The Columbian. [volume] (Bloomsburg, Pa.) 1866-1910, 1892-01-22
The Country Nwspapor As it Was, and
As 1t Is.


Dr. Chaplin said, more than a gene
ration ago, that any man who could
cross Broadway at Fulton street had
brains enough for the making Of a
country editor. This was not so SC
we're dispardgcment of the country
editor as 1t seems on the face of the
allegation to be. For it really did re
quire, and does require now, no small
amount of gray cerebral matter to per.
form the feat mentioned. And when
one remembers that Dr. Chaplin was
more than little myopic, and from
defective vision could not be sure
some truck or express wagon shouldn't
hit him before he touched the oppo-
site curbstone, it is easy to under
stand that the gravamen of the com
parson was not meant to rest heavily
upon the editor.
| am reminded of this humorous
and forciblc hyperbole when | con-
template for moment the changes
which have come over rural journal
ism in but little more than a genera
ton of time
The newspaper of the early boy
hood of some men still living was al
most always issued at the county seat,
where there were usually two-one
representative of each Of the two
great parties. 1t was always weekly,
and such copies as were not sent out
by the mail stage were dispatched BY
horseback rider, or by market
and freight wagon often that ran, per-
haps, twenty-five or thirty miles over
the country to and from the chief
town or county seat. 1t was a great
event in those days when the paper
arrived in the back town, for it gave
the bucolic world its hebdomadal peep
into the larger world, whose affairs
were henceforth to go to sleep again
from rural notice until the next weeks
issue renewed the history. Without a
telegraph, without the railway even,
with exchanges equally as destitute of
stirring topics as his own sheet must
perforce be, the country editor real
ly needed no little wit to print so
readable sheet as he often did
What he had to depend on mainly
was, of course, selected ''miscelany."
If he welded the scissors well, and
could adapt and quote from the writ
Ing OF others with propriety, he was
sure of no little local fame, and often
received generous support. In
portant court doings, marriages and
deaths, and an occasional hanging.
made up the local news and a
steamer arrival from Europe, casuali-
ties and crimes, occasional election
returns, and the proceedings Of Cong
gress and the State Legislature, with
the Presidents and Governors mess
sages, afforded the topics of general
interest. Over the foreign news was
usually put the picture of a sailing
vessel and over few stickfuls of any
specially new and important-such as
the latest election returns, for instance
might be noticed the galloping horse
and rider, with a long scroll bearing
some legend, and a numbered mile
post near, supposed to be flying rear
ward.
There was an occasional travellers
letter, to be sure, whose writer was
taking stage journey, perhaps, of
fifty or seventy-five miles, and who
reported the small incidents thereof
with as much seriousness and wonder
as now accompany Stanley's accounts
of African exploration or Stevens BIZ
cycle trip around the world. From
some little town or post-ofiice hamlet
there were occasional bIief letters
signed "Justitia," "Vindex," 'Junius,'
or Spectator not giving any special
local news, but discussing some
governmental affair of the nation,
State or county in highly rounded
classical or Addisonian periods. Quite
often these letters were full of Jeffer-
sonian or Federal sentiments, with
quotations from the leaders of these
two currents of thought; and not sell
dom they were forcibly and gracefully
written.
But noted place in the country
weekly of long ago was the Poets Corn
er, or ''The Muse" as it was sometimes
termed. Only the other day | was
looking over a number of bound vol
umes of two or three country weeklies
from fifty to seventy-hve years old, and
was surprised at the brightness of some
of this verse. 1t was both original and
selected-the latter invariably good,
and the former occasionally OF extreme
or notable merit Why shouldn't it
have been? Here Whittier first es.
sayed to sing, and here Bryant, Holmes,
Longfellow and others who have
achieved fame tried their maiden
flights. Whittier was blushing boy
when the postman or paper rider threw
the paper containing his first effusion
over the fence, where he was at work