Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/226

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202

��Roland Worthwgton.

��principal feature several columns of stage line advertisements, was incorpor- ated with the A?nerican Traveller. With the issue of the new Daily Even- ing Traveller, the first number of which appeared on April i, 1845, the Ameri- can traveller became its semi- weekly issue, and the Stage Register was trans- formed into the Weekly Traveller. This programme of publication is main- tained to the present time, the Boston Evening Traveller (daily), the Afneri- can Traveller (semi-weekly), and the Weekly Traveller, all being regularly issued in large and steadily-growing editions from the well-known Traveller Building, on the corner of State and Congress Streets, facing the Old State House — in many respects the most striking newspaper site in the city.* The first number of the Daily Evening Traveller was a four-page sheet, about 14 X 20, bearing the imprint of Upton, Ladd, and Company as the publishers \ but that firm very soon afterwards relin- quished all connection with it. Its originators and first editors were Rev. George Punchard and Deacon Ferdi- nand Andrews. They projected it as a strictly Orthodox paper, devoted to the zealous advocacy of the temperance cause. Rev. Mr. Punchard was popu- larly spoken of as " the bishop of the Orthodox churches of New Hamp- shire," in which state he had been preaching with marked ability and power. Mr. Andrews, his associate, was a Deacon of the Pine Street Church. Together they set the moral and social standards of the Traveller high, and though they have both long since ceased their connection with it, and passed to their rest, the paper to this day is conspicuous for the respect with which it treats all religious and moral movements, its constant and vigorous advocacy of the temperance reform.

��and its careful exclusion of all matter that would give offence in the family cir- cle. In this way it has steadily enjoyed, and still retains, the enviable distinction of being one of the cleanest newspapers in the country, and this, with its enter- prise in the legitimate news field and the high order of literary work con- stantly displayed in its editoral columns, have secured it a warm welcome in thousands of the best homes of Boston, Massachusetts, and far and wide throughout New England. The credit of laying the basis of its permanent suc- cess as a vigorous, wide-awake, robust, daily journal belongs unquestionably to Mr. Worthington. He brought with him, from his experience on the Adve?-- tiser, a large fimd of practical wisdom as a publisher, and a natural endow- ment of creative and originative faculty besides, which, from the date of his con- nection with the Traveller to the present writing, has been the dominating factor in its development.

Mr. Worthington's name is identified with some notable steps in the progress of journalism. The newspaper hfe of Bos- ton, at the time he first entered it, was a very stately and slow-going affair. All the dailies of the Hub, save the Mail and Times, were six-penny sheets, and news- boys were not permitted to cr/ any of them for sale on the streets. Their very rigid ideas of what dignity required confined them to circulations acquired " by subscription only." In August, 1848, Daniel Webster was announced to address a meeting of his neighbors at Marshfield on the political issues of the hour. General Taylor had been for some time nominated for the Presidency, but the "God-like Daniel" had played the part of Achilles, " sulking in his tent." There was intense interest on the part of the people of the State, and of the whole country to hear what he would say

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