MR PITMAN AND STENOGRAPH.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2420, 14 January 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

MR PITMAN AND STENOGRAPH.

Mr Isaac Pitman is a frank man and a truthful one. He was a National schoolmaster, and stenography has made his fortune, beside spreading his name wherever throughout the world men talk in public; but he told the Congress of Stenographers, gathered recently in London, that he did not love his " art " as an "art." Ho only loved it for ifs utility. Does he not, however, exaggerate this latter recommendation of his system of writing shorthand ? It has helped, we suppose, to preserve some oratory, though Cioero lived and Demosthenes moved crowds before Mr Pitmau; but then it has also helped to diffuse the flabby political chatter which is now debasing the thoughts of the foremost nations of the world. The stenographer reports Mr Blight, but also Mr Labouchere. Mr Pitman hopes to see his system supersede all others, and even to become the instrument of tho grjat author. He forgets that very quick writing involves very shallow thinking, and that the man who dictates his books falls under tho temptations of the orator. Oratory is a gre;it art, and hrs done much both in politics and religion ; but it is essentially different, both in form and in kind of effectiveness, from good literature. Gibbon dictating would have been comparatively as inellVctivo as Mr Gladstone writing.