Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1923-03-02
SCRIBES AND
PHARISEES
.s--s-.s.-s-.s-.s..s..s-. BY s..s'
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
Copyright, 1922, BY the Macmillan Co.

of the country called the West
by those who live east OF the
Alleghan!es, and referred to lovingly
as back East" by those who dwell
west of the Rockies. 1t is a country
town where, as the song goes, you
know everybody and they all know
you" and the country newspaper office
is the social clearing house.
In our little newspaper Office VIZ are
all reporters, and we know many init
mate things about people that we do
not print.
AS the merest incident of the daily
grind, 1t came to the Office that the
bank cashier, whose retirement was
announced with half a column of re-
greet, was caught $500 short, after
20 years Of faithful service, and that
his wife sold the homestead to make
his shortage good.
Though our loathed but esteemed
contemporary, the Statesman, speaks
Of our town as "this city," and calls
the marshal "chief of police" we are
none the less a country town. Like
hundreds of its kind, our little daily
newspaper is equipped with typeset-
ting machines and is printed from a
web %perfecting press, yet it is only a
country newspaper, and knowing this,
we refuse to put on city airs. Of
course, we print the afternoon Associ-
ated Press report on the first page,
under formal heads and with some
p%retense of dignity, but that first page
is the parlor of the paper, as it is of
most of its contemporaries, and in the
other pages they and we go around in
our shirt sleeves, calling people by
their first names teasing the boys and
girls 'good-naturedly; tickling the
pompous members Of the village with
straws from time to time, and letting
out the family secrets OF the commu-
nifty without much regard for the feel
ings of the supercilious.
Nine or ten thousand people in our
town go to bed on this kind of mental
pabulum, as do country town jewellers
all over the United States, and al
though we do not claim that it is help
full, we do contend that 1t does not
hurt them. Certainly by poking mild
fun at the shams-the town pharisees
we make it more difficult to main
tain the class lines which the pre-
tenders would establish. Possibly by
printing the news of everything tbRt
happens, suppressing nothing ION ac-
count of the responsibility of the par
ties concerned" we may prevent some
evil-doers from going on with their
plans, but this is mere conjecture, and
we do not set it down to our credit.
What we maintain is that in printing
our little country dailies, we, the
scribes, from one end Of the world to
the other, get more than our share of
fun out Of life as we 90 along, and
pas as much of it on to our neighbors
as we can spare.
Because we live in country towns,
where the only car gongs we hear are
on the bakers wagon, and where the
horses in the fire department work on
the streets, is no reason why city
jewellers should assume that we are
natives. We have no dialect worth
recording-save that some of us west
erners burr our ''r's'' a little, or drop
an occasional ina "g." But you will
find that all the things advertised in
the backs of the magazines are in our
houses, and that the young men in our
towns walking home at midnight, with
their coats over their arms, whistle
the same popular airs that lovelorn
hAr,o orn uvhfcf1inU In Now VnrK BORT
land, San Francisco or New Orleans
that same evening. Our girls are those
pretty, reliant, well-dressed young
women whom you see at the summer
resorts from Coronado beach to Buzz
yards bay. In the fall and winter
these girls fill the colleges of the East
and the state universities of the West.
We take all the beautiful garden
magazines, and our terra-cotta works
are turning out creditable vases
which we pronounce "vahzes," you may
be sure-for formal gardens. And
though we men for the most part u
u own ~lawnmOwers, and personally
look after the work of the college boy
who takes care Of the horse and the
COW for his room, still there are a few
Of US proud and naughty creatures
who have automobiles. At the flower
parade In our own little town last
October there were ten automobiles
in line, decked with paper flowers and
laden with pretty girls In lawns and
dimities and linens-though as a mat
ter of fact most of the linens were
only Indian head" And our partic-
ular little country paper printed an
item to the effect that the real social
line Of cleavage in the town lies not
between the cutglass set and the dew
otees of hand-painted china, but be-
tween the real nobility who wear gen.
uine linen and the base limitations who
wear Indian head.
In some towns an item like that
would make people mad, but we have
our people trained to stand a good
deal. They know that it costs them
five cents a line for cards of thanks
--l -4-o1xkf4-r 80 1ra CO fhox-