Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1886-05-20
SMART ALECKS.
A Glass Of People Who Have No Use for
Their Home Papers.


One style Of man finds his local pa
per too high-priced-he can get certain
papers four times as large for half the
money. He usually takes the weekly
edition of the New York Eternity, con-
tanning two hundred columns of New
Jersey snake stories and reports of the
cotton market for reading matter and
twice as many columns of patent medi-
cine and prize package advertisements.
This man prefers to read the adver-
tisements, not because of their SUI
perior literary merit but because the
type is larger. He is one of these kind
of men who does not read the common,
domestic English language that the
Puritans brought over in the Plymouth
Rock with as much case as he might.
He grapples quite successfully with the
second reader brand where the large
words have been all sorted out but
throws up both hands when he comes
to where the language is taken just as it
comes as in this family journal. He may
be on quite intimate terms personally
with each individual member of the al
phabet but where they get together in
groups of over six he finds that he does
not recognize the combination. There
are so many words mixed with the mat
ter in his local paper that contain more
than six letters that it makes very dis
jointed reading for him. In the New
York sheet it is different; the same
matter appears about so often and he
has rather got the hang of it. Every
six months brings the same question
about how to cure bone SPAWN with
the old regulation answer. The same
old snake legends crop out, the same
directions for laying the foundation fol
gooseberry pie, the same leading ed
itorial on moral suasion as a factor in
weaving calves, the same anecdotes OF
Benjamin Franklin, the same ground
plans for an improved pig trough that
the swine can't get their feet in. An
editor with an under jaw like gang,
| plank sits in the Office and makes up
the paper from the old files year aftel
year.
That's the kind of newspaper the
man gets who thinks his home paper il
too expensive. He takes it till at last
his wife gets divorce and his children
move off in the direction of the tai
timber.
How this man must love week after
week, from July to eternity, to wade
through this kind of matter. Never {
word about his own town or even hi
own State! While the local paper notes
the fact that he marketed spring
turkey that weighed forty-sever
pounds on foot, this New York gather
ing of gloom is talking about introduc
ing domestic fowls in the Dried Mis-
sionary Islands.
When this man is at last frozer
to death, his home paper, despite tht
fact that he never took it, will de
vote a column in telling of his many
virtues and the editor will ruin his las
chance of salvation by saying that the
deceased will be greatly missed while
the New York Solar System, if it men
tons it at all, will do so like this: "Ar
unknown man perished in the recen
storm near Waddleton, Dacotah Terri
tory. He was rather weak-minded anC
was under the influence of frontier
whisky at the time"
The man who stops his local papei
alleges many reasons but this is tn,
manner of him who does it because tn,
big Eastern messenger of misery i
cheaper. .-EStelline Cd. ~ Bell.