Notes and Events.

Manawatu Herald, 13 April 1893, Page 3

Notes and Events.

Mr Stead's " Character Sketches " in the fleview of Reviews are always interesting reading, and the last, the " Pall Mall Gazette " especially so as discovering many odd facts. When the new paper was about to be started the name was a matter of much discussion. Eventually the title by which the paper is so well known was chosen just to please ar deceased gentlemen. The proprietor talking over the matter one day with Miss Thackeray said that he ,had thought of calling it the Pall Mall Gazette, after the paper in " Pendemis." Miss Thackery eagerly caught at the idea. It would so please her father, she said, for the idea of Thackery as dead and uninterested in the affairs of the world he had so recently quitted was quite foreign to her thought.

In the novel when Pendemis was invited to contribute, Captain Shandon wrote \ — " Yon would be the very man to halp us with a genuine West End article — you understand —dashing trenchant, and d— arisn tocrafcic." The prospectus itself was drawn up by Captain Shandon in the highest of high falutin bombast. "We address ourselves to the higher circles of society, We care not to disOwp it — the Pall Mull Gazette is written by gentlemen for gentlemen ; its conductors speak to the glasses in which they live and were born. The field preacher has his journal, the radical freethinker has his journal ; why should the Gentlemen of England be unrepresented in the press." The Gazette attempted a morning edition in 1870, for four months resulting in the proprietor losing a sum of £25,000. The Auckland Weekly News states that he, the Hon Mr Stout, found in Samoa a great deal of interest and that he believed if a Vote were taken among the Samoans they would unanimously ask to come under British protection. He thinks that the action of Germany, England and the United States is most high-handed, in attempting to rule 35.000 inhabitants in the interest ot 400 Europeans in Samoa. They ought to be allowed to set up some sort of native government under the benevolent protectorate of Great Britain, is his opinion. :