Where Town and Country Meet 



right that he should have, as it were, a prior 

 and superior claim upon all sorts of meteor 

 ological marvels. It does my heart good to 

 read, in country newspapers, in the dead of 

 winter or the height of summer, those long, 

 complacent paragraphs in which the editor, 

 and his correspondents from all outlying 

 hamlets and corners, chronicle the notable 

 feats of the weather of the week. There is 

 an unction and a deep, sweet, unenvious 

 satisfaction about this class of literature, that 

 endear to me at all seasons the columns of 

 the country weekly. The news may be old 

 a week old, perhaps, when it reaches the 

 outermost country subscriber but it is none 

 the less engrossing to all. The farmer, 

 whose ear was frozen, very likely, three 

 hours before the editor awoke to the con 

 sciousness that the morning of the day on 

 which he penned his item was cold, will 

 sit and pore over the news most absorbedly, 

 five days later, in the midst of such a thaw 

 that the plow would cut a furrow as easily 

 as in April. It delights him as the record 

 of a local condition which was, in a measure, 

 unsurpassed and unprecedented since last 

 January, at any rate. It was an event, in a 



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