the Tribune been established, Henry J. Raymond's career might have been different.

At the close of the Presidential canvass, Raymond sought for a select school in which to teach, and he has himself told us that it was only upon the downfall of all such hopes, and in despair of finding anything to do at home, that he determined to try his fortune in the city of New York. Arriving there in December, 1840, knowing but one person in the whole city, a student in a lawyer's office, he ventured to make application to Horace Greeley for the place of assistant on the New-Yorker, the little weekly journal which was the immediate predecessor of the New York Tribune. For five years Raymond had been a subscriber to the New-Yorker, and had occasionally sent contributions to its columns: and on the strength of this relation - he made timorous advances to Mr. Greeley. But the result of the first interview was chilling; the services of another applicant had just been accepted; Greeley was poor, and his paper, like all of its class at that day, was unable to bear the expense of a larger number of assistants. Raymond; however, obtained permission to be in the office whenever he chose, and in return promised to give his help on any occasion when his services should be of value. On this anomalous footing he made his way towards the first round of the ladder of New York journalism.

Again pushing out upon the current, he advertised, through the National Intelligencer of Washington, for a school in the South, and while awaiting replies, occupied his leisure hours in reading law in the office of Mr. Edward W. Marsh, a member of the New York Bar. A part of each day for three weeks was passed by Raymond in the office of the New-Yorker, where a considerable share of literary work gradually fell into his hands. He writes of his life at this period: "I added up election returns, read the exchanges for news, and discovered a good deal which others had overlooked; made brief notices of new books, read proof, and made myself generally useful. At the end of about three weeks I received the first reply to my advertisement, offering me a school of thirty scholars in North Carolina. I told Mr. Greeley at once that I should leave

the city the next morning. He asked me to walk with him to the post-office, whither he always went in person to get his letters and exchanges, and on the way inquired where I was going. I told him to North Carolina to teach a school. He asked me how much they would pay me. I said, four hundred dollars a year. Oh,' said he, 'stay here - I'll give you that.' And this was my first engagement on the Press, and decided the whole course of my life."

९

Eight dollars a week was meagre pay for the literary labor performed by Raymond in his twenty-first year: - quite as meagre, in comparison with the quality of the work, as the paltry pittance of seventy-five dollars a year paid him in the country store at the age of fifteen; but he did not repine, nor did he refuse the slice because the whole loaf was not at com mand. It was, however, simply impossible to live comfortably upon his pitiful salary. By extra work, he was enabled to increase his income, and he did not disdain to weight his lean purse by writing daily advertisements of a vegetable pill for a quack doctor, at the rate of fifty cents for each production. Subsequently he obtained the situation of teacher to a Latin class in a young ladies' seminary in New York; and, still later, eked out his means of subsistence by writing correspondence for the Philadelphia Standard, edited by R. W. Griswold; the Cincinnati Chronicle, edited by E. D. Mansfield, afterwards the "Veteran Observer" of the New York Times; the Bangor Whig, and the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser.

Thus the tide ran, Raymond always floating with it, never overwhelmed, until the spring of 1841, when Horace Greeley established the New York Tribune. The few months' service which had been rendered by Raymond made him a necessity to Greeley, and with the foundation of the Tribune were also laid the foundations of Raymond's future position and prosperity. Less than three months over age when he took the post of first assistant upon the Tribune, he at once threw his whole force into the profession which he then definitely determined to follow; and so began a career which culminated a few years later in a new era for Journalism in America.

Twenty-one years of Raymond's life had passed before he

became fast-anchored.

Thereafter he was identified with news

paper life; in it he made his reputation; by it he amassed a competency; through its agency he rose to political preferment, and he died in harness.

To his peculiar experiences in the office of the Tribune, a separate chapter must be given.

CHAPTER IV.

ANCHORED.

THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE HORACE GREELEY'S TRIBUTE ΤΟ HENRY J. RAYMONDA MISTAKE CORRECTED — RAYMOND'S WORK ON THE TRIBUNE-SIGNAL SUCCESSES-DR. DIONYSIUS LARDNER'S LECTURES SEVERE ILLNESS OF RAYMOND GREELEY CALLS UPON HIM - RAYMOND'S WRETCHED PAYRESULTS OF AN INTERVIEW IN A SICK-ROOM RAYMOND AS A REPORTERHIS SECESSION FROM THE TRIBUNE.

* "I

HORACE GREELEY has written of Henry J. Raymond: had not much for him to do till the Tribune was started; then I had enough; and I never found another person, barely of age and just from his studies, who evinced so much and so versatile ability in journalism as he did. Abler and stronger men I may have met; a cleverer, readier, more generally efficient journalist I never saw. He remained with me eight years, if my memory serves, and is the only assistant with whom I ever felt required to remonstrate for doing more work than any human brain and frame could be expected long to endure. His salary was of course gradually increased from time to time; but his services were more valuable in proportion to their cost than those of any one else who ever worked on the Tribune."

The praise here bestowed is just - but Mr. Greeley's memory is at fault. Mr. Raymond served upon the New-Yorker and the Tribune less than three years in all, - from December, 1840 to April, 1841, on the New-Yorker; and from 1841 to 1843 on the Tribune; the latter year being the date of his secession from the Tribune to join General Webb in the Courier and Enquirer. But Mr. Greeley is entirely right in the tribute he pays to Mr. Raymond's qualities as an efficient worker.

Raymond set out with a resolute purpose, not only to estab

"Recollections of a Busy Life," pp. 138-9.

lish his own reputation as a journalist, but also to gain for the Tribune the patronage and the confidence of the reading public. To these ends he bent all his energies, and to his untiring perseverance and his marked capacity the new journal owed a very large share of its early success. He wrote editorial articles, clipped paragraphs from the exchanges, made up the news, prepared reviews of new books, reported the proceedings of public meetings, and did with all his might whatever his hand found to do; receiving, as the reward of all this wearing labor upon a daily newspaper, which required his services half the night, the same salary of eight dollars per week which had been paid him for the lighter and pleasanter day's work of a weekly journal!

Among the signal successes achieved by Raymond, in the early days of his service for the Tribune, was the reporting of the scientific lectures delivered in New York by Dr. Dionysius Lardner, a popular lecturer, very much overrated, who was then at the height of his celebrity. The lectures were delivered in that extraordinary old church in Broadway called the "Tabernacle," long since pulled down, in which Jenny Lind declined to sing because it was "an old tub,”—and so it was. Raymond, always swift-handed, had a stenographic system of his own, a kind of long-short-hand, by the use of which he was able to follow an ordinary speaker very closely; and his reports of Lardner's remarks proved to be so accurate that the doctor adopted them, and with slight revision they were afterwards published in two octavo volumes. But on the night when the last lecture of the course was delivered, Raymond fell ill. Coming out from the heated church, he found a tempest raging, and reached the Tribune office only after a thorough drenching. Sitting for hours in wet clothes, he finished his report,— a very long and excellent one, and went to his home in the small hours of the morning, to wake next day in a violent fever. His room was on the upper floor of a boarding-house on the corner of Vesey and Church streets; his means were limited; the attendance was poor; fare was scanty; neither family nor friends were near him; it was altogether an unpleasant predicament. But he pulled through bravely. He had