Christmas comes, you can give a
Christmas entertainment, and ask an admission fee, and, won't you give the
money to the missions of our Church? That will be putting another round in
the ladder, and the 'Up-the-Ladder Club' will go higher still. I want you
to help other people all you can. I'll tell you what to do, and be with
you."

The boys agreed to their teacher's plan. Sid was specially enthusiastic.
Will Somers said he would help. Aunt Stanshy had promised to open the
rooms of her house, and one December night, when the sky was like the dark
face of an Oriental beauty, hung all over with golden jewelry, the White
Shields and their friends met at Aunt Stanshy's. How happy were the club
boys to find there a banner sent by Mr. Walton. He wrote that Tim Tyler
was coming to Sunday-school, and that they had previously secured four
scholars, and Tim should be counted the fifth. Happy knights to earn that
banner!

About eight Sid came into the front room dressed in a brown, broad-skirted
coat, also wearing small clothes, silver knee-buckles, and buckled shoes.
He took off his cocked hat, made a low bow, and holding out a diminutive
newspaper, yellow with age, began:

"I am a printer. I had the honor of printing the 'New Hampshire Gazette,'
which was started in Portsmouth in 1756, and is still published in that
good old city. In those days newspapers were not so numerous as now. When
the Revolutionary War closed there were forty-three papers in the country.
We did not give such crowded or so large sheets as are now published. My
paper, though, was so popular all the spare copies were taken, and I have
none by me this moment; but here is a copy of the 'New England Chronicle,'
that came out in Boston on the 4th of July, 1776. It has four pages, you
will see, measures ten inches by fifteen, say, and each page has three
columns. It was not easy work then to publish a paper. We had no
steam-presses, but hand-power had to do the work, and my arms ache to this
day. It was hard, too, at the time of the Revolutionary War, to get paper,
and before the war, too. In 1769 there was only one paper-mill in New
England, and that was at Milton, Mass. They had to advertise for rags, and
what they called the bell-cart went through Boston picking them up. Then
in towns like Salem, Charlestown, Portsmouth, they scraped all they could.
Ten years after, my brother-publisher, of the 'Massachusetts Spy,'
appealed to the 'fair Daughters of Libert