the decease of tbe celebrated person, Whenever a distinguished man reaches an advanced age, or is attacked by illness, or shows signs of failing health, some member of the staff is instantly told off to write his life-story. It is a remarkable fact, well known to all experienced journalists, that this praotioe of writing obituaries of great men seems almost invariably to have the effect of ' ! KEEPING THEM ALIVE. - At any rate they rarely die very soon after their memoirs are put into,type,-and sometimes'many years elapse before their departure gives opportunity for their posthumous praises to be sounded. Instances are quite common in which memoirs have been' composed so long before the event that the writers themseltes have been the first to die. ; 'A very Curious example. of this -is supplied in the base of the Times' biography of the late Earl Russell. It was originally written about 20 years before the statesman's decease. It was " brought vp 1 to date " from time to' time, and, strange to say, everyone of its contributors died, until a sort of ill-lack seemed to ; attaoh to it, and no orie was inclined to touch it. - Many hundreds of columns must have been written and printed about tbe Prince of Wales in 1871, when he was suffering under a severe attack of typhoid fever. A large portion of these have; perhaps, been preserved— it is to be hoped not to be used for many a day. In one case, a provincial journalist had prepared a long memoir of the Prince, and oil, that anxious day— a Sunday — vyhen'tbe . Heir>apparenti seemed havering between life 1 and -cieath', ; and' when'tfulletins' Were being sent from the newspaper offices t6 ithe churches to be read out from the pulpit, the writdr gave orders' lKaff the! article should/b.esent to, him in.proof.on.the, following;. >Mo.nday. That, morning. ;,. the I journalist in . question, came dawn ,to. /break? , fast to find theJadies of hia family in tears.'••'The poor' Prince," exclaimed pne.^ift dead I " ; .The journalist then, asked for .evi-i dbnee of the:sad f«ot,;whereupon • c ■ 1 ■ l , fi' .his aw».PßOors, j , , headed "Death of the Prince of Wales," were handed to him. " & that all-? " was bis coldblooded remark. ,7," £U2>"reohoed tbe lady. *H Do you mean to say , that Jhat .article was Written, while the Prince was .agive 1 ", Tbe journalist frankly avowed that such was indeed,tbe case, and perhaps was not as muoh moved aavfee ought to. have been on being Wd that,". it, was a great shame to do such things." „Some distingoishedi, people have sbdwn no objections to have their "Hvea 'taken "< "prematurely. 'More than one in-, stance could be cited in which' some public personage has actually been " interviewed " with- a view to a posthumous record 1 of his 1 life. It is a tolerably weU-ascertamed fact that the! .great. Lord Brougham .spread through the intermediary of a relation a false report of bis own death, in order to see what the newspapers would, say about him, in which design he was more or less satisfied, as he. was .biographiaed;jin several journals. Miss Harriet Martineau, again, 1 :' WBOTEHEB OWN MEJiOIB , forithe Daily News, and it remained for many years in the office of that journal to be published in about five columns at the time of hei; death. It is a singular fact that tbe obituary leading articles on the death of Pope Pius IX in the Times and Daily Telegraph respectively were both written by the same hand. The author was the late James Macdonell. He was on the staff of the Telegraph when be wrote the article to be "pigeon-holed," and (had joined the Times some years before the Pope's demise.- Newspapers are rarely taken by surprise in the case. of a sudden death of a great man. It was so, however, in one instance, as regards the decease of the late M. THIBRS. The news arrived late in the evening ; no memoirs were ready, but five of the best writers on the staff were employed to trace the great statesman's career, and in less than two hours turned out among them about eight columns of an able and interesting memoir. In the case of Mr Gladstone, Lord Tennyson, Mr John Buskin, Sir Richard Owen, Prince Bismarck, Count yon Moltke, and many other distinguished men of advanced age. their memoirs are now ready either in M 3. or print in every leading journal in the kingdom, wanting for their completion only the details of the last hours of the illustrious subject.— The Newsagent. — A scientist, after much investigation of the subject, has come to the conclusion that the reason why women are so fond of ribbons is because the first woman was made of a rib-bone. Somebody oaki ns the conundrum, " Why pay rMit ? " We have to aniwer that vre only do it just to keep the landlord from asking us to step outiide, There oan be no iwe In asking silly questions, whioh only proyoko and diwerve »illy answers. A mnrb. more pertinent qne»Mon is. Why bave gray Jiair, when thß voices of two hemiiph«rei havo proclaimed that Mr. S. A. Allen's IWoiiLD'a HAIR BMTOJUUI it au lufaliible n«*n» of roitoriag gray or faded hah to ifif tf glwa wlouf M d «h«ui f