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

SOME GENIUS IN AN OLD ROOM

385

Twenty-five years after the Beecher-Tilton trial a
three-line death-notice came to Clarke's desk. He read
the dead man's name and summoned a reporter.
"This man was a juror in the Beecher case," said
Clarke. "Look in the file of February 6 or 7, 1875,
and I think you'll find that this man stood up and made
an interruption. Write a little piece about it."
A Sun man who reported the funeral of Russell Sage
at Lawrence, Long Island, in July, 1906, returned to
the office and told Mr. Clarke that an acquaintance of
the Sage family had told him, on the train coming back,
the contents of the old man's will-a document for
which the reading public eagerly waited. The reporter
laid his informant's card before the night city editor.
Clarke studied the name on it for a minute, and then
said:
" We won't print the story. Dig out the file for June,
1899, and somewhere on the front page-I think it will
be in the third or fourth column-on the 1st or 2nd of
June you'll find a story telling that this man was sent
to Sing Sing for forgery."
Clarke's memory was right. Although it is anticlimactic to relate it, the ex-convict's description of
what the will contained was also correct.
Will Irwin, while reporting a small war between two
Chinese societies, wrote an article one night about the
arrest of two Hip Sing tong men who were wearing
chain armour under their blouses. Clarke, much interested, asked Irwin all about the armour.
"It reminds me of 'King Solomon's Mines,'" remarked Irwin, "and the chain armour that the heroes
had made in Sheffield to wear in Africa."
" Yes," replied Clarke, who had not read the Haggard
novel in fifteen years; "but it wasn't Sheffield-it was
Birmingham."