A few months after this the “great fire” swept over New York, and laid nearly the whole business portion of the city in ashes.  This was Mr. Bennett’s opportunity.  The other journals of the city devoted a brief portion of their space to general and ponderous descriptions of the catastrophe, but Mr. Bennett went among the ruins, note-book and pencil in hand, and gathered up the most minute particulars of the fire.  He spent one-half of each day in this way, and the other half in writing out reports of what he thus learned.  These reports he published in “The Herald.”  They were free, graphic, off-hand sketches of the fire and its consequences, and were so full and complete that they left little or nothing connected with the incidents they described to be added.  Mr. Bennett also went to the expense of publishing a picture of the burning of the Merchants Exchange, and a map of the burnt district—­a heavy expense for his little journal.  The result proved the sagacity of his views.  “The Herald” reports of the fire created a heavy demand for the paper, and its circulation increased rapidly.  Yet its success was not assured.

When his first year closed, Mr. Bennett found his paper still struggling for existence, but with a fair prospect of success, if it could follow up the “hit” it had made with its reports of the fire.  About this time he received an offer from Dr. Benjamin Brandreth to advertise his pills in “The Herald,” and a contract was at once concluded between them.  The money thus paid to the paper was a considerable sum, and proved of the greatest assistance to it.  All the money received was conscientiously expended in the purchase of news.  The circulation grew larger as its news facilities increased, and for some years its proprietor expended all his profits in making the paper more attractive.

At the close of the fifteenth month of its career Mr. Bennett increased the size of “The Herald,” and raised the price of it to two cents per copy.  His success was now assured, and continued to increase, as, under his able and far-seeing management, his paper expanded and enlarged its facilities for securing and making public the promptest and most reliable news of the day.  Since that time his success has been unvarying.  He has made “The Herald” the leading newspaper of the world, for no other journal upon the globe can compare with it in liberality and energy in the collection of news or in promptness and completeness of detail in laying it before the public.  Its growth has been slow, but sure.  Every step has been won by hard and conscientious labor, as well as by the force of real genius.  Other journals have been compelled to follow the example of “The Herald,” but none have surpassed it.  It still stands at the head of the newspaper press of the world, and we are justified in believing that it will continue to stand there as long as its founder’s hand controls it.