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

46

MEMOIRS OF AN EDITOR

the fires that burned behind it. On the contrary, his
countenance wore an expression of anxiety, almost of
anguish, as he steered his steed with caution through
the stream of omnibuses, drays, and delivery-wagons.
Mr. Greeley's horsemanship must be described not only
as tentative but also as slouchy. He wore no straps to
his trousers and as he rode one leg of them had worked
half-way up to the knee while the other, perhaps, was
mounting more ambitiously the second third of his respectable thigh.
The elder Bennett, too,' lived near by at the corner of
Thirty-eighth Street. I don't remember ever seeing the
cynical Scot-Frenchman who had made the young Herald
readable by reporting with fidelity, under the headline
"Bennett Thrashed Again," the repeated assaults of
James Watson Webb of the Courier and Enquirer. The
latter used to take a day off now and then for the purpose
of inflicting bodily chastisement upon his contemporary.
Bennett also made things cheerful for his readers by such
monkeyish performances as the announcement of an
approaching matrimonial event of particular interest to
himself, heading the same: "Declaration of Love-Caught
at Last-Going to be Married-New Movement in Civilization," and adding editorially: "The holy estate of
wedlock will only increase my desire to be useful."
I find a good specimen of Bennett's early editorial
style in an old number of the Herald which happens to
turn up for the occasion. The date is April 29, 1837, and
under the title "A Word or Two of Blackguardism" the
editor is replying to a Philadelphia controversialist:
I confess honestly that I have a slight squint in my left eye,

but I am comforted with the idea that the ladies —the sweet
and beautiful ladies-who have examined it minutely, do say
it is a delicious squint, unlike any one they ever looked into.
"Dear Bennett," they say, turning up their pretty soft liquid
eyes, "it will make your fortune." I also admit that I have
been twice assailed by Webb in Wall Street, who attempted,