mainly brick or stone houses, and her furlongs of masts and
yards, afforded ample incitement to a wonder and admiration
akin to awe.
It was, if I recollect aright, the 17th of August, 1831. I
was twenty years old the preceding Februaiy ; tall, slender,
pale, and plain, with ten dollars in my pocket. Summer cloth-
ing worth perhaps as much more, nearly all on my back, and
a decent knowledge of so much of the art of printing as a boy
will usually learn in tlie office of a country newspaper. But
I knew no human being within two hundred miles, and my
immistakably rustic manner and address did not favor that
immediate command of remunerating employment which was
my most urgent need. However, the world was all before
me ; my personal estate, tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, did
not at all encumber me ; and I stepped lightly off the boat,
and away from the detested hiss of escaping steam, walking
into and up Broad Street in quest of a boarding-house. I
found and entered one at or near the corner of "Wall ; but the
price of board given me was $ 6 per week ; so I did not need
the giver's candidly kind suggestion that I would probably
prefer one where tlie charge was more moderate. Wandering
thence, I cannot say how, to the North Eiver side, I halted
next at 168 West Street, where the sign of "Boarding" on a
humbler edifice fixed my attention. I entered, and was
offered shelter and subsistence at $2.50 per week, which
seemed more rational, and I closed the bargain.
My host was ISIr. Edward McGolrick ; his place quite as
much grog-shop as boarding-house ; but it was quietly, decently
MY FIRST EXPERIENCES IN NEW YORK. 85
kept while I stayed in it, and he and his family were kind
and friendly. I regret to add that liquor proved his ruin not
many years afterward. My first day in New York was a
Friday, and, the family being Eoman Catholic, no meat was
eaten or provided, which I understood ; but when Sunday
evening was celebrated by unlimited card-playing in that
same house, my traditions were decidedly jarred. I do not
imply that my observances were better or worse tlian my
host's, but that they were different.
Having breakfasted, I began to ransack the city for work,
and, in my total ignorance, traversed many streets where none
could possibly be found. In the course of that day and the
next, however, I must have visited fully two thirds of the
printing-offices on Manhattan Island, without a gleam of suc-
cess. It was midsummer, when business in New York is
habitually duU; and my youth, and unquestionable air of
country greenness, must have told against me. ^Tien I called
at The Journal of Commerce, its editor, Mr. David Hale, bluntly
told me I was a runaway apprentice from some country office ;
which was a very natural, though mistaken, presumption. I
returned to my lodging on Saturday evening, thoroughly
weary, disheartened, disgusted with New York, and resolved
to shake its dust from my feet next Monday morning, while
I could still leave with money in my pocket, and before its
almshouse could foreclose upon me.
But that was not to be. On Sunday afternoon and even-
ing several young Irishmen called at McGolrick's, in their
holiday saunterings about town ; and, being told that I was a
young printer in quest of work, interested themselves in my
effort, with the spontaneous kindness of their race. One
among them happened to know a place where printers were
wanted, and gave me the requisite direction ; so that, on
visiting the designated spot next morning, I readily found
employment ; and thus, when barely three days a resident, I
had found anchorage in New York.
The printing establishment was John T. West's, over
McEbath and Bangs's publishing-house, 85 Chatham Street,
86 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUiSY LIFE.
and the work was at my call simply because no printer who
knew the city would accept it. It was the composition of a
very small (32mo) New Testament, in double columns, of
Agate type, each column barely 12 ems wide, with a centre
column of notes in Pearl, only 4 ems wide ; the text thickly
studded with references by Greek and superior letters to the
notes, which of course were preceded and discriminated by
corresponding indices, with prefatory and supplementary re-
marks on each Book, set in Pearl, and only paid for as Agate.
The type was considerably smaller than any to which I had
been accustomed ; the narrow measure and thickly sown Italics
of the text, with the strange characters employed as indices,
rendered it the slowest, and by far the most difficult, work I
had ever undertaken ; while the making up, proving, and
correcting twice, and even thrice over, preparatory to stereo-
typing, nearly doubled the time required for ordinary com-
position. I was never a swift t}^e-setter ; I aimed to be an
assiduous and cori-ect one ; but my proofs on this work at first
looked as though they had caught the chicken-pox, and were
in the worst stage of a profuse eruption. For the first two or
three weeks, being sometimes kept waiting for letter, I scarcely
made my board ; while, by diligent t}^3e-sticking through
twelve to fourteen hours per day, I was able, at my best, to
earn bvit five to six dollars per week. As scarcely another
compositor could be induced to work on it more than two
days, I had this job in good part to myself; and I persevered
to the end of it. I had removed, very soon after obtaining it,
to Mrs. Mason's shoemaker boarding-house at the corner of
Chatham and Duane Streets, nearly opposite my work ; so
that I was enabled to keep doing nearly all the time I did not
need for meals and sleep. When it was done, I was out of
work for a fortnight, in spite of my best efforts to find more ;
so I attended, as an unknown spectator, the sittings of the
Tariff Convention, which was held at the American Institute,
north end of the City Hall Park, and presided over by Hon.
William Wilkins, of Pittsburg, Pa. I next found work in
Ann Street, on a short-lived monthly, where my pay was not
31 Y FIRST EXPERIENCES IN NEW YORK. 87
forthcoming ; and the next month saw me back at West's,
where a new work ā a commentary on the Book of Genesis,
by Rev. George Bush ā had come in ; and I worked on it
throughout. The cliirography was blind ; the author made
many vexatious alterations in proof ; the page was small and
the type close ; but, though the reverse of fat, in printers'
jargon, it was not nearly so abominably lean as the Testament ;
and I regretted to reach the end of it. Wlien I did, I was
again out of work, and seriously meditated seeking employ-
ment at something else than printing ; but the Winter was a
hard one, and business in New York stagnant to an extent
not now conceivable. I think it was early in December, when
a " cold snap " of remarkable severity closed the Hudson, and
sent up the price of coal at a bound to $ 16 per ton, while the
cost of other necessaries of life took a kindred but less con-
siderable elevation. Our city stood as if besieged till Spring
relieved her; and it was much the same every Winter.
Mechanics and laborers lived awhile on the scanty savings of
the precedmg Summer and Autumn ; then on such credit as
they could wring from grocers and landlords, till milder
weather brought them work again. The earnings of good
mechanics did not average $ 8 per week in 1831 - 32, while they
are now double that sum ; and living is not twice as dear as
it then was. Meat may possibly be ; but Bread is not ; Fuel is
not ; Clothing is not; while travel is cheaper; and our little cars
have enabled working-men to live two or three miles from
their work without serious cost or inconvenience ; thus bring-
ing Yorkville or Green Point practically as near to Maiden
Lane or Broad Street as Greenwich or the Eleventh Ward was.
Winter is relatively dull now, but not nearly so stagnant as
it formerly was. In spite of an inflated currency and high
taxes, it is easier now for a working-man to earn his living in
New York than it was thirty to forty years ago.
About the 1st of January, 1832, I found employment on
The Spirit of the Times, a weekly paper devoted to sporting in-
telligence, then started by Messrs. William T. Porter and James
Howe, two yoimg printers, of whom the former, if not both,
88 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
had worked with me at West's the previous Fall. I think it
was a little after midnight, on the 1st of January, 1832, that
we compositors delivered the forms of the first number into
the hands of the pressmen in an upper story in Fulton Street.
The concern migrated to Wall Street the next March, finding
a location very near the present site of the Merchants' Ex-
change ; and I clung to it through the ensuing Spring and
Summer ; its foreman, Francis V. Story, being nearly of my
own age, and thenceforth my devoted friend. But the founders
and editors were also quite young ; they were inexperienced
in theu- calling, without capital or influential friends, having
recently drifted from the country to the city much as I did ;
and their paper did not pay, ā I know it was difficult to make
it pay me, ā especially through the dreary cholera Summer of
1832. The disease was then new to the civilized world, while
the accounts of its recent ravages in the far East were calcu-
lated to appall the stoutest heart ; the season was sultry, the
city filthy, and the water we drank such as should breed a
pestilence at any time. New York had long enjoyed and
deserved the reputation of having worse water tlian any other
city of its size on earth ; and the loose, porous sands whereon
it was built rendered this fluid more and more detestable as
the city grew larger and older. I am glad that it was my
privilege to vote soon afterward for the introduction of the
Croton, which I did right heartily, though a good many op-
posed it (some of them voting " Brandy ") ; two of the Wards,
tenanted mainly by poor men, giving majorities against it.
Twelve years intervened betwixt that vote and our celebra-
tion to welcome the actual introduction of the water, ā the
fluid we drew from the wells growing steadily more and more
repulsive and unwholesome ; but the glad day came at last ;
and New York has ever since been a more eligible, healthful
residence for rich or poor than it previously was.
We have had cholera and other epidemics since ; but our
city has never since been paralyzed as it was in the Summer
of 1832. Those who could mainly left us ; scarcely any one
entered the city; trade was dead, and industry languished
MY FIRST EXPERIENCES IN NEW YORK. 89
during that fatal Summer. I think I sometimes met tw^o, if
not three, palanquins, bearing cholera patients to some hos-
pital, in my short walk from dinner in Chatham Street to my
work in Wall Street. One died at my boarding-house. I
believe nearly all experienced symptoms of the plague, though
it was most common and most fatal with those debilitated by
intemperance or some form of sensual excess. But it passed
off as cool evenings came on ; our fugitives and our business
came back to us ; and all, save the dead and the bereaved,
was as before.
In October I paid a visit, via Providence and Boston, to my
relatives in New Hampshire ; walking over the lower part of
that State from Londonderry into eastern Vermont, and as far
north as Newport, which I entered after dark of a stormy even-
ing, having walked from Claremont (nine miles) in a rain, at
first gentle, but steadily increasing to the last. I never enter,
as a stranger, a private house if I can avoid it ; and I kept
hoping to see a tavern-sign until I was so wet that it was of
no consequence. When at last I reached the village, where
I expected (but failed) to find an uncle living, it proved to be
court-week, with the two taverns crowded to overflowing.
Making my way through a thick cloud of tobacco-smoke to
the ofiice of one, I procured a remnant of supper, and part of
a bed in a private house at some distance, where I threw off
my wet clothes and slept. In the morning, my clothes all
responded to the call to duty till it came to my short boots ;
these utterly refused, until I had taken off my wet socks and
thrust them into my pockets, when the boots were barely '
persuaded to resume their only serviceable position. I took
breakfast, paid my bill, and walked off, in the frosty morning
air, considerably less supple-jointed than one should be at one-
and-twenty. I never saw this New Hampshire Newport be-
fore, and have not seen it since.
My relatives being pretty widely scattered, I had occasion
to traverse southwestern New Hampshire in various direc-
tions ; and I saw more of that State than ever before or
since. I started, one clear, frosty morning, from Francestown,
90 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
taking a mountainous by-way to Stoddard ; and, as I recollect,
I did not see a hundred acres of really arable soil in travelling
twelve to fifteen miles. There was some rugged pasturage ;
but Hemlock and AVliite Birch, alternating with naked rocks
and mountain tarns or petty lakes, generally monopohzed
the prospect. I met one poor soul who had a horse and
wagon, and heartily pitied him. He could rarely ride, while
my walk was far easier and less anxious than his.
Eeaching Stoddard (a small village half-way up a high
hill), I stepped into a convenient tavern, and called for dinner.
My breakfast had been quite early ; the keen air and rough
walk had freshened my appetite ; I was shown into a dining-
room with a well-spread table in the centre, and left to help
myself. There were steaks, chickens, tea, coffee, pies, &c., and
I did ample justice to all. " What is to pay ? " I asked the
landlord, on reentering the bar-room. " Dinner 18f cents," he
replied. I laid down the required sum, and stepped off, men-
tally resolving that I would, in mercy to that tavern, never
patronize it again.
I returned by the way I went ; walking from Providence
across to Norwich, Conn., where I took steamboat, and arrived
in New York on the second of our three days of State elec-
tion. I gave my vote right heartily for the anti-Jackson
ticket, but without avail, ā Jackson being overwhehningly
reelected, with Marcy over Granger for Governor. I soon
found work which paid fairly at the stereotyping establish-
ment of J. S. Eedfield, and was there employed till the close
of that year, when an opportimity presented for commencing
business on my own account, which I improved, as will be
set forth in my next chapter.
XII.
GETTING INTO BUSINESS.
HAYING "been fairly driven to New York two or three
years earlier than I deemed desirable, I was in like
manner impelled to undertake the responsibilities of business
while still in myjtwenty-second^ jear. My friend Story, barely
older than myself, but far better acquainted with city ways,
having been for many years the only son of a poor widow,
and accustomed to struggling with difficulties, had already
conceived the idea of starting a printery, and offering me a
partnership in the enterprise. His position in Wall Street, on
The Spirit of the Times, made him acquainted with Mr. S. J.
Sylvester, then a leading broker and seller of lottery-tickets,
who issued a weekly " Bank-Note Reporter," largely devoted
to the advertising of his own business, and who offered my
friend the job of printing that paper. Story was also intimate
with Dr. W. Beach, who, in addition to his medical practice,
dabbled considerably in ink, and at whose office my friend
made the acquaintance of a young graduate. Dr. H. D.
Shepard, who was understood to have money, and who was in-
tent on bringing out a cheap daily paper, to be sold about the
streets, ā then a novel idea, ā daily papers being presumed
desirable only for mercantile men, and addressed exclusively
to their wants and tastes. Dr. Shepard had won over my
friend to a belief in the practicability of his project ; and the
latter visited me at my work and my lodging, urging me to
unite with him in starting a printery on the strength of Mr.
Sylvester's and Dr. Shepard's proffered work. I hesitated,
having very little means, ā for I had sent a good part of my
92 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
past year's scanty savings to aid my father in his struggle
AvTEIi the stubborn wilderness ; but Story's enthusiastic con-
fidence at length triumphed over my distrust ; we formed a
partnership, hired part of two rooms already devoted to print-
ing, on the southwest corner of Nassau and Liberty Streets
(opposite our city's present post-office), spending our little all
(less than $ 200), and stretching our credit to the utmost, for
the requisite materials. I tried Mr. James Conner, the exten-
sive type-founder in Ann Street, ā having a very slight ac-
quaintance with him, formed in the course of frequent visits
to his foundry in quest of " sorts " (type found deficient in
the several offices for which I had worked at one time or
another), ā but he, after hearing me patiently, decided not to
credit me six months for the $ 40 worth of type I wanted of
him ; and he did right, ā my exhibit did not justify my
request. I went directly thence to Mr. George Bruce, the
older and wealthier founder, in Chambers Street, ā made the
same exhibit, and was allowed by him the credit I asked ; and
that purchase has since secured to his concern the sale of not
less than $ 50,000 worth of type. I think he must have noted
something in my awkward, bashful ways, that impelled him
to take the risk.
The Morning Post ā Dr. Shepard's two-cent daily, which
he wished to sell for one cent ā was issued on the 1st of
January, 1833. Nobody in New York reads much (except
visitor's cards) on New Year's Day ; and that one happened
to be very cold, with the streets much obstructed by a fall of
snow throughout the preceding night. Projectors of news-
papers in those days, though expecting other people to adver-
tise in their columns, did not comprehend that they also must
advertise, or the public will never know that their bantling has
been ushered into existence ; and Dr. Shepard was too poor to
give his sheet the requisite publicity, had he understood the
matter. He was neither a writer nor a man of affairs ; had
no editors, no reporters worth naming, no correspondents, and
no exchanges even ; he fancied that a paper would sell, if
remarkable for cheapness, though remarkable also for the
GETTING INTO BUSINESS. 93
absence of every other desirable quality. He was said to
have migrated, while a youth, from New Jersey to New York,
with S 1,500 in cash ; if he did, his capital must have nearly
all melted away before he had issued his first number. Though
his enterprise involved no outlay of capital by him, and his
weekly outgoes were less than $ 200, he was able to meet
ā them for a single week only, while his journal obtained a cir-
culation of but two or three hundred copies. Finally, he
reduced its price to one cent ; but tlie public would not buy
it even at that, and we printers, already considerably in debt
for materials, were utterly unable to go on beyond the second
or third week after the publisher had stopped paying. Thus
the first cheap-for-cash daily in New York ā perhaps in the
world ā died when scarcely yet a month old ; and we printers
were hard aground on a lee shore, with little prospect of
getting off.
We were saved from sudden bankruptcy by the address of
my partner, who had formed the acquaintance of a wealthy,
eccentric Briton, named Schols, who had a taste for editorial
life, and who was somehow induced to buy the "wreck of The
Morning Post, remove it to an office of his own, and employ
Story as foreman. He soon tired of his thriftless, profitless
speculation, and threw it up ; but we had meantime sur-
mounted our embarrassments by the help of the little money
he paid for a portion of our materials and for my partner's
services. Meantime, the managers of the New York lotteries,
then regularly drawn under State auspices, had allowed a
portion of their letter-press printing to follow Mr. Sylvester's
into our concern, and were paying us very fairly for it ; I
doing most of the composition. For two or three months
after Dr. Shepard's collapse, I was frequently sent for to work
as a substitute in the composing-room of The Commercial
Advertiser, not far from our shop ; and I was at length offered
a regular situation there ; but our business had by this time
so improved that I was constrained to decline. Working early
and late, and looking sharply on every side for jobs, we were
beginning to make decided headway, when my partner was
94 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
drowned (July 9, 1833) while bathing in the East Eiver
near his mother's residence in Brooklyn, and I bitterly mourned
the loss of my nearest and dearest friend. His place in the
concern was promptly taken by another young printer, a
friend of the bereaved family, Mr. Jonas Winchester, who
soon married Story's oldest sister ; and we thus went on, with
I moderate but steady prosperity, until the ensuing Spring,
when we issued (March 22, 1834), without premonitory
sound of trumpet, The New-Yorker, a large, fair, and cheap
weekly folio (afterward changed to a double quarto), devoted
mainly to current literature, but giving regularly a digest of
all important news, including a carefid exhibit and summary
of election returns and other political intelligence. I edited
and made up this paper, while my partner took charge of our
more profitable jobbing business.
The New-Yorker was issued under my supervision, its edito-
rials written, its selections made, for the most part, by me,
for seven years and a half from the date just given. Though
not calculated to enlist partisanship or excite enthusiasm, it
was at length extensively liked and read. It began with
scarcely a dozen subscribers ; these steadily increased to nine
thousand ; and it might, under better business management,
(perhaps I should add, at a more favorable time,) have proved
profitable and permanent. That it did not was mainly owing
to these circumstances : 1. It was not extensively advertised
at the start, and at least annually thereafter, as it should have
been. 2. It was never really published, though it had half a
dozen nominal publishers in succession. 3. It was sent to
subscribers on credit, and a large share of them never paid for
it, and never will, while the cost of collecting from others ate
up the proceeds. 4. The machinery of railroads, expresses,
news companies, news offices, &c., whereby literary periodicals
are now mainly disseminated, did not then exist. I believe
that just such a paper, issued to-day, properly published and
advertised, would obtain a circulation of one hundred thousand
in less time than was required to give The New-Yorker scarcely
a tithe of that aggregate, and would make money for its
GETTING INTO BUSINESS. 95
owners, instead of nearly starving them, as mine did. I was
wort h at lea st $1,500 when it was started; I worked hard
and lived frugally throughout its existence ; it subsisted for
the first two years on the profits of our job-work ; when I,
deeming it established, dissolved with my partner, he taking
the jobbing business and I The New-Yorker, which held its
own pretty fairly thenceforth till the Commercial Eevulsion
of 1837 swept over the land, whelming it and me in the gen-
eral ruin. I had married in 1836 (July 5th), deeming myself
worth $ 5,000, and the master of a business which would
thenceforth yield me for my labor at least $ 1,000 per annum ;
but, instead of that, or of any income at all, I found myself
obliged, throughout 1837, to confront a net loss of about $ 100
per week, ā my income averaging SlOO, and my inevitable
expenses $ 200. It was in vain that I appealed to delinquents
to pay up ; many of them migrated ; some died ; others were
so considerate as to order the paper stopped, but very few of
these paid ; and I struggled on against a steadily rising tide
of adversity that might have appalled a stouter heart. Often
did I call on this or that friend with intent to solicit a small
loan to meet some demand that could no longer be postponed
nor evaded, and, after wasting a precious hour, leave him,
utterly unable to broach the loathsome topic. I have bor-
rowed $500 of a broker late on Saturday, and paid liim $ 5
for the use of it till Monday morning; when I somehow con-
trived to return it. ]\Iost gladly would I have terminated the
struggle by a surrender ; but, if I had failed to pay my notes
continually falling due, I must have paid money for my weekly
supply of paper, ā so that would have availed nothing. To