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

DANA: HIS "SUN "'AND ITS CITY 239

Never attack the weak or the defenseless, either by
argument, by invective, or by ridicule, unless there is
some absolute public necessity for so doing.
Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they
contain the whole truth or the only truth.
Support your party, if you have one; but do not think
all the good men are in it and all the bad ones outside
of it.
Above all, know and believe that humanity is advancing; that there is progress in human life and human
affairs; and that, as sure as God lives, the future will
be greater and better than the present or the past.
In other words, don't loaf, don't cheat, don't dissemble, don't bully, don't be narrow, don't grouch.
Mr. Dana's maxims were as applicable to any other
business as to his own. In a lecture delivered at Cornell University in 1894-three years before his deathMr. Dana uttered more maxims " of value to a newspaper-maker ":
Never be in a hurry.
Hold fast to the Constitution.
Stand by the Stars and Stripes. Above all, stand for
liberty, whatever happens.
A word that is not spoken never does any mischief.
All the goodness of a good egg cannot make up for
the badness of a bad one.
If you find you have been wrong, don't fear to say so.
All these maxims were quite as useful to the merchant
as to the newspaperman. They related to the broad
conduct of life. They counselled against folly, so far as
the making of newspapers was concerned, but they did
not convey the mysterious prescription with which Dana
revived American journalism from that trance in which
it had forgotten that everybody is human and that the
English language is alive and fluid.
If there had been rules by which a living newspaper