Greeley's Tribune. It was the first of a long line of cheap and good newspapers, some of which still live and prosper, but many more long since sank into utter oblivion; even the diligent collector of curiosities has difficulty to-day in discovering stray copies of them.

The next development in order was the fierce rivalry which is always born of opposition. Beach and Bennett, who had been tilting in their private lists, united to bear down Greeley. Horace, however, was a good fighter, and he had Raymond to help him, and McElrath to manage the business affairs, and so the battle was waged without material injury to either party, for in reality there was room for all. The reading public enjoyed the fun, and bought all the papers engaged in quarrel, in order to see which had won; and this continued and growing demand was fuel to the fire of competitive activity.

On election nights, the rival journals ran pony expresses to convey early intelligence of results; and in times of high political excitement, locomotive engines were raced on rival lines of railroad, in the interest of papers which had paid high prices for the "right of way." The writer has a vivid remembrance of one night in the office of the Tribune, when a special messenger, hot and dusty, came in from the east end of Long Island, with important election returns from Patchogue or Quogue, or some other queer place, brought by special engine at the rate of sixty-five miles an hour (on the Long Island Railroad too!). The yell of joy which Greeley uttered when he saw the "returns" might have been heard a quarter of a mile. As goes Quogue, so goes the Union; and the returns in question settled the fate of a district.

Instances of sharp practice, too, were not wanting. On one occasion, a messenger for the Tribune quietly gathered up the

In an unpublished letter, written in 1845, Mr. Greeley paid this striking tribute to Mr. McElrath: "In the fall of 1841, a kind Providence impelled Mr. Thomas McElrath, formerly a bookseller, then a lawyer and master in chancery, to call on me and suggest the idea of a partnership. I gladly closed with him on any terms, and from that day to this not another hair has been worn off my head by the aching puzzle of studying out the means of paying to-morrow's note."

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details of some important news, in a distant part of the country, and then ran away with it to New York on an engine which was in waiting, under a full head of steam, for the use of the representative of the Herald. Of course, the Tribune had the news exclusively; and Bennett, very naturally, uttered blasphemies. Such occurrences gave zest to the pursuit of intelligence, and sometimes provoked acrimonious discussions between the rival sheets.

Nor was the competition confined to enterprises like these. For want of the boundless facilities now afforded by the organized enterprise of the newspaper offices, there were curious experiments in unexpected directions. Type was set on board of North River steamboats by corps of printers, who had a speech ready for the press in New York eight hours after its delivery in Albany.* Carrier-pigeons, carefully trained, flew from Halifax or Boston with the latest news from Europe tucked under their wings, and delivered their charge to their trainer in his room near Wall Street; and an excellent gentleman, Mr. Monroe F. Gale, who has been the foreman of the

*This feat was once performed under Henry J. Raymond's direction, and the story was told after his death, with substantial correctness, in one of the current biographical sketches, from which we copy:

"Before the days of the telegraph [1843], Raymond was sent to Boston to report a speech of Daniel Webster, then in the height of his popularity. Rival city journals also despatched their reporters, each selecting for the purpose two of their best short-hand writers to work against Mr. Raymond. The speech was delivered, and proved to be one of Mr. Webster's greatest achievements. The several New York reporters took the night-boat to return to New York, and all, save Mr. Raymond, gave themselves up to such enjoyment during the evening as the boat afforded. Mr. Raymond sat quietly in the back cabin, and was observed to be writing furiously. Presently one of the reporters had his suspicions aroused, and setting out on an exploring expedition, found that Mr. Raymond had on board a small printing-office, fully equipped. His manuscript was taken page by page to the compositors, set up immediately, and on the arrival of the boat in New York, at five o'clock in the morning, Mr. Raymond's report, making several columns of the Tribune, was all in type. These columns were put into the forms at once, and the readers of that journal were, at six A. M., served with a full report of Daniel Webster's speech delivered in Boston on the previous afternoon. This, at that time, was one of the greatest journalistic feats on record, and so completely astonished and astounded the Tribune's rivals that they never published the reports furnished by their short-hand writers, but acknowledged themselves fairly beaten."

Times' composing-room since the foundation of that paper, was sent sailing over the Atlantic, in a little pilot-boat, in quest of improved methods of news-getting.

The episode of this madcap voyage across the ocean dates back to the year 1846, and is interesting enough to be recorded among the reminiscences of the older journalism of New York.

In the early part of the year 1846 there were no fast steamers; seven-day voyages across the Atlantic were supposed to be wild vagaries, - even, indeed, if the idea of attaining such a degree of reckless speed had ever entered the brain of any sane man. Nevertheless, the spirit had been awakened which was to produce this and all other wonders. The eager quest for fresh news had begun to mark the conduct of the public journals of New York as a distinguishing characteristic; and the adventurous voyage of the pilot-boat William J. Romer was but a natural expression of the prevalent feeling of the day. The immediate purpose of her despatch to Europe was the prompt conveyance of the Oregon Treaty to England; but an incidental point was a test of the speed of light-built boats.

A contemporaneous narrative* gives a full account of the voyage of the Romer, together with a copy of the log kept by her captain, the comments of the press of the day upon the probable purpose of the expedition, and five wood-engravings, illustrating some of the perils through which the little craft safely passed. One of these illustrations we reproduce; it represents the boat in mid-ocean, environed by fields of broken ice.

The William J. Romer belonged to the fleet of New York pilot-boats. Her burden was about fifty tons. The equipment for the long and perilous winter voyage across three thousand miles of sea was made as perfect as the circumstances permitted; but the discomforts endured by her courageous crew, and the passengers she carried, were sufficiently disagreeable. She left New York on Tuesday, February 10, 1846, and on the

• Greeley's revived New-Yorker, of Saturday, April 18, 1846, —a weekly paper then issued as an adjunct to the Tribune.