public. We
mean to be perfectly understood on this point, and therefore
openly disclaim all steel-traps,--all principle, as it is
called,--all party,--all politics. Our only guide shall be
good, sound, practical common-sense, applicable to the
business and bosoms of men engaged in every-day 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 on every public and proper subject, stripped of
verbiage and coloring, with comments, when suitable, just,
independent, fearless, and good-tempered. If the Herald
wants the mere expansion which many journals possess, we
shall try to make it up in industry, good taste, brevity,
variety, point, piquancy, and cheapness."

He proceeded immediately to give a specimen of the "comments" thus
described, in the form of a review of an Annual Register just
published. The Register informed him that there were 1,492 "rogues in
the State Prison." His comment was: "But God only knows how many out
of prison, preying upon the community, in the shape of gamblers,
blacklegs, speculators, and politicians." He learned from the Register
that the poor-house contained 6,547 paupers; to which he added, "and
double the number going there as fast as indolence and intemperance
can carry them." The first numbers were filled with nonsense and
gossip about the city of New York, to which his poverty confined him.
He had no boat with which to board arriving ships, no share in the
pony express from Washington, and no correspondents in other cities.
All he could do was to catch the floating gossip, scandal, and folly
of the town, and present as much of them every day as one man could
get upon paper by sixteen hours' labor. He laughed at everything and
everybody,--not excepting himself and his squint eye,--and, though his
jokes were not always good, they were generally good enough. People
laughed, and were willing to expend a cent the next day to see what
new folly the man would commit or relate. We all like to read about
our own neighborhood: this paper gratified the propensity.

The man, we repeat, really had a vein of poetry in him, and the first
numbers of the Herald show it. He had occasion to mention, one day,
that Broadway was about to be paved with wooden blocks. This was not a
very promising subject