DIPLOMATIC JOURNALISTS,

Observer, Volume 4, Issue 89, 27 May 1882, Page 163

DIPLOMATIC JOURNALISTS,

Eous Marten lias been so much about the Ministerial backstairs, peeping through keyholes and hiding behind piles of big blue books, that he has become insensibly officialised. He now interlards his correspondence with diplomatic phrases, such as " I have no official information on the subject," "' I am not at liberty to give any details at present," and so forth. In fact E6us has become as great an authority on delicate questions of state as his namesake the Admiral used to be on the niceties of the turf. If journalism should fail him, our Eous -will be able to set up as a kind of literary Talleyrand, and Turveydrop in one. When we first knew Eous he had charge of a meteorological station at the Bluff or some other obscure village in the neighbourhood of Invercargill, from the retirement of which he wouldfroin time to time startle the world with oracular announcements after the style of Saxby, or the Dephian sages. The meteorological training Eous received has since stood him in good stead. His genius for oracular studies was then in the crucible ; it has since come out in all. the refinement of a distinguished journalist, and the favoured prophet of the Gt-overnrnent. From physical meteorology Eous has developed into an authority on the political barometer, and there are few men in the Colony who have a keener " weather eye " for fat advertisements, (3-overn-ment printing, and official intelligence. Mr Dick told a Wellington deputation the other day, in reference to the proposed central Prison, that he had " asked the editors of the papers to ascertain the state of public opinion for him," and of course, Eous, being a high authority on such questions, was entrusted with the main part of the work of watching the barometer. It must be gratifying, not to say flattering to journalists that at last a new careeer of usefulness begins to open out for them. Whether or not the public will be satisfied with dummy -journalism, however, remains to be seen.