In its opening sentences the prospectus stated that the journal would appear in a dress worthy of the liberal patronage promised. To modern eyes the first volumes are cramped, dingy, and uninviting. Each issue consisted of a single sheet folded once, to make four pages, as continued to be the case until the middle eighties; a page measured only 14 by 19½ inches; and the conventional cuts of ships, houses, stoves, furniture, and coiffures would be disfiguring if they were not quaint. But when we compare the _Evening Post_ with its contemporaries we see that the statement was not empty. Editor Callender remarked that “This newspaper is, beyond all comparison, the most elegant piece of workmanship that we have seen, either in Europe or America.” The _Gazette of the United States_ commented that it was published “in a style by far superior to that of any other newspaper in the United States.” How could it afford this style? it asked. Advertisements were the secret, for out of twenty columns, fourteen or fifteen were always filled with the patronage of Federalist merchants. Few journals then had more than two full fonts of type, and some were set entirely in minion. Coleman and his printer, a young man from Hartford named Michael Burnham, had started with four full fonts of new type beautifully cut; they used a superior grade of paper; and the arrangement and use of headings had been carefully studied. Dignity was then, as always later, emphasized. Every Saturday a weekly edition, called the _Herald_, was sent to distant subscribers, from Boston to Savannah, with fewer advertisements and at least twice the reading matter. Noah Webster, in conducting the _Minerva_, had been the first New York editor to perceive the economy and profit in publishing such a journal “for the country” without recomposition of type, and had himself used the name _Herald_. The New York Federalists relied principally upon the weekly for a national diffusion of their views, and with reason, for at an early date in 1802 the circulation rose above 1600, as against slightly more than 1100 for the _Evening Post_ itself. These were respectable figures for that time. What should the Federalist chieftains, Hamilton, Wolcott, King, Gouverneur Morris, and others, make of these two instruments? To answer this, we shall have to look first at the qualifications of “Hamilton’s editor,” as other journals called him.