n thought
of. There he was alone in his cellar, without clerk, errand-boy,
or assistant of any kind. For many weeks he did with his own hands
everything,--editorials, news, reporting, receiving advertisements,
and even writing advertisements for persons "unaccustomed to
composition." He expressly announced that advertisers could have their
advertisements written for them at the office, and this at a time when
there was no one to do it but himself. The extreme cheapness of the
paper rendered him absolutely dependent upon his advertisers, and yet
he dared not charge more than fifty cents for sixteen lines, and he
offered to insert sixteen lines for a whole year for thirty dollars.

He at once produced an eminently salable article. If just such a paper
were to appear to-day, or any day, in any large city of the world, it
would instantly find a multitude of readers. It was a very small
sheet,--four little pages of four columns each,--much better printed
than the Herald now is, and not a waste line in it. Everything _drew_,
as the sailors say. There was not much scissoring in it,--the scissors
have never been much esteemed in the Herald office,--but the little
that there was all told upon the general effect of the sheet. There is
a story current in newspaper offices that the first few numbers of the
Herald were strictly decorous and "respectable," but that the editor,
finding the public indifferent and his money running low, changed his
tactics, and filled his paper with scurrility and indecency, which
immediately made it a paying enterprise. No such thing. The first
numbers were essentially of the same character as the number published
this morning. They had the same excellences and the same defects: in
the news department, immense industry, vigilance, and tact; in the
editorial columns, the vein of Mephistophelean mockery which has
puzzled and shocked so many good people at home and abroad. A leading
topic then was a certain Matthias, one of those long-bearded religious
impostors who used to appear from time to time. The first article in
the first number of the Herald was a minute account of the origin and
earlier life of the fellow,--just the thing for the paper, and the
sure method of exploding _him_. The first editorial article, too, was
perfectly in character:--

"In _debuts_ of this kind," said the editor,

"many talk of principle--political principle, party
principle--as a sort of steel-trap to catch the