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

THE REIGN OF DANA

171

day Sun never appeared in more than four pages, except
in emergencies. In the end, of course, the scheme was
beaten by the very excellence of its originator's qualities.
The Sun, by its popularity, drew more and more advertising. Through his own genius Dana destroyed his own
dream, but not without having almost proved that it was
possible of realization.
Dana believed that most of the newspapers of his day
-particularly in the seventies-were tiring out not only
the reader but the writer. Commenting on a decline in
the newspaper business in the summer of 1875, the Sun
said:
Some of our big contemporaries have been overdoing the thing. They seem to think that to secure
circulation it is necessary to overload the stomachs
of their readers.
The American newspaper-reader demands of an
editor that he shall not give him news and discussions
in heavy chunks, but so condensed and clarified that
he shall be relieved of the necessity of wading
through a treatise to get at a fact, or spending time
on a dilated essay to get a bite at an argument.
Six or seven dreary columns are filled with leading
articles, no matter whether there are subjects to discuss of public interest, or brains at hand to treat
them. Our big contemporaries exhaust their young
numn and drive them too hard. The stock of ideas is
not limitless, even in a New York newspaper office.
Another thing has been bad. Men with actual
capacity of certain sorts for acceptable writing have
been frightened off from doing natural and vigorous
work by certain newspaper critics and doctrinaires
who are in distress if the literary proprieties are
seemingly violated, and if the temper and blood of