Perhaps he would like to build tables and chairs better, so he was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker; but here he was no more satisfied than with the monotony of sewing leather. At his own request, the dealer cancelled the agreement, and the boy found a place to set type on the Newburyport "Herald." At last he had obtained the work he loved. He would some day own a paper, he thought, and write articles for it. Ah! how often poor boys and rich build air-castles which tumble to the ground. It is well that we build them, for life soon becomes prosaic enough to the happiest of us. At sixteen he wrote an article for the "Herald," signing it "An Old Bachelor." Imagine his surprise and delight when he saw it really in print! Meantime his mother, who was six hundred miles away, wrote him devoted letters, ever encouraging and stimulating him to be upright and temperate. A year later she died, and William was left to fight his battles alone. He missed the letters,--missed having some one to whom he could tell a boy's hopes and fears and temptations. That boy is especially blest who has a mother to whom he can confide everything; such a boy usually has a splendid future, because by her wisdom and advice he becomes well fitted for life, making no foolish experiments. Reading as much as possible, at nineteen William wrote some political articles for a Salem paper, and, strange to say, they were attributed to Hon. Timothy Pickering! Surely, he could do something in the world now; so when his apprenticeship was over and he had worked long and faithfully, he started a paper for himself. He called it the "Free Press." It was a good title, and a good paper; but, like most first literary adventures, it proved a failure. Perhaps he ought to have foreseen that one can do little without capital; but youth is about as blind as love, and rarely stops to reason.