The story of the Sun, New York: 1833-1928 / by Frank M. O'Brien ; with an introduction by Edward Page Mitchell ...

54

THE STORY OF "THE SUN"

boat and came to New York to see the wonderful supplement.
Harriet Martineau, who was touring America at the
time, wrote in her Sketches of Iecstern Travel that the
ladies of Springfield, Massachusetts, subscribed to a
fund to send missionaries to the benighted luminary.
When the Sun articles reached Paris, they were at once
translated into illustrated pamphlets, and the caricaturists
of the Paris newspapers drew pictureS of the man-bats
going through the streets s;nginig "Au clair de la unime."
London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow made haste to issue
editions of the work.
Meanwhile, of course, Sir John Herschel was busy with
his telescope at the Cape, all unaware of his expanded
fame in the north. Caleb Weeks, of Jamaica, Long
Island, the Adam Forepaugh of his day, was setting out
for South Africa to get a supply of giraffes for his
menagerie, and he had the honor of laying in the great
astronomer's hand a clean copy of the pamphlet. To say
that Sir John was amazed at the Sun's enterprise would
be putting it mildly. When he had read the story through,
he went to Caleb Weeks and said that he was overcome; that he never could hope to live up to the fame
that had been heaped upon him.
In New York, meanwhile, Richard Adams Locke had
spilled the beans. There was a reporter named Finn,
once employed by the Sun, but later a scribe for the
Journal of Commerce. He and Locke were friends.
One afternoon Gerard Hallock, who was David Hale's
partner in the proprietorship of the Journal of Commerce, called Finn to his office and told him to get extra
copies of the Sun containing the moon story, as the