CRUEL JOKE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1319, 30 October 1880, Page 2

CRUEL JOKE.

Some one has been playing a cwoel jbltoupon Mr. Chanfcrey Harris, the proprietor and editor of the Now Zealand Times. The Wellington correspondent of thi* Lyttelton Times tells the story as followB: Some one has played a cruel joke upon a local newspaper proprietor. Tho newspaper " which owns him " published tho following rather prettv verses : CHANGED. Changed, did you say ? The change is not. in me. How many years have passed since last met, And pledged our troth, and felt that but to. be, Nay, but to breathe the self-samo air, and: whet The appetite of love on mutual smiles and' tears— Revealed the wealth of all this world can give, Even through the vista of all coming years! Yet do you say I'm changed ! and still I live. Is not the change in you who charge mc so? Say, has not Time bedimmcd the earlier love And light of youth? and yet I am yout wife ! Nay, scorn me not— I am your wife ; you cannot say me no. Days, months, nay, years may pass aboTO my head, In weary following, until that welcome day— Oh ! that it were it at once—when, in my narrow bed, The love and wrongs of life might be forgot. for aye. Cecilia. "Cecilia"—whoever she may be—rather- " took the ' change,"' as vulgar little boys-, say, out of tho proprietor in question, inasmuch as the lines are an acrostic,of whichi the first eight letters from his Christiaiii name, and the remainderfrom the words "is< an idiot." All Wellington is laughing at the* sell; and editors carefully scan " poems" before giving them insertion. As I said before, the joke was a cruel one, and—ini justice to a fellow journalist—l must add that the object of it is far from being an idiot.