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

DAY FINDS A RIVAL IN BENNETT'

S9

demned man's cell. The "Life and Adventures," printed
on the first page of the Sun, ran serially from November
14 to November 25, and was read with avidity.
It was ironical that the hero of the story, who had
expressed to Locke an eagerness to have his career set
before the public in its true light, was prevented from
reading the later installments; for the law, taking no
cognizance of the literary side of the matter, went about
its business, and Fcrnandez was hanged in the Bellevue
yard on the nineteenth, a morning when the Sun's narrative had wrecked the sailor off the coast of Wales.
"Give us one of your real Moscow fires," sighed the
Sun in the first week of its existence.
The prayer was answered a little more than two years
later, when about twenty blocks south of Wall Street,
between lBroad Street and the East River, were consume(l. The fire started late in the evening of Wednes(lay, December 16, 1835, and all that the Sun printed
about it the next morning was one triple-leaded paragraph:
POSTSCRIPT-HALF PAST 1 O'CLOCK-A
TREMENDOUS CONFLAGRATION is now raging in the lower part of the city. The Merchants'
Exchange is in flames. Nearly all the blocks in the
triangle bounded by William and Wall Streets and
the East River are consumed! Several hundred
buildings are already down, and the firemen have
given out. God only knows when the fire will be
arrested.
On Friday morning the Sun had two and a half columns about the fire, and gave an approximately correct