and grandmothers and dear little brothers and sisters of the noble newsboys who sell their papers amid the rain and sleet and freezing cold, while these leprous and chronic-pile old scamps are sweetly reposing in feather beds they stole from the tax-payers, under the garb of City Reform. Peter Cooper must soon meet his plundered aunt in the realms of shadows, whose contemplation makes him tremble like a murderer going to execution.

c11

The Early Penury of the Three Napoleons of the American Press—Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond.

The Hon. John Kelly (now Member of Congress from the city of New York) told me that he was the first boy whom James Gordon Bennett employed, when he issued the first number of the Herald,—that he (honest Johnny Kelly) was then a poor, barefooted boy, with scarcely means to live,—that his duties consisted in sweeping out the office, running errands, folding and selling the Herald, and in doing every thing required in and out of the office,—that Bennett then had an office in the basement of a dilapidated building in Wall street, near William, which was in constant danger of falling, and for which he paid no rent,—that Anderson & Ward then published the Herald, whose printing office was in Ann street, in a building subsequently destroyed by fire, and which occupied the lot of the present Sunday Atlas edifice,—that Anderson & Ward would not let Bennett have a solitary copy of the Herald until he paid for it,—that he (John) used to go every day with Bennett to Anderson & Ward’s to get the Herald papers, and that Bennett often had no money, and would appeal in vain for the Herald,—that in tears he often pawned his watch to Anderson & Ward for the Herald newspapers,—that on one occasion, he had no money, and Anderson & Ward held his watch as security for the preceding day’s Heralds, and Ward was drunk, and Anderson was absent, and Bennett cried so long and hard that Ward finally let him have the newspapers,—that nothing but Ward’s generosity, arising from his intoxication, saved Bennett on that critical occasion, as, if Ward had withheld the papers, and the Herald had not appeared as usual, it might have ceased to exist, and the World have never heard of James Gordon Bennett. And thus one event (even the whim of a drunkard) often shadows or illuminates our pathway to ceaseless adversity or prosperity, or to eternal obscurity or immortality.

The Hon. Horace Greeley was so poor when he published the New Yorker, that he could not pay his Wheat Bread Board, and even failed to pay his Unbolted Wheat, or Graham Bread Board. I boarded with Mr. and Mrs. Greeley for seven years at the old Graham House in Barclay street, and (sometime after Greeley established the Tribune) Mrs. Greeley often borrowed money of me, from one shilling to five dollars. She always paid me, but often kept it for weeks, which subjected me to great embarrassment, as I was at the portal of starvation. But Mrs. Greeley was a poetess, and very interesting in conversation, and a sweet and gentle lady, and extremely beautiful, and her pretty smile emitted the solace of an angel’s wand, to a cadaverous and gloomy Grahamite like me, which was of infinite value to my digestive organs, and I never could resist her arch persuasion to loan her money, although it was often my very last shilling. I know a printer in this city who caught Greeley in one of Simpson’s Pawn Boxes. Greeley had just pawned a coat and silver watch, (which the printer saw dart up the spout like a Fourth of July rocket,) and he, Greeley, being near-sighted, was leaning over the counter, counting the pawn money, when the printer, being in the next Pawn Box, (and who had worked as a journeyman printer by the side of Greeley in a printing office in Chatham street some years before,) seized Greeley’s ear, and slapped him on the back, when Greeley looked up, and blushed profusely, and trembled from hat to boot, and picked up his money from the counter, and walked out of the pawnbroker’s shop, with gigantic strides, amid the screams of Simpson and his clerks, and the printer, and all the miserable wretches present, including the darkies. Three years afterwards, Simpson got the boss of the printer to print some auction placards, and told him that Greeley never redeemed his coat and watch, which were sold at a Pawnbroker’s public sale.

Lieutenant Governor Henry J. Raymond, (soon after he came to New York,) was the room-mate of my brother Thomas in Beekman street, nearly opposite Saint George’s Church, at the boarding house of a superannuated Presbyterian clergyman named Brown. Gov. Raymond told me, three weeks since, that my brother Thomas was the first person he roomed with in New York. My brother Tommy had run away from home, and appealed to me for money, and to get him a situation. He arrived from Providence in a snow storm, and as Mrs. Tripler, (with whom I boarded, opposite Saint George’s Church,) was full, I got him board at Parson Brown’s, in a small dark attic room, for two dollars a week. Two days after he began to board at Brown’s, young Mr. Raymond came there, and Brown put him in Tommy’s apartment, where they roomed and slept together for a long period. Raymond was very short, but Tom was much shorter, with the hump of King Richard on his back, but they slept soundly, and snugly, and sweetly, and cosily, and seldom kicked or scratched each other. After Raymond came into Tom’s bed, (it was a double, ricketty, second-hand cot,) Brown reduced Tom’s fare twenty-five cents, which made his board one dollar and seventy-five cents a week, and even that was quite a tax on my attenuated purse. Tom has often told me that he and Raymond would sometimes talk on religion and politics until the doleful hours of midnight, and related many funny anecdotes of Raymond, which I shall publish in the “History of my Life.” Tom said that Raymond was so poor at this time, that he could hardly subsist, and used to have his hair cut close to the skull, to save barber’s money, and wash his handkerchiefs and stockings, and sometimes his shirts, and used to mend his shirts and stockings every Sunday morning, and the room was so cold, that Raymond sat up in the cot, with his legs covered with the sheet and blanket, while he darned his stockings and sewed the rips of his shirts, and that he, (Tom,) suffered severely while Raymond was sitting up in the cot mending his duds, letting in the cold air on his (Tom’s) back and legs. Poor Tommy is cold now, (dying from the rheumatism and dropsy that Raymond gave him,) and I recently bore his tiny body, and big heart, and intelligent brain to our family tomb in Rhode Island, by whose side I may soon repose.

Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond are now at the summit of the American Press, and we shall soon show that they have not been true to the children of the Great Being who raised them from utter penury and obscurity to their present exalted position. And we shall review the source and rise of their Secretaries, Hudson, Dana, and Tuthill, on some very fine day, and then we shall analyse our own mysterious career, and then——O me! O glass! O paint! O putty! O Cooper! O Tiemann! O Edward! O Jeremiah! and the Italian Tasso!

c12

A Sweet Letter.

Rahway, May 15th, 1858.

Stephen H. Branch—

Dear Sir,—Having read a great deal about you, I have taken a great interest in you. Although a stranger, I take my pen to address you a few lines, hoping you will excuse the