POPE: _Essay on Man_

CHAPTER III

1750-1776

_Newbery's Books in America_

In the middle of the eighteenth century Thursdays were red-letter days
for the residents of the Quaker town of Philadelphia. On that day Thomas
Bradford sent forth from the "Sign of the Bible" in Second Street the
weekly number of the "Pennsylvania Journal," and upon the same day his
rival journalists, Franklin and Hall, issued the "Pennsylvania Gazette."

On Thursday, the fifteenth of November, seventeen hundred and fifty, Old
Style, the good people of the town took up their newspapers with
doubtless a feeling of comfortable anticipation, as they drew their
chairs to the fireside and began to look over the local occurrences of
the past week, the "freshest foreign advices," and the various bits of
information that had filtered slowly from the northern and more southern
provinces.

On this particular evening the subscribers to both newspapers found a
trifle more news in the "Journal," but in each paper the same domestic
items of interest, somewhat differently worded. The latest news from
Boston was that of November fifth, from New York, November eighth, the
Annapolis item was dated October tenth, and the few lines from London
had been written in August.

The "Gazette" (a larger sheet than the "Journal") occasionally had upon
its first page some timely article of political or local interest. But
more frequently there appeared in its first column an effusion of no
local color, but full of sentimental or moral reflections. In this day's
issue there was a long letter, dated New York, from one who claimed to
be "Beauty's Votary." This expressed the writer's disappointment that an
interesting "Piece" inserted in the "Gazette" a fortnight earlier had
presented in its conclusion "an unexpected shocking Image." The shock to
the writer it appears was the greater, because the beginning of the
article had, he thought, promised a strong contrast between "Furious
Rage in our rough Sex, and Gentle mildness adorn'd with Beauty's charms
in the other." The rest of the letter was an apostrophe to the fair sex
in the sentimental and florid language of the period.

To the women, we imagine, this letter was more acceptable than to the
men, who found the shipping news more to their taste, and noted with
pleasure the arrival of the ship Carolina and the Snow Strong, which
brought cargoes valuable for their various industries.

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