THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9084, 8 May 1908, Page 6

THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

(By Frank Morton.)

A point on labour. A friend of mine has recently been looking for a really first-rate woman typist and accountant. He begins to think he's suited; but he's not sure, and he has had extraordinary difficulty in getting anybody of promise adequate to his requirement. If you want a woman .typist or secretary for work of special quality and moment, you'll find some difficulty. Typists, in short, are saldom adequately trained; or it may be that the girls in training have not adequate intelligence. For one thing, their punctuation is almost always awful. For that, th<3 primary and secondary schools are, perhaps, chiefly responsible. Children are not taught to punctuate properly, because a large number of the teachers do not themselves punctuate properly. The defect is common. I knew one man— M.A. at an English University and Premier in his own country—who wrote unintelligent letters dotted and splashed apparently at haphazard with commas and dashes. Very occasionally, when he had an idea that a sentence might profitably end abojt ther 3, he'd dab in a semi-colon. If you want to test your patience, go into the nearest typist's office and dictate a page or two of manuscript. If tne typist takes a shorthand-note, you will probably be astounded when you see the transcript. If she writes direct from dictation you will almost as surely find some words you never saw spelt in that way before. Fact is that in all education and training nowadays, there is too great contusion, too keen a desire to be newfar.jjled and smart. I have looked closely into several of these new shorthand systems, and I have discovered nothing so good as Pitman's. It is so simple that any person of orJiuary intelligence can learn it in a few weeks,. It is so legible that I, who write a frantic and wonderful longhand,. can read fluently my shorthand notes of ten years ago. It is so effective that any writer of fair intelligence and good average dexterity can speedily attain to any necessary speed. But people are for ever making haste to learn new systems. I don't blame the people who invent new systems, because (after all) that is a fairly reputable way of making money. But Ido depreciate the stupidity of people, who, being desirous of going in for commercial or newspaper work, cake trouble to learn 1 Borne unproved system that nobody else use 3. I once worked with a man who wrote the good and useful Sloan-Duployan system. All the rest of us wrote Pitman; and the. SloanDuployan man, not being able to give or to receive assistance in case of uncertainty in a note, was a nuisance to himself and everybody else in the office. Jt you want your boy or girl to learn shorthand —an admirable intention, I assure you—pray accept the testimony of a million busy and experienced , men and women that Pitman is good enough for anythinj. Learn the system thoroughly, and don't worry about improvements introduced after you have learned it. I write the Pitman of t twenty years ago, and the highest accredited speed I ever made was 241 words a minute for eleven minutes—Senator Henry Dobson, of Tasmania, the most irritating speaker on earth to the reporter; but while I was reporting I always managed to worry through. Out in India with the Opium Commission, I worked for awhile with that admirable reporter (some years dead now), Thomas Allen Reed. I used to see beautiful "facsimile" reproductions of his alleged notes in shorthand journals; but in actual practice he was so antiquated that he did not even use what we slaves of the clapper know as the sway circle. He knew the later improvements, and some of them he had fathered or invented; but in his own work he used the shorthand he first started reporting with.

TOM BURROWS EXPLAINS. One of the major events. of the week has been the putting up of a new club-swinging record by the champion of the world, Mr Tom Burrows. He swung the clubs without a moment's pause for over sixty-two hours. The swinging was throughout a quite delightful and remarkable exhibition. And the swinger, his great feat accomplished, did not appear to be very badly exhausted or distressed. It must be borne in mind that there could be no doubt at all of the genuinfness of the performance. There was a vigilant committee of disinterested pr&sons, and some of us were looking in and out at all hours of the days and nights. What, then, is the feat worth? As to that, opinions differ. Many good folk consider that the whole thing was foolish, if not a quite disgraceful exhibition. I confess that I have, or had, some sympathy with these. So I saw Burrows about it. He is an extremely intelligent and extremely amiable athlete. The criticism did not incense him in the least. He was anxious to explain, although at the time ho had been swinging the cubs without a break for over forty hours. He swung as he talked. "First of all," he said, "an exhibition like this brings the value, of clubs forcibly home to the public. No man ever see 3 me swinging often without wanting to swing himself. That is a good thing. 1 hold that this is absolutely the firest form of ijAcrcii-e for health and development. There is no injurious strain or wrench. The whole body benefits. When a man swings the clubs regularly for any length of time he looks bettor and feels better than he did before he started. If his digestion haa been bad, he soon begins to digest comfortatbly. If he has breathed badly, he begins to breathe properly. AstothJ endurance test —well, all I've got to say is that if physical endurance is a good thing to cultivate, my endurance test must te a goo I thing. Of course, I know that people will tell you that I'm killing myself, that my contsitution a.id nerves must breakdown, and all the rest of it. Well, I'm forty years ol'. I've been swinging clubs and doing tests for more years than I ca"e to 4 uut. Ask the doctors whether my physique is impaired. Aak them how my nerves are. Ask them how I compare with average sober men of forty. I'm prepared to aland or full by what they say. I'm

a fairly good all-round athlete, I'm passionately fond of athletics, and I never felt better in my Wife. Of course I feel a little tired just no v; but if you talk about possibilities of collapse I want to laugh. With the people who talk about fake, and , make out that I don't go straight, I have no argument. I couldn't cheat if I wanted to; and if I wanted to, Mr Ben Fuller would'nt let me do it iu this theatre. I'm prepared to answer for him, and to leave myself to the public. But I want to say, too, that I always take pleasure in these tests because of the class of young fellows they bring about me. I believe that clean athletics are as good for the morals as the are for the body, I get a lot of interesting conversation and entertainment, and a lot of thoughtful kindness, while I work, and I daresay that helps me through."

I admit cheerfully that I have found good reason to admire this quietly genial man of the sixty-two hours record. As to records in general I remain a little dubious. I wrote a longish story for the 1906 Christmas Annual of the "Otago Witness"~-wrote and re-wrote and typed it —in thirty seven hours without a break. Then I felt stupidly tired and surly, as I realized that I coald probably have done the thing much better in thirty-seven weeks. Once, too, 1 'ranscribed shorthandnotes for twenty-five hours at a stretch; and that was a horror. Cn tne whole, I decide that it is better to do things quietly and slowly, in an atmosphere of decent ciilm. That, I think, is how one should take exercise. I am no 10/er of football and cricket, because these things entail wordy meetings and conspiracies of .committees, and end in a crowd on a glaring or drenching field, with blatant men smokine: bad tobacco under one's nose, and a growing sad conviction that life (after all) is probably not worth living. But dumbbells and clubs are good. You get out of bed in the morning, comfortably sleepy, and at peace with all the world. You grasp your dubs and do gentle battle with that sweet inertia. Gradually a pleasant warmth invades you, as through your open window there come the twitterings of birds and the sounds of a distant world at work. Your relaxed muscles are braced up, and you become pleasantly conscious of your orderly nerves and sinews. You think of breakfast with a growing pleasure, as the deliberate motion lulls you to forgive your enemies. Then, when you are dewy with perspiration, you tumble into a bath of cool, sweet water just dashed with benzoin. Your whole system is deliciouslly rasped by the searching shower. You are glad to be alive. You eat with thankfulness, as your newspaper tell you of the disasters out there in the world that on the whole is very good to you. And so you set forth to the city, eager to do or dare, to succour or to slay.