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

"THE SUN'S" PHILOSOPIIERS AND CRANKS 231
nified and punctilious courtesy, such as he would accord
to a cabinet officer or an ambassador; and so they all
came to love him and the paper.
To hurry over some of the lesser oddities: I recall the
former Sun compositor, otherwise entirely sane, who believed that a vast treasure, like a Captain Kidd deposit,
was concealed somewhere in the walls of the old Tammany
building. He appeared regularly for years, by letter and
sometimes in person, to argue the folly of continuing to
attempt to make money by publishing a newspaper when
wealth beyond the dreams of avarice was within easy
reach if he were permitted to demolish the structure on
a fifty-fifty arrangement with the stockholders. Then
there were the periodic visits of the shabby, patient little
old gentleman who came to the gate to renew the offer
of his manuscript poem for $500; he would make a low
bow when informed that pressure on space prevented the
purchase, politely replying, "Having been an editor myself, I can understand the conditions. I will return when
your columns are less crowded with ephemera. Meanwhile
you may assure Mr. Dana that my epic shall not appear
in any competing publication."
There was the geometrical and metaphysical inventor
of the great system of Magic Reciprocals. This philosopher
obtained results by lining and cross-lining large sheets of
drawing-paper with a ruler and red ink, dividing his
squares into triangles and subdividing the triangles
again and again with diagonals determined by mathematical co-ordinates, the exact principle of which was
never revealed to any of us. The general effect of the com

plex cross-hatching was pleasing to the eye, like lathe work
in the finest bank-note engraving; but the neatness of
mere mechanical execution was forgotten when the inventor explained the significance of the magic reciprocals
thus obtained. One sheet refuted Hegel, another knocked
evolution into a cocked hat, a third cloudy reticuilation