THOUGHTS ON A NEWSPAPER.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume II, Issue 183, 1 July 1874, Page 2

THOUGHTS ON A NEWSPAPER.

(From the Auckland Evening Star.) Eveuy intelligent person regards the cheap newspaper as one of the privileges of the age. Like Heaven’s best gift to man—light, air, sunshine, and water—the newspaper in some form or other is accessible unto all men. Could we by some supernatural power behold all the newspaper readers of the day, with all the difference of mood, circumstance, and scene surrounding them, our view would be almost as extensive as the world, and as varied as the human race. There were ages, however, long passed, when men were happy in their ignorance, and did without the newspaper. But now the poorest man amongst us, the laborer, the humble politician, and the villiage dame can enjoy all the advantages of the cheap press, which have come to us unfettered through the struggles of Milton and other master minds of subsequent ages. What a charm, what a wondrous power for good or evil lies in those straight lines of type which find their way at morning aud evening into nearly every home, and stir peculiar interest in every heart, The newspaper is the record of the life and doings of the human race, illustrated with photographs of the varying phases of the human character under every form of trial or success. The newspaper, moreover, is a great educational power, and tends to make politicians, if not poets, of thinking men. It supplies fact and faction, and presents problems which are not always solid ; hence it leaves us to pursue threads of probabilities until we find ourselves in a boundless maze of conjecture. The particulars of some scheme are laid before us, or some terrible catastrophe, which set our faculties immediately at work in endeavoring to trace hidden motives, unravel complications, and unfold the secret cause of the outer surprise. The newspaper seeks to oblige all men ; it supplies the politician and social reformer with the leading article ; it gratifies the searcher for clippings from foreign news; it furnishes the morbidly curious with daily doings at the police and law courts; it reflects to the merchant and trader the state of the markets ; it sheds glimmerings of hope on the mind of the maid of all-work, and the sturdy new-chum ; it is the ceaseless chronicle of births, deaths, and marriages ; it pleases the embryo poet in circulating his darling verses ; it serves the draper, tailor, dress-maker, and a score of other trades-people in invoicing forth their wares to the wide world. The feeling of power evoked by newspaper is an element of attraction ; by it we seem to sit in the councils of kings ; by it we stand in the assemblies of legislators, and listen to their solemn debates ; by it we become students of art, science, and literature, explore new fields of knowledge, and become cognizant of the undeveloped resources of nature, and learn of new gold and coal districts, which energy, skill, and ingenuity have shadowed upon the stream of time. Then we have the telegraphic department, with news from cities and towns which have come to us in an almost incredibly short space of time, making us acquainted ..with the shifting life of islands and continents under other skies, with accounts of the distant storm and the avalanche peeling and rushing from Alpine heights ; of the earthquake, flood, eclipse, and the comet that wheels its mysterious way in the pathless realms of space. The newspaper, moreover, is the medium of local comp aints. If the Highway Board neglect the thoroughfare or the way to your suburban cottage, you immediately write to the newspaper, and the path is put into order. (? Ed. 8.) The newspaper reflects the thoughts of the people, and often proves, as it should ever prove (unless its heart be corroded with toadyism) a rebuke to petty tyrants and wrong-doers, while it gives color aud strength to the hopes

and aspirations of the many. Th ro l 'jjE the newspaper the dream of becomes the reality of to-morrow. may be true that columns of thought pass with the newspaper Snjov ./ pipe-lights and wrappers, for :>e)v ‘ £ shoes; that paragraphs of wdljdlyt knowledge go to the butter store: ' -1 but those living thoughts die nA, biff j pass through the Wonderful fasfriiA > mentality of the press into a t homes, and like the shining i>‘> 4 the pond caused by the fallow' of. ® pebble, widen and widen reach the boundaries of civilißMioty. •