The Lucknow Sentinel, 1993-10-13, Page 5The dog that would be a best-seller
by Marsha Boulton
HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA,
1893 -- Who was the first Canadian
author to write a book that sold
more than one million copies?
Margaret Marshall Saunders was
33 when she wrote Beautiful .Joe,
the "autobiography" of a illtreated
but amiable dog, which . was
published in 1893. The short novel
took first prize in an American
Humane Society competition, and
became an international best-seller
of over six million copies din more
than 14 languages.
Saunders was born in Milton,
Nova Scotia, and enjoyed a clas-
sical education. After studying in
Scotland and France, she taught
school for several years in Halifax,
but never warmed to the work. At
the suggestion of family and friends
she was encouraged to try writing
fiction.
In 1889 she published her, first
novel, a wildly melodramatic
romance called My Spanish Sailor.
To avoid public antipathy to female
novelists, she dropped her fust
name and published androgynously
as Marshall Saunders.
Beautiful Joe was inspired by a
chance meeting in Meaford, On-
tario, where Saunders encountered
a local miller, William Moore. He
told her the story of a homely pup-
py he had rescued from a brutal
master who had clipped the
animal's ears and tail.
From this thread, Saunders wove
an . unapologetically sentimental
story written from the point of view
of the abused dog who ultimately
finds a home with caring humans.
"I don't believe that a dog could
have fallen into a happier home
than I did," the mangled mongrel
muses, in a conclusion reminiscent
of British author Anna Sewell's
1877 best-seller, Black Beauty,
which surely provided Saunders
with inspiration. Beautiful Joe
became the hit of. the 1890s.
a a
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Over the next 30 years, Saunders
wrote more than 25 books, most of
them heart -tugging children's
stories about domestic animals and
birds.
She travelled extensively
\ throughout North America lecturing
school children and service clubs as
an advocate of legislation for
wildlife protection and the humane
treatment of all animals. Her
humanitarian interests were also
reflected in The Girl from Vermont,
which protested the use of child
labor in American Factories.
In 1914, Saunders settled in
Toronto, where she lived with her
sister, one dog and as many as 200
hundred pet birds. Neighborhood
children regularly brought injured
birds and animals to her for treat-
ment. As often as not, they would
find the famous author with a
pigeon or two. riding around on her
shoulders.
Her work consistently stressed
kindness and she approached human
cruelty not as a lack of virtue or. of
understanding, but as a failure of
feeling. Later critics would find
much of her work maudlin and
didactic, but she wrote with an
entertaining grace.
While Marshall Saunders' literary
ambition may have been best
realized in her ability to wet eyes
and wring hearts, other turn of the
century authors such as Ernest
Thompson Seton and Charles G. D.
Roberts, • expanded Canadian
literature to include a whole new
genre of "animal biography,"
featuring realistic stories of wild
animals.
Subsequent naturalist and conser
vationist authors include Roderick
Haig -Brown and Farley Mowat,
whose Canadian nature .tales and
chronicles for adults and children
are as world-renowned today as
Beautiful Joe was 100 years ago.
Must be an alternative
to Liberal government
To the editor:
1 see by the polls people are
thinking of electing a Liberal
government under Jean Chretien.
How soon we forget 11.5 per cent
unemployment, and 7 to 8 per cent
inflation rates in the earlier 1980s.
Well, we have not forgotten a 18
per cent first mortgage, overdrafts
at the bank of 24 per cent, and
farmers going bankrupt all around
us.
These are the same policies they
are creating again for you.
A far cry from a 71/2. per cent first
mortgage today and inflation
completely under control, and a
new leader Kim Campbell who has
'''0 THE EDITOR
a vision of controlling our deficit
by goverment spending cuts and at
the same time creating jobs.
Although I don't agree on all the
policies of our previous Mulroney
government, there must be an alter-
native to going back to the good
old days of Alan MacEachern and
Jean Chretien.
Former Lucknow business ,
persons,
Al and Gladys Hamilton.
Lucknow Sentinel. Wednesday. October 13. 1993 — Page 5
Looking back at the
newspaper industry
Everyo. e was in mourning the
day he died. As publisher of the
weekly newspaper, he was known
and respected from one corner of
the community to the other.
For many years once every week,
he had made his rounds up one side
of Main Street and down the other.
He had gathered a few ads. He had
picked up a few stories. But mostly
he had collected attitudes and
opinions about everything from the
price of oats to why council put the
stop to the new municipal drain.
Almost every kid in the
community had watched with their
noses pressed to the window as he
set type. Some had been lucky
enough to go right into his shop
where they heard the clatter and the
klunk of the linotype and saw the
shiny silver slugs come tumbling
out carrying words, sente-ices,
paragraphs, whole stories for the
paper.
Folks were accustomed to being
stopped by him as he swept the
front sidewalk on "paper day". It
seemed he was only being friendly
- meeting new people and checking
on his subscribers' welfare. In
reality, he was building
relationships for the newspaper that
would last a lifetime. .
At his funeral there was not a dry
eye in the packed Presbyterian
Church. People had revered that old
man. The community wondered if
things would ever again be the
same without him.
The front page of the newspaper
that week was edged in heavy
black.:At the top of the page, in
place of the usual headline, there
was a simple "30" in large, bold
type.
Some thought it was a mistake.
Others wondered if it was a joke.
Nearly everybody believed that if
the old publisher had been on duty,
it would never have happened.
Yet nothing could have been
twiner trom the truth. The old
man's chest would have swelled
with pride at the sight. The final
"30" is a mark of honour reserved
for the special few who have
devoted, their entire lives to
newspapers.
No one seems to know for sure
where the journalist term "30"
originated - the age oldsymbol that
marks the end of a reporter's story.
e.ar.iy teiegrapn upeLawi
developed a code in which various
numbers stood for different phrases.
"Thirty" meant "end of item".
Before newspapers had direct
telegraph wire, the operator would
write at the bottom of the last sheet
"three o'clock" which was
shortened . to "3 o' c" and then to
"30".
"Thirty" was the number of a
telegraph operator who remained at
his post ending messages during a
major disaster. He met death.
The first message sent to the
central press office during the Civil
War totalled 30 words. The thirty,
together with the words "good
night" and the signature of the
sender, were placed at the bottom
of the sheet 'by the telegrapher.
There • are many more theories
about the sign "30".
It matters not where it began. It
only matters that the beloved old
publisher was so esteemed that his
friends at the newspaper wrote "30"
at the head of his obituary as a
fitting tribute to a great man.
In today's high-tech newspaper
industry, publishers don't usually
sell advertising or write stories or
set type. They certainly don't sweep
sidewalks.
But community weekly
newspaper publishers, even in the
1990s, still practise the craft so dear
to the heart of the old publisher -
and in much the same way too. .
-turn to page 6
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