Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

THE DOOR TO THE COMPOSING-ROOM

89

was overruled by Mr. Goddard. Ross was a little man,
dark, always amiable, always with a twinkle in his eye.
He was the author of the nonsense quatrain that went
all over the country at the time of the Beecher trial:
Said a great Congregational preacher
To a hen, "You're a beautiful creature."
The hen, upon that, laid two eggs in his hat,
And thus did the Henry Ward Beecher.
Proud was the day of the first assignment that surpassed the imaginary line dividing the work of the local
reporter from that of the special correspondent sent away
with a free railroad pass and expense money to chronicle
an event of national news importance. True, the event
was a funeral, but it was the funeral of the most-talked-of
man in America.
I had seen Jim Fisk once, standing in the splendor of
his admiral's uniform at the head of the stairway of one
of his Bristol line steamboats, bought for millions from
Uncle Daniel Drew. These self-exhibitions were among
the greatest joys of his singular life. The pose of his fat
figure was magnificent, the sharpness of the waxed
points of his mustache wondrous, and the nautical
dignity of his carriage inimitable as he saluted with
chubby hand the arriving passengers. When a person of
distinction came aboard, like Horace Greeley on one occasion, Admiral and Colonel Fisk insisted on conducting
him in person to the bridal stateroom and making him
the guest of the boat.
Fisk's relations with the 5Massachusetts press had not
been invariably harmonious. Some years earlier Samuel
Bowles, of the Springfield Republican, had described him

as "almost as broad as he is high, and so round that he
rolls rather than walks." This and other utterances of
Bowles's on the subject of financial methods had so
exasperated Fisk that he started a $50,000 libel suit and