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

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THE STORY OF "THE SUN"

editors of the great metropolis, has passed the period
of middle age; though-years apart-he is as blithe and
nimble as the youngest of them, and has performed, with
the Sun, a feat in modern newspaper practice that entitles him to the stag-horns laid down at his death by
James Gordon Bennett. Mr. Dana is no less a writer
and scholar than an editor; as witness his sketch of
Mr. Greeley, which for thorough character-drawing is
unsurpassed. In a word, Mr. Dana at fifty-three is as
vigorous, sinewy, and live as a young buck of thirty-five
or forty.
His professional associates were boys when he was
managing editor of the Tribune. Manton Marble was
at college at Rochester, and Whitelaw Reid was going
to school in Ohio. Young Bennett and Bundy were
wearing short jackets.
They were rough-and-tumble days, sure enough, even
for New York. There was no Central Park. Madison
Square was "out of town." Pranconi's Circus, surnamed a "hippodrome," sprawled its ugly wooden
towers, minarets, and sideshows over the ground now
occupied by the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Miss Flora
McFlimsy of the opposite square had not come into being; nay, Madison Square itself existed in a city ordinance merely, and, like the original of Mr. Praed's Darnell Park, was a wretched waste of common, where the
boys skated and played shinny.
The elder Harpers stood in the shoes now worn by
their sons, who were off at boarding-school. George
Ripley was as larky as John Hay is. Delmonico's,
down-town, was the only Delmonico's. The warfare
between the newspapers constituted the most exciting
topic of the time. Bennett was "Jack Ketch," Raymond was the " little villain," and Greeley was by turns
an "incendiary," a "white-livered poltroon," and a
"free-lover." Parke Godwin and Charles A. Dana were
managing editors respectively; both scholars and both,
as writers, superior to all the rest, except Greeley, who,
as a newspaper writer, never had a superior.
The situation is changed completely. Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond are dead. Dana and Godwin, both