But after the Embargo and the war the skies slowly brightened, not so much because of the growing circulation as because of the more remunerative advertisements. It was not the $40-a-year advertising that paid, but the single “ads” inserted at the new rate of 75 cents a “square.” There were now many more of these. Because of the rapid growth of the city a brisk trade had sprung up in Brooklyn and Manhattan real estate, which by 1820 often engrossed from one-eighth to one-fourth the whole paper. Steamboats had come, and from Capt. Vanderbilt’s little _Nautilus_, which left Whitehall daily for Staten Island at 10, 3, and 6:30, charging twenty-five cents a trip, to the big _Chancellor Livingston_ running to Albany, and the boat _Franklin_, which offered excursions to Sandy Hook, with a green turtle dinner, for $2, all were advertising. Competing stage-coach lines were eager to impress the public with their speedy schedules; advertising that you could leave the City Hotel at 2 p. m., packed six inside and eight outside a gaudily painted vehicle, and be at Judd’s Tavern in Philadelphia at 5 a. m. the next day. Competition continued keen, for while weak newspapers died, new journals were constantly being established. The most important of these were Charles Holt’s _Columbian_, established in 1808 as a Clintonian sheet; the _National Advocate_, founded in 1813 and edited for a time by Henry Wheaton, later known as a diplomat, who supported Madison; and the _American_, an evening journal first published in the spring of 1819, and edited by Charles King, later president of Columbia College. But the _Evening Post_ kept well to the front, as is shown by a table of comparative circulations in May, 1816: _Mercantile Advertiser_, 2000 _Daily Gazette_, 1750 _Evening Post_, 1600 Gardiner’s _Courier_, 980 _Columbian_, 825 _National Advocate_, 875 _Commercial Advertiser_, 1200 The circulation of the _Mercantile Advertiser_, we are told by Thurlow Weed, who was then working on the _Courier_, was considered enormous. It seldom had more than one and a half or two columns of news, while Lang’s _Gazette_ frequently carried only a half column; so that the _Evening Post_ was clearly the leading newspaper. People in the early twenties regarded it as a well established institution. Its editor had become one of the lesser notables of the city, like Dr. Hosack and Dr. Mitchill; and we are informed by a contemporary that he “was pronounced by his advocates a field-marshal in literature, as well as politics.” Poor as the newspapers of that time seem by modern standards, the _Evening Post_ when compared with the London _Times_ or the London _Morning Post_ (for which Lamb and Coleridge wrote) was not discreditable to New York; it was not so well written, but it was as large and as energetic in news-gathering and editorial utterance. CHAPTER FOUR LITERATURE AND DRAMA IN THE EARLY “EVENING POST”