CONTENTS PAGE LIFE OF STEPHEN H. BRANCH. 2 PETER COOPER’S AVARICE AND INFERNAL ANTECEDENTS. 8 THE EARLY PENURY OF THE THREE NAPOLEONS OF THE AMERICAN PRESS—BENNETT, GREELEY, AND RAYMOND. 11 A SWEET LETTER. 12 [Illustration: STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S ALLIGATOR.] Volume I.—No. 7.] SATURDAY, JUNE 5, 1858. [Price 2 Cents. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by STEPHEN H. BRANCH, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. Life of Stephen H. Branch. While pursuing my studies at Andover, I am corresponding with a girl who resides in my native city. There were girls in Providence far more beautiful than her, (and whose parents were more affluent than hers,) from whom I could doubtless have selected a companion for life, but her father had been a boy with my father, and she loved me as a sister her brother, or as a fond mother loves her precious offspring. These truths had their influence with me. Moreover, this girl had pursued me for years, and (to illustrate her devotion) if I went to a ball, she was there. If I took my position in a cotilion, she would soon be opposite, and staring me broadly in the face, and, as we crossed over, she would cast the most tender glances, and press my hand with deep affection. If I proposed to dance with her, her eyes would kindle with the wildest enthusiasm. If I went to church, she would be in the next pew, and enter mine, if it were not full. If I turned a corner, I often would meet her. If I looked behind, while promenading Westminster, (the Broadway of Providence,) she would often be prancing towards me like an Arabian courser. She would address letters to herself through the Post Office, and call for them when I was at the letter delivery. If I went to a party, she would contrive to get an invitation, and a day seldom passed, when I did not see her. Juliet never loved Romeo more fervently than she loved me. And because I knew she loved me as no virgin ever loved, I resolved to have her. All her kindred favored our union, and before I went to Andover, her father came, on summer evenings, to the Post Office, and conversed with me in the most friendly tones. So, in the Autumn of 1836, I bade adieu to Andover, forever, and repaired to Providence, and married her at her father’s. The wedding was large and magnificent. My father obtained me a clerkship in the Rhode Island Cloth Hall, but manufactures were long depressed, and its directors resolved to close its affairs, which deprived me of a situation. The commercial desolation of 1837 was in embryo, and merchants were curtailing, and extensive failures transpired, and clerks and mechanics