OCR Text |
Show KNtiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittiiiiiiiiniiiii'-s KNtiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittiiiiiiiiniiiii'-s ' i II SCRIBES AND II I PHARISEES j j WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE Kimmmi i niii fi nil n mill n i m 1 1 1 1 1 m i 1 iiT; Copyright, lUi, by tbe Uavniiilan Co. OI7US Is a little town in that part of the country culled the West by those who live east of the Alleghanies, and referred to. lovingly as "hack East" by those who dwell west of the Kockies. It Is a country j towD where, as the song goes, "you know everybody and they all know ' you" and the country newspaper office j Is the social clearing house. In our little newspaper office we are II reporters, and we know many Intimate Inti-mate tilings about people that we do Dot print. As the merest Incident of the dally j grind, It came to the office that the i. bank cashier, whose retirement was 1 announced with half a column of re- gret, was caught $3,500 short, after ' 20 years of faithful service, and that his wife sold the homestead to make his shortage good. Though our loathed but esteemed contemporary, '-the Statesman, specks of our (own as "ihis city," and calls I the marshal "chief of police," we are none the less a country town. Like hundreds of Its kind, our little daily :. newspaper Is equipped with typeset ting machines and is printed from a web perfecting press, yet it is only a country newspaper, and knowing this, we refuse to put on city airs. Of course, we print the afternoon Associated Associ-ated Press report on the first page, under formal heads and with some pretense of dignity, but that first page Is the parlor of the paper, as It is of most of its contemporaries, and in the other pages they and we go around In our shirt sleeves, calling people by their first names; teasing the hoys and girls good-naturedly; tickling the pompous members of the village with straws from time to time, and letting oul the family secrets of the eommu-i' eommu-i' city without much regard for the feel ings of the supercilious. j Nine or ten thousand people in our i town go to bed on tills kind of mental pabulum, us do country town dwellers ell over the United States, and although al-though we do not claim that it is helpful, help-ful, we do contend that it does not 5iurt them. Certainly by poking mild fun at the shams the town pharisees we make It more difficult to muin-J muin-J tain the class lines which the pre- ; tenders would establish. Possibly by printing the news of everything that happens, suppressing nothing "on account ac-count of the respectability of the par-' par-' ties concerned," we may prevent some evil-doers from going on with their plans, hut this is mere conjecture, and ; we do not set It down to our credit. , What we maintain Is that to printing '' our little country dailies, we, the scribes, from one end of Ihe world to ; the other, get more ;than our share of fun out of life as we go along, and pass as much of it on to mr neighbors as we can spare. Because we live In country towns, where the only car gongs we hear are on the baker's wagon, and where the ' horses In the fire department work on the streets. Is no reason why city dwellers should assume that we are , natives. We have no dialect worth recording save that some of us westerners west-erners burr our "r's" a little or drop an occasional final "g." But you will find that all the things advertiser In tbe backs of the magazines are In our I houses, and that the young men In our ' towns walking home at midnight, with their coats over their anus, whistle tlw same popular airs that lovelorn boys are whistling In New York. Port-hind. Port-hind. San Francisco or New Orleans that same evening. Our girls are those i pretty, reliant, well-dressed young women whom you see at the summer resorts from Coronatlo bench to Uuz-I Uuz-I zard's hay. In the fall and winter these girls fill the colleges of the East and the state universities of the West. I We take all the beautiful garden magazines, and our terra-cotta works are turning out creditable vases , which we pronounce "vabzes." you tray be sun? for formal gardens. Anil though we men for the most part run our own lawnuiowers, ami personally look after the work of tbe college boy who takes care of the horse and the cow for his room, still there are a few of us proud and "haughty creatures who have automobiles. At the flower parade In our own little town last 1 Octolior there were ten automobiles In line, decked with paper flowers anil laden with pretty girls in lawns and dlmites and liners though as a matter mat-ter of fact must of tbe linens were only "Indian bend." Anrl our particular partic-ular little country paper printed an Item to the effect that the real social line of cleavage In the town lies not between tbe cut :l.iss set and the devotees dev-otees of hand-painted china, hut between be-tween the real nobility who wear gen-nine gen-nine linen and the base Imitations who vmir Indian head. In some towns an Item like that would make people mad. but we have our people trained to stand a good deal. They know that It costs them five cents a line for cards of thanks and resolutions of respect, so they never bring them in. They know that onr paper never permits "one who was there" to report social functions, so that dear old correspondent ha re-si re-si gr.-ed ; and because we have insisted for years on making an Item about the first tomatoes that are served in spring at any rlinner or reception, together with the cost per pound of the tomatoes, toma-toes, the town has bei-uuie used to our attitude and does not bun with Indignation In-dignation when we poke a risible finger fin-ger at tbe home-made costumes of the Plymouth Daughters when they present "The Mikado" to pay for the new pipe organ. Indeed, so used is the town to our ways that when there was great talk last winter about Mrs. Frelingbeysen for serving fresh strawberries straw-berries over the Ice cream at her luncheon In February, just after her husband had gone through bankruptcy, stie called up Miss Larrabee, our society so-ciety editor, on the telephone and asked her to make a little Item saying that the strawberries served by Mrs. Frelingbeysen at her luncheon were not fresh, hut merely sun-dried. This we did gladly and printed her recipe. So, gradually, without our Intending to establish It, a family vernacular has grown up in the paper which our people peo-ple understand, but which like all other family vernaculars is Greek to those outside the circle. Thus we say: "Bill Pr-ker Is making his eighth o.'ennlal distribution of cigars today for a boy." City papers would print It: "Born to Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Parker, a baby boy. Again we print this Item: "Mrs. Merrlman Is getting ready to lend her fern to the Nortons, June 15." That doesn't mean anything, unless yon happen to know that Mrs. Merrlman Merrl-man has the prettiest Boston fern In town, and that no bow window Is properly prop-erly decorated at any wedding without that fern. In larger towns the same item would appear thus: "Cards are out announcing the wedding wed-ding of Miss Cecil Norton and Mr. Collls R. Hatcher at the home of the hrlde's parents, Mr. and Mrs. T. J. Norton, 1022 High street, June 15." A plain drunk Is generally referred to In our columns as a "guest of Marshal Mar-shal Furgeson's Informal house party," and when a group of drunk-and disorderlies dis-orderlies Is brought In we feel free to say of their evening diversion that they "spent the happy hours, after refreshments, playing progressive hell." Anrl this brings us to the consideration of the most Important personage with whom we have to deal. In what we call "social circles," the most important impor-tant personages are Mrs. Julia Neal Worthington and Mrs. Piiscilla Win-throp Win-throp Conklin. who keep two hired girls and can pay five dollars a week for them when the prevailing price is .hree. In financial circles the most posed to be doing a tack-door beer business." he again Is "the authorities," authori-ties," and contends that the word strikes more terror Into the hearts of evil-doers than the mere name, Marshal Furgeson. Next In rank to "the authorities," in the diplomatic corps of the office, come our advertisers: The proprietors of the White Front Dry Goods store, the Golden Eagle Clothing store, and the Bee Hive. These men can come nearer to dictating the paper's policy tbau the bankers and politicians, who are supposed to control country newspapers. news-papers. Though we are charged with being tbe "organ" of any of half a dozen politicians whom we happen to speak of kindly at various times, we have little real use for politicians in our office, and a business man who brings in 60 or 70 dollars' worth of advertising every month has more influence in-fluence with us than all the politicians in the county. This Is the situation In most newspaper offices that succeed, suc-ceed, and when nny other situation prevails, when politicians control editors, edi-tors, the newspapers don't pay well, and sooner or later the politicians are bankrupt. The only person In town whom all the merchants desire us to poke fun at Is Mall Order Petrle. Mall Order Petrie Is a miserly old codger who buys everything every-thing out of tows that he can buy a penny cheaper than the home merchant mer-chant selils It. He Is a hard-varking man, so far as that goes, and so stingy that he has been accused of going barefooted in the summer time to save shoes. When he Is sick he sends out of town for patent medicines, and for ten years he worked in his truck garden, gar-den, fighting floods and droughts, bugs and blight, to save something like a hundred dollars, which he put in a mail order bank In St. Louis. When it failed he grinned at the fellows who twitted him of his loss, and said: "Oh, come easy, go easy !" A few years ago he subscribed to a matrimonial paper, and one day he appeared at the office of the probate Judge with a mail order wife, who, when they had been married a few years, went to an orphan asylum and got a mail order baby. We have had considerable sport with Mail Order Petrie, and he has become so used to it that he likes It. And this is the material with which we do our day's work Mail Order Petrie, Marshal Furgeson, the pretty Suppressing Nothing "On Account of the Respectability of the Parties Concerned." important personage Is John Markley, who buys real estate mortgages; in political circles the most important personage Is Charlie Hedrlck, who knows the railroad attorneys at the capital and always con get passes for the county delegation to the state convention; con-vention; In the railroad yard the most Important personage is the division sueriiiienrlent, who smokes ten-cent cigars and lias the only "room with a bath" at tbe Hotel Metropole. But with us. in the publication of our newspaper, newspa-per, the most important personage in town Is Marshal Furgeson. If you ever looked out of the car-window car-window ns you passed through town, you undoubtedly saw him at the depot. walking nervously up anil down the platform, peering Into the fates of i strangers. He Is ever on the outlook for crooks, though nothing more violent vio-lent has happened In our county for I years than an assault and battery. But j Marshal Furgeson never relinquishes j his watch. In winter, clad In his blue ! uniform and campaign hat. he is a fa- j miliar figure on our streets; and in summer, without coat or vest, with his big silver star on which is stamped "Chief of Police." pinned to his suspender, sus-pender, he may be seen at any point where trouble Is least likely to break out. He Is tbe only man on the town site whom we are afraid to tease, be- ! cause he Is our chief source of news. I When we particularly desire to please him we refer to him as "the j authorities." If the Palace grocery has j been Invaded through the back window j and a box of plug tobacco stolen. Mar- i shal Furgeson is delighted to read in i the paper that "the authorities have ! ao Important clew and the arrest may j be expected at any time." lie is "the j i an borities." If "the authorities hsve j I their eyes on a certain barber shop j on South Main street, which is sup j girls in the flower parade, the wise club women, the cutgluss society crowd, the proud owner ot trie automobile, auto-mobile, the "respectable parties concerned," con-cerned," tbe proprietor of the Golden Eagle, the clerks In the Bee Hive, t lie country crook who aspires to he a pro-fessionnl pro-fessionnl criminal some day, "the leading lead-ing citizen," who spends much of his time seeing the sights of his country, tbe college boys who wear funny clothes and ribbons on their hats, and the politicians, greedy for free advertising. adver-tising. Our business seems to outsiders to be a cruel one. because we have to ileal as mere business with such sacred things as death and birth, the meeting and parting of friends, nntl with tragedies trage-dies as well as with comedies. Time and again we have been sr-prised sr-prised at the charity of our peop... They are always willing to forgive and be It man or woman who takes a misstep in our town which Is the counterpart of hundreds of American towns if the offender shows that he wishes to walk straight, a thousand hands are stretched out to help him and guide him. It is not true that a man or woman who makes a mis-tnke mis-tnke Is eternally damned by his fellows. fel-lows. If one persis-ts in wrong after the first misdoeil it Is not because sheltering love and kindness were not thrown around the wrongdoer. We have In our town- women who have done wrom; and have lived down their errors just as men do. and have been forgiven. A hundred times in oar of lire we have talked fhe-o t nines over and hsve I een proud of our people and of their humanity. We are ail nrleh-ors nrleh-ors and friends, an 1 when sorrow :-o,a?s. no one is alone. The to.ui' greatest truer-dies have proved the : town's sympathy, and hate been worth 'heir cost. |