Reporters and the General

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume V, Issue 673, 17 October 1891, Page 2

Reporters and the General

The Argue says that the presemen who went down the bay to meet General Booth had a long wayjthe best of the trip. While the Salvationists put their faith in Providence, and were rewarded with a thorough soaking, the newspaper people, wiser in their generation than the children of light, threw themselves with sublime confidence upon the chief steward. The result was that while the army sang and ehouted in the rain, the pressmen were solaced with New Zealand pheasant, and soothed with the amber fluid of Scotia. They also sat high and dry in the smoking room all the trip—one representative of a metropolitan daily had thoughtfully borrowed [he key—anfi the Salvationists, looking pitifully through the' W in '4ow b'd visions of Elysian bowers, hidden in a blue halo of smoke, The game, it may be remarked, was euchre. It was presumably a laudable Mxiety for the souls of the smokers thatwade certain members of the army so anxious to force their way In. Perish the thought that anything in the way cf creature comforts could have induced a single ‘ Salvationist to abandon the cold without and the open deck for the f warm within' of the smoking room. Yet the Salvationists bad their revenge, During the series of meetings a good deal of attention was wasted upon a Hallelujah lass, of What the newspapers would term a preapegranca, who sat right in front of" the'’ e’agij, and rpado play with a long pencil and a note-book of porter,toy: siqe, All sorts of theories were formed about this Hallelujah lass. Some held that she was a shorthand reporter for the War Cry; others that she waa simply taking the ' points ’ of the addresses for personal reference; and there was a generally received idea that she was engaged ifi the vain attempt to count the audience in order’id make ihg Sftenqance square with tha tickets. It seems'now thqt she was an artist, and that she has succeeded in obtaining several excellent portraits of the reporters, with the object of holding them up as a shocking example. There is a good deal of flutter about this among the young lions of the press, The worst is that no otfe is exactly Sfire of Wje precise moment that the portraits were 'caught'f and hoti two or three arc going about with a raised expression of countenance,- otrainng their memories to try and recollect what BartlcnUr villainy they wore engaged la when tba epcoial artist of the War Dry got' on the job.'