The "flush times" held bravely on.

Something over two years before, Mr.
Goodman and another journeyman printer, had borrowed forty dollars and set out from San Francisco to try their fortunes in the new city of Virginia.

They found the Territorial Enterprise, a poverty-stricken weekly journal, gasping for breath and likely to die.

They bought it, type, fixtures, good-will and all, for a thousand dollars, on long time.
The editorial sanctum, news-room, press-room, publication office, bed-chamber, parlor, and kitchen were all compressed into one apartment and it was a small one, too.

The editors and printers slept on the floor, a Chinaman did their cooking, and the "imposing-stone" was the general dinner table.