riae_,
and he ran off and joined himself to his countrymen. Returning again,
under the proclamation, after the death of the great Narragansett king,
James, for such was his English name, obtained a pardon, and worked at
the business for the remainder of his life. From Eliot's account of him,
he was the most accurate printer in the colony--the only one 'who was
able to correct the press with understanding.' He printed the Psalter
and several other works in the Indian language; and being always known
as James the Printer, he assumed the latter as his surname. He married
and reared a family by that name, whose descendants were recently living
in Grafton.

The first newspaper published in North America was the _Boston News
Letter_, commenced in April, 1704, by John Campbell. It was printed by
the authority of the licensers, as a half sheet of what was then called
pot paper--a large size of foolscap. Campbell was a bookseller, and the
postmaster of Boston. The paper was printed by Bartholomew Green. The
first number contained the Queen's speech to both houses of Parliament;
some notice of the attempts of the Pretender, James the Eighth of
Scotland, who was said to be sending over Popish missionaries from
France; three or four paragraphs of domestic intelligence; four items of
ship news from Philadelphia, New York, and New London; and one
advertisement by the editor. The paper was continued fifteen years,
weekly, upon the half sheet of foolscap, without a rival on the
continent, and continually languishing for want of support.[A] In 1719
the editor made a great effort to enlarge his publication. He stated in
his prospectus that he found it to be impossible, with a weekly half
sheet, to carry on all the public occurrences of Europe, with those of
the American colonies and the West Indies. He was then thirteen months
behind the news from Europe, and to obviate the difficulty he resolved
to publish every other week a full sheet of foolscap, he afterward
announced, as the advantage of this enlargement, that in eight months he
was able to bring down the foreign news to within five months of the
date of his publication!

What a contrast between the newspaper of that day and our own! _Then_
news from England, five months old, was fresh and racy. Now we must have
it in twelve days, and even then send out fleets of newsboats from Cape
Race to bring it to us two days sooner than steam can take the ship up
to New York and Boston. _The