Far Western Newspapers

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part one of the American Far West seven Mid nineteenth
Century Views from Abroad. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by
David Wales. The American Far West seven Mid nineteenth Century

(00:22):
Views from Abroad by anonymous Part one Far Western Newspapers.
There is not a town anywhere in the West of
sufficient importance to be reckoned a right smart chance of
a city without a local weekly, bi weekly, or even
daily newspaper, as it is impossible for the whole community

(00:45):
to be of one mind. In matters political, we generally
find one devoted to the interests of the Democratic Party,
and a second to the well cherished opinions of the Republicans,
these two parties dividing social affairs and public and private
life in the Far West. Now, what do I mean

(01:05):
by the Far West? A term often used but with
a most indefinite application about New York. The term is
applied to the region of which Chicago is the center.
If you go to Chicago, you will find that the
railway companies are advertising the Far West as Omaha. At
Omaha on the Missouri Utah seems to be that born,

(01:28):
while again at the City of the Saints. It is
Oregon or California, somewhere about the Pacific at all events.
Whether the people of the Pacific coast have any place
where they locate the far west, it is hard to say.
Probably China and Japan would be about the nearest whereabout
of that geographically relative locality. The scene of the following

(01:52):
sketches will lie, broadly speaking, in the region on either
side of the Rocky Mountains, somewhere in the wiles of
those new states and territories which are now and again
springing up out of the wilderness, which are peopled by
an ever moving and adventurous people, not by any means barbarous,
yet far from refined, in fact, of that peculiar type

(02:15):
known well enough in those parts of the world as
the Western Man. It is with the ruder type of
newspaper produced in such out of the way places as
lie within the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra
Nevadas of California, or the Cascade Mountains of Oregon or Idaho,
with their characteristics and with their humor, that I propose

(02:38):
to deal. The flourishing state of ephemeral literature on the
shores of the Pacific, associated as it will ever be
in our minds with bowie knives and nuggets, cannot be
better expressed than by stating that in the city of
San Francisco alone, numbering one hundred fifty thousand inhabitants, and
nineteen years ago, consisting of only a few cots tents

(03:00):
on some sand hills, there are published no fewer than
forty five periodicals, comprising ten dailies, eight monthlies, one semi weekly,
one tri weekly, and two annuals. Of these, three are
published in the German language, three in the Spanish, and
two in French. The gold of California has attracted men

(03:23):
clever in every department of brain and handicraft, and accordingly
we find these periodicals edited with good ability and even refinement.
It is only when we get up in the interior
that we find the Western editor, in all his crudity,
Suppose that it should ever fall to the lot of
a wise man of the East to ride some summer

(03:45):
day into one of these quiet little western towns situated
on a prairie or by some river, with a not
euphonious name, where it is difficult to say when the
town commences and the country ends, or which is which
and where. The inhabitants, in their dulce far niente langer

(04:05):
seem to wish, like the lotus eaters as they tilt
their rocking chairs on the shady side of the street
in front of the grocery store, that it was always afternoon.
Before he has well taken off his jingling Mexican spurs
or imbibed a preliminary drink with the landlord of the hotel,
he will be accosted by a shabby, genteel individual, whom,

(04:30):
by the shrewdly telling questions he puts, the traveler will
have no difficulty in recognizing as the local editor, if
he has not done so already himself. Colonel Homer S. Smith,
mine host will soon take upon himself a Western landlord's
privilege of introducing you to a doctor, Captain, judge, or

(04:51):
mister Ossian E Dodge, editor of the Swampville Flag of Liberty,
and one of our most distinguished citizens. If he be
not of the same way of thinking in political matters,
it is immaterial, for this civility will only be delayed
a few minutes until the opposition editor from across the

(05:12):
way makes his appearance in his shirt sleeves, to take
his meridian cocktail and to squeeze out of the new
arrival all the public news he may possess for the
public good in a professional way, or true to his
country matters of private history, for his own private satisfaction.

(05:32):
As you get better acquainted with your friend, you will
find that he is far from being such a truculent
fellow as his leaders and personal items might lead you
to suppose. He will hospitably ask you to come up
to my office, Captain write your letters there, sir. And
when you look into his office, which is generally press room,
composing room, and study, with little furniture beyond a saliva

(05:57):
rusted stove, a spittoon, and a huge rule rocking chair
of cheap construction, you will find that it seems to
be a general loafing place for the more idle of
the citizens of the political opinions which the flag professes.
There they are all smoking, chewing tobacco, eating apples, or
ruminating with chair tilted back, or sitting on the step

(06:19):
in front of the office door. Only occasionally moving over
to the neighboring bar room to put in a blast,
or to hiss in or drop a pison. The editor
will now and then, if not better employed, rush out
to ask a passing acquaintance if he has not such
a thing as an item about him, or will bolt

(06:40):
round the corner of the street to pump a rusty
gold miner who has just now wearily trudged into town
for the week's supply of pork and beans. Shortly afterwards
you will see the two adjourning to take a drink,
or if news from the diggings at mad Mule Canyon
or shirt Tail Bar footnote well known mining localities in California,

(07:03):
and footnote is of a particular spicy character, the miner
will adjourn to the office. There, his news will be
set up in due course, and he will be invited
to take a char doubtless not only in hospitality, but
also with eye to the policy of keeping him out
of the way of the opposition already on the kiviva.

(07:25):
For in these dull, die away mining or rural villages
in some mountain valley of the far West, a man
with news is an important personage and comports himself most
properly as one from cities. The telegraph and the male
may bring matters of general interest to all alike. But
the local items of a difficulty down at Greecer's camp,

(07:49):
or a gold strike in black Jack's claim at Yuba Dam,
are matters which must be picked up by that most
industrious individual, the local editor, or as he is called
in other places, reporter. If the paper is going to
press and there is a dearth of items under the
column local, there is nothing for it but to extemporize

(08:11):
some or resort to that unfailing remedy of a newsless editor,
write letters on local grievances to himself and answer them
in the next issue. In many years wanderings about the
less settled portions of the slopes of the Rocky Mountains,
I have had much intercourse, pleasant on the whole, with
the Western editor. Scattered through my note books are various

(08:34):
memoranda illustrative of these rough spurtings of literary effort. In
a roughly organized state of society, the editor works to
please the public, and from the paper can generally be
drawn a tolerably fair picture of the community for which
it is produced. Tinctured of course, with more or less
of the individual peculiarities of the presiding spirit. I must,

(08:57):
in honesty explain that no one needed, expect in a
few glances over a single file of Western newspapers, to
find so many strongly marked characteristics as occur within narrow
limits in a gathering like mine, for that contains picked
specimens called at wide intervals. On the other hand, I

(09:17):
can assert that, as they were not gathered with any
special object in view, they are fairly representative, and in
no case is there the slightest exaggeration. The editor himself
has generally been brought up as a printer, and not unfrequently,
in case of accident, will set up and work off
his own leader. Not unfrequently he puts in his time

(09:41):
at case, and if he be of a speculative turn
of mind, drives the stagecoach or runs the hotel. But
oftener he is a local attorney, filling up his spare
time with politics, and possibly sits in the territorial legislature.
There is not, I believe, a politician of any eminence
in this wise who, at one time or other has

(10:04):
not been a printer or a lawyer. The former generally
graduating into the latter. As the world deals more kindly
with him, or ambition pricks him on, he very seldom
sticks to the editorial desk, but gravitates with Western versatility
into some other more lucrative line of business. If he
be sufficiently talkative, he takes to politics and runs for

(10:28):
the local legislature or the district judgeship, or if muscularly inclined,
you will find him working in a mining claim or
engaged in fulfilling a contract to blaze a trail. The
first thing which attracts attention in the little, dirty looking,
ill printed sheet is its astounding personality, that personality being

(10:50):
generally not so much directed against the other party, or
even against the rival paper as representing the other party,
as against the editor of it in his private care capacity.
Every Western editor's name is prominently printed at the head
of his paper, and instead of talking as he of
the eatonwill Gazette might of our contemptible contemporary, the journal

(11:14):
the Western Paper talks of that low lived hound cephas
east Locum who edits the miserable two bit thing over
the way footnote one bit fivepence to sevenpence and two
bits one shilling being about the ordinary price of a
single newspaper to the west of the Rocky Mountains. The

(11:37):
former is the lowest coin in general circulation. However, if
taken by the week, the usual subscription for a daily
paper is only one shilling delivered. End footnote. The editor
of a San Jose paper quarrels with another editor. Listen
to his description of his friend's character. He is a

(11:58):
professional loafer and may generally be seen round drinking saloons,
not only at election times, but for years after. He
makes a game of politics and plays as he would
a game of short cards or cutthroat monte. To win.
He wears his hair short, a style known as the
fighting cut, that he may be always ready for a scrimmage,

(12:21):
and that his adversary may take no undue advantage. The
preponderance of his brains is located between his ears. His
countenance is concave, and one or both his eyes are
usually in mourning from the effects of his last fight.
He is powerful in primaries, where he votes early and
often for his favorite candidates, succeeds and calls the nomination

(12:46):
regular in the matter of piety, long prayers, and so
forth that is entirely out of his line. Cursing is
more especially his forte. He can tell the difference between
a whiskey strait and a gin cocktail with his eyes shut,
and can snuff a treat two blocks off. He spends
his money with blank and makes it a point of

(13:07):
honor never to pay an honest debt. He accepts office
for the sake of the stealings, and is loyal because
it pays best. End quote. There is no joke here.
The man is perfectly in earnest as Anne, who knew
the pair of worthies would for a moment doubt. Nothing
can more thoroughly express his personality as well as the

(13:29):
absolute dearth of local news in a mountain newspaper in
Nevada than the following from the Virginia Enterprise. We observe
that briar local of the news footnote i e. Local
editor or reporter, and footnote has on a new coat.
If we remember right, there was a dry goods store

(13:50):
burnt out a short time ago, and that a number
of coats which were put on the street for safe
keeping after having been saved from the fire, were missing.
Of course, we don't intend to cast any reflection or
to say that briar nipped any of them. Oh No.
Another indignantly states that it would take the augur of

(14:11):
common sense longer to pierce into a certain editor's brain
than it would take for a boiled carrot to bore
through the Alps. After this elegant burst of eloquence, we
may be prepared to learn that William T. Dowdell, an
Illinois editor, having read Brick Pomeroy out of the Democratic Party.

(14:31):
The latter replies by calling dwdol an idiotics will headed chunk,
whereupon Dawdo calls Brick a pandemoniac pastepot cutthroat. The editor
of the Oakland News offers a handsome apology to the
editor of is San Leandro Contemporary for a typographical error
in calling him a monkey. He meant a donkey. Sometimes

(14:56):
these personal pin battles are a little more truculent. There
is a well known editor out west of the name
of Prentiss. Prentiss is never known to be put out,
and accordingly, mister Smith, we shall call him of the
Cleveland Plain Dealer made a fatal mistake when he penned
the following. Prentiss is a liar, and we shall tell

(15:17):
him so when we meet him. Prentiss thus replies in
his next paper, Ah, will you, mister Smith about that
time there will be a funeral and the Smith family
will be the principal mourners. The following is more in
the highly jocose way, and coming from a village in
the vicinity of San Francisco, is characteristic enough wanted a

(15:40):
calaboose footnote jail end footnote. Mcillan of the Parajo Times
is earnestly petitioning the board of supervisors for a calaboose,
which institution, he argues, is sadly wanted in the town
of Watsonville. We once spent a week in Watsonville, and
we have no hesitation in saying that mcquillan's head is

(16:03):
quite level on the calaboose question. A calaboose is sadly
needed in that locality, so says the dramatic chronicle, to
which the editor pointly referred to as McQuillan replies in
parenthesis at the end of a reprint. Yes, we remember
your visit here which suggested to us the necessity of

(16:23):
a calaboose. My friend, the honorable W. P. H. Is
well known in Northwest America as the active Superintendent of
Indian Affairs in Oregon, and was at one time editor
and is still proprietor of the Oregon Statesman. On one
of his tours he captured the wives of the Great
War Chief Panine of the Shoshones, who had for eight

(16:46):
years waged continual war against the Whites, accompanied with most
merciless outrages. These women were held as hostages, and the
result was that in the ensuing summer the chief sued
for peace, and mister H, with the officers of the
Indian Department and a party of friends, of which the
writer of these pages formed, one journeyed along the region

(17:09):
of the Snake River to deliver them up in State.
Our astonishment was great to find our doings subsequently recorded
in the opposition paper as follows to Bill H, Editor
of the Statesman, went up Snake River last week with
three squaws, the notion evidently being to lead those at
a distance who did not know the official character of

(17:30):
the journey to suppose that Bill H was a person
of very immoral life who consorted in trigamic concubinage with
Aboriginal ladies, and that the Statesman must be a vile
paper to have such an editor. Some years ago, I
passed an evening at the Dales of the Columbia River,
a locality well known to all readers of early adventure

(17:53):
beyond the Rocky Mountains. It is now a little village city,
of course, they call it, on the highway to the
mines of Idaho. It was crowded on this particular night
with travelers. Among the motley throng were various newspaper men
bound to the mines, either to canvass for their papers,
correspond or generally to look around among others. I was

(18:17):
introduced to an exceedingly pleasant gentleman called mister Samuel Bowers,
editor of a Portland paper. He was an excellent fellow,
affable and pleasant, and after the manners and customs of
the country, we had many drinks together, I believe we
engaged to correspond. What was my delight when the Dales Mountaineer,

(18:38):
the weekly paper, came out next morning to find the
following anent my friend of the evening before, who was
now on his way up the Columbia River. Miners look
out among other rogues, thieves, cutthroats, rowdies, and blackguards generally
whom we noticed in the city last night was Sam Bowers,
who has figured in the role of newspaper editor, school

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fund thief, et cetera. We believe that he is on
his way to the mines, in which case the honest
miners had better look sharp else Sam will bilk them. Sure.
I expressed a little surprise to the friend who had
introduced me. Oh was the reply. That's nothing. Sam. Perhaps

(19:22):
ain't much on the prey, but still he's not such
a bad coon, but he differs in politics with the
folks in this quarter. Watch the Umatilla and other up
river papers and see what they say. I did watch them,
with this result that the paper in the next village
on the river above the Dales, after a fashion very
common in the Western newspapers, I suppose, for the sake

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of filling up, copied out the item with the commentary
Sam passed through here the other day, nothing missing, to
which the next weekly adds, Sam passed through here on Thursday.
But as far as we can learn, without injury to
the portable property of any of our citizens, there was
talk about a child's rattle and a red hot stove,

(20:07):
but we believe the rumor was without foundation. So another
editor apologizes to another for calling him a miserable thing.
He meant a nothing, And the editor of the Solano
Press calls his brother of the Herald an absurd ass,
a contentible cur, a dirty dog, and a liar. Equally

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parliamentary is the language of the Oregon Statesman in reference
to a contemporary. We republish today a vile, degraded, infamous,
an execrably atrocious lie from the columns of the Daily Oregonian.
Next week, when time and space will permit, we shall
reply to it. For the present, suffice it for the low, vulgar,

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foul mouthed, and unrefined hound to know that our eye
is upon him, and he cannot escape us. The Solano
Press is apparently of a fierce nostril and ancient for
a fight. Woe betide the unfortunate white whose differs with
it in opinion, even though the opinion be not political,
but on the serious business of the best route to

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a certain mining locality. I remember a newspaper correspondent, as
harmless a man as need be I well know, who
ventured to hint that there was a better route to
the Idaho mines than by passing up the Columbia. His
advice if followed would be to the detriment of the
Columbia River towns. With what unanimity was he abused? No

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attempt was made at argument. It was the old endorsement
of the brief no defense abuse. Plaintiff's attorney, The Oregonian
suggested that some charitable packer footnote mulateer who packs or
carries goods to the mines or elsewhere in footnote, some

(21:55):
charitable packer had given him the privilege of writing the
bell mare, and had generously offered him a blanket to
cover his miserable carcass. The last I heard of this
unfortunate young man was the suggestion of the Yumatilla Tri
Weekly Advertiser that the flunky must have lingered along the roads,
scouring knives and washing dishes, that he never paid for

(22:18):
a meal, as evident from his statement of the prices charge,
et cetera, et cetera. Here below is a piece of
fine writing from an editorial in a Californian mining paper.
Let vagabonds howl and traitors hiss. Let the breeders of
bloodhounds to track and tear Union refugees bay like their

(22:39):
own dogs. Let the smitten maniacs who cursed Johnson till
he turned traitor, also vomit new blasphemies against the holy
name of liberty. Let foul lust and lazy pride, and
insolent and testy spleen and self conscious envy and gleaming hate,
and blear eyed prejudice, and besotted ignorance, and poor signe brutality,

(23:02):
stir every cesspool with their asinine vociferations, until every club
room of democracy reeks like an omnium gatherum of stenches.
I regret to say that many of these gems of
far Western periodical literature are occasionally not only scurrilous on
the individual attacked, but verge on the sacred precincts of

(23:24):
the family circle, holding up to public scorn the foibles
and weakness of the female members of the family of
the individual attacked, and even occasionally being so openly coarse
and indecent as to preclude their being noticed in this place.
Probably no one likes, when running for the honorable office

(23:45):
of congressmen or Supreme State judge, to have it shown
in a newspaper. How in an early portion of his
career he murdered his grandmother and ignominiously buried her in
the back kitchen. Mister Artemis Sward, himself a Quondam newspaper man,
has exactly struck this nail on the head when he

(24:06):
represents in the controversy about a plank road this attack
upon the editor of the Eagle of Freedom. The passage
is worth quoting as an epitome of a system quote.
The road may be, as our contemporary says, a humbug,
but our aunt isn't bald headed, and we haven't got
a one eyed sister sal. Wonder if the editor of

(24:29):
the Eagle of Freedom sees it this used up the
Eagle of Freedom feller, because his aunt's head does present
a skinned appearance, and his sister Sarah is very much
one eyed. We have recently put up in our office
an entirely new sink of unique construction, with two holes
through which the soiled water may pass to the new

(24:49):
bucket underneath. What will the hell hounds of the advertiser
say to this? We shall continue to make improvements as
fast as our rapidly increasing business may warrant. Wonder whether
a certain editor's wife thinks she can palm off a
brass watch chain on the community for a gold one.

(25:11):
A paper in Vancouver Island used to style its evening
contemporary the Night Cart. Though a vast portion of a
Western newspaper might, without a very great stretch of adverse criticism,
be styled personal. Yet by emphasis in the local item column,
you can see every now and then paragraphs entitled personal.

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These paragraphs refer to the business of private individuals in
contradistinction to others relating to the public wheel What they
are may be judged by the following personal welcoming home
of a prominent citizen. Mister Joe Tritch arrived home last
night with the stage. He has on a new suit

(25:54):
of state clothes, including a fine plug hat. He looks
the dog on discuss ever since Jim Ford left. But
nevertheless we are glad to see him and hope he
will settle down and behave himself. The following is peculiarly
national in its curiosity. Nathan E. Wallace and Charlie Henry
went up to Fort Langley last night business unknown. As

(26:17):
might be expected, such personalities occasionally lead to hostile encounters
between rival editors and their readers. Most frequently these consist
only in a thrashing on either side, and I fancy
very few Western editors have missed having a difficulty of
that sort at one time or another on their hands.

(26:38):
I possess a scrap book kept by mister B. Griffin
of Victoria in the earlier years of California, and such
items as the following are not unfrequent. Collision between H. A.
De Cercy Esquire, editor of the Calaveras Chronicle, and mister W. H. Carter,
Affair of honor between W. H. Jones and V. Selucius

(27:00):
t slingsby editorial difficulty down at Santa Clara, Man shot
et Ce. John King of William, editor of the San
Francisco Herald, was shot by a rowdy whom he had
attacked in his paper. His death may be said to
have been the origin of the Vigilance Committee, which, with

(27:21):
a lawless justice, created comparative peace and order where anarchy
and villainy had reigned. I heard a story about a
new editor who had come to a place which was
infested with a gang of ruffians. Before his face was
generally known, he attacked those men most violently in his paper.
One day, as he was sitting in his office after

(27:43):
having published a particularly severe article, a stalwart individual brandishing
a whip in his hand, rushed in and inquired for
the editor. Suspecting evil, he asked the visitor to be
seated and he would call the editor, who had just
stepped out for a minute. On his way downstairs, he
met a second individual carrying a bludgeon, and likewise inquiring

(28:06):
vigorously for the editor. Oh, sir, he is sitting in
his office upstairs. You'll find him there. When he next
peeped into the office, the two were belaboring each other, thoroughly,
rolling over and over, and each fancying that he had
the editor in hand. I tell the story for what
it is worth, and do not pretend to guarantee its

(28:28):
exact truth. Doolittle, a Southern editor, held his post for
six months, and in that time was stabbed twice, shot
three times, belabored with a bludgeon once, thrown into a
pond once, but was never kicked. During his six months experience,
he killed two of his adversaries. All these are absolute facts.

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When Isaac Disraeli wrote The Quarrels and Calamities of Authors,
he must assuredly have known nothing of Western newspaper, Otherwise
a chapter ought to have been added to both books.
As a set off. The local of the Memphis Bulletin
jestingly sums up his year's experience as follows. Ben asked

(29:14):
to drink eleven thousand, three hundred ninety three drank eleven thousand,
three hundred ninety two, requested to retract, four hundred and sixteen,
didn't retract four hundred and sixteen Invited to parties, receptions, presentations,
et cetera by people fishing for puffs. Three thousand, three
hundred and thirty three took the hint, thirty three didn't

(29:38):
take the hint. Three thousand, three hundred threatened to be whipped.
One hundred seventy four Ben whipped. Zero didn't come to time.
One hundred and seventy Ben promised bottles of champagne, whiskey, brandy, gin, bidders,
et cetera if I would go after them. Three thousand,
six hundred and fifty Ben after them, zero going again.

(30:02):
Zero been asked what's the news, three hundred thousand told,
thirteen didn't know, two hundred thousand lied about it. Ninety thousand,
nine hundred and eighty seven been to church. Two changed politics,
thirty two expected to change still, thirty three gay for

(30:24):
charity five dollars gave for a terrier dog twenty three
dollars cash on hand zero. Everybody advertises in the West,
professional men as well as tradesmen, and it is mainly
owing to this extensive advertising business that so many of
the local newspapers subsist. It is always expected that the

(30:47):
editor should call attention in the body of the paper
to the advertisement when first inserted, and accordingly you continually
see such notices as the following We call our reader's
attention to the auction of boots and shoes by our
fellow citizen, Washington Hubs, which appears in our advertising columns
this day. Wash is pretty tonguey and generally persuades folks

(31:11):
to buy or our readers will observe that measures Caleb
Johnston and Company have opened a restaurant on the corner
of Jackson and Fremont Street footnote. In Sacramento, the streets
are named A to B and first, second, third, and
so on. Monotonous note doubt, but still a relief to
the everlasting Washington, Jackson, Fremont, Carney, et cetera. Streets end

(31:36):
note on the corner of Jackson and Fremont Street, where
the tallest sort of feeding may be had at all
hours at the lowest possible cost to the span dulus money.
We advise our friends to give Caleb a call. Advertisements
of hotels with an initial letter of a Noah's Arc

(31:56):
like house, or of mule and horse dealers and hug
hirers figure extensively. What would the London time say to
the following, which I cut from the Idaho Statesmen footnote
June thirteen, eighteen sixty five. In footnote the advertisers apparently
aggrieved on the head of some rivals running an unfair
competition with him. Quote opposition is the life of business.

(32:21):
Work for nothing and find yourself, mister r and I
am with you, and you damned old rascal, here we go.
Horses kept to hay per night one dollar, saddle, horses
per day one dollar, two horses for buggy per day,
two fifty oats per pound. Five call any time, day
or night. A new era wool mattresses in Grand Ronde Valley,

(32:45):
Oregon prices reduced the cheapest house in the burgh. All
the creature comforts to be had at our house as
they can be had anywhere on the sunny side of
the Blue mountains. Are you hungry? Come to our house?
Are you thirsty? Take a drink? Are you weary? Try
one of my mattresses. Are you sad? I will condole
with you. Are you glad? I will rejoice with you.

(33:07):
If you are mad, I will go out and spar
with you. Come and see me. End quote. Outside hotel
keepers are every now and then calling the miner's attentions
to their square meals, by which is meant full meals,
in contradistinction to the imperfect dinner a man has to
put up with. On the mountains, men who wish to

(33:29):
buy timber are referred to this solemn announcement of the
fact of some timber being for sale. Quote Grand benefit
of Salem, Marion County, Oregon. From and after this date
we propose to sell lumber, lays and slabs as cheap
as any other high toned mill in the country. Times
are changed, and we have changed the credit of one

(33:50):
year and returned to ready pay, without which no webfoot
need apply. Footnote Webfoot a slang phrase after an inhabitant
of the rainy valley of the Willamette. End footnote. Book
keeping is most effectually played out You that, oh, come
to our office. There's the place, and settle now. We

(34:11):
cannot afford to wait, and when we commence to done,
we never get done. Be wise to day tis folly
to delay. Queer people follow all sorts of queer businesses
out west. A classical scholar was keeping a hotel in Victoria,
Vancouver Island, as might be inferred from his advertisements, which

(34:32):
used to be interlarted with Greek and Latin quotations from Escalus, Plato, Horace, Uppian,
and Avid. Sometimes the newspapers contain an ominous warning from
the city marshal to certain suspicious characters to get up
in dust, or an announcement of some indignant individual who

(34:52):
has been paid in green backs instead of gold, as
is customary all over the Pacific, Still, notwithstanding the appreciated currency,
with the heading spot him, Spot Him, Spot Him, The
following melancholy advertisement is called from an Oregon paper. Will
the gentlemen who stole my melons on last Sabbath night

(35:14):
be generous enough to return me a few of the seeds,
as they were a very rare variety. Marriages are expected
to be or at least are accompanied with some girdon
to the printers at the end of these announcements, you
generally see something like the following. Our staff returns thanks
for their present, and drank the happy couple's health in

(35:36):
flowing bumpers of champagne. The present consists almost always of
a few bottles of champagne, as no charge is made
for such announcements. In the local papers, typographical errors are
always troublesome, and a Western paper is usually distinguished for
their number and variety. Occasionally these errors become matter of

(35:57):
considerable difficulty to the editor and add one more responsibility
to many others. For instance, a friend of mine got
into a little trouble that way. In a weak moment,
he agreed to conduct the weekly paper in a mining
village for the editor, who was called off on other business.
All went well until a leading man among the miners
brought in an obituary of his deceased wife, who was

(36:20):
about the only white woman in the village. Now, as
items are scarce, it was sent straight to the printer.
On revising the proof, my friend found that it read
she was distinguished for her virtue and benevolence. He concluded
that the husband must have meant virtues. A proof was

(36:40):
accordingly dispatched to the husband with a request to correct
it and send it to the printer. My friend went
to bed early next morning he was roused by an
acquaintance with a paper in his hand, informing him that
Jim so and so, the author of the obituary aforesaid,
was hunting him, I e. The editor all over town

(37:01):
now as hunting a man means in the west, going
through all the drinking shops with a huge revolver in hand,
shouting where is he? My friend had just reason for
alarm and inquired what in the world he was being
hunted for. Oh, was the reply? Fun is all right,
but you know that item about old mother Blank was

(37:22):
a little too much. She mightn't be just the correct thing,
but still Jim thought a sight of her. It was
some time before the temporary editor could understand what was meant,
until the paper was shown him, with the obituary, intimating
that missus Blank was distinguished for her virtue, question mark
and her benevolence. The husband knew nothing about a proof,

(37:46):
and the printer had treated the query as an editor's correction.
After considerable difficulty, the indignant husband was consoled and peace
was made over drinks in the nearest saloon. Errors of
context are not unfrequent. Thus the San Diego paper announces
that the schooner General Harney had just arrived in the

(38:07):
harbor with no passengers but Nathan Brown, who owns half
the cargo, and the captain's wife, Or that there was
lost a valuable new silk umbrella belonging to a gentleman
with a curiously carved head. Sometimes the make up of
the paper is a little out of joint. Thus it
was rather a mistake, savoring of grim humor, to put

(38:30):
the arrangements for a police commissioner's funeral under the head
of rural sports. Paying in advance is always one of
the cardinal virtues in the subscriber to any periodical. But
perhaps the pious editor of the Christian Index need not
have announced so prominently that but a week since we
recognize the death of an old father in the church,

(38:51):
a careful reader of the Index, and who paid for
three papers in advance. In a country where every year
thousands of immigrants from the Southwestern States arrive over the
plains and the rocky mountains, full of stories of Indian
fights and chalk full of alkali, a good itemizer of
such matters is important. Accordingly, we find announced that we

(39:15):
have engaged the services of an immigrant editor, to whom
is entrusted all matters connected with engines, fights and alkalide subjects.
Utah editors, notwithstanding the presence of the Saints, are rather
profane fellows. One of them heads his leader with the
startling title of hell Boiling again. English newspaper readers would

(39:37):
be rather surprised to find some morning their favorite organ
printed on brown packing paper, by reason of the office
having run short of the usual paper. I have seen
this more than once in Vancouver Island. Again. The Chronicle,
a paper published in the same English colony off the
northwest coast of America, worth stating as its whereabout seems

(40:00):
only to be known to a few Frgs's, announces in
a paper before me that, owing to the market being
bare of paper of the usual size, we shall be
compelled to appear in a reduced form until the arrival
of the mail steamer active with a supply. Again, the
same paper, on one occasion appeared with one side blank,

(40:23):
accompanied by an explanatory note that, owing to an accident,
the composed matter got disarranged, and as there was no
more time to set it up again. Our readers will
please excuse the blank page. Letters to the paper are
not addressed as in England, to the editor of Blank
but editors Stump City Gazette and Commencing Measure's editors. Some

(40:48):
of these papers are edited by women, and in the
controversy about women's rights, it is worthy of remark that
the feminine editorials are not the least truculent of the
literary efforts, especially in times of political contest. When one
of the sterner sects ventures to raise the lady's virtuous indignation,
a female editor announces that, being a woman, she cannot

(41:12):
take satisfaction of the low lived hound who wrote the
article in our contemporary over the Way, but she has
a little boy who will clean him out handsomely in
about two minutes. Generally, just before an election contest, fresh
papers are started to advocate particular views, and it is

(41:33):
then that the Western paper is seen in all its glory.
It is rampant and scatter slaughter on every side on
the whole. I think that the most objectionable feature I
observed in the Western newspaper system is the custom of
dead heading. That is, of the editors going free on
railway steamers stages, and even paying their hotel bill and

(41:56):
livery stable keeper by praising the gentlemanly, high toned proprietor.
I know that many papers will not permit of this system.
The New York Legislature passed an act for abolishing and
forbidding the dead head system as far as possible, taking
them all in all. Though the Western papers may be

(42:17):
rough in their language, yet with rare exceptions, they are
always decent. They may be rude in their humor, but
their rudeness differs as much from the double entendre of
the low class of city papers, as much as the
honest clay of their own prairie lands differs from the
slime of the street. On the whole they work for good.

(42:37):
And if their literature be not very refined, neither are
their readers. So if it do not civilize them, neither
does it suffer them to remain barbarous, as they would
be very apt to be in the rude society of
the remote, far western glens, and of Part one