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

SOME GENIUS IN AN OLD ROOM

373

Presbyterian clergyman who was chaplain of the One
Hundred and Tenth Regiment of New York Volunteer
Infantry in the Civil War. Chester Lord studied at
Hamilton College in 1869 and 1870, and went from
college to be associate editor of the Oswego Advertiser.
In 1872 he came to the Sun as a reporter, and covered
part of Horace Greeley's campaign for the Presidency
in that year. After nine months as a reporter he was
assigned by the managing editor, Cummings, to the suburban desk, where he remained for four years.
In the fall of 1877 he bought the Syracuse Standard,
but in six weeks he returned to the Sun and became
assistant night city editor under Ambrose W. Lyman,
the predecessor of S. M. Clarke. Ballard Smith, who
succeeded William Young as managing editor in 1878,
named Lord as his assistant, and Lord succeeded Ballard Smith as managing editor on December 3, 1880.
For thirty-three years Lord inspected applicants for
places in the news departments of the Sun, and decided
whether they would fit into the human structure that
Dana had built. Edward G. Riggs, who knew him as
well as any one, has written thus of him:
Like Dana, he has been a great judge of men. His
discernment has been little short of miraculous. Calm,
dispassionate, without the slightest atom of impulse,
as wise as a serpent and as gentle as a dove, Lord got
about him a staff that has been regarded by newspapermen as the most brilliant in the country. Independent
of thought, with a placid idea of the dignity of his place,
ever ready to concede the other fellow's point of view
even though maintaining his own, Lord was never
known in all the years of his managing editorship of
the Sun to utter an unkind word to any man on the
paper, no matter how humble his station.

One of Lord's notable performances as managing