good send -off," the intimate relationships that prevent the naked truth from being told in public places , the concealments that do not conceal, - all of these conditions are faithfully portrayed by descriptions that in themselves are wholly unreliable , yet
are absolutely trustworthy records of the state of mind , the intellectual interests, the friendly relationships of the rural community . It must also be remembered that conditions in a poor , backward community can also be in part reconstructed from what the paper does not contain as well as from what it
publishes. The country press as an interpreter of rural and village life is best described by William Allen White who says :
“ Therefore, men and brethren , when you are riding through this vale of tears upon the California Limited , and by chance pick up the little country newspaper with its meager telegraph service of three or four thousand words— or, at best, fifteen or twenty thousand ; when you see its array of countryside items;
its interminable local stories ; its tiresome editorials on the waterworks, the schools, the street railroad , the crops, and the city printing, don 't throw down the contemptible little rag with
the verdict that there is nothing in it.d fBut sand and now ind aknow ll eyethis, red kknow it well : if you could take the clay from your eyes and read the
little paper as it is written , you would find all of God 's beautiful sorrowing, struggling, aspiring world in it, and what you saw
would make you touch the little paper with reverent hands.” 23 The reconstruction through the newspaper of the life of the
small community seems simple, — the reconstruction of the life of a great city is a more complex matter. The rural community knows itself, it is interested in reading about itself, and it makes the necessary modifications of all local accounts given . But a
huge city does not know itself, — “ the people in one part read
with eagerness about the other part of which it knows not. The society debutante will read of the temptations of the Bowery
and of Chinatown, while the shop girl pores over the descrip tions of Mrs . K 's jewels and the latest entertainment or the
newest scandal in the upper set.” 24 Yet as one star differeth 23 “ The Country Newspaper,” Harper's Magazine, May, 1916, 132: 887- 891.
See also E . A . Start, “ The Country Newspaper," New England Magazine, November, 1889, 7 : 329 - 335; C . M . Harger, “ The Country Editor of To-day,” Atlantic Monthly, January , 1907, 99: 89-96. 14 Suggested by M . H . Bess
