By the beginning of 1816 the _Evening Post_ was giving much space to the possibilities of coal gas as an illuminant. A schoolmaster named Griscom lectured the evening of Jan. 26 on the light, the audience including the Mayor, Recorder, many aldermen, and prominent business men. He demonstrated the use of gas, argued that it would cost only half as much as lamps or candles, and showed that it gave a superior brilliancy without smoke or odor. At this time, as Coleman emphasized, Londoners had extensively employed coal gas for four or five years. During the summer of 1816 a successful trial was made in Baltimore. At last, seven years later, the _Evening Post_ was able editorially to direct attention to the advertisement of the New York Gas Company, which was just issuing $200,000 worth of stock, and which the city government had given a franchise for lighting all the town south of Grand Street for the next thirty years. But the use of old-fashioned illuminants involved no such hardships as did the city’s exclusive dependence, when Hamilton’s journal began its career, upon wood for fuel. As regularly as the Hudson froze and snowdrifts blocked the roads, prices soared. In January, 1806, for example, hickory rose from the normal price of $3.50 a load (three loads made a cord) to $7, and some speculators even tried to get $8. In 1821, after a severe snowstorm, $5 was charged for a load of oak, and $7.50 for better woods. It was with unusual satisfaction, therefore, that in the summer of 1823 the journal said that it “congratulated the public on the near prospect of this city being supplied with coal, dug from that immense range” of potential mines lately discovered in Pennsylvania. The new Schuylkill Coal Company and the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company were making preparations to ship the anthracite; and Coleman hoped that the city’s fuel bill of $700,000 or $800,000 would be cut in half.