Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 January 1894 — VANCE’S FAVORITE STORY. [ARTICLE]

VANCE’S FAVORITE STORY.

What Happened fn a Town WhereOnly One Man Could Read. Washington Cor. Springfield Republican. Senator Vance has one favorite story. This is it: Along in the forties Asheville, S. C*, was a very small place, out of the path of travel, and the only man who could read was the postmaster, whose name was Brown. The rest of the natives depended upon him for their knowledge of what was going on in the world, and the habitues of the postoffice at last strouck on the brilliant idea of subsribing to a weekly paper in common. So when the paper came Brown would assemble the members of the pool and read it to them, begining religiously with the announcement of rates at the top of the first column of tlie first page and going through to the end. On pleasant days the neighbors didn’t have a great deal of time to devote to literature, and they got in the habit of coming around for their news rations only when the weather was too rainy for outdoor work. At this rate Brown found that he couldn’t keep up very well with the procession of events and he adopted a plan of reading the paper in order, forming a stack, shoving the latest issue underneath and taking them off the top one by one. The stack kept growing on him, and to make matters worse the papers mcreasedin size about that time by a couple of columns on each page. Still the post master kept bravely on, although by the time the Mexican war broke out there was a stack of formidable size to attend to. As the village depended altogether for its information on these occasional readings it so happened that nobody heard anything about the outbreak of the war until about a year after peace had been declared. Then they reached the war layer of the paper, and. as the .news begun to culminate in the readings the excitement grew intense. There was only one thing for them to do as patriotic American citizens, and they promptly did it. They organized a company including every man of fighting age in the town, and started out bravely for the scene of operations with their old flint locks ana badger tails in their hats. They got as far as Salisbury when they found out the real state of things and how badly they had been duped. Then they Returned and made Brown leave • town. This is what Senator Vance really tells as a true story. "