A MATTER OF WRITING.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume X, Issue 490, 1 September 1882, Page 9

A MATTER OF WRITING.

Mathew Hale Smith was writing letters to the Journal over the signature of " Burleigh." Smith wrote a detestable hand, and Charles O. Rogers, who was then making the Journal jump with his activity, enterprise and liberality, was very nearly his match in this particular. One day a compositor came down to Mr. Rogers with some of Burleigh's " copy," saying that if he had got to set that kind of stuff they'd have to pay him by the hour, because he couldn't make his salt setting it by the thousand. Rogers immediately wrote BurJeigh a note, telling him that if he couldn't write so that his letters could be read, he had better either quit writing or get somebody to do his writing for him. In a day or two there arrived an envelope with Rogers's signature cut out and pasted upon it and "Care Boston Journal " wiitten beneath. Upon being opened it read as follows : " Dear Sir ; I have received a letter, which, from the printed headline, I assume to be from the Journal office. If you will get somebody that can write a legible hand to inform me whom it was from and what it is all about, I shall esteem it a favour. Yours, trnly, Mathew Hale Smith." The next time Mr. Smith came to Boston he was handsomely entertained, and Charlie Rogers paid the bills. — Exchange.