The parson.  Mandeville likes to show off well enough.  I heard that he related to a woods’ boy up there the whole of the Siege of Troy.  The boy was very much interested, and said “there’d been a man up there that spring from Troy, looking up timber.”  Mandeville always carries the news when he goes into the country.

Mandeville.  I’m going to take the Parson’s sermon on Jonah next summer; it’s the nearest to anything like news we’ve had from his pulpit in ten years.  But, seriously, the boy was very well informed.  He’d heard of Albany; his father took in the “Weekly Tribune,” and he had a partial conception of Horace Greeley.

Our next door.  I never went so far out of the world in America yet that the name of Horace Greeley did n’t rise up before me.  One of the first questions asked by any camp-fire is, “Did ye ever see Horace?”

Herbert.  Which shows the power of the press again.  But I have often remarked how little real conception of the moving world, as it is, people in remote regions get from the newspaper.  It needs to be read in the midst of events.  A chip cast ashore in a refluent eddy tells no tale of the force and swiftness of the current.

Our next door.  I don’t exactly get the drift of that last remark; but I rather like a remark that I can’t understand; like the landlady’s indigestible bread, it stays by you.

Herbert.  I see that I must talk in words of one syllable.  The newspaper has little effect upon the remote country mind, because the remote country mind is interested in a very limited number of things.  Besides, as the Parson says, it is conceited.  The most accomplished scholar will be the butt of all the guides in the woods, because he cannot follow a trail that would puzzle a sable (saple the trappers call it).

The parson.  It’s enough to read the summer letters that people write to the newspapers from the country and the woods.  Isolated from the activity of the world, they come to think that the little adventures of their stupid days and nights are important.  Talk about that being real life!  Compare the letters such people write with the other contents of the newspaper, and you will see which life is real.  That’s one reason I hate to have summer come, the country letters set in.

The mistress.  I should like to see something the Parson does n’t hate to have come.

Mandeville.  Except his quarter’s salary; and the meeting of the American Board.

The fire-tender.  I don’t see that we are getting any nearer the solution of the original question.  The world is evidently interested in events simply because they are recent.

Our next door.  I have a theory that a newspaper might be published at little cost, merely by reprinting the numbers of years before, only altering the dates; just as the Parson preaches over his sermons.