'QUIDA' AS A JOURNALIST.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 103, 7 May 1879, Page 4

'QUID A' AS A JOURNALIST.

['Priaco " News Letter."] As though she had not already afflicted mankind sufficiently, • Ouicla ' baa taken to journalism, and, the telegrams inform us, is now regularly installed upon one of the London journals. We take it for granted that her peculiar intellect was turned loose in the dramatic fields of the police reports, ,and that the paper, referred to now contains items something like this : ' It was with a_haughty, half-weary air .that .Sydney Montressor swung past the cads that loitered in the hall of the hotel, approached the counter, and flung a ten pound note to the clerk. 'Here,' he said languidly, lifting lieom the rack a. toothpick with his taper fingers— fingers whose grasp was gentler than a woman's but the sinews ,of which, were of steel, ' Here, sirrah ; give me tho change for this bill.' •Directly, sir,' cringed the clerk, and then, after inspecting the note ifor a moment, that; official slipped be,hind the, desk and whispered a word to a porter, who hastily disappeared. ' And ao that was the last penny of

Mob treason's princely inheritance, which be had jusfc flung so unregret- ■ fully upoti the counter, and half of that was to buy a boqaetfor theslutnberousey d, tawny haired panther woman (that had wrought his ruin. Eighty-Bix millions sterling he he poured into her greedy lap in less than nine weeks, and this— this was -the last of it all. Did he love his jewelled serpent, this languorous, musk scented, basilisk ? His lip curled at the thought. No, she was no more to him than the hosts of otber women who had thrown themselves at his scornful feet, and upon whom he trampled with the proudly contemptuous air of the cloyed and satiated conqueror. ' Violets must be trodden upon to exhale their sweetest fragrance,' he said, tossing the hair back from his forehead with a single blase movement of his willowy neck. ' What would you have ?' 1 How now, vulgarian ?' he exclaimed, turning haughtily to the clerk ; { where is my change ?' Just then a policeman entered hastily. * That's the fellow,' said the hotel cashier, pointing to Montressor ; ' run him in, please ; charge of passing counterfeit money — old hand at it, too ' The officer took one step forward, and then paused and held his breath. The bystanders cowered into insignifl cance as they gazed, awestricken, upon the accused. With his eye blazing like a danger signal at sea, he towered above the plebeans before him, a giant among the pigmies. His white teeth shone under his curling lip, and his waving locks floated back on the breeze; be seemed a leonine monarch of the jungle raised from his lair by some presumptous creeping thing. With a superb effort he — (And jusfc about here, we should judge, is were the impatient night editor lops off Ouida's « local " and finishes it wilh three lines, showing how Montressor, nevertheless, allowed himself to be hustled into a waggon by the officer, three porters, the collar of his coat and the slack of his pants, and how he was locked up over night, and in the morning sent up for six months as an "old offender." The cold fact is, that there isn't any show for ; real genius in journalism nowadays.)