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

HOW I WENT TO "THE SUN"

109

four little pages for two cents were studied with increasing
surprise and admiration. It seemed to a doubtless undeveloped critical sense that notwithstanding its unimposing dimensions The Sun was something new and desirable; a model of brevity where brevity was indicated,
of unconventionality in the apportionment of readingmatter to meet human interest, of spirited expression
guided by uncommon literary taste and humor in the
editorial articles. It had already gone far from Republican
orthodoxy in its progress toward independence of party.
I cared not much for this; the point of view was that of
workmanship. Governor Dingley, down from Augusta
over Sunday, used on Monday mornings to come into my
small room next to the compositors' quarters and find
me reading The Sun, perhaps to the neglect of the tariff
or election news needed for the leader in that afternoon's
Journal which he had not time to write himself. He would
shake his head, remarking "Dana's a good teacher for
condensation and for saying what you want to say, but
as to what he generally wants to say!-" and the governor, without further comment, would withdraw to
take the train for the State capital.
Those editorial articles especially, before I came to
know the true inwardness of the New York establishment,
were a source of unending speculation. Surely, Dana did
not write them all. If not, which of the remarkably diverse individualities appearing on the page was to be
identified with him? Three salient and very distinct styles
of editorial English provoked my keen curiosity.
The first style was the modernized Addisonian of the
Spectator essays, infused with well-bred humor, sometimes
gentle, sometimes sly, occasionally even mordant, but

with a bite that never deposited venom. It was employed
on a wide range of subjects-the minor moralities, the
social amenities and transgressions, the inexhaustible
questions of non-polemic theology, of sentiment particu