There shall be joy in the household of the country editor what time the
rural mind shall no longer crave the unhealthy stimuli afforded by
fascinating accounts of corpulent beets, bloated pumpkins, dropsical
melons, aspiring maize, and precocious cabbages. Then the bucolic
journalist shall have surcease of toil, and may go out upon the meads
to frisk with kindred lambs, frolic familiarly with loose-jointed
colts, and exchange grave gambollings with solemn cows. Then shall the
voice of the press, no longer attuned to the praises of the vegetable
kingdom, find a more humble, but not less useful, employment in calling
the animal kingdom to the evening meal beneath the sanctum window.
To the over-worked editor life will have a fresh zest and a new
significance. The hills shall hump more greenly upward to a bluer sky,
the fields blush with a more tender sunshine. He will go forth at dawn
with countless flipflaps of gymnastic joy; and when the white sun shall
redden with the blood of dying day, and the hogs shall set up a fine
evening hymn of supplication to the Giver of Swill, he will stand upon
the editorial head, blissfully conscious that his intellect is
a-ripening for the morrow’s work.
The rural newspaper! We sit with it in hand, running our fingers over
the big staring letters, as over the black and white keys of a piano,
drumming out of them a mild melody of perfect repose. With what delight
do we disport us in the illimitable void of its nothingness, as who
should swim in air! Here is nothing to startle—nothing to wound. The
very atmosphere is saturated with “the spirit of the rural press;” and
even our dog stands by, with pendant tail, slowly dropping the lids
over his great eyes; and then, jerking them suddenly up again, tries to
look as if he were not sleepy in the least. A pleasant smell of
ploughed ground comes strong upon us. The tinkle of ghostly cow-bells
falls drowsily upon the ear. Airy figures of phenomenal esculents float
dreamily before our half-shut eyes, and vanish ere perfect vision can
catch them. About and above are the drone of bees, and the muffled
thunder of milk streams shooting into the foaming pail. The gabble of
distant geese is faintly marked off by the bark of a distant dog. The
city with its noises sinks away from our feet as from one in a balloon,
and our senses are steeped in country languor. We slumber.
God bless the man who first invented the country newspaper!—though
Sancho Panza blessed him once before.