A REPORTER WHO CAN STAY.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XIV, Issue 5054, 29 December 1887, Page 2

A REPORTER WHO CAN STAY.

New Zealand journalist 3 are nothing if not thorough. By late files of the Auckland Evening Bell to hand it appears that the ferry steamers Eagle and Victoria have been racing home from a picnic, down harbor, and being opposition boats, going ao hard that their safety valves blew wide open aud howled like the damned, frightening women and children into a panic, which threatened to cause a bad accident. The Harbor Board decided to hold an inquiry in committee, and engaged a shorthand writer to take down the witness' evidence. The papers naturally thought so public a matter wanted a public inquiry, and sent their best lightning phonographists. The Board kicked and wanted to do without the gentlemen of the fourth estate. Those from the Herald and Star caved in in part ; but the gentleman from the Bell was of different metal — bell-metal in fact. The Chairman blandly begged, the members of the Board snapped and bullied, the stalwart and pompous* secretary hectored ; and otill the reporter stayed, and aaid he had orders to report that meeting, and he meant to do it, too. Unless he was fired out he proposed to stay. The writer knows that reporter well. He is a Yankee and a sticker ; in his own terse language he "is built that way." At length they sent for a policeman, but he being a man wise in hia generation, and knowing and liking tho reporter, a:ked to be excused till he consulted his superior officer. Mr "Bell" held the fort, the members of the Board bit their nails, growled about loss of time and glared at the reporters (for by this time theothera had edged in) while a "cloud of witnesses " snarled, pushed, and perspired outside the door, and yelled at the Board to let the pressman stay " They didn't want no hole-and-corner job ; let the papers report the thing properly," and so on. Some daring soul among the fossils proposed that they should "chuck the paper men cut ourselves," but another gave wiser counsels, as four or five young reporters, he considered, were too much for five or six old fossils, betides, as exMayor Waddell, the chairman, said, " if one of you laid your hand on a reporter's shoulder even, that would be an assault ; my J.P. knowledge tells me that much." At length the constable returned with his sergeant, and after again asking tho Bell reporter if he would go out, and being told that unless ho was chucked out, they got the half-Nelson " hoult " on one side and the hammer-lock on the other, and yanked him forth into the outer air with one grand simultaneous yank. But the Press triumphed, as it always does, insomuch a3 the time had got so late, and the Board was so disturbed, that a motion " that; tho committee refer the whole matter to the full Board at thejregular meeting," was carried nem con, and the conspirators rush forth to talk and dream all night that a grcon reporter, with pink eyes, a tail, and a glue pot on the back end of his pants, was sitting on their several chests taking note of all their thoughts on a red-hot sheet of iron with the business end of his tail.