He began his English newspaper experience after a kind of apprenticeship on a German daily with Stilson Hutchins, another interesting character of those days.

It was from Stilson Hutchins that I learned something of Pulitzer's origin and beginnings, for he never spoke much of himself.
According to this story he was the offspring of a runaway marriage between a subaltern officer in the Austrian service and a Hungarian lady of noble birth.

In some way he had got across the Atlantic, and being in Boston, a wizened youth not speaking a word of English, he was spirited on board a warship.

Watching his chance of escape he leaped overboard in the darkness of night, though it was the dead of winter, and swam ashore.

He was found unconscious on the beach by some charitable persons, who cared for him.