s
subterranean office, and buying copies of the new paper from its
editor, who used to sit at a desk composed of two flour-barrels and a
piece of board, and who occupied the only chair in the establishment.
For a considerable time his office contained absolutely nothing but
his flour-barrel desk, one wooden chair, and a pile of Heralds. "I
remember," writes Mr. William Gowans, the well-known bookseller of
Nassau Street,

"to have entered the subterranean office of its editor early
in its career, and purchased a single copy of the paper, for
which I paid the sum of one cent United States currency. On
this occasion the proprietor, editor, and vendor was seated
at his desk, busily engaged writing, and appeared to pay
little or no attention to me as I entered. On making known
my object in coming in, he requested me to put my money down
on the counter, and help myself to a paper; all this time he
continuing his writing operations. The office was a single
oblong underground room; its furniture consisted of a
counter, which also served as a desk, constructed from two
flour-barrels, perhaps empty, standing apart from each other
about four feet, with a single plank covering both; a chair,
placed in the centre, upon which sat the editor busy at his
vocation, with an inkstand by his right hand; on the end
nearest the door were placed the papers for sale."

Everything appeared to be against his success. It was one poor man in
a cellar against the world. Already he had failed three times; first,
in 1825, when he attempted to establish a Sunday paper; next, in 1832,
when he tried a party journal; recently, in Philadelphia. With great
difficulty, and after many rebuffs, he had prevailed upon two young
printers to print his paper and share its profits or losses, and he
possessed about enough money to start the enterprise and sustain it
ten days. The cheapness of his paper was no longer a novelty, for
there was already a penny paper with a paying circulation. He had cut
loose from all party ties, and he had no influential friends except
those who had an interest in his failure. The great public, to which
he made this last desperate appeal, knew him not even by name. The
newsboy system scarcely existed; and all that curious machinery by
which, in these days, a "new candidate for public favor" is placed,
at no expense, on a thousand news-stands, had not bee