The Moving Finger

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 13, 2 June 1911, Page 6

The Moving Finger

"The Moving Finger writes; and having writ, moves 0n. ,.

"liittle Minister" Barrie—charming novelist and playwright—is bringing out a new book this year. About Windy grown-up?

After resisting the linotype for years. Syd. "Bulletin" has at last succumbed to the tempter called Economy. The trail of the Metal ELing is over recent issues, and obviously. But what a "Bully" it is, tho' it never has h-sen as good as it was.

A recent "Lone Hand" contained an article captioned "Music and Socialism." Wβ read it once, we read it twice, we read it thrice, and tk-en interpreted the title as an editorial joke emulatory of Mark Twain. For nothing outside the title either mentioned or suggested Socialism.

I/et mc make the superstitious of a nation and I care not who makes its laws, or its songs either.—Mark Twain.

We observe with horror that the "Dominion's" idea of a literary "deparment" is the scissoring of shovelsful of English matter. It saves money, 'tis true—but is also a clue as to why the "Dominion" thinks New Zealanders have produced nothing in printer's ink worth copyrighting. And the "Dominion 1, will see that they won't. Or try.

Backblox Australians within the Dominion will be sorry to hear that illfated Dick Holt ("6x8") bush bard and free is in bad health. He was recently appointed caretaker of the Ghillagoe (N.Q.) oaves.

"Lyttelton Tim-es" has an admirable method of indicating that a correspondent's letter has been cut down. It places an asterisk (*) before the signature. Present writer has far years thought something of the kind, was demanded by fair play,

Says "Bulletin' : "Still another death from starvation on the Inky Way of the North. The corpse this time is the 'Wild] River Times.' The dreadful fluctuation of the fortunes of the mining camp is mainly responsible for littering the North with these ink-stained bones. Sometimes, even with that handicap, they might pull through; but the big well-equipped paper of the settled towns dashes in with its budget of local news, and the poor little struggling rag is counted out." Reminds us that in the years agone when Q. "Figaro" had Bobby Byrnes at its helm it reprinted some noticeable articles from "Wild River Times," so clever that people thought the "Wild! River Times 7, a fake to add lustre and pictur-esqueness to the articles. Poor old Bobby— we'll never forget his bitter groan of: "mad dog journalism" when the "Boomerang" practically quashed "Figaro." Strange to Queensland hasn't today a weekly of the sort equal to either.

Some readers see a portrait of Mr. Balfour in the character of "Evesham" in 11. G. Wells's new storyJKere is the portrait: "Some men one sees through and understands, some one cannot see into or round because they axe of opaque clay, but about Evesham I had a sense of things hidden as it were by depth and mists. . . . At times it seemed to mc bis greatness stood over and behind the reality of his life, like some splendid servant, thinking his own thoughts, who waits behind a lesser master's chair."

Wells describes the object of the much-discussed "The New Machia vellx" by saying: "I wanted; to make a picture of an ambitions man pulled down by passion, and there it is done and finished."

THE SOCIAJLIST MOVEMENT

From "The Servant in the Souse' 5

cm , * 1S a liTrjjxg thing/ 5 said Manson. "The pillars of it go up like the brawny trunks of heroes; the sweet human flesh of men and women is moulded: about its bulwarks, strong, impregnable; the faces of little children laugh out from every corner stone; the terrible spans and arches of it are the joined hands of comrades; and up in the heights and spaces there are inscribed the numberless musings of all the dreamers of the world.

"It is yet building—building and built upon. Sometimes the work goes forward in deep darkness; sometimes in blinding light- now beneath the burden, of unutterable- anguish; now to the tune of a great laughter and heroic shoutings, like the cry of thunder.

"Sometimes, in the silence of the night-time, one may hear the tiny hammerings of the comrades at work up in the dome —the comrades that have climbed ahead."