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

SOME "SUN" STORIES

263'

stands out most clearly in the kaleidoscopic maze
slipping backward and forward before our eyes.
Another unforgettable article related to disaster was
Will Irwin's striking story, "The City That Was," printed
the day after the San Francisco earthquake. These were
introductory lines:
The old San Francisco is dead. The gayest, lightest-hearted, most pleasure-loving city of this continent, and in many ways the most interesting and
romantic, is a horde of huddled refugees living among
ruins. It may rebuild; it probably will; but those
who have known that peculiar city by the Golden
Gate, and have caught its flavor of the Arabian
Nights feel that it can never be the same.
It is as though a pretty, frivolous woman had
passed through a great tragedy. She survives, but
she is sobered and different. If it rises out of the
ashes it must be a modern city, much like other
cities and without its old flavor.
There were less than five columns of the article, but
it to(l the whole story of San Francisco; not in dry
figures of commerce and paved streets, but of the people
and places that every Eastern man had longed to see,
but now never could see.
As examples of the work of Sun reporters in murder
trials, let us take three widely separated examples, beginning with the verdict rendered January 5, 1873, against
Edward S. Stokes for the murder of Jim Fisk:
Stokes took his accustomed place, and his relatives
sat down facing the jurors. The judge entered and
took his place. Then, amid the most solemn silence,