Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/298

 292 Southern Historical Society Papers.

diseased by prejudice and malignity it may be denied, but we can afford to interpose the recorded facts of history to offset these, and pity the bigotry that will gainsay them.

A recent writer in one of the periodicals of the day has graphi- cally described the straits of the Press of the South, in the following language :

" Side by side with the reports of battles and the records of peace commissions, congresses and legislatures, the blurred columns of the Confederate Press were wont to teem with domestic recipes for cheap dishes, directions for raising and utilizing various vegetable pro- ducts, instructions for making much of little in matters pertaining to every phase of household life. Hard by a list of dead and wounded would stand a recipe for tanning dog skins for gloves; while the par- agraphs just succeeding the closing column of the description of a naval engagement off Hampton Roads were directions for the use of boneset as a substitute for quinine.

"The journals of that day were printed usually upon the poorest paper, made of straw and cotton rags, and so brittle that the slightest touch mutilated it. The ink, like the paper, was of the cheapest and commonest, and left its impression, not only on the face of the sheet, but on the hands no less than on the mind of the reader. Few fonts of new type found their way into the Confederacy during the war, and at the end of four years the facilities for printing had come to a low ebb. It was no uncommon thing for publishers to issue half sheets in lieu of a complete paper, with scarcely an apology to subscribers for the curtailment of their literary and news rations. It was generally understood that this happened only through stern necessity, and not from any disposition on the part of the newspaper men to give less than an equivalent for the subscription price.

" Sometimes the journal which on yesterday appeared in all the glory of a six-column page was to-day cut down to a four- column half sheet, or publication was suspended with the announcement that the stock of materials had been exhausted, and that as soon as the office could be replenished publication would be resumed. Eagerly as the rough sheets were looked for, and closely as they were read, a diminution of matter in them, or a failure to appear, caused only passing comment or dissatisfaction. Men's minds were so filled with the thousand things that each day brought forth about them, there were so many rumors in the air, and news flew so rapidly, even without newspaper aid, as to cause them not too greatly to miss that which to-day has come to be one of the veriest neces-