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

"THE NEWSPAPER MAN'S NEWSPAPER"

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high grade of literary expression which distinguished all
his acknowledged productions. He never desired or possessed a private secretary. When he had something that
he wanted to say himself in The Sun it was his custom
to send for Tom Williams, his faithful but not overworked stenographer for many years, and to dictate the
article; often at the same time running through the exchanges on the window-seat and perhaps continuing in a
fragmentary way an interrupted conversation with a visitor or responding briefly to some corer-in from another
part of the office, seeking instructions. In thus duplicating or triplicating his mental processes Mr. Dana proved
his remarkable faculty of keeping unentangled the plural
threads of thought, like a chess expert playing several
games at once. His dictation was swift and sure. He
seldom haggled in picking the right word; but when he
got to work upon his proofs he would sometimes spend
hours in furbishing the phrases, returning to the task day
after day, recasting whole paragraphs until the emendations satisfied a fastidious taste.
Thomas F. Williams, Dana's stenographer for a quarter
of a century, was a genius deserving more than a mere
mention in these scattering reminiscences. He was a
sworn Fenian of 1864, a Dublin scholar and journalist,
good as gold and taciturn as an educated clam, with a
little of Mark Twain's physiognomy and a great deal of
Mark Twain's tardiloquence. Like Boyle O'Reilly he
came to this country when presence in Ireland was no
longer possible. For a time he was private secretary to
General Oliver O. Howard of the Freedmen's Bureau.
He took part in the invasion from Maine of Indian Island,
in the Bay of Fundy, when the British flag was captured

and brought back in triumph by the Clan-na-Gael
expeditionists. An ardent fisherman, his sailboat, the
Sand Fla, was frequently in evidence on Sundays in the
lower bay. It was difficult to detect emotion in his sun