Edits a Country Newspaper.—The “Ph?nixville Pioneer.”—The Discouragements.—The Suspension.—Publishes “Views Afoot.”—Introduction to Literary Men.—Contributes to the “Literary World.”—Becomes an Editor of the New York “Tribune.”—The Gold Excitement of 1849.—Resolves to visit the Eldorado.—Arrival in California. Bayard Taylor’s gifts were not such as would contribute toward the success of a country newspaper—so delicate, refined, poetical, 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 disposition 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 advantageous 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 anecdotes connected with his life as a country editor. One subscriber wanted a glossary, 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 shears.”
It was a difficult task. To edit the New York “Herald” would have been far easier and better suited to Mr. Taylor’s genius. The people, of Ph?nixville, however, began to appreciate their privileges after the lack of support compelled the young journalists to close their office and suspend the publication of the paper; and financial aid to re-establish the “Pioneer” was generously offered. But one year in such an unappreciated labor was enough for Mr. Taylor, and he left Ph?nixville, according to his own account, considerably wiser and poorer than he was when he entered it. If[117] any of our readers has attempted to start a literary paper in the country, and passed through the perplexities of financial management and rude discouragements, he will need no words to prompt his most hearty sympathy with the work, and the suspension of Mr. Taylor’s undertaking. To make successful a publication of that character in ............