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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4803, 14 August 1876, Page 2

Theue is a perennial freshness of fiction about the newa which its Wellington correspondent furnishes to the Otago Daily Times that commands admiration, even while it prohibits respect. There have been political rumors enough, Heaven knows, flying about Wellington to supply a score of correspondents with interesting items, and many industrious gentlemen have not been slow to take advantage of this harvest of humbug. But the Daily Times correspondent is not of your ordinary class which eagerly telegraphs rumors whether they have a foundation in fact or not, content so long as such rumors are in existence. His master hand disdains the more grovelling forms of the canard and aims at the truly great in falsehood. His spirit leaves the lower atmospheres of mendacity, and, as the poet says, soars "slap bang" into the wild and buoyant sphere of untrammelled untruth. Thus we find the following as his latest effort, which it may be truly said is unimprovable in its utter disregard for the mere restriction of fact: —" It is quite on the card that the date for abolition taking effect may be extended till some date after the next session meets, things in the meantime being left pretty well as they are.'' It is a pity to think that such labor in the art of fiction as this is not more appreciated. The worst of it "is that it is unfortunately an art cujus principium est mentiri, medium laborare, et finis mendicare.