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

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MEMOIRS OF AN EDITOR

brought me into not infrequent contact with him after
Mr. Dana's death. Once, I remember, he besought aid
in blocking a foolish plan to remove the City Hall to the
site of the old Croton Reservoir at Forty-second Street,
and thus make room for a vast municipal building in the
park down-town. John Bigelow foresaw the use of the
reservoir site for the united Astor, Lenox, and Tilden institutions. Andrew H. Green, the father of the Greater New
York, was another of The Sun's friends who plotted with
the newspapers for large public ends; like Tilden's, his
manner of approach was a bit furtive or slantindicular,
so that one who did not know him well might suppose him
engaged in an unholy conspiracy when his purpose was
really noble and unselfish.
Looking down again from the window, I see Miss
Middy Morgan, with the frame of an Amazon and the
sweetly bland face of a baby, striding along Park Row in
cowhide boots on her way from the cattle-yards to the
Tribune. She was a better judge of hored beasts than
Greeley. The first and most capable woman reporter of the
live-stock mart, she shared with Mrs. Emily V. Battey
of The Sun the honor of being the pioneers, so far as I am
aware, of that extensive and important reinforcement
which has made working journalism bisexual. Not far
behind Middy Morgan, perhaps, Doctor Mary Walker
would pass by; a good sincere woman, if an unsuccessful
reformer, braving the derision of the thoughtless with the
courage of her trousers. One day I looked down upon a
gun-carriage stopped by a blockade of traffic right under
the window at the Frankfort Street corner. The guncarriage conveyed the coffin of General Joe Wheeler of
Alabama, gallant, peppery little soldier of the Confederacy

and of the Union, who had always been a welcome visitor
to the room where I stood. Another day at the same spot
a crowd had gathered around a halted barouche of ceremony containing Li Hang Chang, a statesman elongate