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

" SUN" REPORTERS AND THEIR WORK 331

wrote hastily and anonymously for the Sun than in
some of the eight or nine published volumes that bear
his name, and the reason for this is that he was primarily a newspaperman.
He entered the game at fifteen, as an apprentice in
the office of the Red Bank (New Jersey) Standard. At
seventeen he was a city editor and a writer of humour.
At eighteen he had founded the Red Bank Leader-a
failure. At nineteen he was one of the editors of the
Webster (Massachusetts) Times, and at twenty he was
a reporter on the New York Graphic. At twenty-two
he was on the Sun, where he remained from 1875 to
1893.
Ralph was a news man who lacked none of the large
reportorial qualities. He enjoyed seeing new places
and new people. He liked to hunt news-an instinct
missing in some good writers who fail to be great reporters. He liked to write-a taste found too seldom
among men who write well, and too frequently among
the graphomaniacs who fancy that everything is worth
writing, and that perfection lies in an infinite number
of words.
Some one said of Ralph that he "could write five
thousand words about a cobblestone." If he had done
that, it would have been an interesting cobblestone. He
had a passion for detail, but it was not the lifeless and
wearisome detail of the realistic novelist. When he
wrote half a column about a horse eating a woman's
hat, the reader became well acquainted with the horse,
the woman, and the crowd that had looked on.
Ralph was untiring in mind, legs, and fingers. He
liked the big one-man news story, such as an inauguration or a parade, or the general introduction of a national convention. His quiet, easy style, his ability to
cover an event of many hours and much territory, were