tinued by correspondence after Miss Cheney, in the pursuit of her vocation, had removed to North Carolina. Thither the lover hied; the two became one, and returned together to New York. They were married, as he said he would be, by the Episcopal form. Sumptuous was the attire of the bridegroom; a suit of fine black broadcloth, and "on this occasion only," a pair of silk stockings! It appears that silk stockings and matrimony were, in his mind, associated ideas, as rings and matrimony, orange blossoms and matrimony, are in the minds of people in general. Accordingly, he bought a pair of silk stockings; but trying on his wedding suit previous to his departure for the south, he found, to his dismay, that the stockings were completely hidden by the affluent terminations of another garment. The question now at once occurred to his logical mind, 'What is the use of having silk stockings, if nobody can see that you have them?' He laid the case, it is said, before his tailor, who, knowing his customer, immediately removed the difficulty by cutting away a crescent of cloth from the front of the aforesaid terminations, which rendered the silk stockings obvious to the most casual observer. Such is the story. And I regret that other stories, and true ones, highly honorable to his head and heart, delicacy forbids the telling of in this place.

The editor, of course, turned his wedding tour to account in the way of his profession. On his journey southward, Horace Greeley first saw Washington, and was impressed favorably by the houses of gress, then in session. He wrote admiringly of the Senate:"That the Senate of the United States is unsurpassed in intellectual greatness by any body of fifty men ever convened, is a trite observation. A phrenologist would fancy a strong confirmation of his doctrines in the very appearance of the Senate; a physiognomist would find it. The most striking person on the floor is Mr. Clay, who is incessantly in motion, and whose spare, erect form betrays an easy dignity approaching to majesty, and a perfect gracefulness, such as I have never seen equaled. His countenance is intelligent and indicative of character; but a glance at his figure while his face was completely averted, would give assur⚫ ance that he was no common man. Mr. Calhoun is one of the plainest men and certainly the dryest, hardest speaker I ever listened to. The flow of his ideas reminded me of a barrel filled

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with pebbles, each of which must find great difficulty in escaping from the very solidity and number of those pressing upon it and impeding its natural motion. Mr. Calhoun, though far from being a handsome, is still a very remarkable personage; but Mr. Benton has the least intellectual countenance I ever saw on a senator. Mr. Webster was not in his place." * "The best speech was that of Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky. That man is not appreciated so highly as he should and must be. He has a rough readiness, a sterling good sense, a republican manner and feeling, and a vein of biting, though homely satire, which will yet raise him to distinction in the National Councils."

Were Greeley and Co. making their fortune meanwhile? Far from it. To edit a paper well is one thing; to make it pay as a business is another. The New Yorker had soon become a famous, an admired, and an influential paper. Subscriptions poured in; the establishment looked prosperous; but it was not. The sorry tale of its career as a business is very fully and forcibly told in the vari ous addresses to, and chats with, Our Patrons, which appear in the volumes of 1837, that 'year of ruin,' and of the years of slow recovery from ruin which followed. In October, 1837, the editor thus stated his melancholy case:

"Ours is a plain story; and it shall be plainly told. The New Yorker was established with very moderate expectations of pecuniary advantage, but with strong hopes that its location at the head-quarters of intelligence for the continent, and its cheapness, would insure it, if well conducted, such a patronage as would be ultimately adequate, at least, to the bare expenses of its publication. Starting with scarce a shadow of patronage, it had four thousand five hundred subscribers at the close of the first year, obtained at an outlay of three thousand dollars beyond the income in that period. This did not materially disappoint the publishers' expectations. Another year passed, and their subscription increased to seven thousand, with a further outlay, beyond all receipts, of two thousand dollars. A third year was commenced with two editions-folio and quarto-of our journal; and at its close, their conjoint subscriptions amounted to near nine thousand five hundred; yet our receipts had again fallen two thousand dollars behind our absolutely necessary expendi tures. Such was our situation at the commencement of this year of ruin ; and we found ourselves wholly unable to continue our former reliance on the honor and ultimate good faith of our backward subscribers. Two thousand five hundred of them were stricken from our list, and every possible retrenchment of

our expenditures effected. With the exercise of the most parsimonious frugal ity, and aided by the extreme kindness and generous confidence of our friends, we have barely and with great difficulty kept our bark afloat. For the future, we have no resource but in the justice and generosity of our patrons. Our humble portion of this world's goods has long since been swallowed up in the all-devouring vortex; both of the Editor's original associates in the undertaking have abandoned it with loss, and those who no fill their places have invested to the full amount of their ability. Not a farthing has been drawn from the concern by any one save for services rendered; and the allowance to the proprietors having charge respectively of the editorial and publishing departments has been far less than their services would have commanded elsewhere. The last six months have been more disastrous than any which preceded them, as we have continued to fall behind our expenses without a corresponding increase of patronage. A large amount is indeed due us; but we find its collection almost impossible, except in inconsiderable portions and at a ruinous expense. All appeals to the honesty and good faith of the delinquents seem utterly fruitless. As a last resource, therefore, and one beside which we have no alternative, we hereby announce, that from and after this date, the price of the New Yorker will be three dollars per annum for the folio, and four dollars for the quarto edition.

"Friends of the New Yorker! Patrons! we appeal to you, not for charity, but for justice. Whoever among you is in our debt, no matter how small the sum, is guilty of a moral wrong in withholding the payment. We bitterly need it--we have a right to expect it. Six years of happiness could not atone for the horrors which blighted hopes, agonizing embarrassments, and gloomy apprehensions-all' arising in great measure from your neglect-have conspired to heap upon us during the last six months. We have borne all in silence we now tell you we must have our pay. Our obligations for the next two months are alarmingly heavy, and they must be satisfied, at whatever sacrifice. We shall cheerfully give up whatever may remain to us of property, and mortgage years of future exertion, sooner than incur a shadow of dishonor, by subjecting those who have credited us to loss or inconvenience. We must pay; and for the means of doing it we appeal most earnestly to you. It is possible that we might still further abuse the kind solicitude of our friends; but the thought is agony. We should be driven to what is but a more delicate mode of beggary, when justice from those who withhold the hard earnings of our unceasing toil would place us above the revolting necessity! At any rate, we will not submit to the humiliation without an effort.

"We have struggled until we can no longer doubt that, with the present currency-and there seems little hope of an immediate improvement-we cannot live at our former prices. The suppression of small notes was a blow to cheap city papers, from which there is no hope of recovery. With a currency mcluding notes of two and three dollars, one half our receipts would come to

us directly from the subscribers; without such notes, we must submit to an agent's charge on nearly every collection. Besides, the notes from the South Western States are now at from twenty to thirty per cent. discount; and have been more those from the West range from six to twenty. All notes beyond the Delaware River range from twice to ten times the discount charged upon them when we started the New Yorker. We cannot afford to depend exclusively upon the patronage to be obtained in our immediate neighborhood; we cannot retain distant patronage without receiving the money in which alone our subscribers can pay. But one course, then, is left us-to tax our valuable patronage with the delinquencies of the worse than worthless-the paying for the non-paying, and those who send us par-money, with the evils of our present depraved and depreciated currency."

Two years after, there appeared another chapter of pecuniary history, written in a more hopeful strain. A short extract will complete the reader's knowledge of the subject:

"Since the close of the year of ruin (1837), we have pursued the even tenor of our way with such fortune as was vouchsafed us; and, if never elated with any signal evidence of popular favor, we have not since been doomed to gaze fixedly for months into the yawning abyss of Ruin, and feel a moral certainty that, however averted for a time, that must be our goal at last. On the contrary, our affairs have slowly but steadily improved for some time past, and we now hope that a few months more will place us beyond the reach of pecuniary embarrassments, and enable us to add new attractions to our journal.

"And this word 'attraction' brings us to the confession that the success of our enterprise, if success there has been, has not been at all of a pecuniary cast thus far. Probably we lack the essential elements of that very desirable kind of success. There have been errors, mismanagement and losses in the conduct of our business. We mean that we lack, or do not take kindly to, the arts which contribute to a newspaper sensation. When our journal first appeared, a hundred copies marked the extent to which the public curiosity claimed its perusal. Others establish new papers, (the New World and Brother Jonathan Mr. Greeley might have instanced,) even without literary reputation, as we were, and five or ten thousand copies are taken at once-just to see what the new thing is. And thence they career onward on the crest of a towering wave.

"Since the New Yorker was first issued, seven copartners in its publication have successively withdrawn from the concern, generally, we regret to say, without having improved their fortunes by the connection, and most of them with the conviction that the work, however valuable, was not calculated to prove lucrative to its proprietors. You don't humbug enough,' has been the complaint of more than one of our retiring associates; 'you ought to

make more noise, and vaunt your own merits. The world will never believe you print a good paper unless you tell them so.' Our course has not been changed by these representations. We have endeavored in all things to maintain our self-respect and deserve the good opinion of others; if we have not succeeded in the latter particular, the failure is much to be regretted, but hardly to be amended by pursuing the vaporous course indicated. If our journal be a good one, those who read it will be very apt to discover the fact; if it be not, our assertion of its excellence, however positive and frequent, would scarcely outweigh the weekly evidence still more abundantly and convincingly furnished. We are aware that this view of the case is controverted by practical results in some cases; but we are content with the old course, and have never envied the success which Merit or Pretense may attain by acting as its own trumpeter."

The New Yorker never, during the seven years of its existence became profitable; and its editor, during the greater part of the time, derived even his means of subsistence either from the business of job printing or from other sources, which will be alluded to in a moment. The causes of the New Yorker's signal failure as a business seem to have been these:

1. It was a very good paper, suited only to the more intelligent class of the community, which, in all times and countries, is a small class. "We have a pride," said the editor once, and truly, "in believing that we might, at any time, render our journal more attractive to the million by rendering it less deserving; and that by merely considering what would be sought after and read with avidity, without regard to its moral or its merit, we might easily become popular at the mere expense of our own self-approval."

2. It seldom praised, never puffed, itself. The editor, however, seems to have thought, that he might have done both with propriety. Or was he speaking in pure irony, when he gave the Mirror this first-rate notice.' "There is one excellent quality," said he, "which has always been a characteristic of the Mirror-the virtue of self-appreciation. We call it a virtué, and it is not merely one in itself, but the parent of many others. As regards our vocation, it is alike necessary and just. The world should be made to understand, that the aggregate of talent, acquirement, tact, industry, and general intelligence which is required to sustain creditably the character of a public journal, might, if judiciously parceled out, form he stamina of, at least, one professor of languages, two brazen lec