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

38

THE STORY OF "THE DUN"

poets. With Morris it was not a hollow vocation, for
the author of " Woodman, Spare That Tree," could always get fifty dollars for a song. He and Willis ran
the Mirror and later the New Mirror, and wrote verse
and other fanciful stuff by the bushel. Philip Hone
would have been the best reporter in New York, as his
diary reveals, but he was of the aristocracy, and he
seems to have scorned newspapermen, particularly
Webb and Bennett.
But somehow, by that chance which seemed to smile
on the Sun, Ben Day got clever reporters. He wanted
one to do the police-court work, for he saw, from
the first day of the paper, that that was the kind of
stuff that his readers devoured. To them the details of
a beating administered by James Hawkins to his wife
were of more import than Jackson's assaults on the
United States Bank.
X When George W. Wisner, a young printer who was
out of work, applied to the Sun for a job, Day told
him that he would give him four dollars a week if he
would get up early every day and attend the policecourt, which held its sessions from 4 A.M. on. The people of the city were quite as human then as they are
to-day. Unregenerate mortals got drunk and fought
in the streets. Others stole shoes. The worst of all
beat their wives. Wisner was to be the Balzac of the
daybreak court in a year when Balzac himself was writing his "Droll Stories."
The second issue of the Sun continued the typographical error of the day before. The year in the date-line of
the second page was " 1832." The big news in this
paper was under date of Plymouth, England, August 1,
and it told of the capture of Lisbon by Admiral Napier
on the 25th of July. Day-or perhaps it was Wisnerwrote an editorial article about it: