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

IN CIVIL WAR TIME

47

by that means, to put down the rising popularity and influence
of the delightful Herald.... Why should I be rated "with
one or two words of blackguardism" because I possess a beautiful squint which every lady that has examined it says is "delicious! My gracious, Mr. Bennett, it is delicious! " I would
not give my squint for all the specie that will be in the Kitchen
Cabinet in June next. Again it was not my fault that Col.
Webb made himself an assassin and violated the laws to put
down the Herald.... I have often tried but never could save
Col. Webb from violating the laws.
And so on for a column. It was with some reason that
Henry Watterson a few years ago ranked James Gordon
Bennett, Sr., as the first of the yellow journalists. Even
as late as the year now in focus for reminiscence, he was
evading a challenge to a circulation wager in this language of consummate impudence, reprinted in James
Melvin Lee's "History of American Journalism" from
the Herald of December 7, 1861:
Mr. Mephistopheles Greeley and that little villain Raymond
are greatly moved upon the subject of the relative circulation
of the Herald and their own petty papers, and are affected to
tears about the matter. We are sorry for them-but their
attempts to inveigle us into a silly bet are absolutely in vain. The
practice of betting is immoral. We cannot approve of it. It may
suit Greeley and Raymond, who have exhibited very little
morality in the conduct of their journals, but it will not do for us.
I wish I might have identified the editor of the Herald
some day descending the high stoop of his Fifth Avenue
mansion so as to have retained an impression of his physical
appearance. He has been described as straight in frame,
keen and straightforward, and as of the representative
type of the New York City business man. The younger
Bennett, however, a tall youth of nineteen or twenty, we

saw often and admired reverently as the beau-ideal of the
man of the world and all around dare-devil. In the neighborhood he was generally credited with the invention of
the new forms of sport then popular thereabouts; such,
for instance, as the game of breaking up the long proces