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 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,