OUIDA TURNED JOURNALIST.

Waikato Times, Volume XIII, Issue 1081, 29 May 1879, Page 3

OUIDA TURNED JOURNALIST.

Respecting the report that a famous lady novelist has become a journalist, the '■ San Francisco News Letter' lias the following : — " As though she had not already afflicted mankind sufficiently, "Ouida" has taken to journalism, and the tele, grams inform us, is now regularly installed upon one of the London journals. We take it for granted that her peculiar intellect was turned loose m the dramatic field of the police reports,and that the paper now referred to contains item's like this : '* It was with a haughty, halfweary air, that Sydney Montressor swung past the cads that loitered m the hall of the hotel, appioached the counter, and flnng a, ten-pound note to the clerk. " ' Here," he said languidly, lifting 1 from the rack n toothpick with his taper fingers— fingers whose grasp was gentler than a woman's, but the sinews of which were of steel. 'Here, sirrah ; give me the change for this hill.' 1 " « Directly sir,' cringed the clerk, and then, after inspecting the note for a moment, that official 'slipped behind the desk, and whispered a word to a porter, wh« hastily disappeared. ' And so that was the last penny of Montressor's prinoely inheritance, which he had flung so unregretfully upon the counter, and half of that was going to buy l a bouquet for the sluinbeifoiis-eyed, tawny-haired panther woman that had wrought his ruin. Eighty-six million sterling had he poured into her greedy lap m less tfean nine weeks, and this— this was the last of it all. Did he love this jewelled serpent, this languorous, musk-scented basilisk ? IHs lip curled at the thought. No, she was no more to him than tlje hosts of other women* wh©' had thrown themselves at his scornful feet, and upon whom he trampled with the air of the cloyed and satiated conqueror. " ' Violets must be trodden upon to exhale their sweetest fragrance,' he said, tossing the hair from his forehead with a single blas6 movement of his willowy neck. ' What would you have?' " • How now, vulgarian V be ex claimed, turning haughtily to the clerk ; " where is my change V Just then a policeman entered hastily. "' That's the fellow,' said the hotel cashier, pointing to Montressor ; " run him m, please ; charge of passing counterfeit money — old hand at it, too.' * l The officer took one step forward, and then paused and held his breath. The bystanders cowered into insignificance as they gazed, awe-stricken upon the accused. With his eye blazing like a danger-signal at sea, ho towered above the plebeians before him, a giant among the pigmies. His white teeth shone under his curling lip, and his waving looks floated on the breeze) he seemed a leonine monarch of the jungle raised from his lair by some presumptuous cringing thing. With a superb effort he — [And just about here, we should judge, is where the impatient night editor lops off Ouida's "local" and finishes it with three lines, showing how Montressor, nevertheles, allowed himself to be hustled into a wagon by the officer, three porters, the collar of his coat and the slack of his pants* awl Ijqw be was looked up

over night, and m the morning sent up for six months as an "old offender." The cold fact is, that there isn't any show for real genins m journalism nowadays. J