OUTRAGEOUS--The _Courier and Enquirer_ of Saturday morning is just twice as large as its usual size. The sheet is now large enough for a blanket and two pairs of pillow-cases, and it contains, in printers’ language, 698,300 ems--equal to eight volumes of the ordinary-sized novels of the present day. If the reading matter were printed in pica type and put in one unbroken line, it would reach from Nova Zembla to Terra del Fuego. Such a paper is an insult to a civilized community. A little later, when Colonel Webb’s paper boasted of “the largest circulation,” the _Sun_ offered to bet the colonel a thousand dollars--the money to go to the Washington Monument Association--that the _Sun_ had a circulation twice as great as that of the big sixpenny daily. It must not be thought, however, that the _Sun_ did not attempt to treat the serious matters of the day. It handled them very well, considering the lack of facilities. The war crisis with France, happily dispelled; the amazing project of the Erie Railroad to build a line as far west as Chautauqua County, New York; the anti-abolitionist riots and the little religious rows; the ambitions of Daniel Webster and the approach of Halley’s comet--all these had their half-column or so. When Matthias the Prophet, the Dowie of that day, was brought to trial in White Plains, Westchester County, on a charge of having poisoned a Mr. Elijah Pierson, the _Sun_ sent a reporter to that then distant court. It is possible that this reporter was Benjamin H. Day himself. At any rate, Day attended the trial, and there made the acquaintance of a man who that very summer made the _Sun_ the talk of the world and brought to the young paper the largest circulation of any daily. CHAPTER III RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE’S MOON HOAX _A Magnificent Fake Which Deceived Two Continents, Brought to “The Sun” the Largest Circulation in the World and, in Poe’s Opinion, Established Penny Papers._ The man whom Day met at the murder trial in White Plains was Richard Adams Locke, a reporter who was destined to kick up more dust than perhaps any other man of his profession. As he comes on the stage, we must let his predecessor, George W. Wisner, pass into the wings. Wisner was a good man, as a reporter, as a writer of editorial articles, and as part owner of the paper. His campaign for Abolition irritated Mr. Day at first, but the young man’s motives were so pure and his articles so logical that Day recognized the justice of the cause, even as he realized the foolish methods employed by some of the Abolitionists. Wisner set the face of the _Sun_ against slavery, and Day kept it so, but there were minor matters of policy upon which the partners never agreed, never could agree.