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

260

THE STORY OF "THE SUN"

and no harm. When he had finished his day in the office
of the Sun, perhaps at writing some instructive paragraphs about the possibilities of American trade in
Nicaragua, he would take off his skull-cap, place a
black soft hat on his gray head, and go forth to dilate
on the advantages of super-Fourierism to some sympathetic audience of socialists.
There was a story in the office that one evening Mr.
Swinton, making a speech at a socialistic gathering, referred hotly to the editor of the Sun as one of the props
of a false form of government, and added that "some
day two old men will come rolling down the steps of the
Sun office," and that at the bottom of the steps he,
Swinton, would be on top.
This may be of a piece with the story about Mr.
Dana and the man with the revolver; but the young men
in the reporters' room liked to tell it to younger men.
It probably had its basis in the fact that on the morning
after a particularly ferocious assault on capital, John
Swinton would poke his head into Mr. Dana's room to
tell him how he had given him the dickens the night
before-information which tickled Mr. Dana immensely.
And Dana never went to the bottom of the Sun stairs
except on his own sturdy legs.
Swinton was a Scotsman, born in Haddingtonshire in
1830. He emigrated to Canada as a boy, learned the
printer's trade, and worked at the case in New York.
After travels all over the country, he lived for a time
in Charleston, South Carolina, and there acquired an
abhorrence for slavery. He went to Kansas and took
part in the Free Soil contest, but returned to New York
in 1857 and began the study of medicine.
While so engaged he contributed articles to the New
York Times, and Henry J. Raymond, who liked his
work, took him as an editorial writer. He was the