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

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MEMOIRS OF AN EDITOR

ing-press, came in to say that to the best of his belief
New York and the country had gone Democratic; and
so I wrote the leader in that sense that night, with the
fateful stethoscope still searching my souL
The next morning when Mr. Dana came down-town he
did not appear to be greatly distressed by the probability
of the election of Cleveland, whom he had opposed for
reasons which it is unnecessary here to analyze; nor elated
by the defeat of Blaine (whom he opposed but in a way secretly loved always), a defeat compassed by the Mugwump
defection, the Coney Island frauds, and the efficiency of
the Reverend Doctor Burchard; nor again by the conspicuous failure of his support of Ben Butler a pi-aller candidate on a platform of administrative reform with greenback-labor declarations which Dana would scarcely touch
with tongs; an enterprise which was to impair the political
prestige of The Sun considerably for several years to come.
All these things upset Mr. Dana not in the least that morning, as far as I could see; but he did exhibit a genuine
and kindly concern when I told of my interview with the
doctor.
"Don't dream of quitting," he said, "till Austin Flint
has overhauled you. Better go right up there now. I'l
give you a letter to him and I'm sure he won't overcharge."
Doctor Austin Flint the senior was then seventy-two
and at the top of his profession. He had been one of Mr.
Dana's most intimate friends in Buffalo when the future
editor was working as a clerk in the grocery and general
store of his uncle William and the young doctor was beginning his brilliant career of practice and medical precept and authorship. Both were members of the Coffee
Club, an association of ardent young fellows who met

weekly to read poetry to each other and settle the great
questions that were stirring in philosophy, politics, or
religion. It was Flint who steered Dana to Harvard in
1839. The tall, courtly physician, with neatly trimmed