The story of the Sun, New York, 1833-1918 / by Frank M. O'Brien.

156

THE STORY OP "THE SUN"

marked civility, attention, and respect. We should be
ashamed of our countrymen if it were otherwise. During his stay at Boston the citizens gave him a public
dinner. At New Haven he received a similar token of
kind regard. In this city a ball has been given him.
All these attentions were right and proper, and as far
as we can learn they have been uniformly conducted in
a gentlemanly and respectable manner, becoming alike
to the characters of those who gave and him who received them.
But a few penny-catchers of the press are determined
to make money out of Boz. The shop-windows are
stuffed with lithograph likenesses of him, which resemble the original just about as much as he resembles
a horse. His own wife would not recognize them in
any other way than by the word " Boz " written under
them.
Then a corps of sneaking reporters, most of them
fresh from London, are pursuing him like a pack of
hounds at his heels to catch every wink of his eye, every
motion of his hands, and every word that he speaks, to
be dished up with all conceivable embellishments by
pen and pencil, and published in extras, pamphlets, and
handbills. To make all this trash sell well in the market,
the greatest possible hurrah must be made by the papers interested in the speculations, and therefore the
whole American people are basely caricatured by them,
and represented as one vast mob following Dickens from
place to place, and striving even to touch the hem of
his garment.
That our readers at a distance may not be induced to
suppose that the good people of New York are befooling
themselves in this way, we beg leave to assure them that
all these absurd reports are ridiculous caricatures,
hatched from the prolific brains of a few reckless reporters for a few unprincipled papers. They do in truth
make as great fools of themselves as they represent the
public to be generally. But beyond their narrow and
contemptible circle we are happy to know that Mr.
Dickens is treated with that manly and sincere respect
which is so justly his due, and which must convince him