Between his landing at Halifax and the appearance of the first number of the Herald sixteen years elapsed; during most of which he was a very poor, laborious, under-valued, roving writer for the daily press.  At Halifax, he gave lessons in book-keeping for a few weeks, with little profit, then made his way along the coast to Portland, whence a schooner conveyed him to Boston.  He was then, it appears, a soft, romantic youth, alive to the historic associations of the place, and susceptible to the varied, enchanting loveliness of the scenes adjacent, on land and sea.  He even expressed his feelings in verse, in the Childe Harold manner,—­verse which does really show a poetic habit of feeling, with an occasional happiness of expression.  At Boston he experienced the last extremity of want.  Friendless and alone he wandered about the streets, seeking work and finding none; until, his small store of money being all expended, he passed two whole days without food, and was then only relieved by finding a shilling on the Common.  He obtained at length the place of salesman in a bookstore, from which he was soon transferred to the printing-house connected therewith, where he performed the duties of proof-reader.  And here it was that he received his first lesson in the art of catering for the public mind.  The firm in whose employment he was were more ambitious of glory than covetous of profit, and consequently published many works that were in advance of the general taste.  Bankruptcy was their reward.  The youth noted another circumstance at Boston.  The newspaper most decried was Buckingham’s Galaxy; but it was also the most eagerly sought and the most extensively sold.  Buckingham habitually violated the traditional and established decorums of the press; he was familiar, chatty, saucy, anecdotical, and sadly wanting in respect for the respectabilities of the most respectable town in the universe.  Every one said that he was a very bad man, but every one was exceedingly curious every Saturday to see “what the fellow had to say this week.”  If the youth could have obtained a sight of a file of James Franklin’s Courant, of 1722, in which the youthful Benjamin first addressed the public, he would have seen a still more striking example of a journal generally denounced and universally read.

Two years in Boston.  Then he went to New York, where he soon met the publisher of a Charleston paper, who engaged him as translator from the Spanish, and general assistant.  During the year spent by him at Charleston he increased his knowledge of the journalist’s art.  The editor of the paper with which he was connected kept a sail-boat, in which he was accustomed to meet arriving vessels many miles from the coast, and bring in his files of newspapers a day in advance of his rivals.  The young assistant remembered this, and turned it to account in after years.  At Charleston he was confronted, too, with the late peculiar institution, and saw much to approve in it,