CHAPTER III

1750-1776

_Newbery's Books in America_


In the middle of the eighteenth century Thursdays were red-letter days
for the residents of the Quaker town of Philadelphia. On that day Thomas
Bradford sent forth from the "Sign of the Bible" in Second Street the
weekly number of the "Pennsylvania Journal," and upon the same day his
rival journalists, Franklin and Hall, issued the "Pennsylvania Gazette."

On Thursday, the fifteenth of November, seventeen hundred and fifty, Old
Style, the good people of the town took up their newspapers with
doubtless a feeling of comfortable anticipation, as they drew their
chairs to the fireside and began to look over the local occurrences of
the past week, the "freshest foreign advices," and the various bits of
information that had filtered slowly from the northern and more southern
provinces.

On this particular evening the subscribers to both newspapers found a
trifle more news in the "Journal," but in each paper the same domestic
items of interest, somewhat differently worded. The latest news from
Boston was that of November fifth, from New York, November eighth, the
Annapolis item was dated October tenth, and the few lines from London
had been written in August.