^[)C iiiiiucv's iiUnttl)!!) Visitor. 



21 



coiiliiiiic(l) ; sevt'ii in Massachusetts; two in 

 Uliode Isliinil ; I'oiii' in Coiniecticiit ; liiurinNcvv 

 York; iiino in Pennsylvania, of wliicli tlirco 

 were Gernian ; two in Maryland ; two in Virgin- 

 ia ; two ill Norlli Carolina ; three in South Caro- 

 lina, anil ono in C!(;iM}.'ia. 



In January 1810, Tlioiiias pnlilislics a list oT 

 three hiniilred and (il'ly newspapers, of whioh 

 tweiity-si'vcn uero daily, liltocn thrice, thirty- 

 eight twice and two hundred and seventy-nine 

 oiioe u weelv. , 



Sonic of our own reminiscences of printers 

 and newspapers, since we came upon the staije, 

 may Ik; iniiresling, il' nor to the general reader, 

 to some of the hundreds younger tirin ourselves 

 engaged in our prolession. 



Since the year 1802 we have lieen in the hahit 

 of marking the contents of various newspapers 

 in almost every section of the Union ; and through 

 these have gained the hetter knowledge of the 

 towns and districts where they were puhlishcd. 

 In Boston in the year 1810 and for several 

 years previous six semi-weekly newspapers, of 

 which four were what was then called federal 

 of federal republican, ami two repnhlican or 

 democratic. Of these 



Benjamin Kcssell's Columbian Cenlinel was 

 the he.-t conducted paper, giving the earliest and 

 most accurate intelligence of any paper in New 

 England. According to Thomas the family 

 name of Russell was frequent among the printers 

 of Boston prior to the revolution. In the early 

 printing of Isaiah Thomas, Benjamin Russell was 

 liis apprentice; and we have heard it said that in 

 attending halls which were then freipient among 

 all young people in a style where the full value 

 of the iiijunciion to " mind the music and the 

 step" was well understood as the distinguishing 

 mark of the most dcsirahle of each of, the sexes 

 by the other, a liright new pair of buckskin nn- 

 nientionahles allernah d between the master and 

 apprentice — the one always absent on these oc- 

 casions when the oilier was present. 



Commencing his paper with a small <|uantity 

 of type, of which his bead exhausted the letter s 

 in the words "Massachiscits Cenlinel" in a font 

 of the larger size, the orlhography of the latter 

 word was altered. About the year 1800, the Cen- 

 linel twice a week issued semi-weekly editions cf 

 six thon.sand or more copies. 



The work of iirinting was all done upon a 

 Ramage hand press with two pulls on each side 

 of the sheet. Going to press at a late hour at 

 night, the most hnniod workmen could turn off 

 not much over tlii'ec hundred copies in an hour. 

 The stages and carriers of mails going out all the 

 time after midnight to sunrise, were first suppli- 

 ed. From that time the door and passage « ay 

 to the office of delivery was waged in iiy a con- 

 tinued cro«d of |iersons several hours on the 

 inoriiing of each piihlicalion day. 



The tact of Maj. llnssel at cateringand condens- 

 ing news has probalily been excelled by no other 

 editor in this or any other conniry. His arratise- 

 ment and style were peculiar: every department 

 iiad its [iroper head — each head beginning with 

 a two-line letter with i(jites fir.-t the (jirthest in 

 the distance: Capitals, small capitals and italics 

 always gave the different degiee<= of emphasis.— 

 Ill the series of years when great revolutions aud 

 battles were occurring in Europe and other |)arts 

 of the world, in that condenseil form which 

 crowded advertising rendered indispensahIe,Riis- 

 sel's Centinel always excelled in giving more in- 

 formation in the same space and presenting the 

 marching and countermarching, the points of at- 



of success or failure in the 



lack, the reason 

 plainer attitude. 



For years the Centinel had tvgi'eat circulation 

 but the carelessness of its conductor in fiiiling to 

 exact payment from his customers, ami perhaps 

 llic expensive habits superinduced by the I'xpec- 

 tation always to be present at convivial and most 

 other public occasions, made him often deficient 

 in funds. Some friend at length suggested to 

 Maj. K. that ho might possibly relieve himself 

 from the vexation of being dunned by asking 

 earnestly his own iliies. Collectors sent forth 

 with bills of five, ten and even more years stand- 

 ing soon created a liiiiil not only to discharge old 

 debts, but to pay down for every expense of the 

 ofH(;e. The price of subscription was four dol- 

 lars per annum ; and the advertising alone for 

 years was suflicient to cover the expenses of the 

 office. Maj. |{. married a second wife, n Miss 

 Campbell, of New York, if we remember right 

 the announcement in the papers of the time, 

 .•ihoiit the year 1800. His whole concern in the 

 tinancial department of the office was left with 

 the head clerk : he was stented to pay over the 

 proprietor fifty dollars a week for his family ex- 

 penses, and, pari passu, to discharge all office 

 bills, including press-men and car-men. Having 

 accidentally run up a bill of some six hundred 

 dollars for ink, much of which was wasted as 

 were fonts of beautiful type, jiartly from the rap- 

 id work necessary and partly from the careless- 

 ness or unavoidable accidents of night work, the 

 ink merchant informed us at the lime that the 

 presentation of so large a bill gave an alarm to 

 the responsible secretary of the treasury in the 

 Cenlinel concern like that which might be an- 

 ticipated from the actual bankruptcy of a slate or 

 national treasury. 



tMaj. Russel appeared for many years on 

 'Change, in most conspicuous celebrations and 

 processions, at College exhibitions and in every 

 place where public attention was attracted. — 

 A mnsemeiits of almost every name and nature 

 found him one hearing a part. Visiting Boston, 

 we rarely ever attended the old Federal street 

 Theatre, since given up as a place of scenic ex- 

 hibition, hut now again restored, when Maj. 

 Russell's head, grey or powdered was not to be 

 seen cDiispiciions among the wealth, beauty and 

 fashion of the city. Our own early years were 

 accompanied by a passion for representations of 

 Shakspeare and other great masters of the drama, 

 which, unbridled always when we visited the ci- 

 ty, were all but inesistahle. We admired the 

 high acting of Couk, Cooper, JMrs-. Powell aud 

 other stars of forty years since; and we have of- 

 ten thought that iheii " mirror held up to nature" 

 had quite as good a moral effect upon our youth- 

 ful days as the best of pulpit preaching. 



For tiiaiiy years, ,'Maj. Russell was one of the 

 representatives of the ciiy of Boston in the Le- 

 i;i^laIllle. In that city his political party has 

 maintained an almost uniform ascendtiicy. It 

 was remarkable that amidst all the fiiscinalioiis 

 of com]iany, the necessity of acting in some 

 public agency, and other cares and attractions of 

 domestic life, the editorial department of the 

 Cenlinel was rarely if ever deticient while pub- 

 lished by M.ij. Russell. He was^perhaps as sensi- 

 tive to public disliivor as any other man. The 

 same year the writer was a Senator in New 

 Hampshire, twenty year.s ago, Maj. Russell failed 

 in his election to the .same position in Boston, 

 from some division of Ins party preferring a bro- 

 ker who bad come over as an Adams man from 

 the foi-tner democracy. Meeting him on election 



day at Boston, he said— " Mr. Hill, I am happy to 

 perceive that yoii are this year what I am not." 

 Exchanging sympathy by offsetting other disafi- 

 pointiiients, he politely offered to conduct us to 

 the State House where the two Massachusetts 

 branches were organizing: the b.dloting for 

 speaker there added to his mortification in the 

 election of Levi Lincoln as the speaker of the 

 democratic line of Adams adherents, in the place 

 of Luther Lawrence, who was first and always 

 with the editor of the Centinel, a federalist. 



The establishments of daily papers in Boston 

 having encroached inncli upon the circulation of 

 the semi-weeklies, Maj. Russell several years 

 since retired from the Centinel, saving in the 

 sale of the establishment a competency for the 

 siip|)ort of himself and fiimily. The last time 

 we met him in State street, not long before his 

 death, without mentioning with complacency his 

 life and success as a newspaper editor, he advert- 

 ed with pride to his legislative career — long priv- 

 ileged as the oldest member of the House to call 

 the newly elected members to order. Ho said 

 his own name of RxcsseU had been most nume- 

 rous of any name in the Hnu.se generally. We 

 claimed in his presence a right to be vain also, 

 because ours on the mother's side was the name 

 of Russell ; and we sometimes had cousins more 

 or less removed, associated with him as legisla- 

 tors in our own native State. 



The Centinel was not the only valued and es- 

 teemed journal in Boston : there were three more 

 papers upon the same side in jiolitics, two of 

 which, conducted generally by practical printers 

 and one by a classical scholar of some eminence, 

 were the steady and stable eX|)onents of the polit- 

 ical class to which they belonged. The oldest pa^ 

 pers on the federal side, published on different 

 days, gave to subscribers who could afford afford 

 it, a newspaper every morning, except Sundays. 

 But the paper on the opposite political side, dis- 

 linguishei! [larticularly as the antagonist of the 

 Centinel, was 



The Independent Chronicle, published on Mon- 

 days and Thursdays, at first by Ebe.xkzf.r Lar- 

 Ki.\, afterwards by Adams and Larkin, and final- 

 ly by Adams and Rhodes. This paiier was long 

 issued from the third story of an old brick build- 

 ing in Court street, nearly opposite the present 

 court house. Mr. Adams was not a printer, but 

 a mechanic of some other sort, who came by 

 marriage to be interested in the paper. With the 

 motto of "Truth its guide, and Liberty iis ob- 

 ject," the Chronicle in an engraved head of Ger- 

 man text letters with flourishes, made its appear- 

 ance tH ice a week. Our recollections of the of- 

 fice room thirty years ago, always found ftlr. 

 Rhodes in one part, with his scissors and pen 

 clipping and condensing news from the mail : a 

 venciiible (lid man seventy to eighty years of age, 

 in the smaller type was composing the ship intel- 

 ligence— other journeymen or boys around In 

 the counting room and readingapartment (or suc- 

 cessive years, in the course of the forenoon the 

 cocked-hat of Honestns (Benjamin Austin) came 

 in, where, sitting around, might generally be found 

 some half a dozen faces of obstinate republicans, 

 a Jarvis, a Little, a Eustis, a Snelling, a Gleason, 

 and others, of which the first was the oracle and 

 leader. He was not a writer editorially, but con- 

 stantly a contributor, generally under the head of 

 "commnnication." We are informed, his habit 

 was to write articles of a morning on small pie- 

 ces of paper, sitting with his family at the fire- 

 side. Younger than John Hancock, and like him 

 highly educated, Honestus maintained hisprinci- 



