Soon after Barnum arrived in New York the city was almost destroyed by the largest fire in its early history. The fire started on a cold day, December 16, 1835, and burned steadily for three days because there was no efficient water supply, and the water available froze in the pipes. More than seven hundred buildings were turned to ruins, and almost all the insurance companies went into bankruptcy. Many mercantile establishments were forced out of business, and the banks suspended payment. It was during this fire that the _New York Herald_, founded in that same year by James Gordon Bennett, became popular. Cross-eyed James Gordon Bennett, owner, editor, and reporter for his new enterprise, went through the ruins of the fire with a note-book and gave New York its only vivid account of the results and causes of the disaster. This kept the _Herald_, which both in friendship and enmity was such a potent advertising medium for Barnum for many years, from almost certain bankruptcy, because the demand for the paper during the fire did not fall off afterwards, and a large advertising contract from Dr. Brandreth’s pills kept it alive. Times were hard, but the fire made them worse, and during the first five years of Barnum’s residence in New York the city, as well as the rest of the country, suffered great financial distress. President Jackson’s famous “specie circular” caused the government treasury to gather in all the gold of the country, and the result was a drastic panic, from which Barnum’s efforts must have suffered a severe check. In April, 1837, more than two hundred and fifty large New York business houses suspended payments, and every bank in the city did the same. II