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

24 THE STORY OF "THE SUN"
ascensions, and quoted Napoleon as saying that the only.insurmountable difficulty of the balloon in war was the
impossibility of guiding its course. "This difficulty Dr.
Dura.t is now endeavoring to obviate." And the Sun
added:
May we not therefore look to the time, in perspective, when our atmosphere will be traversed with
as much facility as our waters?
The union printers were lively even in the first days
of the Sun, which announced, on October 21, 1833, that
the Journal of Commerce paid its journeymen only ten
dollars a week, and added:
The proprietors of other morning papers cheerfully pay twelve dollars. ''Therefore, the office of the
Journal of Commerce is what printers term a rat
office-and the term "rat," with the followers of the
same profession with Faust, Franklin, and Stanhope,
is a most odious term.
At the end of its first month the Sun was getting more
and more advertising. Its news was lively en)ough, considering the times. Rum, the cholera in Mexico, assassinations in the South, the police court, the tour of Ienry
Clay, and poems by Walter Scott were its long suit.
The circulation of the little paper was now about twelve
hundred copies, and the future seemed promising, even
if Mr. I)ay did print, at susplicioLsly frequent intervals,
articles inveighing against the dlebtors'-prison law.
The Astor House was at first to be called the Park
Hotel, for the Sun of October 29, 1833, announced
editorially: