Bayard Taylor’s gifts were not such as would contribute toward the success of a country newspaper—so delicate, refined, poetical¹, and classical, we wonder that he should ever have undertaken so uncongenial a work. The best things which he could write would be dull as lead to the majority of his readers. The more literary merit his editorials and poems contained, the less likely were they to receive the praise of his subscribers. Yet his disposition³ to work was so inherent in every nerve, that he had not been at home one week from his tour of Europe before he was searching for a place for editorial work or correspondence. Mr. Frederick Foster, who was an old acquaintance and who also had been in the office of the West Chester “Village Record,” suggested the establishment of a weekly newspaper. As they looked for an opening for such an enterprise, they hit upon the town of Ph?nixville, Pa., as the most advantageous⁴ locality. Ph?nixville was then a[116] prosperous village, containing about two thousand inhabitants, twenty-seven miles from Philadelphia and thirty-one miles from Reading. There were rolling-mills, furnaces, and a variety of manufactories in the town, and the people constituted an enterprising and unusually vigorous community. There Mr. Taylor and Mr. Foster began the publication of the “Pioneer,” and with high hopes and an alarming confidence, waited neither for capital nor subscribers.

Mr. Taylor has often related to his friends some most amusing anecdotes⁵ connected with his life as a country editor. One subscriber² wanted a glossary⁶, another wished to see the local gossip about John Henry Smith’s surprise party, instead of the dull columns of literary reviews. One suggested that two editors would kill any paper, while another ventured to assert that he himself would edit the paper for them at three hundred dollars a year and “find

分享到：