edition was carrying three and a half columns or so on the right side of the page, started off rather unpromisingly with an 18-inch poem which began like this:
A youth and a maid on a lonely veranda
Were taking a purely platonic meander.
There were 16 more lines of this; but nothing happened, so let's leave them there. The rest of the column is clipped miscellany.
The second and third columns are taken up largely with dramatics. The reviewer took his job seriously, and wrote and wrote. W. E. Sheridan, tragedian of the day, was at the New Market on the waterfront (close to where the Skidmore fountain is now), and he drew a whole column of space, in a day when they used to get twelve or fourteen hundred words into a column. The critic compares him with J. B. McCullough and displays a bit of familiarity with Shakespeare.
In the next two columns appeared about one and one-third columns written from "notes gathered during a trip to Boise how the trade of Boise was lost and how it may be regained." Some miscellaneous stuff follows, including 150 words or so on the use of short words, by Horatio Seymour.
A rather sprightly woman columnist (wonder who she was) under the general headline "A Medley from Madge" talked, so the headline went on to say, "a Little While About Art Schools—And a Good Deal About Bonnets—She Tells Our Dear Lady Readers What is Pretty and What Isn't—A Stupid Britisher, Etc."
The seventh and last column is taken up, for the most part, with an article from the Detroit Free Press on the work of Mrs. Anna Etheridge in the war hospitals. The rest of the column deals with Gath's picture of Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield, and a lot of current religious discussion, chiefly from church papers.
Page 2 carried 2½ columns of editorial, letters to the editor, and miscellaneous bits; 1¾ columns of book reviews under a 1-column head, "New Publications," a column or so of miscellaneous matter clipped from other papers, and 1¾ columns of advertising.
Page 3 was occupied with a column of social and personal, reviewing the week, more or less; more than a column and a half of local news under the heading "The Local Budget"; under the head "Short Portland Pulpit Notes," 14 items totaling 300 words; then Brief Shipping Notes. Finally, on that page there was nearly a column and a half of "column stuff" under the heading "Chaff. Prattle About Various Matters from a Man About Town."
After some rather irreverent comment on religious affairs, which are usually omitted from "columns" in these days; something on dramatics and more on politics, there came a rather detailed story of a recent municipal election. There had been a see-saw count between
