THE GIRL JOURNALIST.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 226, 30 May 1872, Page 8

THE GIRL JOURNALIST.

But the Young ' Girl. She gets her living by writing stories for a newspaper. Every week she furnishes a new story. If her head nches on her heart is" heavy, so that she does not come to timo with her story, she falls behindhand, aud has to live on credit. It sounds well enough to say that " she supports herself by her pen," but her lot is a trying one; it repeats the doom of the Danaidos. The '" Weekly Bucket ""has no bottom, and it it her business to help, to fill it. Imagine for one moment what it is to tell a talo that must flow on, flow ever, without pausing; the lover miserable aud happy this week, to begin miserable attain next week and end as before ; the villain scowling, plotting, punished ; to si owl, plot, and get puuished again in our next ; and endless series of woes and blisses, into each jwragrapli of which the forlorn artist has to throw all the liveliness, all the-emotion, all the graces of style she is mistresb of, for the wages of a maid of all work, and no more recognition or thanks from anybody than the apprentice who sets the types for the paper th;vt prints her ever-ending and ever-beginning stories. /nd yet she had a pretty talent, sensibility, . a natural way of writing, and ear for the music of verse, in whitff she sometimes indulges to vary the" dead monotony of everlasting narrative, and a sufficient amount c? invention to make her stories readable. I have found my eyes dimmed over thorn oftener than once, more with thinking about her, perhaps, than about her heroes and heroines. Poor little body! Poor little mind ! Poor little soul! She is one of that great company of delicate, intelligent, emotional young creatures, who are waiting, like that sail I spoke of, for some breath of heaven to fill their white bosoms — love, the right of every woman ; religious emotion, sister of love, with the same passionate eyes, but cold, thin, bloodless hands — some enthusiasm of humanity or divinity ; and find that life oilers them, instead, a seat on a wooden bench, a chain to fasten them to it, and a heavy oar to pull day and night. We read the Arabian tales, and pity the doomed lady who must amuse her lord and master from day to day or have her head cut off j how much better is a mouth without bread to fill it than no mouth at all to fill, because no head ! AYe have all round us a weary-eyed company of Scheherazades ! Thig is one of them, and I may call her by that name when it pleases me to do so. — Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Mr. Win. Crooks, F.R.S., in the preface to his pamphlet on "Psychic Force and modern Spiritualism," gives the following explanation of the exact position which he wishes to occupy in. respect to this subject: — "I have desired to examine the phenomena from a point of view as strictly physical as their nature will permit. . I wish to ascertain the laws governing the appearance of very remarkable phenomena -which at the present time are occurring to an almost incredible extent. "That a hitherto unrecognised form of foree — whether it be called psychic force or x force is of little consequence — is' involved in this occurrence, is not with me a matter of opinion, but of absolute knowledge ; but the nature of that force, or the cause which immediately excites its activity, forms a subject on which I do not at present feel confident to offer an opinion. 1 wish, at least for the present, to be considered in the position of an electrician at Valentia, examining, by means of appropriate testing instruments, certain electrical currents and pulsations passing through the Atlantic cable ; independently of their causation, aud ignoring whether these phenomena* are produced by imperfections in the testing instruments themselves — whether byearth currents or by faults in the insula* tion — or whether they are produced by an intelligent operator at the other enc^ of the line." • ...