This was not said in flattery, but because he had seen on congressmen’s desks the heaps of country weeklies, and he knew how closely they were read. The smallest editorial paragraph tells the politician of the condition in that paper’s community, for he knows that it is put there because the editor has gathered the idea from some one whom he trusts as a leader—and the politician knows approximately who that leader is. So the country editor often exerts a power of which he knows little.
But politics is only a part of the country editor’s life. The social affairs of the community are nearest to him. The proud father who brings in a cigar with a notice of the seventh baby’s arrival (why cigars and babies should be associated in men’s minds I never understood), the fruit farmer who presents some fine Ben Davis apples in the expectation that he will get a notice, are but types. The editor may have some doubts concerning the need of a seventh child in the family of the proud father, and he may not be particularly fond of Ben Davis apples; but he gives generous notices because he knows that the gifts were prompted by kind hearts and that the givers are his friends.
When joy comes to the household, it is but the working of the heart’s best impulses to desire that all should share it. The news that the princess of the family has, after many years of waiting, wedded a prosperous merchant of the neighboring county, brings the family into prominence in the home paper. Seldom in these busy times does the editor get a piece of wedding-cake, but nevertheless he fails not to say that the bride is “one of our loveliest young ladies and the groom is worthy of the prize he has won.” The city paper does not do that. Here and there a country editor tries to put on city airs and give the bare facts of “social functions,” without a personal touch to the lines. But infrequently does he succeed in reaching the hearts of his readers, and somehow he finds that his contemporary across the street, badly printed, sprinkled with typographical errors and halting in its grammar, but profuse in its laudations, is getting an unusual number of new subscribers. Even you, though you may pretend to be unmindful, are not displeased when on the day after your party you read that the guests “went home feeling that a good time had been had.”