se. The
editor--who felt that he had caught the public ear, as he
had--contrived, by desperate exertions, to "rake the Herald out of the
fire," as he said, and went on alone. Four months after, the great
fire laid Wall Street low, and all the great business streets
adjacent. Here was his first real opportunity as a journalist; and how
he improved it!--spending one half of every day among the ruins,
note-book in hand, and the other half over his desk, writing out what
he had gathered. He spread before the public reports so detailed,
unconventional, and graphic, that a reader sitting at his ease in his
own room became, as it were, an eyewitness of those appalling scenes.
His accounts of that fire, and of the events following it, are such as
Defoe would have given if he had been a New York reporter. Still
struggling for existence, he went to the expense (great then) of
publishing a picture of the burning Exchange, and a map of the burnt
district. American journalism was born amid the roaring flames of the
great fire of 1835; and no true journalist will deny, that from that
day to this, whenever any very remarkable event has taken place in the
city of New York, the Herald reports of it have generally been those
which cost most money and exhibited most of the spirit and detail of
the scene. For some years every dollar that the Herald made was
expended in news, and, to this hour, no other journal equals it in
daily expenditure for intelligence. If, to-morrow, we were to have
another great fire, like that of thirty years ago, this paper would
have twenty-five men in the streets gathering particulars.

But so difficult is it to establish a daily newspaper, that at the end
of a year it was not yet certain that the Herald could continue. A
lucky contract with a noted pill-vender gave it a great lift about
that time;[1] and in the fifteenth month, the editor ventured to raise
his price to two cents. From that day he had a business, and nothing
remained for him but to go on as he had begun. He did so. The paper
exhibits now the same qualities as it did then,--immense expenditure
and vigilance in getting news, and a reckless disregard of principle,
truth, and decency in its editorials.

Almost from the first month of its existence, this paper was deemed
infamous by the very public that supported it. We can well remember
when people bought it on the sly, and blushed when they were caught
reading it, and when the man in a country pl