AN IMMENSE TELEGRAM.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3158, 11 August 1881, Page 4

AN IMMENSE TELEGRAM.

A correspondent says : —We all regard the Americans as a go-ahead people ; and, indeed, not without good reason. I have before me a copy of the Chicago Times of May 22nd, 1881, and if I have never heard anything of America before, and was never to hear anything of America again, I think I should be able from this paper alone to get a tolerably good idea of America and American character. The copy of the Times before me consists of 176 long columns of closely printed matter, on almost every subject under the sun. Specitil telegrams are there by the score, and amongst them is one nothing less than a marvel. Ifc consists of tho entire New Testament (tho revised version, of course), word for word, from the beginning of Matthew to the end of the Revelation. This immense telegram occupies nearly eighty-nine columns, and is a feat in the art of telegraphy that lias never been equalled. The time occupied in its transmission from New York to Chicago was from 5 to 11.30 o'clock p.m., nineteen wires being used up to 9 o'clock, and twenty-one after that hour. The number of words was 83,715 ; nearly 84,000. After this I shall he surprsied at nothing I hear respecting America. When a paper of 176 long columns of closely packed matter, including amongst many other things of great interest a special telegram of 83,715 words, can be had in America for 2£d, it really does seem as if nothing was beyond the enterprise of the cute Yankee.