Ten years have passed, and Jacob is still a clerk, but not in a store. Hopeless of getting into business, he applied for a vacancy that occurred in an insurance company, and received the appointment, which he still holds at a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year. After being sold out three times by the sheriff, and having the deep mortification of seeing her husband brought down to the humiliating necessity of applying as often for the benefit of the insolvent law, Mrs. Jones took affairs, by consent of her husband, into her own hands, and managed them with such prudence and economy, that, notwithstanding they have five children, the expenses, all told, are not over eight hundred dollars a year, and half of the surplus, four hundred dollars, is appropriated to the liquidation of debts contracted since their marriage, and the other half deposited in the Savings Bank, as a fund for the education of their children in the higher branches, when they reach a more advanced age.
To this day it is a matter of wonder to Jacob Jones why he could never get along in the world like some people; and he has come to the settled conviction that it is his “luck.”
STARTING A NEWSPAPER.
An experience of Mr. John Jones.
It happened sometime within the last ten or fifteen years, that, in my way through this troublesome world, I became captivated with the idea of starting a newspaper. That I had some talent for scribbling, I was vain enough to believe, and my estimate of the ability I possessed was sufficiently high to induce me to think that I could give a peculiar interest to the columns of a weekly paper, were such a publication entirely under my control.
I talked about the matter to a number of my literary and other friends, who, much to my satisfaction, saw all in a favourable light, and promised, if I would go on in the proposed enterprise, to use all their interest in my favour.
“I,” said one, “will guaranty you fifty subscribers among my own circle of acquaintances.”
“And I,” said another, “am good for double that number.”
“Put me down for a hundred more,” said a third, and so the promises of support came like music to my willing ear.
One or two old veterans of the “press gang,” to whom I spoke of my design, shrugged their shoulders, and said I had better try my hand at almost any thing else. But I was sanguine that I could succeed, though hundreds had failed before me. I felt that I possessed a peculiar fitness for the work, and could give a peculiar charm to a newspaper that would at once take it to the hearts and homes of the people.
A printer was called upon for an estimate, based upon a circulation of three thousand copies, which was set down as a very moderate expectation. He gave the whole cost of paper, composition, (type setting,) and press-work, at $4000.