assurance that the county shall be mapped out afresh, and every town visited Saturday and Monday. Dawes is gaining, and so is Weston. The fight is between them, it seems to me, and Weston's friends are quite confident of victory. Dawes is the only man that can beat him,- that is the word to pass along the line.

To H. L. Dawes.

November 10, 1856.

What with forty-two hours continuous work Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, without sleep, and getting over it, last week, I had not time to write you. But you know what I would say, and how I felt, and how I whooped, and how good all over I felt; so good that not even Fremont's defeat could take the joy out of me. Was not the vote great, and the result magnificent, and that Berkshire should do the best part of it too! I had faith, strong faith, after I saw how your friends responded to the final call for work, but I was not prepared for such a victory. Your friends everywhere worked well and with a hearty good will. It is something to have such friends. All deserve appreciation, and no one above another, and I know all will have it from you.

It seems now as if you must have been elected any way; but there's no doubt that both Weston and Trafton thought they were ahead a week before the election, and with reason. You gained rapidly in the last six days, and immensely in the last three. Our fellows went over the district after Weston and Trafton had got through. I verily believe that every town in the district was visited on Saturday and Monday. It was certainly so this side the mountains.

that is, all

You shall pay the bill now that you are elected the expenses, for it is right. Had you failed it would have been different, for I felt we could well afford to invest $50 or $100 in your behalf at a venture. The principal item is for the 5500 extras, which being printed in the night in order to get them out, cost more than they ordinarily would. I have paid some bills at Northampton, and have some to pay at Greenfield. The whole

will be within $75,* but pay all the rest first and let this remain till you have cash on hand and "owe no man anything." Please do this. I'll take a mortgage on your first mileage.

To Charles Allen.

SPRINGFIELD, December 21, 1856.

I had just settled down for the winter, determined not to be seduced out of Springfield for the present, when I got, on Saturday, the note I enclose [the suggestion to establish a newspaper in Philadelphia]. I hardly know what to think about it, much less what to say. It's flattering, of course, and appeals somewhat to a proper ambition, and yet I have a dread of deep water. I feel a good deal as did the bashful boy, whose father was urging him to go and marry a certain girl of the neighborhood. 66 I was married- your mother was married — and you must expect to be." "But," blubbered the youth, "you married mother, but you want me to go and marry a strange gal!" I can edit a paper in Massachusetts, but the strange gal in Philadelphia I have some horror of. However, I shall hear what they have to say. If I could dictate the terms as to capital, etc., and have supreme control, and make an independent paper with Republican leanings, and not a Republican paper with independent leanings (like the Tribune and Republican) I should like to see what I am made of somewhat more than I am likely to here. Please return me Dana's note, and of course say nothing of the suggestion in its present shape, unless it be to G. T. D., whose opinion I should respect.

December 25, 1856. . . My Philadelphia

The compliments of the season! man came yesterday, but I told him I could and would do nothing with him; that I could only talk seriously of the matter when I saw a combination of capital, of which I was to be the

Characteristic of the region and time,-the chief manager in a hot congressional contest spends less than a hundred dollars; and the sharp decisive work of the final rally is done on Saturday and Monday, without infringing on the intervening Sunday.

VOL. I.-12

representative and salaried agent, taking such interest of course myself as to inspire confidence in my fidelity. He says Dana, Snow, and M'Elrath, of the Tribune, are ready to invest in the enterprise if I will take hold. I said, very well: when you and the other Philadelphia gentlemen and Dana & Co. want to talk with me on my basis, summon me to New York for consultation, and I will come down. And so he left after half an hour's talk, evidently full in the faith that the combination would be made, and that I should be summoned to its head. But we will see. There is undoubtedly a chance to make a property costing from $30,000 to $50,000, worth $100,000 within one to two years, with good and resolute management; but I shall be stiff with 'em,- depend upon it.

AT

CHAPTER XVII.

THE BOSTON "TRAVELLER."

T the close of the presidential campaign of 1856, the Republican had fairly achieved the position which the New York Tribune soon after accorded to it, of "the best and ablest country journal ever published on this continent." It had won its place by the hardest work, by its editor's natural genius for journalism, and by the opportunity of a great political epoch. It had for several years been steadily earning money for its proprietors; it was constantly increasing the quantity and quality of its matter; it had won a high reputation, had made many enemies, and was acknowledged by both friends and enemies as a power in public affairs. But it seemed to have reached a limit which forbade much further growth. It had gained almost as large a circulation as was possible in the country neighborhood to which it was necessarily restricted. After several more years of prosperity, in 1860, the entire circulation of the Daily was 5700. Of this number 1850 copies were taken in Springfield, of which the population was about 15,000; giving one paper to every eight inhabitants,-a very high rate, and one from which scarcely any advance could be expected, though in fact within two or three years the circulation of the Daily was more than doubled owing to the rapid growth of the town through the

enlargement of the Armory, and the increased demand for news in time of war. The Weekly had, in 1860, a circulation of 11,280, of which 7271 were in Massachusetts. The special field of the paper was in western Massachusetts, though both editions had a limited circulation elsewhere; and there was no state or territory, except Mississippi and Utah, in which the Weekly had not regular subscribers. But the substantial paying circulation was necessarily confined to the immediate neighborhood, and could never rise beyond a small fraction of the constituency possible for the journals of a great city. The advertising patronage, of course, was under a like limitation. All this implied that the Republican must be published upon a very economical basis: that it must deny itself many of those resources by which a wealthy newspaper can increase its attractions; that its chief conductor must spend his own vitality freely to make up for the limitations of his exchequer, and that he must content himself with a far scantier measure of influence than the journalist who numbers his readers by the hundred thousand.

This was the barrier which Samuel Bowles had now reached in his career. It was impossible but that such a spirit as his should seek to pass it, and to find a wider field. He was only thirty years old,—an age when the best of a man's work should be still before him. He had in himself every qualification for filling a large place. He might well feel a strong self-confidence when he looked toward a wider field. From the great established newspapers, under the recognized master-journalists, advances were repeatedly made to him. Propositions more than once came from the office of the Tribune, a paper with which the Republican was largely in sympathy, and with whose staff its editor was on friendly terms. In 1856, as one of his letters has shown, a project was discussed for his taking the head of the Tribune bureau at Washing