instructions of the founders.
They are here no longer in their bodily presence, but their spirit,
their ideas, still pervade the vast establishment. Everything is still
sold at a small profit and at a price plainly marked, and any article
which may have ceased to please the purchaser can, without the slightest
difficulty, be exchanged or its value refunded.

When James Gordon Bennett was forty years old, he collected all his
property, three hundred dollars, and in a cellar with a board upon two
barrels for a desk, himself his own type setter, office boy, publisher,
newsboy, clerk, editor, proof-reader and printer's devil, he started the
New York _Herald_. In all his literary work up to this time he had
tried to imitate Franklin's style; and, as is the fate of all imitators,
he utterly failed.

He lost twenty years of his life trying to be somebody else. He first
showed the material he was made of in the "Salutatory," of the _Herald_,
viz., "Our only guide shall be good, sound and practical common-sense
applicable to the business and bosoms of men engaged in everyday life.
We shall support no party, be the organ of no faction or coterie, and
care nothing for any election or any candidate from President down to
constable. We shall endeavor to record facts upon every public and
proper subject stripped of verbiage and coloring, with comments when
suitable, just, independent, fearless and good-tempered."

Joseph Hunter was a carpenter, Robert Burns a ploughman, Keats a
druggist, Thomas Carlyle a mason, Hugh Miller a stone mason. Rubens, the
artist, was a page, Swedenborg, a mining engineer. Dante and Descartes
were soldiers. Ben Johnson was a brick layer and worked at building
Lincoln Inn in London with trowel in hand and a book in his pocket.
Jeremy Taylor was a barber. Andrew Johnson was a tailor. Cardinal Wolsey
was a butcher's son. So were Defoe and Kirke White. Michael Faraday was
the son of a blacksmith. He even excelled his teacher, Sir Humphry Davy,
who was an apprentice to an apothecary.

Virgil was the son of a porter, Homer of a farmer, Pope of a merchant,
Horace of a shopkeeper, Demosthenes of a cutler, Milton of a money
scrivener, Shakespeare of a wool stapler, and Oliver Cromwell of a
brewer.

John Wanamaker's first salary was $1.25 per week. A. T. Stewart began
his business life as a school teacher. James Keene drove a milk wagon in
a California town. Joseph Pulitzer, proprietor of the New York _World_,