II
But politics is only a part of the country editor’s life. The social affairs of the community are nearest to him. The proud father who brings in a cigar with a notice of the seventh baby’s arrival (why cigars and babies should be associated in men’s minds I never understood), the fruit farmer who presents some fine Ben Davis apples in the expectation that he will get a notice, are but types. The editor may have some doubts concerning the need of a seventh child in the family of the proud father, and he may not be particularly fond of Ben Davis apples; but he gives generous notices because he knows that the gifts were prompted by kind hearts and that the givers are his friends.
When joy comes to the household, it is but the working of the heart’s best impulses to desire that all should share it. The news that the princess of the family has, after many years of waiting, wedded a prosperous merchant of the neighboring county, brings the family into prominence in the home paper. Seldom in these busy times does the editor get a piece of wedding-cake, but nevertheless he fails not to say that the bride is “one of our loveliest young ladies and the groom is worthy of the prize he has won.” The city paper does not do that. Here and there a country editor tries to put on city airs and give the bare facts of “social functions,” without a personal touch to the lines. But infrequently does he succeed in reaching the hearts of his readers, and somehow he finds that his contemporary across the street, badly printed, sprinkled with typographical errors and halting in its grammar, but profuse in its laudations, is getting an unusual number of new subscribers. Even you, though you may pretend to be unmindful, are not displeased when on the day after your party you read that the guests “went home feeling that a good time had been had.”
The time has not yet come for the country paper to assume city airs; nor is it likely to arrive for many years. The reason is a psychological one. The city journal is the paper of the masses; the country weekly or small daily is the paper of the neighborhood. One is general and impersonal; the other, direct and intimate. One is the market-place; the other, the home. The distinction is not soon to be wiped out.
And when sorrow comes! Into the home of a city friend of mine death entered, taking the wife and mother. The family had been prominent in social circles, and columns were printed in the city papers, columns of cold, biographical facts—born, married, died. But the news went back to the small country town where in their early married life the husband and wife had spent many happy years, and in the little country weekly was quite another sort of story. It told how much her friends loved her, how saddened they were by her passing away, how sweet and womanly had been her character. The husband did not send the city papers to distant acquaintances; he sent copy after copy of the little country weekly, the only place where, despite his prominence in the world, appeared a sympathetic relation of the loss that had come to him.
Week after week the country paper does this. From issue after issue clippings are stowed away in bureau drawers or pasted in family Bibles, because they picture the loved one gone. It may not be a very high mission; but no part of the country editor’s work has in it more of satisfaction and recompense.
After the funeral comes the real test of the editor’s good-nature. Long resolutions adopted by lodges and church organizations are handed in for publication, each bristling with the forms of ritual or creed, and each signed with the names of the committee members upon whom devolved the task of composition. A few country editors are brave enough to demand payment at advertising rates for these publications; generally they are printed without charge.
Nor is there a halt at this step in the proceeding. One day a sad-faced farmer, with a heavy band of crape around his battered soft hat, accompanied by a woman whose heavy veil and black dress are sufficient insignia of woe, comes to the office.
“We would like to put in a ‘card of thanks,’” begins the man, “and we wish you would write it for us. We ain’t very good at writing pieces, and you know how.”
Does the editor tell them how bad is the taste that indulges the stereotyped card of thanks? Does he haughtily refuse to be a party to such violation of form’s canons? Scarcely. He knows the formula by heart and “the kind friends and neighbors who assisted us in our late bereavement” comes to him as easily as the opening words of a mayor’s proclamation.