on, having
become freemen by the Constitution of Massachusetts of 1780. Fleet was
droll and witty in the conduct of his paper, especially in his
advertisements. Witness the following advertisement of one of his negro
women for sale: 'To be sold, by the printer of this paper, the very best
negro woman in this town, who has had the small pox and the measles; is
as hearty as a horse, as brisk as a bird, will work like a beaver.'

There was a common evil existing in those days which, it is to be
feared, has now become chronic. People were prone to omit paying for
their newspapers. Fleet had often to complain of this crying sin, even
against men of great religious professions. On one occasion he read them
quite a severe lesson upon their injustice and oppression in this
respect. 'Every one,' says he, 'thinks he has a right to read news, but
few find themselves inclined to pay for it. 'Tis a great pity a soil
that will bear _piety_ so well, should not produce a tolerable crop of
common honesty.'

It is, moreover, slanderously reported in the ancient chronicles, that
Fleet was not blessed with the most beautiful and sweet-tempered wife
and daughters in Boston. On one occasion he invited a friend to dine
with him on _pouts_, a kind of fish then esteemed a great delicacy, and
of which he knew his friend to be remarkably fond. His domestic matters,
however, did not move along very smoothly that morning, and when they
sat down to table, the gentleman remarked that the _pouts_ were wanting.

'Oh no,' said Fleet, 'only look at my wife and daughters!'

Twenty-one years elapsed from the establishment of a newspaper in
Boston, before William Bradford commenced the _New York Gazette_, in
October, 1725. It was printed on a half sheet of foolscap, with a large
and almost wornout type. There is a large volume of these papers in the
New York City Library, in good preservation. The advertisements do not
average more than three or four a week, and these are mostly of runaway
negroes. The ship news was diminutive enough; now and then a ship, and
some half a dozen sloops arriving and leaving in the course of the week.
Such was the daily paper published in the commercial metropolis of the
United States, one hundred and thirty-eight years ago!

Eight years after the establishment of Bradford's _Gazette_, the _New
York Weekly Journal_ was commenced by John Philip Zengar. This paper
was established for the purpose of opposing the colonial admin