From 1854, the date of the starting of the three St. Paul daily papers, until 1860, the time of the completion of the Winslow telegraph line, there was great strife between the Pioneer, Minnesotian and Times as to which would be the first to appear on the street with the full text of the president's message. The messages of Pierce and Buchanan were very lengthy, and for several days preceding their arrival the various offices had all the type of every description distributed and all the printers who could possibly be procured engaged to help out on the extra containing the forthcoming message. It was customary to pay every one employed, from the devil to the foreman, $2.50 in gold, and every printer in the city was notified to be in readiness for the approaching typographical struggle. One year one of the proprietors of the Minnesotian thought he would surprise the other offices, and he procured the fastest livery team In the city and went down the river as far as Red Wing to intercept the mail coach, and expected to return to St. Paul three or four hours in advance of the regular mail, which would give him that much advantage over his competitors. Owing to some miscalculation as to the time the stage left Chicago the message was delivered in St. Paul twenty-four hours earlier than was expected, and the proprietor of the Minnesotian had the pleasure of receiving a copy of his own paper, containing the complete message, long before he returned to St. Paul. The management always provided an oyster supper for the employes of the paper first out with the message, and it generally required a week for the typos to fully recover from its effect. * * * * * As an evidence of what was uppermost in the minds of most people at this time, and is probably still true to-day, it may be related that in the spring of 1860, when the great prize fight between Heenan and Sayers was to occur in England, and the meeting of the Democratic national convention in Charleston, in which the Minnesota Democrats were in hopes that their idol, Stephen A. Douglas, would be nominated for president, the first question asked by the people I would meet on the way from the boat landing to the office would be: "Anything from the prize fight? What is the news from the Charleston convention?" * * * * *