The Opelousas courier., 1888-05-19

" blAAIS
and you can see with me, the
sort of town from which this
struggling newspaper comes.
The long, ragged streets, deco
rated with broken barrel-hoops
and denied tomato cans, with
dog-fennel everywhere. The
stores are barn-like and empty,
with here and there q clerk sell
ing pink ribbon for the party or
a few nails and rivets to put up
that sign. Lazy men sit around
chewing tobacco, whiting
sticks and making an unseemly
litter on the side walks under
the cool shade of the male null
berry trees and they have not
even the ambition to collect
their pine WRITINGS and take
them home for kindlings.
I can see the dust in the road
as the doctors buggy rattles
past, the horse clinking its four
heels together in a rhythmical
way that recalls the blacksmith's
sign and anvil chorus in "Trova-
tore" and | can hear the lazy
stick-whittlers betting money
they haven't got hat jim Jexes'
wife has Fad twins again.
Then the editor comes along
the editor of the down-in-the-
mouth, unpatronized paper -
and if we were there, we who are
his fellow-sufferers. his brothers
and sisters, his loyal lasting
friends, if we were there our hats
and our bonnets would be off to
him. Who but a fellow-scribe
can guess with what courage,
what hope, what patience he
sticks at his work, and writes
his earnest editorials and helps
run off the paper and makes out
his bills and tries to collect sub
scriptions, and noses around for
more fallen signs and dead geese
and red wagons and new babies!
He is the victimsof people who
have not learned the magic
power of advertising, Of a stick
whiting community, Of gossip
and ignorance, and indifference
and idleness.
The power of the press is an
old story. Mr.. Wilkie Collins
made one Of his brightest and
smartest old ladies lay all the
blame of the Franco-Prussian
war to the newspapers that
would write about it. The press
is the reflex of the people. 1t
makes and unmakes the states
man. It cannot always make
him do his duty, but it shows
him the way.
, Take any newspaper and com
pare its local columns with its
editorial. The local, the news
columns of a paper are its life.
THE reports tell what is-the
, Editorials what ought to be. Re
pests are or ought to be facts,
for they make public opinion.
1t rests with the community,
in the aggregate and individual
ly, to give theonewspaper good
wholesome, creditable facts to
publish.
Wherever there is an un.
worthy newspaper, a fippant
, newspaper, a coarse newspaper.
, the shame is as much with the
subscribers as with the publish.
) ers.
There are false teachers anC
: immoral opreachers infesting
earth, and the public demand te
t know what these do and what
/ they say, rather than that they
should be forbidden the use Of
) schools and pulpits. There are
vile places of amusement even
in New Orleans, and in othe1
cities aud towns, that would no
exist if vile people did not hunt
them up, and leud them support
Strangers judge of a town b,
its newspapers. If every thrIv
ing town in this prosperous
state has not a good paper of it,
own it is the fault of the peopl'
s of the town.
Do you not remember hov
critics told poor, old, starving
n Caleb Plummer, the toymakel
that the eyes of his dolls wer
). not natural
And do you not remembe
q hoW tears came into the fade'
wintry eyes of the blind girl
$ father as he sobbeds out: "4il
eyes Of my dolls are as near t
e nature as | can afford to max
them for sixpence.o
u Thara in nAf an editor in thl