operation--the first step toward crowding out the lumbering stages.
Newspapers were multiplying, and there were now fifty various sorts,
daily, weekly, and monthly. The dailies cost six cents, and were
delivered to regular subscribers. In the year 1833 the _Sun_, the first
penny paper to be published in the city, was issued. It was a success.
Boys sold it on the streets in all parts of the town. This was the
beginning of the work of the news-boys, and after this they were to be
found all over the country.

But now there came another great fire. On a December night, a night so
cold that it was said there had not been such another in fifty years,
flames broke out in the lower part of town near the river. The citizens
battled with it as best they could, but it burned for three days,
destroying almost all of the business end of the city. For years
afterward it was called the "Great Fire," and was remembered with dread.
To-day there is a marble tablet on a house in Pearl Street near Coenties
Slip, which was the centre of the burned district, where you can read of
how fearful the fire was and how thankful the people were that the
entire city was not destroyed. But the houses were quickly rebuilt, and
New York prospered more than ever before.

[Illustration: View of Park Row, 1825.]

Destructive as the fire was, however, it called attention to the fact
that there was a woful lack of water in the city. Most of the water was
still supplied by the wells and springs which had been sufficient for
a small town, but were by no means so for a city of the present size. It
was now that the idea of bringing a large supply of water from without
the city was conceived. The plan was to build an artificial course, or
aqueduct, for water, from the Croton River, forty miles and more above