A majority of the newspapers have displayed with justifiable pride the name of the State in their titles. A number have had but a brief existence, scarcely remembered now but for the names of their founders or their own strange titles, such as the "Horn of the Green Mountains," "The Post Boy," "Tablet of the Times," "Northern Memento," and "The Reformed Drunkard." The Spooners seem to have been intimately connected with early newspapers and printing in the young commonwealth, for at least four of this name were engaged in such business. The famous Matthew Lyon edited for a while "The Farmer's Library," and Rufus W. Griswold the "Vergennes Vermonter;" D. P. Thompson, the novelist, "The Green Mountain Freeman," and C. G. Eastman, the poet, "The Spirit of the Age," and "The Argus."
The dingy little papers of the olden time, with their month-old news, the brief oracular editorial comments, their advertisements of trades and industries now obsolete, their blazoning of lotteries and the sale of liquors, now alike illegal, were welcome visitors in every household; and the weekly round of the post-rider was watched for with an eagerness that can hardly be understood by people to whom come daily and hourly, by mail and telegraph, news of recent events in all quarters of the globe. To those old-time readers of blurred type on gray paper, scanned by the ruddy glare of pine knots or the feeble light of tallow-dips, the tidings of foreign events which had happened months before came fresher than to us what but yesterday first stirred the heart of Europe.
Now, every considerable village in the State has its weekly paper, the larger towns these and daily papers. When Zadock Thompson published his "Vermont Gazetteer" in 1840, there were thirty papers published in the State, where now are, according to Walton's Register for 1891, sixty-one daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals.
For many years liquor-drinking was a universal custom, and a householder suffered greater mortification if he had no strong waters to set before his guest than if the supply of bread and meat was short. The cellar of every farmhouse in the apple-growing region had its generous store of cider, some of which went to the neighboring still to be converted into more potent apple-jack, here known as cider-brandy. This and New England rum were the ordinary tipple of the multitude, and the prolific source of hilarity, maudlin gabble, and bickerings at bees, June trainings, and town meetings. Drunkenness was disgraceful, but the limit was wide, for a man was not held to be drunk as long as he could keep upon his feet. When he fell, and clung to the grass to keep himself from rolling off the heaving earth, he became open to the charge of intoxication, and fit for the adornment of the stocks. Many a goodly farm, that had been uncovered of the forest by years of labor, floated out of its owner's hands in the continual dribble of New England rum and cider-brandy.
The signboard of the wayside inn swung at such frequent intervals along the main thoroughfares that the traveler must be slow indeed who had time to grow thirsty between these places of entertainment. The old-time landlord was a very different being from his successor, the modern hotel proprietor. Though a person of consideration, and maintaining a certain dignity, he received his guests with genial hospitality, and at once established a friendly relationship with them which he considered gave him a right to their confidence. Ensconced in his cage-like bar, paled from counter to ceiling, the landlord drew from his guests all the information they would give of their own and the world's affairs,—their whence-coming and whither-going,—while he dispensed foreign and domestic strong waters, or made sudden sallies to the fireplace where lay the ever-ready flip-iron, blushing in its bed of embers. Good old Governor Thomas Chittenden was a famous tavern-keeper, and as inquisitive concerning his guests' affairs as other publicans of those days. He used to tell with relish of a rebuff he got from a wayfarer who stopped to irrigate his dusty interior at the governor's bar. "Where might you come from, friend?" the governor asked.
"From down below," was the curt reply.
"And where might you be going?"
"To Canada."
"To Canada? Indeed! And what might take you there?"
"To get my pension."