Untitled

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5290, 9 March 1878, Page 2 (Supplement)

Shameful Deception.—The Nev> York Timet, welting o( " the rage for Illustrations,"tells the following story:—Some subscription publishers of the unregonerale kind are understood to have taken unwarranted liberties with their fellow-countrymen. Two or three years since a publishing-honso issued a trashy volume, claiming to bo the lives of notorious criminals daring the last h’df-century. Any blanks In tho careers of the culprits were filled up with imaginary horrors, and all their misdeeds were grossly exaggerated, In order to present the lovers of such re fined and ennobling literature with the most highly spiced morsels. When the manuscript was finished and the proper illustrations were looked for, It was found that only a certain number of the scoundrels’ likenesses were obtainable. The question was to supply their places with assumed portraits that would not betray the cheat. After considerable search, an old volume, long out of print, of biographies of evangelical clergyman of a bygone day, with portraits, was opportunely discovered. These were coarse wood-

cuts, and so wretchedly done that it seemed to the publisher that they would pass current for villains of the deepest dye. The work was issued, and as it was extensively advertised Is a moral publication—to warn the young from the beginning of vice, and so forth—it fell into the hands of many orthodox people, who had no difficulty in reading the characters of the rascals by their utterly depraved countenances. Before long some of the readers detected the .likeness between the criminals and certain aged preachsrs still lingering on this earthly stage. Discovery after discovery was made, and finally the whole fraud was revealed : but the exposure, it is asserted, only increased the sale of tire noxious book.