Note 836 — Chapter VII
Reading edition
"Country Printer," in Freneau, iii, 60. Freneau thus describes the country editor of that day:—
"Three times a week, by nimble geldings drawn, A stage arrives; but scarcely deigns to stop. Unless the driver, far in liquor gone, Has made some business for the black-smith-shop; Then comes this printer's harvest-time of news, Welcome alike from Christians, Turks, or Jews. "Each passenger he eyes with curious glance, And, if his phiz be mark'd of courteous kind, To conversation, straight, he makes advance, Hoping, from thence, some paragraph to find, Some odd adventure, something new and rare, To set the town a-gape, and make it stare. "All is not Truth ('tis said) that travellers tell— So much the better for this man of news; For hence the country round, that know him well, Will, if he prints some lies, his lies excuse. Earthquakes, and battles, shipwrecks, myriads slain— If false or true—alike to him are gain. "Ask you what matter fills his various page? A mere farrago 'tis, of mingled things; Whate'er is done on Madam Terra's stage He to the knowledge of his townsmen brings: One while, he tells of monarchs run away; And now, of witches drown'd in Buzzard's bay. "Some miracles he makes, and some he steals; Half Nature's works are giants in his eyes; Much, very much, in wonderment he deals,— New-Hampshire apples grown to pumpkin size, Pumpkins almost as large as country inns, And ladies bearing, each,—three lovely twins."
Freneau was himself a country printer in New Jersey, after editing the National Gazette in Philadelphia. Thus the above description was from his personal experience and in a town in a thickly settled part, on the main road between New York and Philadelphia.