From being a clerk in an importing house, he turned to journalism, and after some work as a reporter, and on the staff of The Arcadian (1873), he became in 1877 assistant editor of the comic weekly Puck. He soon assumed the editorship, which he held until his death in Nutley, New Jersey. He developed Puck from a new struggling periodical into a powerful social and political organ. In 1886 he published a novel, The Midge, followed in 1887 by The Story of a New York House.