The prospect was not a pleasant one to contemplate, but Mr. Bennett did not shrink from it.  He knew that it was in him to succeed, and he meant to do it, no matter through what trials or vicissitudes his path to fortune lay.  Those who heard his expressions of confidence shook their heads sagely, and said the young man’s air-castles would soon fade away before the blighting breath of experience.  Indeed, it did seem a hopeless struggle, the effort of this one poor man to raise his little penny sheet from its cellar to the position of “a power in the land.”  He was almost unknown.  He could bring no support or patronage to his journal by the influence of his name, or by his large acquaintance.  The old newspaper system, with its clogs and dead-weights, was still in force, and as for newsboys to hawk the new journal over the great city, they were a race not then in existence.  He had to fight his battle with poverty alone and without friends, and he did fight it bravely.  He was his own clerk, reporter, editor, and errand boy.  He wrote all the articles that appeared in “The Herald,” and many of the advertisements, and did all the work that was to be performed about his humble office.

“The Herald” was a small sheet of four pages of four columns each.  Nearly every line of it was fresh news.  Quotations from other papers were scarce.  Originality was then, as now, the motto of the establishment.  Small as it was, the paper was attractive.  The story that its first numbers were scurrilous and indecent is not true, as a reference to the old files of the journal will prove.  They were of a character similar to that of “The Herald” of to-day, and were marked by the same industry, tact, and freshness, which make the paper to-day the most salable in the land.

Says Mr. Parton:  “The first numbers were filled with nonsense and gossip about the city of New York, to which his poverty confined him.  He had no boat with which to board arriving ships, no share in the pony express from Washington, and no correspondents in other cities.  All he could do was to catch the floating gossip, scandal, and folly of the town, and present as much of them every day as one man could get upon paper by sixteen hours’ labor.  He laughed at every thing and every body,—­not excepting himself and his squint eye,—­and though his jokes were not always good, they were generally good enough.  People laughed, and were willing to expend a cent the next day to see what new folly the man would commit or relate.  We all like to read about our own neighborhood; this paper gratified the propensity.

“The man, we repeat, had really a vein of poetry in him, and the first numbers of ‘The Herald’ show it.  He had occasion one day to mention that Broadway was about to be paved with wooden blocks.  This was not a very promising subject for a poetical comment, but he added:  ’When this is done, every vehicle will have to wear sleigh-bells, as in sleighing times, and Broadway will be so quiet that