be moribund.  The proprietors had lost money and labor in the failing enterprise, and now lost interest.  After many protracted discussions they resolved to establish an evening edition under another name, which should be neutral in politics, and, if it proved successful, to let the Eagle die.  The Herald, therefore, came into existence on August 31, 1846, and an edition of two thousand was printed of its first number.  The editor of the new sheet was William O. Eaton, a Bostonian, then but twenty-two years of age, of little previous experience in journalism.

The Herald, it must be admitted, was not a handsome sheet at the outset.  Its four pages contained but five columns each, and measured only nine by fourteen inches.  But, unpromising as was its appearance, it was really the liveliest of the Boston dailies from the hour of its birth, and received praise on all hands for the quality of its matter.

The total force of brain-workers consisted of but two men, Mr. Eaton having the assistance, after the middle of September, of Thomas W. Tucker.  David Leavitt joined the “staff” later on, in 1847, and made a specialty of local news.  The editorial, composing, and press rooms were the same as those of the Eagle, in Wilson’s Lane, now Devonshire Street.

“Running a newspaper” in Boston in 1846 was a different thing altogether from journalism at the present day.  The telegraph was in operation between Boston and New York, but the tolls were high and the dailies could not afford to use it except upon the most important occasions.  Moreover, readers had not been educated up to the point of expecting to see reports of events in all parts of the world printed on the same day of their occurrence or, at the latest, the day following.

For several years before the extension of the wires overland to Nova Scotia, the newsgatherers of Boston and New York resorted to various devices in order to obtain the earliest reports from Europe.  From 1846 to 1850 the revolutionary movements in many of the countries on the continent were of a nature to be especially interesting to the people of the United States, and this stimulated enterprise among the American newspapers.  Mr. D.H.  Craig, afterward widely known as agent of the Associated Press, conceived the idea of anticipating the news of each incoming ocean-steamer by means of a pigeon-express, which he put into successful operation in the year first named.  He procured a number of carrier-pigeons, and several days before the expected arrival of every English mail-steamer took three of them to Halifax.  There he boarded the vessels, procured the latest British papers, collated and summarized their news upon thin paper, secured the dispatches thus prepared to the pigeons, and fifty miles or so outside of Boston released the birds.  The winged messengers, flying homeward, reached the city far in advance of the steamers, and the intelligence they brought was at once delivered to Mr. W.G.  Blanchard, then connected with the Boston press, who had the brief dispatches “extended,” put in type, and printed as an “extra” for all the papers subscribing to the enterprise.  Sheets bearing the head “New York Herald Extra” were also printed in Boston and sent to the metropolis by the Sound steamers, thus anticipating the arrival of the regular mail.