Pastoral Journalism.
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.
