Volume I Part 34 (1/2)

[829] Goodrich, i, 61.

[830] Schoepf, ii, 61; see note, _ib._ Even this journal died for want of subscribers.

[831] Salem _Gazette_, Sept. 13, 1791; Hist. Col., Topsfield (Ma.s.s.) Hist. Soc., iii, 10.

[832] Was.h.i.+ngton to Humphreys, Dec. 26, 1786; _Writings_: Ford, xi, 98-103.

[833] Was.h.i.+ngton to General Knox, Dec. 26, 1786; _ib._, 103-05.

[834] _Writings_: Smyth, x, 36 _et seq._ This arraignment of the press by America's first journalist was written when Franklin was eighty-three years old and when he was the most honored and beloved man in America, Was.h.i.+ngton only excepted. It serves not only to illuminate the period of the beginning of our Government, but to measure the vast progress during the century and a quarter since that time.

[835] Jefferson to Mrs. Adams, Paris, Sept. 25, 1785; _Works_: Ford, iv, 465.

[836] ”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 pa.s.senger 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, s.h.i.+pwrecks, 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-Hamps.h.i.+re 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.

[837] Goodrich, i, 38.

[838] A letter from Salem Town about 1786-87; in _American Journal of Education_, xiii, 738.

[839] Van Santvoord: _Memoirs of Eliphalet Nott_, 19.

[840] Davis, 333.

[841] ”Many cannot read or write, and many that can, know nothing of geography and other branches. The country is too thinly settled to carry out a system of common schools.” (Howe, 153, speaking of western Virginia about 1830.)

[842] Weld, i, 168. But President Tyler says that the boys Weld saw were grammar-school pupils.

[843] Watson, 269.

[844] Chastellux, 319-20.

[845] De Warville, 126-27.

[846] _Ib._, 145 and 450.