Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/19

Rh 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.

It is interesting, in these days of lightning, to read an account of how the Herald beat its local rivals in getting out an account of the President's Message in 1849. A column synopsis was received by telegraph from New York, and published in the morning edition, and the second edition, issued a few hours later, contained the long document in full, and was put on the street at least a half-hour earlier than the other dailies. How the message was brought from Washington is thus described: J. F. Calhoun, of New Haven, was the messenger, and he started from the capital by rail at two o'clock on the morning of December 24; a steamtug in waiting conveyed him, on his arrival, from Jersey City to New York; a horse and chaise took him from the wharf to the New Haven dépôt, then in Thirty-second Street, where he mounted a special engine and at 10 started for Boston. He reached Boston at 6.20 the next morning, after an eventful journey, having lost a half-hour by a derailed tender and an hour and a half by the smashup of a freight-train.

The Herald, feeble as it was in many respects at first, managed to struggle through the financial diseases incident to newspaper infancy so stoutly that at the opening of 1847, when it had attained the age of four months, its sponsors were able to give it a New-Year dress of new type, to increase the size of its pages to seven columns, measuring twenty-one by seventeen inches, and to add a morning and a weekly edition. The paper in its new form, with a neat head in Roman letters replacing the former unsightly title, and printed on a new Adams press, presented a marked improvement.

Mr. Eaton continued in charge of the evening edition, while the new morning issue was placed in the hands of Mr. George W. Tyler. The Herald under this joint management presented its readers with from eight to ten columns of reading-matter daily. Two columns of editorials, four of local news, and two of clippings from "exchanges," were about the average. News by telegraph was not plenty, and, as has already been intimated, very little of it was printed during the first year. Yet, the Herald was a live and lively paper, and published nothing but "live matter." Much prominence was given to reports of affairs about home, and in consequence the circulation soon exhibited a marked improvement.