carcely surpassed by that of leading journals in our larger cities.

"The Essex Journal" was begun by Isaiah Thomas, who in the course of a
year sold his interest in it to Ezra Lunt; and he, after two years,
obeying another call to public service, sold it to John Mycall. The first
of these began life in the humblest condition, without schooling of any
kind, it is alleged; taught himself to read and write, and after a time
removed to Worcester, became connected with a noted paper there, the
"Massachusetts Spy," at length accumulated a handsome fortune, for the
times, much of which, after a long life, he bequeathed to the Antiquarian
Society of Worcester, and a portion to Harvard College, and other
literary institutions. He was the founder, also, of the American
Antiquarian Society. He became a writer and educator of much repute.

Upon the breaking out of the Revolutionary war, Mr. Ezra Lunt was the
first man who volunteered, in the meeting-house, when the minister, Rev.
Mr. Parsons, exhorted his parishioners to military service; was chosen
captain of the company, with which he was present in command at Bunker
Hill, and afterwards was raised to the rank of major. He took part in the
battle of Monmouth Court House, when the British army, under Sir Henry
Clinton, retired with much difficulty and loss before Washington, and
used to relate the particulars of the well-known rebuke administered by
that great chief to General Charles Lee for his hasty retreat from the
advanced post, which had been assigned him. He declared himself to have
been close by at the moment, and to have heard the energetic language
used on the occasion. After the war, he received his allotment of land,
and settled upon it, at Marietta, Ohio.

Mr. Mycall was a person of much natural capacity and shrewdness, with
certain eccentricities of character, and kept up a little politic mystery
about himself. He once engaged a well-known carriage-maker of the day to
build him a chaise, which it was agreed should be finished at a certain
time. When the specified period arrived, the vehicle was not forthcoming.
Enduring a similar disappointment several times, and expressing himself
strongly about it to the offender, that individual promised it to him
positively at a certain date, _if he was alive_. Even then, it was not
delivered; but what was the astonishment of the faulty party to read in
his newspaper the next morning, "Died, yesterday, P. B., chaise-maker,"
etc