[Sidenote: _NEWSPAPERS._] I found on inquiry that the figures were about correct. And the fact is, that it is only in the newspapers that the country people find nearly all their literature, and that barely a farmer can be found who does not regularly take three or more papers, and this makes the continued lives of these papers possible. A town of a thousand or twelve hundred inhabitants will support two or even three papers. How is it done? Examine one of these papers and you will find the outside pages better printed than the inside, and filled with a special sort of romantic stories, and short bits of general information; extracts from magazines and from Eastern or English newspapers. The inside pages have the true local color. Here you will see the leader, devoted to the topics of the time and place; descanting on the railroad news of the day; expressing the editor's opinions on the rates of freight or passage, or on the advantages his town offers for establishing new industries; or criticising the recent appointment of postmaster. Then the correspondence from various outlying towns or villages, written very often by the schoolmaster, and abounding in literary allusions and quotations. And then comes the amazing feature of the paper--a column or two are devoted to "locals." This is the style: "Beautiful weather. New York sirup at Thompson's. The spring plowing is nearly done. Use the celebrated XL flour, the best in the market. Mrs. ---- has been in ----, attending to the woman-suffrage question, the past week. Our thanks are due to two fair ladies for bouquets of spring flowers, the first of the season. Our young friend Pete M---- called on us yesterday; good boy Pete. Judge Henry was at Salem the past week. Miss Addie Bines is visiting friends in town. Did you see that bonnet at the Presbyterian church on Sunday? The accidental pistol-shot the sheriff got is pretty bad. The rates of board at the Cosmopolitan Hotel are five dollars a week; three meals for a dollar. The Odd-Fellows will give a ball on the 25th. Our vociferous friend Sam N---- is starting for Puget Sound." And so on. I observe and I hear that these locals are by far the best-read portion of the paper. A variety of items of scraps from the neighborhood, and advertisements, the longest of which relate to patent medicines of all sorts, fill up these two inner pages of the paper. The secret of cheap production lies in obtaining the paper, with the two outside pages ready printed, from an office in Portland, which supplies in this way twenty or thirty of these little newspapers. Thus the cost to the editor is reduced to the getting-up of the two inner pages, and, as will be seen, not a very high level of brain-power is needed.