Meantime, Joseph, too, had learnt the paternal art,—­how well will appear from a single fact.  About this time, his father’s office was destroyed by fire, and with it the unfinished printing of the Legislative Journals and Acts of the year.  Time did not allow waiting for new material from Philadelphia.  Just in this strait, he that had of old been so inauspicious, Dick Davison, came once more into play,—­but, this time, not as a marplot.  He, strange to say, was at hand and helpful.  For, after his political exploit, abandoning England in disgust at the consequences of his Gunpowder Plot, he, too, had not only come to America, but had chanced to set up his “type-stick” in the neighboring town of Warrenton, where, having flourished, he was now the master of a printing-office and the conductor of a newspaper.  Thither, then, young Joseph was despatched, “copy” in hand.  Richard—­really a worthy man, after all—­gladly atoned for his ancient hurtfulness, by lending his type and presses; and, falling to work with great vigor, our young Faust, with his own hands, put into type and printed off the needful edition of the Laws.

He had also, by this time, as an important instrument of his intended profession, attained the art of stenography.  When, soon after, he began to employ it, he rapidly became an excellent reporter; and eventually, when he had grown thoroughly versed in public affairs, confessedly the best reporter that we ever had.

He was now well-prepared to join in the manly strife of business or politics.  His father chose, therefore, at once to commit him to himself.  He judged him mature enough in principles, strong enough in sense; and feared lest, by being kept too long under guidance and the easy life of home, he should fall into inertness.  He first sent him to Philadelphia, therefore, to serve as a workman with Birch and Small; after which, he made for him an engagement on the “National Intelligencer,” as a reporter, and sent him to Washington, in October, 1807.

To that place, changing its name to the one just mentioned, the father’s former paper, “The Gazetteer,” had been transferred by his old associate, Samuel Harrison Smith.  Its first issue there (tri-weekly) was on the 31st of October, 1800, under the double title of “The National Intelligencer and Washington Advertiser.”  The latter half of the title seems to have been dropped in 1810, when its present senior came, for a time, into its sole proprietorship.

More than twice the age of any other journal now extant there,—­for the “Globe” came some thirty, the “Union” some forty-five years later,—­the “Intelligencer” has long stood, in every worthy sense, the patriarch of our metropolitan press.  It has witnessed the rise and fall around it of full a hundred competitors,—­many of them declared enemies; not a few, what was more dangerous far, professed friends.  Yet, in the face of all enmity and of such friendship, it has ever held on its calm way, never deserting the public cause,—­as little extreme in its opposition as in its support of those in power; so that its foes never forgot it, when they prevailed, but its friends repeatedly.  To estimate the value of its influence, during its long career, would be impossible,—­so much of right has it brought about, so much of wrong defeated.