"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.
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