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Show Found Home Paper In Heart of Rockies "Publishing a country newspaper rz minds me of tossing a pebble into 'the ocean. We never know how far ,tlte circles which it sets in motion will reach," said Willitson Manley, publisher publish-er of The I'lalndealer of Canton, .N. Y., the other day, in speaking of "Sub-i "Sub-i scribe for Your Home Town Paper I Week," which is to be observed the country over the week of November ,7-12. "I had a good reminder of this not long ago," he went on. "One day there appeared in the riaindenler office a short, stubby, ro- j bust man of probably sixty. I knew the minute I saw him that he had come in from the big outdoors in some : section. lie told me that he had taken j ;tbe paper for many years, probably . forty, ever since he bad left Canton, j w here he was born. He told me where , I would find the paper going, and I found it. Ills post office was in a j Millie town way out in the Rockies. He, I said he had come back to the old town I to live. He paid what he owed and j a year over for good measure, and then j be sat down and I knew something was ; coming. ; Forty Years in the Mountains. '. "'Say,' said he, 'newspapers are j great things. You can never tell what they are going to do for you. I have , been a peddler out In the mountains for forty years, making my trips, me j and the little burro, about once In ! six months. There were a lot of long jumps between houses. For fifteen years I bad been going out of my I trail, about live miles to one side, to ! .'ell lo a family that bad moved In. ;You get rather well acquainted with people If you see them once In six , months for (hat long, so when I got (here one afternoon and didn't find .anyone home just the door unlocked, as all doors were there I went in and 1 made myself comfortable, and when j supper time came I didn't hesitate about hunting around for gtub. And while I was doing It I found a ropj of the I'lalndealer on the kitchen slieif . mid one or two more around the house the I'lalndealer, mind yon, the paper I was inking right from the old home town! And 1 wondered who these fifteen-year-old friends of mine were. I suddenly realized we had j never talked over our pedigrees any. i " 'When the family got homethai j evening I asked questions, and what ! do you think? that wife was a sort of grandnlece of mine. She hadn't beard of her old uncle off stubbing around in the rocks of the Rockies, and I hadn't ever beard that anyone any-one related to me had ever mar. Tied and was out there living under another name. Your paper introduced us to each other. I just thought you might like to know about it.'" |