"Of course, it had to be a sort of local paper, giving train and station
gossip with sage remarks and 'preachments' from the boy's standpoint. It
sold for three cents a copy, or eight cents a month to regular
customers. Its biggest 'sworn circulation' was 700 copies, of which
about 500 were _bona fide_ subscriptions, and the rest 'news-stand
sales.'

"The great English engineer, Robert Stephenson, grandson of the inventor
and improver of the locomotive, is said to have ordered a thousand
copies to be distributed on railways all over the world to show what an
American newsboy could do.

"Even the _London Times_, known for generations as '_The Thunderer_,'
and long considered the greatest newspaper in both hemispheres, quoted
from _The Weekly Herald_, as the only paper of its kind in the world.
Young Edison's news venture was a financial success, for it added $45.00
a month to his already large income.

"But _Paul Pry_ came to grief because he tried to be funny in disclosing
the secret motives of certain persons. People differ widely in their
notions about fun. In a local paper, too, some one's feelin's are likely
to get 'lacerated!' This was the case with a six-foot subscriber to the
paper which was published then under Al Edison's pen name of 'Paul Pry.'
One day the juvenile editor happened to meet his huge and wrathy reader
too near the St. Clair river. Whereupon the subscriber took the editor
by his collar and waistband and heaved him, neck and crop, into the
river. Edison swam to shore, wet, but otherwise undisturbed,
discontinued the publication of _Paul Pry_, and bade good-by to
journalism forever!