would not like to see it in print. Gravely, however, the person committing such an offence must needs stand in awful apprehension of the fearful curse denounced in the conclusion of the Apocalypse.
An edition of the Catholic Missal was once published in France, in which the accidental substitution merely of the letter u for an a, was the cause of a shocking blunder, changing, as it did, the word calotte (an ecclesiastical cap or mitre) into culotte, which, as my readers are aware, means, in drawing-room English, a gentleman's small clothes. The error occurred in one of the directions for conducting the service, where it is said: "Here the priest will take off his culotte!"
Among the errors that have occurred through design, was one which happened in the old Hudson Balance, when the Rev. Dr. Croswell was the editor of that ancient and excellent journal. A merchant by the name of Peter Cole chanced to get married. Cole, however, was very unpopular, and was not one of the brightest intelligences even of those days. The bride, too, was a little more no than yes, in her intellectual furnishment. It used to be a common practice in the country, in sending marriages to the press, to tack on a bit of poetry in the shape of some sweet hymenial sentimentality. In compliance with this custom, the groomsman added a line or two from one of the poets, where the bard speaks of the bliss of the marriage state, 'when heart meets heart reciprocally soft.' The wicked boys in the printing office, however, corrected the poet, making the stanza read thus:
'When head meets head, reciprocally soft.'
Another instance, more ludicrous still, was the following: A lad in a printing office, who knew more about type setting than he did of the Greek mythology, in looking over a poem they were printing, came upon the name of Hecate, one of the lady divinities of the lower world, occurring in a line like this:
'Shall reign the Hecate of the deepest hell.'
The boy, thinking he had discovered an error, ran to the master printer, and inquired eagerly whether there was an e in cat. 'Why, no, you blockhead,' was the reply. Away went the boy to the press room, and extracted the objectionable letter. But fancy the horror of both poet and publisher, when the poem appeared with the line:
'Shall reign the He cat of the deepest hell.'
But let a form of types, arranged either for book or newspaper, be ever so correct when sent to the press, errors not unfrequently happen from yet another cause, viz.: the liability of now and then a letter to drop out, when the form has not been properly adjusted, or locked sufficiently tight in the iron frame which by printers is called a chase. How important the loss of a single letter may become is seen by the following example. A printer putting to press a form of the Common Prayer, the c in the following passage dropped out unperceived by him: 'We shall all be CHANGED in the twinkling of an eye.' When the book appeared, to the horror of the devout worshipper, the passage read: 'We shall all be HANGED in the twinkling of an eye.'
Sometimes a whole page or a whole form drops through, and falls into what printers call pi– that is, a mass of all sorts of letters, stops, marks, points, spaces, forming a jumble of everything – and involving the dire necessity of assorting over the whole mass, letter by letter. In isolated printing houses, where they have but few workmen, and assistance is not near, such a catastrophe is a serious matter. An instance of this kind, which happened many years ago in the county of Oneida, is in point. An editor was putting his paper to press (for in the country, editor and printer are often combined) when down fell his form – a wreck of matter and a crush of words. There was no other printing office nearer than Albany, and it was impossible for him to rearrange his types for the paper that week. But his paper must come out at all hazards, on account of the legal advertisements on the first side. He therefore hit upon the expedient of publishing his paper with a blank page, inserting in large letters, 'Omitted for want of room!'
But, after all, when it is considered of how many separate and minute pieces of metal a book form or the page of a newspaper is composed, the wonder is that errors of the press are not far more numerous than they are. A single page of one of our largest papers cannot contain less than 150,000 separate pieces of metal, each of which must be nicely adjusted in its own proper place, or error and confusion will ensue.
But to return from this long digression of the early newspaper press of New York. A paper called the New York Chronicle was published during the years 1761-'62, and then died. The New York Pacquet was next published, in 1763, but how long it lived is not known. In 1766, Holt established the New York Journal, or General Advertiser, which in the course of the year was connected with Parker's Gazette, the Journal, however, being printed as a separate paper. John Holt edited the first Whig paper published in New York; nor, as in the case of Hugh Gaine, did his patriotism come and go as danger approached or receded from the city. In 1774, Holt discarded the King's arms, and took that engraving from the title of his paper, substituting in place of it, a serpent cut in pieces, with the expressive motto, 'Unite or Die.' In January, 1775, the snake was united and coiled, with the tail in its mouth, forming a double ring: within the coil was a pillar standing on Magna Charta and surmounted with the cap of liberty: the pillar on each side was supported by six arms and hands, figurative of the colonies. On the body of the snake, beginning at the head, were the following lines:
'United now, alive and free,
Firm on this basis Liberty shall stand;
And thus supported, ever bless our land,
Till Time becomes Eternity.'
The designs both of 1774 and 1775 were excellent – the first, by a visible illustration, showing the disjointed state of the colonies; and the second presenting an emblem of their strength when united. Holt maintained his integrity to the last. When the British troops took possession of New York, he removed to Esopus, now Kingston, and revived his paper. On the burning of that village by the enemy in 1777, he removed to Poughkeepsie, and published the Journal there until the peace of 1783, when he returned to New York and resumed his paper under the title of The Independent Gazette; or, The New York Journal Revived. Holt was an unflinching patriot, but did not long survive the achievement of his country's freedom. In 1784 he gave his paper a new typographical dress, and commenced publishing it twice a week, being the second paper thus frequently published in the United States. He died, however, early in that year. The Journal was continued for a time by the widow; but after undergoing several changes of name and proprietorship, it passed into the hands of Francis Greenleaf in 1787, by whom it was converted into a daily paper, called the Argus, or Greenleaf's New Daily Advertiser. A semi-weekly paper was also published by Greenleaf, called the New York Journal and Patriotic Register. Mr. Greenleaf was a practical printer and an estimable and enterprising man. He fell a victim to the yellow fever in 1798. The paper was continued by his widow for a little while, but ultimately fell into the hands of that celebrated political gladiator, James Cheetham.
The Independent Reflector was a paper commenced by James Parker in 1752, and continued for two years. Among its contributors were Governor Livingston, the Rev. Aaron Burr (father of the distinguished and unhappy statesman of that name), William Alexander (afterward Lord Stirling), and William Smith, the historian of New York. The tone of the paper was unsuited to the ears of the men in power: it was free and fearless in its discussions; and means were found to silence it. The belief was that Parker was suborned to refuse longer to publish it.
The celebrated James Rivington began his paper, under the formidable title of Rivington's New York Gazette; or, The Connecticut, New Jersey, Hudson's River, and Quebec Weekly Advertiser, in 1733. The imprint read as follows: 'Printed at his ever open and uninfluenced press, fronting Hanover Square.' It is well known that Rivington was the royal printer during the whole of the Revolutionary War; and it is amusing to trace the degrees by which his toryism manifested itself as the storm gathered over the country. The title of the paper originally contained a cut of a large ship under sail. In 1774, the ship sailed out of sight,
