B 9483489 GRAD 808.9 N533 8957 013 MuE '^ --- —-`-I-~--~1-"7- II'-- "ll —~---I1-"~~1.~-~1- ` --- —11-lL - -I ~........ "._..:.:;...:......_.`. -_.:.. =:.1'.-.._ `.; `.-: 1 - '.. -_ r1-;."~: -- --— r ----— r -.-~- —e..-.--` —` --- —;l-i5' r.-..-.;i — ~.- --- —— --- - 'l'n"T~irr ---s?; ---.... -—..-. —;;~ -r .... - — --- ---- O.W. —. "O I.T - - 46"Wo.0,.. - — %,j I - - - qp_ I , i yJ-3 3 S ~57 0/3 II I BENJAMT-N H. DAY, FOUNDER OF 'THE SUN'" V y i "1 NEW YORK, 1833-1918 BY t% FRANK M.~O'BRIEN WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY EDWARD PAGE MITCHELL, EDITOR OF "THE SUN-ILUSTATINSAND FCIIE NEW YORK: GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY Copyright, 1918, By George H. Doran Company Copyright, 1917, 1918, The Frank A. Munsey Compay Copyright, 1918, The Sun Printing and Publishing Assooiation Printed in the United States of America TO FRANK A. MUNSEY AN INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR OF THE SUN T is truer, perhaps, of a newspaper than of most other complex things in the world that the whole may be greater than the sum of all its parts. In any daily paper worth a moment's consideration the least fancifully inclined observer will discern an individuality apart from and in a degree independent of the dozens or hundreds or thousands of personal values entering at a given time into the composite of its grey pages. This entity of the institution, as distinguished from the human beings actually engaged in carrying it on, this fact of the newspaper's possession of a separate countenance, a spirit or soul differentiating it from all others of its kind, is recognised either consciously or unconsciously by both the more or less unimportant workers who help to make it and by their silent partners who support it by buying and reading it. Its loyal friends and intelligent critics outside the establishment, the Old Subscriber and the Constant Reader, form the habit of attributing to the newspaper, as to an individual, qualities and powers beneficent or maleficent or merely foolish, according to their mood or digestion. They credit it with traits of character quite as distinct as belong to any man or woman of their acquaintance. They personify it, moreover, without much kuowledge, if any, of the people directing and producing it; and, often and naturally, without any particuvii viii INTRODUCTION lar concern about who and what these people may be. On their own side, the makers of the paper are accustomed to individualise it as vividly as a crew does the ship. They know better than anybody else not only how far each personal factor, each element of the composite, is modified and influenced in its workings by the other personal factors associated in the production, but also the extent to which all the personal units are influenced and modified by something not listed in the office directory or visible upon the payroll; something that was there before they came and will be there after they go. Of course, that which has given persistent idiosyncrasy to a newspaper like the Sun, for example, is accumulated tradition. That which has made the whole count for more than the sum total of its parts, in the Sun's case as in the case of its esteemed contemporaries, is the heritage of method and expedient, the increment of standardised skill and localised imagination contributed through many years to the fund of the paper by the forgotten worker as well as by the remembered. The manner of growth of the great newspaper's welldefined and continuous character, distinguishing it from all the rest of the offspring of the printing press, a development sometimes not radically affected by changes of personnel, of ownership, of exterior conditions and fashions set by the popular taste, is a subject over which journalistic metaphysics might easily exert itself to the verge of boredom. Fortunately there has been found a much better way to deal with the attractive theme. 4 The Sun is eighty-five years old as this book goes to press. In telling its intimate story, from the September Tuesday which saw the beginning of Mr. Day's intrepid and epochal experiment, throughout the days INTRODUCTION ix of the Beaches, of Dana, of Laffan, and of Reick to the time of Mr. Munsey's purchase of the property in the summer of 1916, Mr. O'Brien has done what has never been undertaken before, so far as is known to the writer of this introduction, for any newspaper with a career of considerable span. There have been general histories of Journalism, presenting casually the main facts of evolution and progress in the special instance. There have been satisfactory narratives of journalistic episodes, reasonably accurate accounts of certain aspects or dynastic periods of newspaper experience, excellent portrait biographies or autobiographies of journalists of genius and high achievement, with the eminent man usually in strong light in the foreground and his newspaper seldom nearer than the middle distance. But here, probably for the first time in literature of this sort, we have a peaLbiography of a newspaper itself, covering the whole range of its existence, exhibiting every function of its organism, illustrating every quality that has been conspicuous in the successive stages of its growth. The Sun is the hero of Mr. O'Brien's " Story of the Sun." The human participants figure in their incidental relation to the main thread of its life and activities. They do their parts, big or little, as they pass in interesting procession. When they have done their parts they disappear, as in real life, and the story goes on, just as the Sun has gone on, without them except as they may have left their personal impress on the newspaper's structure or its superficial decoration. During no small part of its four score and five years of intelligent interest in the world's thoughts and doings it has been the Sun's fortune to be regarded as in a somewhat exceptional sense the newspaper man's newspaper. If in truth it has merited in any degree X INTRODUCTION this peculiar distinction in the eyes of its professional brethren it must have been by reason of originality of initiative and soundness of method; perhaps by a chronic indifference to those ancient conventions of news importance or of editorial phraseology which, when systematically observed, are apt to result in a pale, dull, or even stupid uniformity of product. Mr. Dana wrote more than half a century ago to one of his associates, " Your articles have stirred up the animals, which you as well as I recognise as one of the great ends of life." Sometimes he borrowed Titania's wand; sometimes he used a red hot poker. Not only in that great editor's time but also in the time of his predecessors and successors the Sun has held it to be a duty and a joy to assist to the best of its ability in the discouragement of anything like lethargy in the menagerie. Perhaps, again, that was one of the things that helped to make it the newspaper man's newspaper. However this may be, it seems certain that to the students of the theory and practice of journalism, now happily so numerous in the land, the chronicler of one highly individual newspaper's deeds and ways is affording an object lesson of practical value, a textbook of technical usefulness, as well as a store of authoritative history, entertaining anecdote, and suggestive professional information. And a much wider audience than is made up of newspaper workers present or to come will find that the story of a newspaper which Mr. O'Brien has told with wit and knowledge in the pages that follow becomes naturally and inevitably a swift and charming picture of the town in which that newspaper is published throughout the period of its service to that town-the most interesting period in the existence of the most interesting city of the world. It is a fine thing for the Sun, by all who have worked INTRODUCTION xi for it in its own spirit beloved, I believe, like a creature of flesh and blood and living intelligence and human virtues and failings, that through Mr. Munsey's wish it should have found in a son of its own schooling a biographer and interpreter so sympathetically responsive to its best traditions. EDWARD P. MITCHELL. I CONTENTS CHAPTER I /'3 /9/iT SUNRISE AT 222 WILLIAM STREET PAGE Benjamin H. Day, with No Capital Except Youth and Courage, Establishes the First Permanent Penny Newspaper.-The Curious First Number Entirely His Own Work.. 21 CHAPTER II THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE " SUN " A Very Small Metropolis Which Day and His Partner, Wisner, Awoke by Printing Small Eur JSan 4, a.aastS^.~,11~^a e^nBeings and Having Boys Cry the Paper.. 31 CHAPTER III RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX A Magnificent Fake Which Deceived Two Continents, Brought to " The Sun" the Largest Circulation in the World and, in Poe's Opinion, Established Penny Papers.. 64 xiii xiv CONTENTS CHAPTER IV DAY FINDS A RIVAL IN BENNETT PAGE The Success of " The Sun Leads to the Founding of The I"Herald.'^-ntnterprises and Quar. rels of a Furious Young Journalism.-The Picturesque Webb.-Maria Monk.. 103 CHAPTER V NEW YORK LIFE IN THE THIRTIES A Sprightly City Which Daily Bought Thirty Thousand copies of " The Sun."-The Rush to Start Penny Papers.-IDx&lis _" The uan" for FQrt kusand Dol_.. 121 CHAPTER VI MQaEJS Y. B ERA OF HUSTLE " Thf Sun_" Uses Albany Steamboats, Horse oExpresses, Trotting Teams, Pigeons, and the T1eegrapi to Get News.-Poe's Famous Balloon Hoa &iS he-Case of Mary Rodgers.139 CHAPTER VII THE SUN " IN THE MEXICAN WAR Moses Y. Beach as an Emissary of President Polk.-The Aso dt Press Founded in he Office of " The Sun." —Ben Day's Brother-inL ew tvees withi Smallor.tune... 164 ,CONTENTS XV CHAPTER VIII THE SUN " DURING THE CIVIL WAR PAGE One of the Few Entirely Loyal Newspapers of New York.-Its Brief Ownership by a Religious Coterie.-It Returns to the Possession of M SBLJ hac Eh lt a. 172 CHAPTER IX THE EARLIER CAREER OF DANA His Life at Brook Farm and His Tribune Experience.-His Break with Greeley, His Civil War Services and His Chicago Disappointment.His Purchase of "The Sun".. 202 CHAPTER X DANA: HIS " SUN" AND ITS CITY e Period of he Great Personal Journalists.Dana's Avoidance of Rules and Musty Newspaper Conventions.-His Cloice of Men and His Broad Definition of News... 233 CHAPTER XI DANA, AS MITCHELL SAW HIM A Picture of the Roam Where Oaie an Ruled for - Th4ity.EYar?-T Democratic Ways of a Newspaper Autocrat."-W. O. Bartlett, Pike, and His Other Edrly Associates... 247 xvi CONTENTS CHAPTER XII DANA'S FIRST BIG NEWS MEN PAaG Amos J. Cummings,'Dr. Wood, and John B. Bogart.-The Lively Days of Tweedism.Elihu Root as a Dramatic Critic.-The Birth and Popularity of "The Sun's " Cat.. 262 CHAPTER XIII DANA'S FAMOUS RIVALS PASS The Deaths of Raymond, Benn.e.tt,.,aW Greeley Leave Him the Dominant Figure of the American Newspaper Field.-Dana's Dream of a Paper Without Advertisements.. 293 CHAPTER XIV / "THE SUN " AND THE GRANT SCANDALS Dana's Relentless Fight Against the Whisky Ring, the Credit Mobilier, "Addition, Division, and Silence," the Safe Burglary Conspiracy and the Boss Shepherd Scandal. 304 CHAPTER XV THE SUN" AND "A HUMAN INTEREST" Something About.Everything, for.Everybody.-A Wonderful Four-Page Paper.-A Comparison of the Styles of " Sun" Reporters in Three Periods Twenty Years Apart.... 313 CONTENTS xvii CHAPTER XVI "SUN" REPORTERS AND THEIR WORK PAGI Cummings, Ralph, W. J. Chamberlin, Brisbane, Riggs, Dieuaide, Spears, O. K. Davis, Irwin, Adams, Denison, Wood, O'Malley, Hill, Cronyn.-Spaiish War "Work...328 CHAPTER XVII SOME GENIUS IN AN OLD ROOM Lord, Mno-for- I er Clarke, Magician of the Copy Desk.-Ethics, Fair Play and Democracy.-" The Evening Sun " and Those Who Make It...369 CHAPTER XVIII THE FINEST SIDE OF " THE SUN " Literary Associations of an Editorial Department That Has Encouraged and Attracted Men of Imagination and Talent.-Mitchell, Hazeltine, Church, and Their Colleagues.. 402 CHAPTER XIX "THE SUN" AND YELLOW JOURNALISM L:y ' ' The Coming and Going of a Newspaper Disease. -Dana's Attitude Tord President Cleveland.-Dana's Death!.-1wnerships of Paul Dana, Laffan, Reick, and Munsey..413 Bibliography........ 435 Chronology........ 437 Index.......... 493 ILLUSTRATIONS BENJAMIN H. DAY, FOUNDER OF "THE SUN". Frontispiece PAGE BENJAMIN H. DAY, A BUST.......22 THE FIRST ISSUE OF "THE SUN. 28 THE FIRST HOME OF "THE SUN"...34 THE SECOND HOME OF "THE SUN.. 34 BARNEY WILLIAMS, THE FIRST NEWSBOY.... 50 RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE, AUTHOR OF THE MOON HOAX. 68 THE FIRST INSTALMENT OF THE MOON HOAX... 96 A MOON SCENE, FROM LOCKE'S GREAT DECEPTION..96 MOSES YALE BEACH, SECOND OWNER OF "THE SUN"..124 AN EXTRA OF "THE SUN. 136 THE THIRD HOME OF "THE SUN"...136 MOSES SPERRY BEACH........166 ALFRED ELY BEACH........170 CHARLES A. DANA AT THIRTY-EIGHT.....204 MR. DANA AT FIFTY........ 224 THE FIRST NUMBER OF t THE SUN" UNDER DANA..236 THE HOME OF "THE SUN" FROM 1868 TO 1915...236 MR. DANA IN HIS OFFICE.......248 JOSEPH PULITZER..... 258 ELIHU ROOT........258 JUDGE WILLARD BARTLETT.......258 MR. DANA AT SEVENTY........ 270 AMOS JAY CUMMINGS....... 280 DANIEL F. KELLOGG........290 AMOS B. STILLMAN......... 290 JOHN B. BOGART........290 xix xx xx ILLUSTRATIONS JAMES GORDON BENNETT, SR. HORACE GREELEY HENRY J. RAYMOND JULIAN RALPH ARTHUR BRISBANE EDWARD G. RIGGS CHESTER SANDERS LORD SELAH MERRILL CLARKE SAMUEL A. WOOD OSCAR KING DAVIS THOMAS M. DIEUAIDE SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS WILL IRWIN. FRANK WARD 0 'MALLEY EDWIN C. HILL. PAUL DANA.. WILLIAM M. LA.FTAN WILLIAM C. REICK. FRANK A. MUNSEY. EDWARD PAGE MITCHELL PAGE 300 300 300 316 330 350 370 380 390 390 390 390 398 398 398 404 410 *... 416 *... 422 430 THE STORY OF 'Q'z g - I line ~urr I THE STORY OF "THE SUN" CHAPTER I SUNRISE AT 222 WILLIAM STREET Benjamin H. Day, with No Capital Except Youth and Courage, Establishes the First Permanent Penny Newspaper. -The Curious First Number Entirely His Own Work. IN the early thirties of last century the only newspapers in the city of New York were six-cent journals whose reading-matter was adapted to the politics of men, and whose only appeal to women was their size, perfectly suited to deep pantry-shelves. Dave Ramsey, a compositor on one of these sixpennies, the Journal of Commerce, had an obsession. It was that a penny paper, to be called the Sun, would be a success in a city full of persons whose interest was in humanity in general, rather than in politics, and whose pantry-shelves were of negligible width. Why his mind fastened on the Sun as the name of this child of his vision is not known; perhaps it was because there was a daily in London bearing that title. It was a short name, easily written, easily spoken, easily remembered. Benjamin H. Day, another printer, worked beside Dave Ramsey in 1830. Ramsey reiterated his idea to his neighbour so often that Day came to believe in it, although it is doubtful whether he had the great faith that possessed Ramsey. Now that due credit has been given to Ramsey for the idea of the penny Sun, he 21 22 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" passes out of the record, for he never attempted to put his project into execution. Nor was Day's enthusiasm for a penny Sun so big that he plunged into it at once. He was a business man rather than a visionary. With the savings from his wages as a compositor he went into the job-printing business in a small way. He still met his old chums and still talked of the Sun, but it is likely that he never would have come to start it if it had not been for the cholera. 1' There was an epidemic of this plague in New York in 1832. It killed more than thirty-five hundred people in that year, and added to the depression of business already caused by financial disturbances and a wretched banking system. The job-printing trade suffered with other industries, and Day decided that he needed a newspaper-not to reform, not to uplift, not to arouse, but to push the printing business of Benjamin H. Day. Incidentally he might add lustre to the fame of the President, Andrew Jackson, or uphold the hands of the mayor of New York, Gideon Lee; but his prime purpose was to get the work of printing handbills for John Smith, the grocer, or letter-heads for Richard Robinson, the dealer in hay. Incidentally he might become rich and powerful, but for the time being he needed work at his trade. Ben Day was only twenty-three years old. He was the son of Henry Day, a hatter of West Springfield, Massachusetts, and Mary Ely Day; and sixth in descent from his first American ancestor, Robert Day. Shortly after the establishment of the Springfield Republican by Samuel Bowles, in 1824, young Day went into the office of that paper, then a weekly, to learn the printer's trade. That was two years before the birth of the second and greater Samuel Bowles, who was later to BENJAMIN H. DAY A Bust in the Possession of Mrs. Florence A. Snyder, Summit, N. J. SUNRISE AT 222 WILLIAM STREET 23 make the Republican, as a daily, one of the greatest of American newspapers. Day learned well his trade from Sam Bowles. When he was twenty, and a first-class compositor, he went to New York, and worked at the case in the offices of the Evening Post and the Commercial Advertiser. He married, when he was twenty-one, Miss Eveline Shepard. At the time of the Sun's founding Mr. Day lived, with his wife and their infant son, Henry, at 75 Duane Street, only a few blocks from the newspaper offices. Day was a good-looking young man with a round, calm, resolute face. He possessed health, industry, and character. Also he had courage, for a man with a family was taking no small risk in launching, without capital, a paper to be sold at one cent. yThe idea of a penny paper was not new. In Philadelphia, the Cent had had a brief, inglorious existence. In Boston, the Bostonian had failed to attract the cultured readers of the modern Athens. Eight months before Day's hour arrived the Morning Post had braved it in New York, selling first at two cents and later at one cent, but even with Horace Greeley as one of the founders it lasted only three weeks. When Ben Day sounded his friends, particularly the printers, as to their opinion of his project, they cited the doleful fate of the other penny journals. He drew, or had designed, a head-line for the Sun that was to be, and took it about to his cronies. A. S. Abell, a printer on the Mercantile Advertiser, poked the most fun at him. A penny paper, indeed! But this same Abell lived to stop scoffing, to found another Sun-this one in Baltimore-and to buy a half-million-dollar estate out of the profits of it. He was the second beneficiary of the penny Sun idea. William M. Swain, another journeyman printer, also 24 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" made light of Day's ambition. He lived to be Day's foreman, and later to own the Philadelphia Public Ledger. He told Day that the penny Sun would ruin him. As Day had not much enthusiasm at the outset, surely his friends did not add to it, unless by kindling his stubbornness. As for capital, he had none at all, in the money sense. He did have a printing-press, hardly improved from the machine of Benjamin Franklin's day, some job-paper, and plenty of type. The press would throw off two hundred impressions an hour at full speed, man power. He hired a room, twelve by sixteen feet, in the building at 222 William Street. That building was still there, in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge approach, when the Sun celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1883; but a modern six-story envelope factory is on the site to-day. There is no question as to the general authorship of the first paper. Day was proprietor, publisher, editor, chief pressman, and mailing-clerk. He was not a lazy man. He stayed up all the night before that fateful Tuesday, September 3, 1833, setting with his own hands some advertisements that were regularly appearing in the six-cent papers, for he wanted to make a show of prosperity. He also wrote, or clipped from some out-of-town newspaper, a poem that would fill nearly a column. He rewrote news items from the West and South-some of them not more than a month old. As for the snappy local news of the day, he bought, in the small hours of that Tuesday morning, a copy of the Courier and Enquirer, the livest of the six-cent papers, took it to the single room in William Street, clipped out or rewrote the police-court items, and set them up himself. A boy, whose name is unknown to fame, assisted him at devil's work. A journeyman printer, Parmlee, helped SUNRISE AT 222 WILLIAM STREET 25 with the press when the last quoin had been made tight in the fourth and last of the little pages. The sun was well up in the sky before its namesake of New York came slowly, hesitatingly, almost sadly, up over the horizon of journalism-never to set! In the years to follow, the Sun was to have changes in ownership, in policy, in size, and in style, but no weekday was to come when it could not shine. Of all the morning newspapers printed in New York on that 3rd of September, 1833, there is only one other-the Journal of Commerce-left. But young Mr. Day, wiping the ink from his hands at noon, and waiting in doubt to see whether the public would buy the thousand Suns he had printed, could not foresee this. Neither could he know that, by this humble effort to exalt his printing business, he had driven! a knife into the sclerotic heart of ancient journalism. The sixpenny papers were to laugh at this tiny intruder -to laugh and laugh, and to die. The size of the first Sun was eleven and one-quarter by eight inches, not a great deal bigger than a sheet of commercial letter paper, and considerably less than onequarter the size of a page of the Sun of to-day. Compared with the first Sun, the present newspaper is about sixteen times larger. The type was a good, plain face of agate, with some verse on the last page in nonpareil. An almost perfect reprint of the first Sun was issued as a supplement to the paper on its twentieth birthday, in 1853, and again-to the number of about one hundred and sixty thousand copies-on its fiftieth birthday, in 1883. Many of the persons who treasure the replicas of 1883 believe them to be original first numbers, as they were not labelled " Presented gratuitously to the subscribers of the Sun," as was the issue of 1853. Hardly a month passes by but the Sun receives one of 26 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" them from some proud owner. It is easy, however, to tell the reprint from the original, for Mr. Day in his haste committed an error at the masthead of the editorial or second page of the first number. The date-line there reads " September 3, 1832," while in the reprints it is " September 3, 1833," as it should have been, but wasn't, in the original. And there are minor typographical differences, invisible to the layman. Of the thousand, or fewer, copies of the first Sun, only five are known to exist-one in the bound file of the Sun's first year, held jealously in the Sun's safe; one in the private library of the editor of the Sun, Edward Page Mitchell; one in the Public Library at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street, New York; and two in the library of the American Type Founders Company, Jersey City. There were three columns on each of the four pages. At the top of the first column on the front page was a modest announcement of the Sun's ambitions: The object of this paper is to lay before the public, at a price within the means of every one, ALL THE NEWS OF THE DAY, and at the same time afford an advantageous medium for advertising. It was added that the subscription in advance was three dollars a year, and that yearly advertisers were to be accommodated with ten lines every day for thirty dollars per annum-ten cents a day, or one cent a line. That was the old fashion of advertising. The friendly merchant bought thirty dollars' worth of space, say in December, and inserted an advertisement of his fur coats or snow-shovels. The same advertisement might be in the paper the following July, for the newspapers made no effort to coordinate the needs of the seller SUNRISE AT 222 WILLIAM STREET 27 and the buyer. So long as the merchant kept his name regularly in print, he felt that was enough. The leading article on the first page was a semihumorous story about an Irish captain and his duels. It was flanked by a piece of reprint concerning microscopic carved toys. There was a paragraph about a. Vermont boy so addicted to whistling that he fell ill of it. Mr. Day's apprentice may have needed this warning. The front-page advertising, culled from other newspapers and printed for effect, consisted of the notices of steamship sailings. In one of these Commodore Vanderbilt offered to carry passengers from New York to Hartford, by daylight, for one dollar, on his splendid low-pressure steamboat Water Witch. Cornelius Vanderbilt was then thirty-nine years old, and had made the boat line between New York and New Brunswick, New Jersey, pay him forty thousand dollars a year. When the Sun started, the commodore was at the height of his activity, and he stuck to the water for thirty years afterward, until he had accumulated something like forty million dollars. E. K. Collins had not yet established his famous Dramatic line of clipper-ships between New York and Liverpool, but he advertised the " very fast sailing coppered ship Nashville for New Orleans." He was only thirty then. Cooks were advertised for by private families living in Broadway, near Canal Street-pretty far up-town to live at that day-and in Temple Street, near Liberty, pretty far down-town now. On the second page was a bit of real news, the melancholy suicide of a young Bostonian of " engaging manners and amiable disposition," in Webb's Congress Hall, a hotel. There were also two local anecdotes; a paragraph to the effect that " the city is nearly full of 28 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" strangers from all parts of this country and Europe "; nine police-court items, nearly all concerning trivial assaults; news of murders committed in Florida, at Easton, Pennsylvania, and at Columbus, Ohio; a report of an earthquake at Charlottesville, Virginia, and a few lines of stray news from Mexico. The third page had the arrivals and clearances at the port of New York, a joke about the cholera in New Orleans, a line to say that the same disease had appeared in the City of Mexico, an item about an insurrection in the Ohio penitentiary, a marriage announcement, a death notice, some ship and auction advertisements, and the offer of a reward of one thousand dollars for the recovery of thirteen thousand six hundred dollars stolen from the mail stage between Boston and Lynn and the arrest of the thieves. The last page carried a poem, " A Noon Scene," but the atmosphere was of the Elysian Fields over in Hoboken rather than of midday in the city. When Day scissored it, probably he did so with the idea that it would fill a column. Another good filler was the banknote table, copied from a six-cent contemporary. The quotations indicated that not much of the bank currency of the day was accepted at par. The rest of the page was filled with borrowed advertising. The Globe Insurance Company, of which John Jacob Astor was a director, announced that it had a capital of a million dollars. The North River Insurance Company, whose directorate included William B. Astor, declared its willingness to insure against fire and against "loss or damage by inland navigation." At that time the boilers of river steamboats had an unpleasant trick of blowing up; hence Commodore Vanderbilt's mention of the low pressure of the Water Witch. John A. Dix, then Secretary of State of the State of 0I NEW YORK(, TUESDAN, SEPTEMBER~ 3 1833. (Pittm 088 PRO"v BULISMED DAILY, ANIIHCPAN -4dYUhds o, n. AT SWILUAW ST — IX V. AV,n tAa. r L vc~~~booatb. W p" beFew.t % dent ofhi aquaintae*., "and have.u doe oeu*be f.W~Qhe.*tftdh o i o e Lradend Iiti *t Lb: tbaa do as admtls ageco hoey bLawithout Abba aotaWg or Li~ppLba. I never ra. himsetin is bla ~slafata. I baae*A wi be tolarsed, as) Im bhasttbtaP 0~~a;sdata tstlJa~a~ea, tsiadaatsams.(sotbsaa)L ylrslaa isdbat~(Is~k~a dwidlingsbinto Asdyatssaskt0 '"2. Jdsssst1 tha sso Lperj dis Dalloas O at~y5La sass sf 1ss0s ka hSWabf tahasaIbatda not wA tOblaatAD U s.5 (At OtwtatZnaamsat. pt bat oftsbwa wh ftvilf,4o t *ahi etO Vail LbLL '8iil sasLrcatta asostrsack.tNost ayatalO flit, blw au 0" ht" 110 o"rpidO o E ONLaYtia astsjsssas Pat- 41Mflave nts auchsassat thadsUts the Us bs they wa-Mpkft 0ea &Aya s~ bh gi r omd~ tamtoad ssaht Laas(W."dd~satIasaa.bahI $asnca e Ldsssl isssa11Le~,bowcoo yo totwrave dwa5t woLoIadtajt if~ hatw tsstbs 05155. with 1 bials PLaoltr Wasss s~a~s as1,a a %ad re"IT10 pDa tflC a ws.106,`'bywLbtt Is ttstawaa"Istndathem very WlaNp.ttoaptheVato. L 0sbaaas in tatatoaaaswtt aaltsay w stkrae ay "vwsmttt bothdsb in )s..*i= Vaato Wo n*S Iyv atbas0 doulaldavwthafrioad ssaba o Atindab eosuattb 5IIltya sw lbsa stat bsasdoa W ss kbte of sa dtaraseo WM als sastie Avod e ts 4 ~ ~ sisssslataabtse woo tfatslsasatinb bsppyti))a.. de 1M J__ ___ ___ ___ __ A ND____ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ __ Lati05) thats5Lt tosoa seaas o5,pa4~PA ssa as mboat RFAAMIN ~ Iaehdbats aatt sLsIsLsb Isa. bss Makmk of,,5ila4o,w-,f Ch~ptE. & Buoasto4 a sass state. attiW6 with &s"lArtbtabs Ats Jdak Ofrn1O ndb~ f 1 I T S Huner 'aolt asaf y asalbta bt tried asstfb he wolooflt a j0kg~ "0 sioWnt go I7~ fLad as ba ordssss Iywould (sbaeshiappyWA ttas 5 toath 8anhOSAM Omas to no~t daq xdobst enga FOR 310 P-Tosa~tLI~t, ha5a00oq5ttt5, vi wat haveh vaoTtss sood rAtadssl aiaamOe L boaltsal"b ha~Fls05s gatLIL Soth sO 1L511How i sea, Oriiatlly, isMrs sthatlbIdampb4sson. b5a'L t *: sweedtt he bcaptain; bal Iattuppael. thad sla tsstsocotdatsal - F0tRLIYNbP0 O-T nst fartho Sari-sA- step atwto Ias 0sser ip a sthte of asikgetunm Iaass asa tadesadisassat batarD` aspe.a "Wtla"Otas.8,ommalCamsp~Lim.asodyra Ubao'a~. sssatay a t~a oy ~oLeSa otisPeftpskL tba~~t "AqxiVUO" nbseawnssingaf*s a pthagbv aRO beys6 os. btLsbpt~ paa,sf.%~~oet~~ T iftsln. LOOfeih O~or lsase. 1,sb~a~ol~saoa ftsaya ot asb~bftbse~d POORIIA 8R-l~spaP t sip tasss0 O~sas oy s IsS~ii alit~a A~sdaadI bse, Oht~slsbdio t ow asse24t-.s it~S O S I. M4 M to ObLPtshood mysssd pltatltsss atn; ~ at Isagtloaat ass saats~aiassspjs~ UN'' VRf(Lppht tbastdso) s ~a~agpasat add1got small toss Loaleak"t~bea~ Jssgi-V hifbt-atblostbut b JhsIIeJIswabsad.toeasat.' paRtas'aaslo. m1L ~ s a-a do Rasasi, ihodisoorosar I deaassp tsss~oaa.F afotch. undtods staalafthtstlse sespit1osptsssasd.4 —gl o w ft ts u but~ pbswl s ~PI~IQtt1NRL 1MCO l - Flatse. y.sifietthte I bit bary70ot is obasbAts Asti o rhot, 'YOdAssLtabs Ls.IPL5'L sss V1A0 R --— kt -hi Frmn Lbcammtoyabaltspsssdps sasltl 440w5aln5515 to~ L ate tsso the tisa10t, daratasd stR asy 111)1fr l ItTO I ob AM.' Sept.Lrie tdab llacsthas o whataa Psttwa Isdo Ifogya coe h-L ksaubeeaso i 0 0L ytheOs crdt ofo bij laat, 11t "!*Wa,&&* Obdom~ a arataaalbsasottatas aplya bond yoasisg atpop t butt I a tds bataddlo'5a It.I ATL lath), P Mtm.arbI ssstsststt0 -a"Kth p:*ftlo * '1. 86Pssvhatt assassss J s e C.,~sL PAM-, ay a" sst,LL5 a Lhscinb omeao.l4~a,F~f nk F04 hiima~seliffst shortbhasgh Isaarwsthe tlttaaoas~ vlkl" aw W 1Mewa " bn4 f4 0 Esawd s 'orho I~ba P_;Osdy athetitsA) jdgsasil pthe Tadrimstak or ( w *m*Ws ~aat~has hahawatd~sdst It eaeapithoe. *~s,, brTHE FIRST ISSUEhm OF 'THE SUN" woo -2-4,s i Wlivefi*!,, I SUNRISE AT 222 WILLIAM STREET 29 New York, and later to be the hero of the "shoot him on the spot" order, advertised an election. Castleton House Academy, on Staten Island, offered to teach and board young gentlemen at twenty-five dollars a quarter. Such was the first Sun. Part of it was stale news, rewritten. Part was borrowed advertising. It is doubtful whether even the police-court items were original, although they were the most human things in the issue, the most likely to appeal to the readers whom Day hoped to reach-people to whom the purchase of a paper at six cents was impossible, and to whom windy, monotonous political discussions were a bore. 'rn those early thirties, daily journalism had not advanced very far. Men were willing, but means and methods were weak. The first English daily was the Courrant, issued in 1702. The Orange Postman, put out the following year, was the first penny paper. The London Times was not started until 1785. It was the first English paper to use a steam press, as the Sun was the first American paper. The first American daily was the Pennsylvania Packet, called later the General Advertiser, begun in Philadelphia in 1784. It died in 1837. Of the existing New York papers only the Globe dates back to the eighteenth century, having been founded in 1797 as the Commercial Advertiser. Next to it in age is the Evening Post, started in 1801. The weakness of the early dailies was largely due to the fact that their publishers looked almost entirely to advertising for the support of the papers. On the other hand, the editors were politicians or highbrows who thought more of a speech by Lord Piccadilly on empire than of a good street tragedy; more of an essay by Lady Geraldine Glue than of a first-class report of a kidnapping. 30 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" Another great obstacle to success-one for which neither editor nor publisher was responsible-was the lack of facilities for the transmission of news. Fulton launched the Clermont twenty-six years before Day launched the Sun, but even in Day's time steamships were nothing to brag of, and the first of them was yet to cross the Atlantic. When the Sun was born, the most important railroad in America was thirty-four miles long, from Bordentown to South Amboy, New Jersey. There was no telegraph, and the mails were of prehistoric slowness. It was hard to get out a successful daily newspaper without daily news. A weekly would have sufficed for the information that came in, by sailing ship and stage, from Europe and Washington and Boston. Ben Day was the first man to reconcile himself to an almost impossible situation. He did so by the simple method of using what news was nearest at hand-the incidental happenings of New York life. In this way he solved his own problem and the people's, for they found that the local items in the Sun were just what they wanted, while the price of the paper suited them well. CHAPTER II THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE "SUN" A Very Small Metropolis Which Day and His Partner, Wisner, Awoke by Printing Small Human Pieces About Small Human Beings and Having Boys Cry the Paper. OW far could the little Sun hope to cast its beam in a stodgy if not naughty world? The circulation of all the dailies in New York at the time was less than thirty thousand. The seven morning and four evening papers, all sold at six cents a copy, shared the field thus: MORNING PAPERS Morning Courier and New York Enquirer.......... 4,500 Democratic Chronicle............................. 4,000 New York Standard............................ 2,400 New York Journal of Commerce................... 2,300 New York Gazette and General Advertiser........... 1,500 New York Daily Advertiser....................... 1,400 Mercantile Advertiser and New York Advocate...... 1,200 EVENING PAPERS Evening Post.................................... 3,000 Evening Star.................................... 2,500 New York Commercial Advertiser.................. 2,100 New York American............................ 1,600 Total.........................................26,500 New York was the American metropolis, but it was of about the present size of Indianapolis or Seattle. Of 81 32 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" its quarter of a million population, only eight or ten thousand lived above Twenty-third Street. Washington Square, now the residence district farthest downtown, had just been adopted as a park; before that it had been the Potter's Field. In 1833 rich New Yorkers were putting up some fine residences there-of which a good many still stand. Sixth Street had had its name changed to Waverley Place in honor of Walter Scott, recently dead, the literary king of the day. Wall Street was already the financial centre, with its Merchants' Exchange, banks, brokers, and insurance companies. Canal Street was pretty well filled with retail stores. Third Avenue had been macadamized from the Bowery to Harlem. The down-town streets were paved, and some were lighted with gas at seven dollars a thousand cubic feet. Columbia College, in the square bounded by Murray, Barclay, Church, and Chapel Streets, had a hundred students; now it has more than a hundred hundred. James Kent was professor of law in the Columbia of that day, and Charles Anthon was professor of Greek and Latin. A rival seat of learning, the University of the City of New York, chartered two years earlier, was temporarily housed at 12 Chambers Street, with a certain Samuel F. B. Morse as professor of sculpture and painting. There were twelve schools, harbouring six thousand pupils, whose welfare was guarded by the Public School Society of New York, Lindley Murray secretary. The National Academy of Design, incorporated five years before, guided the budding artist in Clinton Hall, and Mr. Morse was its president, while it had for its professor of mythology one William Cullen Bryapt. Albert Gallatin was president of the National Bank, at 13 Wall Street. Often at the end of his day's work THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE "SUN" 33 he would walk around to the small shop in William Street where his young friend Delmonico, the confectioner, was trying to interest the gourmets of the city in his French cooking. Gideon Lee, besides being mayor, was president of the Leather Manufacturers' Bank at 334 Pearl Street. He was the last mayor of New York to be appointed by the common council, for Dix's advertisement in the first Sun called an election by which the people of the city gained the right to elect a mayor by popular vote. A list of the solid citizens of the New York of that year would include Peter Schermerhorn, Nicholas Fish, Robert Lenox, Sheppard Knapp, Samuel Swartwout, Henry Beekman, Henry Delafield, John Mason, William Paulding, David S. Kennedy, Jacob Lorillard, David Lydig, Seth Grosvenor, Elisha Riggs, John Delafield, Peter A. Jay, C. V. S. Roosevelt, Robert Ray, Preserved Fish, Morris Ketchum, Rufus Prime, Philip Hone, William Vail, Gilbert Coutant, and Mortimer Livingston. These men and their fellows ran the banks and the big business of that day. They read the six-cent papers, mostly those which warned the public that Andrew Jackson was driving the country to the devil. It would be years before the Sun would bring the light of common, everyday things into their dignified lives-if it ever did so. Day, the printer, did not look to them to read his paper, although he hoped for some small part of their advertising. It is likely that one of the Gouverneurs-Samuel L.-read the early Sun, but he was postmaster, and it was his duty to examine new and therefore suspicionable publications. Incidentally, Postmaster Gouverneur had one clerk to sort all the mail that came into the city from the rest of the world. It was a small New York upon which the timid Sun cast its still smaller beams. The mass of the 34 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" people had not been interested in newspapers, because the newspapers brought nothing into their lives but the drone of American and foreign politics. A majority of them were in sympathy with Tammany Hall, particularly since 1821, when the property qualification was removed from the franchise through Democratic effort. New York had literary publications other than the six-cent papers. The Knickerbocker Magazine was founded in January of 1833, with Charles Hoffman, assistant editor of the American Magazine, as editor. Among the contributors engaged were William Cullen Bryant and James K. Paulding. The subscription-list, it was proudly announced, had no fewer than eight hundred names on it. The Mechanics' Magazine, the Sporting Magazine, the American Ploughboy, the Journal of Public Morals, and the Youth's Temperance Lecturer were among the periodicals that contended for public favour. Bryant was a busy man, for he was the chief editor of the Evening Post as well as a magazine contributor and a teacher. Fame had come to him early, for " Thanatopsis" was published when he was twentythree, and "To a Water-fowl" appeared a year later, in 1818. Now, in his thirties, he was no longer the delicate youth, the dreamy poet. One April day in 1831 Bryant and William L. Stone, one of the editors of the Commercial Advertiser, had a rare fight in front of the City Hall, the poet beginning it with a cowskin whip swung at Stone's head, and the spectators ending it after Stone had seized the whip. These two were editors of sixpenny " respectables." Irving and Cooper, Bryant and Halleck, Nathaniel P. Willis and George P. Morris were the largest figures of intellectual New York. In 1833 Irving returned from Europe after a visit that had lasted seventeen years. THE FIRST HOME OF "THE SUN," 222 WILLIAM STREET (Under the Arrow) THE SECOND HOME OF "THE SUN" Nassau Street, from Frankfort to Spruce, in the Early Forties. "The Sun's" Second Home Is Shown at the Right End of the Block. The Tammany Hall Building Became "The Sun's" Fourth Home in 1868. ( Yo 8 ^ -' IU THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE "SUN" 35 He was then fifty, and had written his best books. Cooper, half a dozen years younger, had long since basked in the glory that came to him with the publication of " The Spy," " The Pilot," and " The Last of the Mohicans." He and Irving were guests at every cultured function. Prescott was finishing his first work, "The History of Ferdinand and Isabella." Bancroft was beginning his "History of the United States." George Ticknor had written his "Life of Lafayette." Hawthorne had published only "Fanshawe" and some of the "Twice Told Tales." Poe was struggling along in Baltimore. Holmes, a medical student, had written a few poems. Dr. John William Draper, later to write his great " History of the Intellectual Development of Europe," arrived from Liverpool that year to make New York his home. Longfellow was professor of modern languages at Bowdoin, and unknown to fame as a poet. Whittier had written "Legends of New England" and " Moll Pitcher." Emerson was in England. Richard Henry Dana and Motley were at Harvard. Thoreau was helping his father to make lead-pencils. Parkman, Lowell, and Herman Melville were schoolboys. Away off in Buffalo was a boy of fourteen who clerked in his uncle's general store by day, selling steel traps to Seneca braves, and by night read Latin, Greek, poetry, history, and the speeches of Andrew Jackson. His name was Charles Anderson Dana. The leading newspaperman of the day in New York was James Watson Webb, a son of the General Webb who held the Bible upon which Washington took the oath of office as first President. J. Watson Webb had been in the army and, as a journalist, was never for peace at any price. He united the Morning Courier 36 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" and the Enquirer, and established a daily horse express between New York and Washington, which is said to have cost seventy-five hundred dollars a month, in order to get news from Congress and the White House twentyfour hours before his rivals. Webb was famed as a fighter. He had a row with Duff Green in Washington in 1830. In January, 1836, he thrashed James Gordon Bennett in Wall Street. He incited a mob to drive Wood, a singer, from the stage of the Park Theater. In 1838 he sent a challenge to Representative Cilley, of Maine, a classmate of Longfellow and Hawthorne at Bowdoin. Cilley refused to fight, on the ground that he had made no personal reflections on Webb's character; whereupon Representative Graves, of Kentucky, who carried the card for Webb, challenged Cilley for himself, as was the custom. They fought with rifles on the Annapolis Road, and Cilley was killed at the third shot. In 1842 Webb fought a duel with Representative Marshall, of Kentucky, and not only was wounded, but on his return to New York was sentenced to two years in prison "for leaving the State with the intention of giving or receiving a challenge." At the end of two weeks, however, he was pardoned. Having deserted Jackson and become a Whig, Webb continued to own and edit the Courier and Enquirer until 1861, when it was merged with the World. His quarrels, all of political origin, brought prestige to his paper. Ben Day had no duelling-pistols. His only chance to advertise the Sun was by its own light and its popular price. Beyond Webb, Day had no lively journalist with whom to contend at the outset, and Webb probably did not dream that the Sun would be worthy of a joust. Perhaps fortunately for Day, Horace Greeley had just THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE " SUN" 37 failed in his attempt to run a one-cent paper. This was the Morning Post, which Greeley started in January, 1833, with Francis V. Story, a fellow printer, as his partner, and with a capital of one hundred and fifty dollars. It ran for three weeks only. Greeley and Story still had some type, bought on credit, and they issued a tri-weekly, the Constitutionalist, which, in spite of its dignified title, was the avowed organ of the lotteries. Its columns contained the following card: Greeley & Story, No. 54 Liberty Street, New York, respectfully solicit the patronage of the public to their business of letterpress printing, particularly lotteryprinting, such as schemes, periodicals, and so forth, which will be executed on favorable terms. It must be remembered that at that time lotteries were not under a cloud. There were in New York forty-five lottery offices, licensed at two hundred and fifty dollars apiece annually, and the proceeds were divided between the public schools and a home for deafmutes. That was the last year of legalized lotteries. After they disappeared Greeley started the New Yorker, the best literary weekly of its time. It was not until April, 1841, that he founded the Tribune. Doubtless there were many young New Yorkers of that period who would have made bang-up reporters, but apparently, until Day's time, with few exceptions they did not work on morning newspapers. One exception was James Gordon Bennett, whose work for Webb t on the Courier and Enquirer helped to make it the leading American paper. Nathaniel P. Willis and George P. Morris would probably have been good reporters, for they knew New York and had excellent styles, but they insisted on being 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: THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE "SUN" 39 To us as Americans there can be little of interest in the triumph of one member of a royal family of Europe over another; and although we can but rejoice at the downfall of the modern Nero who so lately filled the Portuguese throne, yet if rumor speak the truth the victorious Pedro is no better than he should be. The editor lamented the general lack of news: With the exception of the interesting news from Portugal there appears to be very little worthy of note. Nullification has blown over; the President's tour has terminated; Black Hawk has gone home; the new race for President is not yet commenced, and everything seems settled down into a calm. Dull times, these, for us newspaper-makers. We wish the President or Major Downing or some other distinguished individual would happen along again and afford us material for a daily article. Or even if the sea-serpent would be so kind as to pay us a visit, we should be extremely obliged to him and would honor his snakeship with a most tremendous puff. Theatrical advertising appeared in this number, the Park Theater announcing the comedy of "Rip Van Winkle," as redramatized by Mr. Hackett, who played Rip. Mr. Gale was playing " Mazeppa " at the Bowery. Perhaps these advertisements were borrowed from a six-cent paper, but there was one " help wanted" advertisement that was not borrowed. It was the upshot of Day's own idea, destined to bring another revolution in newspaper methods: TO THE UNEMPLOYED-A number of steady men can find employment by vending this paper. A liberal discount is allowed to those who buy to sell again. Before that day there had been no newsboys; no papers were sold in the streets. The big, blanket po 40 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" litical organs that masqueraded as newspapers were either sold over the counter or delivered by carriers to the homes of the subscribers. Most of the publishers considered it undignified even to angle for new subscribers, and one of them boasted that his great circulation of perhaps two thousand had come unsolicited. The first unemployed person to apply for a job selling Suns in the streets was a ten-year-old-boy, Bernard Flaherty, born in Cork. Years afterward two continents knew him as Barney Williams, Irish comedian, hero of "The Emerald Ring," and "The Connie Soogah," and at one time manager of Wallack's old Broadway Theatre. When Day got some regular subscribers, he sent carriers on routes. He charged them sixty-seven cents a hundred, cash, or seventy-five cents on credit. The first of these carriers was Sam Messenger, who delivered the Sun in the Fulton Market district, and who later became a rich livery-stable keeper. Live lads like these, carrying out Day's idea, wrought the greatest change in journalism that ever had been made, for they brought the paper to the people, something that could not be accomplished by the six-cent sheets with their lofty notions and comparatively high prices. On the third day of the Sun's life, with Wisner at the pen and Barney Flaherty " hollering" in the startled streets, the editor again expressed, this time more positively, his yearning that something would happen: We newspaper people thrive best on the calamities of others. Give us one of your real Moscow fires, or your Waterloo battle-fields; let a Napoleon be dashing with his legions through the world, overturning the thrones of a thousand years and deluging the world with blood and tears; and then we of the types are in our glory. THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE "SUN" 41 The yearner had to wait thirty years for another Waterloo, but he got his " real Moscow fire" in about two years, and so close that it singed his eyebrows. Lacking a Napoleon to exalt or denounce, Mr. Day used a bit of that same page for the publication of homelier news for the people: The following are the drawn numbers of the New York consolidated lotteries of yesterday afternoon: 62 6 59 46 61 34 65 37 8 42 So Horace Greeley and his partner, with their triweekly paper, could not have been keeping all of the lottery patronage away from the Sun. Over in the police column Mr. Wisner was supplying gems like the following: A complaint was made by several persons who "thought it no sin to step to the notes of a sweet violin " and gathered under a window in Chatham Street, where a little girl was playing on a violin, when they were showered from a window above with the contents of a dye-pot or something of like nature. They were directed to ascertain their showerer. The big story on the first page of the fourth issue of the Sun was a conversation between Envy and Candor in regard to the beauties of a Miss H., perhaps a fictitious person. But on the second page, at the head of the editorial column, was a real editorial article approving the course of the British government in freeing the slaves in the West Indies: We supposed that the eyes of men were but half open to this case. We imagined that the slave would have to toil on for years and purchase what in justice was already his own. We did not once dream that light had so far progressed as to prepare the British nation 42 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" for the colossal stride in justice and humanity and benevolence which they are about to make. The abolition of West Indian slavery will form a brilliant era in the annals of the world. It will circle with a halo of imperishable glory the brows of the transcendent spirits who wield the present destinies of the British Empire. Would to Heaven that the honor of leading the way in this godlike enterprise had been reserved to our own country! But as the opportunity for this is passed, we trust we shall at least avoid the everlasting disgrace of long refusing to imitate so bright and glorious an example. Thus the Sun came out for the freedom of the slave twenty-eight years before that freedom was to be accomplished in the United States through war. The Sun was the Sun of Day, but the hand was the hand of Wisner. That young man was an Abolitionist before the word was coined. " Wisner was a pretty smart young fellow," said Mr. Day nearly fifty years afterward, " but he and I never agreed. I was rather Democratic in my notions. Wisner, whenever he got a chance, was always sticking in his damned little Abolitionist articles." There is little doubt that Wisner wrote the article facing the Sun against slavery while he was waiting for something to turn up in the police-court. Then he went to the office, set up the article, as well as his piece about the arrest of Eliza Barry, of Bayard Street, for stealing a wash-tub, and put the type in the form. Considering that Wisner got four dollars a week for his break-o'-day work, he made a very good morning of that; and it is worthy of record that the next day's Sun did not repudiate his assault on human servitude, although on September 10 Mr. Day printed an editorial grieving over the existence of slavery, but hitting at the methods of the Abolitionists. THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE " SUN" 43 These early issues were full of lively little " sunny" pieces, for instance: Passing by the Beekman Street church early this morning, we discovered a milkman replenishing his lacteous cargo with Adam's ale. We took the liberty to ask him, " Friend, why do ye do thus?" He replied, "None of your business"; and we passed on, determined to report him to the Grahamites. A poem on Burns, by Halleck-perhaps reprinted from one of the author's published volumes of verseadded literary tone to that morning's Sun. In the next issue was some verse by Willis, beginning: Look not upon the wine when it Is red within the cup! Then, and for some years afterward, the Sun exhibited a special aversion to alcohol in text and headlines. "Cursed Effects of Rum! " was one of its favourite head-lines. The Sun was a week old before it contained dramatic criticism, its first subject in that field being the appearance of Mr. and Mrs. Wood at the Park Theatre in "Cinderella," a comic opera. The paper's first animal story was printed on September 12, recording the fact that on the previous Sunday about sixty wild pigeons stayed in a tree at the Battery nearly half an hour. On September 14 the Sun printed its first illustration-a two-column cut of " Herschel's Forty-Feet Telescope." This was Sir W. Herschel, then dead some ten years, and the telescope was on his grounds at Slough, near Windsor, England. Another knighted Herschel with another telescope in a far land was to play a big part in the fortunes of the Sun, but that comes later. In the issue with the cut of the telescope was a para 44 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" graph about a rumour that Fanny Kemble, who had just captivated American theatregoers, had been married to Pierce Butler, of Philadelphia-as, indeed, she had. Broadway seems to have had its lure as early as 1833, for in the Sun of September 17, on the first page, is a plaint by "Citizen ": They talk of the pleasures of the country, but would to God I had never been persuaded to leave the labor of the city for such woful pleasures. Oh, Broadway, Broadway! In an evil hour did I forsake thee for verdant walks and flowery landscapes and that there tiresome piece of made water. What walk is so agreeable as a walk through the streets of New York? What landscape more flowery than those of the print-shops? And what water was made by man equal to the Hudson? This was followed by uplifting little essays on " Suicide" and " Robespierre." The chief news of the daythat John Quincy Adams had accepted a nomination from the Anti-Masons-was on an inside page. What was possibly of more interest to the readers, it was announced that thereafter a ton of coal would be two thousand pounds instead of twenty-two hundred and forty-Lackawanna, broken and sifted, six dollars and fifty cents a ton. On Saturday, September 21, when it was only eighteen days old, the Sun adopted a new head-line. The letters remained the same, but the eagle device of the first issue was supplanted by the solar orb rising over hills and sea. This design was used only until December 2, when its place was taken by a third emblema printing-press shedding symbolical effulgence upon the earth. The Sun's first book-notice appeared on September 23, when it acknowledged the sixtieth volume of the THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE "SUN" 45 "Family Library" (Harpers), this being a biography of Charlemagne by G. P. R. James. " It treats of a most important period in the history of France." The Sun had little space then for book-reviews or politics. Of its attitude toward the great financial fight then being waged, this lone paragraph gives a good view: The Globe of Monday contains in six columns the reasons which prompted the President to remove the public deposits from the United States Bank, which were read to his assembled cabinet on the 18th instant. Nicholas Biddle and his friends could fill other papers with arguments, but the Sun kept its space for police items, stories of authenticated ghosts, and yarns about the late Emperor Napoleon. The removal of William J. Duane as Secretary of the Treasury got two lines on a page where a big shark caught off Barnstable got three lines, and the feeding of the anaconda at the American Museum a quarter of a column. Miss Susan Allen, who bought a cigar on Broadway and was arrested when she smoked it while she danced in the street, was featured more prominently than the expected visit to New York of Mr. Henry Clay, after whom millions of cigars were to be named. For the satisfaction of universal curiosity it must be reported that Miss Allen was discharged. On October 1 of that same year-1833-the Sun came out for better fire-fighting apparatus, urging that the engines should be drawn by horses, as in London. In the same issue it assailed the gambling-house in Park Row, and scorned the allegation of Colonel Hamilton, a British traveller, that the tooth-brush was unknown in America. Slowly the paper was getting better, printing more local news; and it could afford to, for the penny 46 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" Sun idea had taken hold of New York, and the sales were larger every week. Wisner was stretching the police-court pieces out to nearly two columns. Now and then, perhaps when Mr. Day was away fishing, the reporter would slip in an Abolition paragraph or a gloomy poem on the horrors of slavery. But he was so valuable that, while his chief did not raise his salary of four dollars a week, he offered him half the paper, the same to be paid for out of the profits. And so, in January of 1834, Wisner became a half-owner of the Sun. Benton, another Sun printer, also wanted an interest, and left when he could not get it. Before it was two months old the Sun had begun to take an interest in aeronautics. It printed a full column, October 16, 1833, on the subject of Durant's balloon ascensions, and quoted Napoleon as saying that the only insurmountable difficulty of the balloon in war was the impossibility of guiding its course. " This difficulty Dr. Durant is now endeavoring to obviate." And the Sun added: May we not therefore look to the time, in perspective, when our atmosphere will be traversed with as much facility as our waters? In the issue of October 17 a skit, possibly by Mr. Day himself, gave a picture of the trials of an editor of the period: SCENE-An editor's closet-editor solus. " Well, a pretty day's work of it I shall make. News, I have nothing-politics, stale, flat, and unprofitablemiscellany, enough of it-miscellany bills payable, and a miscellaneous list of subscribers with tastes as miscellaneous as the tongues of Babel. Ha! Footsteps! THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE "SUN" 47 Drop the first person singular and don the plural. WE must now play the editor." (Enter Devil)-" Copy, sir!" (Enter A.)-" I missed my paper this morning, sir, I don't want to take it-" (Enter B.)-" There is a letter 'o' turned upside down in my advertisement this morning, sir! I-I-" (Enter C.)-" You didn't notice my new work, my treatise on a flea, this morning, sir! You have no literary taste! Sir-" (Enter D.)-" Sir, your boy don't leave my paper, sir-I live in a blind alley; you turn out of -- Street to the right-then take a left-hand turn-then to the right again-then go under an arch-then over a kennel-then jump a ten-foot fence-then enter a doorthen climb five pair of stairs-turn fourteen cornersand you can't miss my door. I want your boy to leave my paper first —it's only a mile out of his way-if he don't, I'll stop-" (Enter E.)-" Sir, you have abused my friend; the article against Mr. -- as a candidate is intolerableit is scandalous-I'll stop my paper-I'll cane youI'll-" (Enter F.)-" Mr. Editor, you are mealy-mouthed, you lack independence, your remarks upon Mr. - the candidate for Congress, are too tame. If you don't put it on harder I'll stop my-" (Enter G.)-" Your remarks upon profane swearing are personal, d - n you, sir, you mean me-before I'll patronize you longer I'll see you in --- (Enter H.)-" Mr., we are very sorry you do not say more against the growing sin of profanity. Unless you put your veto on it more decidedly, no man of correct moral principles will give you his patronage-I, for one — (Enter I.) —"Bad luck to the dirty sowl of him, where does he keep himself? By the powers, I'll strike him if I can get at his carcass, and I'll kick him anyhow! Why do you fill your paper with dirty lies about Irishmen at all?" 48 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" (Enter J.)-" Why don't you give us more anecdotes and sich, Irish stories and them things-I don't like the long speeches-I —" (Devil)-" Copy, sir!" The day after this evidence of unrest appeared the Sun printed, perhaps with a view to making all manner of citizens gnash their teeth, a few extracts from the narrative of Colonel Hamilton, " the British traveler in America ": In America there are no bells and no chambermaids. I have heard, since my arrival in America, the toast of "a bloody war in Europe" drank with enthusiasm. The whole population of the Southern and Western States are uniformly armed with daggers. At present an American might study every book within the limits of the Union and still be regarded in many parts of Europe, especially in Germany, as a man comparatively ignorant. The editorial suggested that the colonel " had better look wild for the lake that burns with fire and brimstone." The union printers were lively even in the first days of the Sun, which announced, on October 21, 1833, that the Journal of Commerce paid its journeymen only ten dollars a week, and added: The proprietors of other morning papers cheerfully pay twelve dollars. Therefore, the office of the Journal of Commerce is what printers term a rat office-and the term "rat," with the followers of the same profession with Faust, Franklin, and Stanhope, is a most odious term. The "pork-barrel" was foreshadowed in an item printed when the Sun was just a month old: THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE "SUN" 49 At the close of the present year the Treasury of the nation will contain twelve million dollars. This rich and increasing revenue will probably be a bone of contention at the next session of Congress. At the end of its first month the Sun was getting more and more advertising. Its news was lively enough, considering the times. Rum, the cholera in Mexico, assassinations in the South, the police-court, the tour of Henry Clay, and poems by Walter Scott were its long suit. The circulation of the little paper was now about twelve hundred copies, and the future seemed promising, even if Mr. Day did print, at suspiciously frequent intervals, articles inveighing against the debtor's-prison law. The Astor House-now half a ruin-was at first to be called the Park Hotel, for the Sun of October 29, 1833, announced editorially: THE PARK HOTEL-Mr. W. B. Astor gives notice that he will receive proposals for building the longcontemplated hotel in Broadway, between Barclay and Vesey Streets. An advertisement which the Sun saw fit to notice editorially was inserted by a young man in search of a wife —" a young woman who understands the use of the needle, and who is willing to be industrious." The editorial comment was: The advertisement was handed to us by a respectablelooking young man, and of course we could not refuse to publish it-though if we were in want of a wife we think we should take a different course to obtain one. Sometimes the police items, flecked with poetry, and presumably written by Wisner, were tantalizingly reticent, as: 50 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" Maria Jones was accused of stealing clothing, and committed. Certain affairs were developed of rather a singular and comical nature in relation to her. Nothing more than that. Perhaps Wisner rather enjoyed being questioned by admiring friends when he went to dinner at the American House that day. Bright as the police reporter was, the ship-news man of that day lacked snap. The arrival from Europe of James Fenimore Cooper, who could have told the Sun more foreign news than it had ever printed, was dis; posed of in twelve words. But it must be remembered that the interview was then unknown. The only way to get anything out of a citizen was to enrage him, whereupon he would write a letter. But the Sun did say, a couple of days later, that Cooper's newest novel, "The Headsman," was being sold in London at seven dollars and fifty cents a copy-no doubt in the oldfashioned English form, three volumes at half a guinea each. The Sun blew its own horn for the first time on November 9, 1833: Its success is now beyond question, and it has exceeded the most sanguine anticipations of its publishers in its circulation and advertising patronage. Scarcely two months has it existed in the typographical firmament, and it has a daily circulation of upward of two thousand copies, besides a steadily increasing advertising patronage. Although of a character (we hope) deserving the encouragement of all classes of society, it is more especially valuable to those who cannot well afford to incur the expense of subscribing to a " blanket sheet" and paying ten dollars per annum. In conclusion we may be permitted to remark that the penny press, by diffusing useful knowledge among the operative classes of society, is effecting the march of From the Collection of Charles Iurnhram BARNEY WILLIAMS, THE COMEDIAN, WHO WAS THE FIRST NEWSBOY OF "THE SUN" (OF'~ THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE "SUN" 51 intelligence to a greater degree than any other mode of instruction. The same article called attention to the fact that the " penny " papers of England were really two-cent papers. The Sun's price had been announced as "one penny" on the earliest numbers, but on October 8, when it was a little more than a month old, the legend was changed to read " Price one cent." The Sun ran its first serial in the third month of its existence. This was " The Life of Davy Crockett," dictated or authorized by the frontiersman himself. It must have been a relief to the readers to get away from the usual dull reprint from foreign papers that had been filling the Sun's first page. In those days the first pages were always the dullest, but Crockett's lively stories about bear-hunts enlivened the Sun. Other celebrities were often mentioned. Aaron Burr, now old and feeble, was writing his memoirs. Martin Van Buren had taken lodgings at the City Hotel. The Siamese Twins were arrested in the South for beating a man. " Mr. Clay arrived in town last evening and attended the new opera." This was "Fra Diavolo," in which Mr. and Mrs. Wood sang at the Park Theatre. " It is said that Dom Pedro has dared his brother Miguel to single combat, which has been refused." A week later the Sun gloated over the fact that PedroPedro I of Brazil, who was invading Portugal on behalf of his daughter, Maria da Gloria-had routed the usurper Miguel's army. On December 5, 1833, the Sun printed the longest news piece it had ever put in type-the message of President Jackson to the Congress. This took up three of the four pages, and crowded out nearly all the advertising. 52 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" On December 17, in the fourth month of its life, the Sun announced that it had procured " a machine press, on which one thousand impressions can be taken in an hour. The daily circulation is now nearly FOUR THOUSAND." It was a happy Christmas for Day and Wisner. The Sun surely was shining! The paper retained its original size and shape during the whole of 1834, and rarely printed more than four pages. As it grew older, it printed more and more local items and developed greater interest in local affairs. The first page was taken up with advertising and reprint. A State election might have taken place the day before, but on page 1 the Sun worshippers looked for a bit of fiction or history. What were the fortunes of William L. Marcy as compared to a two-column thriller, " The Idiot's Revenge," or " Captain Chicken and Gentle Sophia"? The head-lines were all small, and most of them italics. Here are samples: INGRATITUDE OF A CAT. PERSONALITY OF NAPOLEON. WONDERFUL ANTICS OF FLEAS. BROUGHT TO IT BY RUM. The news paragraphs were sometimes models of condensation: PICKPOCKETS-On Friday night a Gentleman lost $100 at the Opera and then $25 at Tammany Hall. The Hon. Daniel Webster will leave town this morning for Washington. John Baker, the person whom we reported a short time since as being brought before the police for stealing a ham, died suddenly in his cell in Bellevue in the greatest agony-an awful warning to drunkards. THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE "SUN" 53 James G. Bennett has become sole proprietor and editor of the Philadelphia Courier. Colonel Crockett, it is expected, will visit the Bowery Theater this evening. RUMOR-It was rumored in Washington on the 6th that a duel would take place the next day between two members of the House. SUDDEN DEATH-Ann McDonough, of Washington Street, attempted to drink a pint of rum on a wager, on Wednesday afternoon last. Before it was half swallowed Ann was a corpse. Served her right! Bayington, the murderer, we learn by a contemporary, was formerly employed in this city on the Journal of Commerce. No wonder he came to an untimely fate. DUEL-We understand that a duel was fought at Hoboken on Friday morning last between a gentleman of Canada and a French gentleman of this city, in which the latter was wounded. The parties should be arrested. LAMENTABLE DEATH-The camelopard shipped at Calcutta for New York died the day after it was embarked. "We could have better spared a better" crittur, as Shakespeare doesn't say. The Sun, although read largely by Jacksonians, did not take the side of any political party. It favoured national and State economy and city cleanliness. It dismissed the New York Legislature of 1834 thus: The Legislature of this State closed its arduous duties yesterday. It has increased the number of our banks and fixed a heavy load of debt upon posterity. Nothing more. If the readers wanted more they could fly to the ample bosoms of the sixpennies; but 54 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" apparently they were satisfied, for in April of 1834 the Sun's circulation reached eight thousand, and Colonel Webb, of the Courier and Enquirer, was bemoaning the success of " penny trash." The Sun replied to him by saying that the public had been "imposed upon by tendollar trash long enough." The Journal of Commerce also slanged the Sun, which promptly announced that the Journal was conducted by "a company of rich, aristocratical men," and that it would take sides with any party to gain a subscriber. The influence of Partner Wisner, the Abolitionist, was evident in many pages of the Sun. On June 23, 1834, it printed a piece about Martin Palmer, who was "pelted down with stones in Wall Street on suspicion of being a runaway slave," and paid its respects to Boudinot, a Southerner in New York who was reputed to be a tracker of runaways. It was he who had set the crowd after the black: The man who will do this will do anything; he would dance on his mother's grave; he would invade the sacred precincts of the tomb and rob a corpse of its windingsheet; he has no SOUL. It is said that this useless fellow is about to commence a suit against us for a libel. Try it, Mr. Boudinot! During the anti-abolition riots of that year the Sun took a firm stand against the disturbers, although there is little doubt that many of them were its own readers. The paper made a vigorous little crusade against the evils of the Bridewell in City Hall Park, where dozens of wretches suffered in the filth of the debtors' prison. The Sun was a live wire when the cholera reappeared, and it put to rout the sixpenny papers which tried to make out that the disease was not cholera, but "summer complaint." Incidentally, the advertising THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE " SUN" 55 columns of that day, in nearly all the papers were filled with patent "cholera cures." The Sun had an eye for urban refinement, too, and begged the aldermen to see to it that pigs were prevented from roaming in City Hall Park. In the matter of silver forks, then a novelty, it was more conservative, as the following paragraph, printed in November, 1834, would indicate: EXTREME NICETY-The author of the " Book of Etiquette," recently printed in London, says: " Silver forks are now common at every respectable table, and for my part I cannot see how it is possible to eat a dinner comfortably without them." The booby ought to be compelled to cut his beefsteak with a piece of old barrel-hoop on a wooden trencher. Not even abolition or etiquette, however, could sidetrack the Sun's interest in animals. In one issue it dismissed the adjournment of Congress in three words and, just below, ran this item: THE ANACONDA-Most of those who have seen the beautiful serpent at Peale's Museum will recollect that in the snug quarters allotted to him there are two blankets, on one of which he lies, and the other is covered over him in cold weather. Strange to say that on Monday night, after Mr. Peale had fed the serpent with a chicken, according to custom, the serpent took it into his head to swallow one of the blankets, which is a sevenquarter one, and this blanket he has now in his stomach. The proprietor feels much anxiety. Almost every newspaper editor in that era had a theatre feud at one day or another. The Sun's quarrel was with Farren, the manager of the Bowery, where Forrest was playing. So the Sun said: 56 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" DAMN THE YANKEES-We are informed by a correspondent (though we have not seen the announcement ourselves) that Farren, the chap who damned the Yankees so lustily the other day, and who is now under bonds for a gross outrage on a respectable butcher near the Bowery Theater, is intending to make his appearance on the Bowery stage THIS EVENING! Five hundred citizens gathered at the theatre that night, waited until nine o'clock, and then charged through the doors, breaking up the performance of " Metamora." The Sun described it: The supernumeraries scud from behind the scenes like quails-the stock actors' teeth chattered-Oceana looked imploringly at the good-for-nothing YankeesNahmeeoke trembled-Guy of Godalwin turned on his heel, and Metamora coolly shouldered his tomahawk and walked off the stage. The management announced that Farren was discharged. The mayor of New York and Edwin Forrest made conciliatory speeches, and the crowd went away. The attacks of Colonel Stone, editor of the six-cent Commercial, aroused the Sun to retaliate in kind. A column about the colonel ended thus: He was then again cowskinned by Mr. Bryant of the Post, and was most unpoetically flogged near the American Hotel. He has always been the slave of avarice, cowardice, and meanness.... The next time he sees fit to attack the penny press we hope he will confine himself to facts. A month later the Sun went after Colonel Stone again: The colonel... for the sake of an additional glass of wine and a couple of real Spanish cigars, did actually THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE "SUN" 57 perpetrate a most excellent and true article, the first we have seen of his for a long time past. Now we have serious thoughts that the colonel will yet become quite a decent fellow, and may ultimately ascend, after a long course of training, to a level with the penny dailies which have soared so far above him in the heavens of veracity. It must be said of Colonel Stone that he was a man of literary and political attainments. He was editor of the Commercial Advertiser for more than twenty years. The colonel did not reform to the Sun's liking at once, but the feud lessened, and presently it was the Transcript-a penny paper which sprang up when the Sun's success was assured-to which the Sun took its biggest cudgels. One of the Transcript's editors, it said, had passed a bogus three-dollar bill on the Bank of Troy. Another walked "on both sides of the street, like a twopenny postman," while a third " spent his money at a theatre with females," while his family was in want. But, added the Sun, "we never let personalities creep in." The New York Times-not the present Times-had also started up, and it dared to boast of a circulation " greater than any in the city except the Courier." Said the Sun: If the daily circulation of the Sun be not larger than that of the Times and Courier both, then may we be hung up by the ears and flogged to death with a rattlesnake's skin. The Sun took no risk in this. By November of 1834 its circulation was above ten thousand. On December 3 it published the President's message in full and circulated fifteen thousand copies. At the beginning of 58 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" 1835 it announced a new press-a Napier, built by R. Hoe & Co.-new type, and a bigger paper, circulating twenty thousand. The print paper was to cost fourfifths of a cent a copy, but the Sun was getting lots of advertising. With the increase in size, that New Year's Day, the Sun adopted the motto, "It Shines for l \," which it is still using to-day. This iiitoto doubtless was suggested by the sign of the famous Rising Sun Tavern, or Howard's Inn, which then stood at the junction of Bedford and Jamaica turnpikes, in East New York. The sign, which was in front of the tavern as early as 1776, was supported on posts near the road and bore a rude picture of a rising sun and the motto which Day adopted. In the same month-January, 1835-the bigger and better Sun printed its first real sports story. The sporting editor, who very likely was also the police reporter and perhaps Partner Wisner as well, heard that there was to be a fight in the fields near Hoboken between Williamson, of Philadelphia, and Phelan, of New York. He crossed the ferry, hired a saddle-horse in Hoboken, and galloped to the ringside. It was bare knuckles, London rules, and only thirty seconds' interval between rounds: At the end of three minutes Williamson fell. (Cheers and cries of "Fair Play! ") After breathing half a minute, they went at it again, and Phelan was knocked down. (Cheers and cries of "Give it to him!") In three minutes more Williamson fell, and the adjoining woods echoed back the shouts of the spectators. The match lasted seventy-two minutes and ended in the defeat of Williamson. The Sun's report contained no sporting slang, and the reporter did not seem to like pugilism: THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE "SUN" 59 And this is what is called " sports of the ring! " We can cheerfully encourage foot-races or any other humane and reasonable amusement, but the Lord deliver us from the " ring." The following day the Sun denounced prize-fighting as "a European practice, better fitted for the morally / and physically oppressed classes of London than the enlightened republican citizens of New York." As prosperity came, the news columns improved. The sensational was not the only pabulum fed to the reader. Beside the story of a duel between two midshipmen he would find a review of the Burr autobiography, just out. Gossip about Fanny Kemble's quarrel with her fatherthe Sun was vexed with the actress because she said that New York audiences were made up of butcherswould appear next to a staid report of the doings of Congress. The attacks on Rum continued, and the Sun was quick to oppose the proposed "licensing of houses of prostitution and billiard-rooms." The success of Mr. Day's paper was so great that every printer and newspaperman in New York longed to run a penny journal. On June 22, 1835, the paper's name appeared at the head of the editorial column on Page 2 as The True Sun, although on the first page the bold head-line THE SUN, remained as usual. An editorial note said: We have changed our inside head to True Sun for reasons which will hereafter be made known. On the following day the True Sun title was entirely missing, and its absence was explained in an editorial article as follows: Having understood on Wednesday (June 21) that a daily paper was about being issued in this city as nearly 60 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" like our own as it could be got up, under the title of The True Sun, for the avowed purpose of benefitting the proprietors at our expense, we yesterday changed our inside title, being determined to place an injunction upon any such piratical proceedings. Yesterday morning the anticipated Sun made its appearance, and at first sight we immediately abandoned our intention of defending ourselves legally, being convinced that it is a mere catchpenny second-hand concern which (had it our whole list and patronage) would in one month be among the "Things that were." It is published by William F. Short and edited by Stephen B. Butler, who announces that his "politics are Whig."... Mr. Short, with the ingenuity of a London pickpocket, though without the honesty, has made up his paper as nearly like ours as was possible and given it the name of The (true) Sun for the purpose of imposing on the public.... We hereby publish William F. Short and Stephen B. Butler to our editorial brethren and to the printing profession in general as Literary Scoundrels. A day later (June 24, 1835) the Sun declared that in establishing the True Sun " Short, who is one of the printers of the Messenger, actually purloined the composition of his reading matter "; and it printed a letter from William Burnett, publisher of the Weekly Messenger, to support its charge of larceny. On June 28, six days after the True Sun's first appearance, the Sun announced the failure of the pretender. The True Sun's proprietors, it said, " have concluded to abandon their piratical course." Another True Sun was issued by Benjamin H. Day in 1840, two years after he sold the Sun to Moses Y. Beach. A third True Sun, established by former employees of the Sun on March 20, 1843, ran for more than a year. A daily called the Citizen and True Sun, started in 1845, had a short life. THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE " SUN" 61 When a contemporary did not fail the Sun poked fun at it: MAJOR NOAH'S SINGULARITY —The Evening Star of yesterday comes out in favor of the French, lottery, gambling, and phrenology for ladies. Is the man crazy? The editor whose sanity was questioned was the famous Mordecai Manuel Noah, one of the most versatile men of his time. He was a newspaper correspondent at fifteen. When he was twenty-eight, President Madison appointed him to be consul-general at Tunis, where he distinguished himself by his rescue of several Americans who were held as slaves in the Barbary States. On his return to New York, in 1816, he again entered journalism, and was successively connected with the National Advocate, the Enquirer, the Commercial Advertiser, the Times and Messenger, and the Evening Star. In 1825 he attempted to establish a great Jewish colony on Grand Island, in the Niagara River, but he found neither sympathy nor aid among his coreligionists, and the scheme was a failure. Noah wrote a dozen dramas, all of which have been forgotten, although he was the most popular playwright in America at that day. His Evening Star was a good paper, and the Sun's quarrels with it were not serious. For their attacks on Attree, the editor of the Transcript, Messrs. Day and Wisner got themselves indicted for criminal libel. They took it calmly: Bigger men than we have passed through that ordeal. There is Major Noah, the Grand Mogul of the editorial tribe, who has not only been indicted, but, we believe, placed at the bar. Then there's Colonel Webb; no longer ago than last autumn he was indicted by the grand jury of Delaware County. The colonel, it is said, 62 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" didn't consider this a fair business transaction, and, brushing up the mahogany pistol, he took his coach and hounds, drove up to good old Delaware, and bid defiance to the whole posse comitatus of the county. The greatest men in the country have some time in the course of their lives been indicted. A few weeks later, when Attree, who had left the Transcript to write "horribles" for the Courier, was terribly beaten in the street, the Sun denounced the assault and tried to expose the assailants. In February, 1835, a few days after the indictment of the partners, Mr. Wisner was challenged to a duel by a quack dentist whose medicines the Sun had exposed. The Sun announced editorially that Wisner accepted the challenge, and that, having the choice of weapons, he chose syringes charged with the dentist's own medicine, the distance five paces. No duel! It would seem that the Sun owners sought a challenge from the fiery James Watson Webb of the mahogany pistol, for they made many a dig at his sixpenny paper. Here is a sample: OUTRAGEOUS-The Courier and Enquirer of Saturday morning is just twice as large as its usual size. The sheet is now large enough for a blanket and two pairs of pillow-cases, and it contains, in printers' language, 698,300 ems-equal to eight volumes of the ordinary-sized novels of the present day. If the reading matter were printed in pica type and put in one unbroken line, it would reach from Nova Zembla to Terra del Fuego. Such a paper is an insult to a civilized community. A little later, when Colonel Webb's paper boasted of "the largest circulation," the Sun offered to bet the colonel a thousand dollars-the money to go to the Washington Monument Association-that the Sun had THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE "SUN" 63 a circulation twice as great as that of the big sixpenny daily. It must not be thought, however, that the Sun did not attempt to treat the serious matters of the day. It handled them very well, considering the lack of facilities. The war crisis with France, happily dispelled; the amazing project of the Erie Railroad to build a line as far west as Chautauqua County, New York; the antiabolitionist riots and the little religious rows; the ambitions of Daniel Webster and the approach of Halley's comet-all these had their half-column or so. When Matthias the Prophet, the Dowie of that day, was brought to trial in White Plains, Westchester County, on a charge of having poisoned a Mr. Elijah Pierson, the Sun sent a reporter to that then distant court. It is possible that this reporter was Benjamin H. Day himself. At any rate, Day attended the trial, and there made the acquaintance of a man who that very summer made the Sun the talk of the world and brought to the young paper the largest circulation of any daily. CHAPTER III RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX A Magnificent Fake Which Deceived Two Continents, Brought to "The Sun" the Largest Circulation in the World and, in Poe's Opinion, Established Penny Papers. THE man whom Day met at the murder trial in White Plains was Richard Adams Locke, a re| porter who was destined to kick up more dust than perhaps any other man of his profession. As he comes J on the stage, we must let his predecessor, George W. Wisner, pass into the wings. Wisner was a good man, as a reporter, as a writer of editorial articles, and as part owner of the paper. His campaign for Abolition irritated Mr. Day at first, but the young man's motives were so pure and his articles so logical that Day recognized the justice of the cause, even as he realized the foolish methods employed by some of the Abolitionists. Wisner set the face of the Sun against slavery, and Day kept it so, but there were minor matters of policy upon which the partners never agreed, never could agree. When Wisner's health became poor, in the summer of 1835, he expressed a desire to get away from New York. Mr. Day paid him five thousand dollars for his * interest in the paper-a large sum in those days, considering the fact that Wisner had won his share with no capital except his pen. Wisner went West and settled at Pontiac, Michigan. There his health improved, 64 RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 65 his fortune increased, and he was at one time a member of the Michigan Legislature. When Day found that Locke was the best reporter attending the trial of Matthias the Prophet, he hired him to write a series of articles on the religious fakir. These, the first "feature stories" that ever appeared in the Sun, were printed on the front page. A few weeks later, while the Matthias articles were still being sold on the streets in pamphlet form, Locke went to Day and told him that his boss, Colonel Webb of the Courier and Enquirer, had discharged him for working for the Sun "on the side." Wisner was about to leave the paper, and Day was glad to hire Locke, for he needed an editorial writer. Twelve dollars a week was the alluring wage, and Locke accepted it. Locke was then thirty-five-ten years senior to his employer. Let his contemporary, Edgar Allan Poe, describe him: He is about five feet seven inches in height, symmetrically formed; there is an air of distinction about his whole person-the air noble of genius. His face is strongly pitted by the smallpox, and, perhaps from the same cause, there is a marked obliquity in the eyes; a certain calm, clear luminousness, however, about these latter amply compensates for the defect, and the forehead is truly beautiful in its intellectuality. I am acquainted with no person possessing so fine a forehead as Mr. Locke. Locke was nine years older than Poe, who at this time had most of his fame ahead of him. Poe was quick to recognize the quality of Locke's writings; indeed, the poet saw, perhaps more clearly than others of that period, that America was full of good writers-a fact of which the general public was neglectful. This was Poe's tribute to Locke's literary gift: 66 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" His prose style is noticeable for its concision, luminosity, completeness-each quality in its proper place. He has that method so generally characteristic of genius proper. Everything he writes is a model in its peculiar way, serving just the purposes intended and nothing to spare. The Sun's new writer was a collateral descendant of John Locke, the English philosopher of the seventeenth century. He was born in 1800, but his birthplace was not New York, as his contemporary biographers wrote. It was East Brent, Somersetshire, England. His early American friends concealed this fact when writing of Locke, for they feared that his English birth (all the wounds of war had not healed) would keep him out of some of the literary clubs. He was educated by his mother and by private tutors until he was nineteen, when he entered Cambridge. While still a student he contributed to the Bee, the Imperial Magazine, and other English publications. When he left Cambridge he had the hardihood to start the London Republican, the title of which describes its purpose. This was a failure, for London declined to warm to the theories of American democracy, no matter how scholarly their expression. Abandoning the Republican, young Locke devoted himself to literature and science. He ran a periodical called the Cornucopia for about six months, but it was not a financial success, and in 1832, with his wife and infant daughter, he went to New York. Colonel Webb put him at work on his paper. Locke could write almost anything. In Cambridge and in Fleet Street he had picked up a wonderful store of general information. He could turn out prose or poetry, politics or pathos, anecdotes or astronomy. While he lived in London, Locke was a regular reader RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 67 of the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, and he brought some copies of it to America. One of these, an issue of 1826, contained an article by Dr. Thomas Dick, of Dundee, a pious man, but inclined to speculate on the possibilities of the universe. In this article Dr. Dick suggested the feasibility of communicating with the moon by means of great stone symbols on the face of the earth. The people of the moon-if there were any -would fathom the diagrams and reply in a similar way. Dr. Dick explained afterward that he wrote this piece with the idea of satirizing a certain coterie of eccentric German astronomers. Now it happened that Sir John Frederick William Herschel, the greatest astronomer of his time, and the son of the celebrated astronomer Sir William Herschel, went to South Africa in January, 1834, and established an observatory at Feldhausen, near Cape Town, with the intention of completing his survey of the sidereal heavens by examining the southern skies as he had swept the northern, thus to make the first telescopic survey of the whole surface of the visible heavens. Locke knew about Sir John and his mission. The Matthias case had blown over, the big fire in Fulton Street was almost forgotten, and things were a bit dull on the island of Manhattan. The newspapers were in a state of armed truce. As Locke and his fellow journalists gathered at the American Hotel bar for their after-dinner brandy, it is probable that there was nothing, not even the great sloth recently arrived at the American Museum, to excite a good argument. Locke needed money, for his salary of twelve dollars a week could ill support the fine gentleman that he was; so he laid a plan before Mr. Day. It was a plot as well as a plan, and the first angle of the plot appeared on the second page of the Sun on August 21, 1835: 68 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" CELESTIAL DISCOVERIES - The Edinburgh Courant says-" We have just learnt from an eminent publisher in this city that Sir John Herschel, at the Cape of Good Hope, has made some astronomical discoveries of the most wonderful description, by means of an immense telescope of an entirely new principle." Nothing further appeared until Tuesday, August 25, when three columns of the Sun's first page took the newspaper and scientific worlds by the ears. Those were not the days of big type. The Sun's heading read: GREAT ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES. LATELY MADE BY SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, LL.D., F.R.S., &c. At the Cape of Good Hope. [From Supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science.] It may as well be said here that although there had been an Edinburgh Journal of Science, it ceased to exist several years before 1835. The periodical to which Dr. Dick, of Dundee, contributed his moon theories was, in a way, the successor to the Journal of Science, but it was called the New Philosophical Journal. The likeness of names was not great, but enough to cause some confusion. It is also noteworthy that the sly Locke credited to a supplement, rather than to the Journal of Science itself, the revelations which he that day began to pour before the eyes of Sun readers. Thus he started: In this unusual addition to our Journal we have the happiness of making known to the British public, and thence to the whole civilized world, recent discoveries in astronomy which will build an imperishable monument to the age in which we live, and confer upon the RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE, AUTHOR OF IHE MOON HOAX From an Engraving in the Possession of His Granddaughter, Mrs. F. Winthrop White of New Brighton, S. I. - I # OF 5-b 0 RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 69 present generation of the human race proud distinction through all future time. It has been poetically said that the stars of heaven are the hereditary regalia of man as the intellectual sovereign of the animal creation. He may now fold the zodiac around him with a loftier consciousness of his mental supremacy. After solemnly dwelling on the awe which mortal man must feel upon peering into the secrets of the sky, the article declared that Sir John "paused several hours before he commenced his observations, that he might prepare his own mind for discoveries which he knew would fill the minds of myriads of his fellow men with astonishment." It continued: And well might he pause! From the hour the first human pair opened their eyes to the glories of the blue firmament above them, there has been no accession to human knowledge at all comparable in sublime interest to that which he has been the honored agent in supplying. Well might he pause! He was about to become the sole depository of wondrous secrets which had been hid from the eyes of all men that had lived since the birth of time. At the end of a half-column of glorification, the writer got down to brass tacks: To render our enthusiasm intelligible, we will state at once that by means of a telescope, of vast dimensions and an entirely new principle, the younger Herschel, at his observatory in the southern hemisphere, has already made the most extraordinary discoveries in every planet of our solar system; has discovered planets in other solar systems; has obtained a distinct view of objects in the moon, fully equal to that which the unaided eye commands of terrestrial objects at the distance of one hundred yards; has affirmatively settled the question whether this satellite be inhabited, and by what orders of beings; has firmly established a new theory of come 70 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" tary phenomena; and has solved or corrected nearly every leading problem of mathematical astronomy. And where was the Journal of Science getting this mine of astronomical revelation for its supplement? The mystery is explained at once: We are indebted to the devoted friendship of Dr. Andrew Grant, the pupil of the elder, and for several years past the inseparable coadjutor of the younger Herschel. The amanuensis of the latter at the Cape of Good Hope, and the indefatigable superintendent of his telescope during the whole period of its construction and operations, Dr. Grant has been able to supply us with intelligence equal in general interest at least to that which Dr. Herschel himself has transmitted to the Royal Society. For permission to indulge his friendship in communicating this invaluable information to us, Dr. Grant and ourselves are indebted to the magnanimity of Dr. Herschel, who, far above all mercenary considerations, has thus signally honored and rewarded his fellow laborer in the field of science. Regarding the illustrations which, according to the implications of the text, accompanied the supplement, the writer was specific. Most of them, he stated, were copies of "drawings taken in the observatory by Herbert Home, Esq., who accompanied the last powerful series of reflectors from London to the Cape. The engraving of the belts of Jupiter is a reduced copy of an imperial folio drawing by Dr. Herschel himself. The segment of the inner ring of Saturn is from a large drawing by Dr. Grant." A history of Sir William Herschel's work and a description of his telescopes took up a column of the Sun, and on top of this came the details-as the Journal printed them-of Sir John's plans to outdo his father by revolutionary methods and a greater telescope. RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 71 Sir John, it appeared, was in conference with Sir David Brewster: After a few minutes' silent thought, Sir John diffidently inquired whether it would not be possible to effect a transfusion of artificial light through the focal object of vision! Sir David, somewhat startled at the originality of the idea, paused a while, and then hesitatingly referred to the refrangibility of rays and the angle of incidence. Sir John, grown more confident, adduced the example of the Newtonian reflector, in which the refrangibility was corrected by the second speculum and the angle of incidence restored by the third. "And," continued he, " why cannot the illuminated microscope, say the hydro-oxygen, be applied to render distinct and, if necessary, even to magnify, the focal object? " Sir David sprang from his chair in an ecstasy of conviction, and, leaping half-way to the ceiling, exclaimed: " Thou art the man! " Details of the casting of a great lens came next. It was twenty-four feet in diameter, and weighed nearly fifteen thousand pounds after it was polished; its estimated magnifying-power was forty-two thousand times. As he saw it safely started on its way to Africa, Sir John "expressed confidence in his ultimate ability to study even the entomology of the moon, in case she contained insects upon her surface." Thus ended the first instalment of the story. Where had the Sun got the Journal of Science supplement? An editorial article answered that " it was very politely furnished us by a medical gentleman immediately from Scotland; in consequence of a paragraph which appeared on Friday last from the Edinburgh Courant." The article added: 72 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" The portion which we publish to-day is introductory to celestial discoveries of higher and more universal interest than any, in any science yet known to the human race. Now indeed it may be said that we live in an age of discovery. It cannot be said that the whole town buzzed with excitement that day. Perhaps this first instalment was a bit over the heads of most readers; it was so technical, so foreign. But in Nassau and Ann Streets, wherever two newspapermen were gathered together, there was buzzing enough. What was coming next? Why hadn't they thought to subscribe to the Edinburgh Journal of Science, with its wonderful supplement? Nearly four columns of the revelations appeared on the following day-August 26, 1835. This time the reading public came trooping into camp, for the Sun's reprint of the Journal of Science supplement got beyond the stage of preliminaries and predictions, and began to tell of what was to be seen on the moon. Scientists and newspapermen appreciated the detailed description of the mammoth telescope and the work of placing it, but the public, like a child, wanted the moon-and got it. Let us plunge in at about the point where the public plunged: The specimen of lunar vegetation, however, which they had already seen, had decided a question of too exciting an interest to induce them to retard its exit. It had demonstrated that the moon has an atmosphere constituted similarly to our own, and capable of sustaining organized and, therefore, most probably, animal life. " The trees," says Dr. Grant, " for a period of ten minutes were of one unvaried kind, and unlike any I have seen except the largest class of yews in the English churchyards, which they in some respects resemble. These were followed by a level green plain which, as RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 73 measured by the painted circle on our canvas of fortynine feet, must have been more than half a mile in breadth." The article had explained that, by means of a great reflector, the lunar views were thrown upon a big canvas screen behind the telescope. Then appeared as fine a forest of firs, unequivocal firs, as I have ever seen cherished in the bosom of my native mountains. Wearied with the long continuance of these, we greatly reduced the magnifying power of the microscope without eclipsing either of the reflectors, and immediately perceived that we had been insensibly descending, as it were, a mountainous district of highly diversified and romantic character, and that we were on the verge of a lake, or inland sea; but of what relative locality or extent, we were yet too greatly Magnified to determine. On introducing the feeblest achromatic lens we possessed, we found that the water, whose boundary we had just discovered, answered in general outline to the Mare Nubicum of Riccoli. Fairer shores never angel coasted on a tour of pleasure. A beach of brilliant white sand, girt with wild, castellated rocks, apparently of green marble, varied at chasms, occurring every two or three hundred feet, with grotesque blocks of chalk or gypsum, and feathered and festooned at the summits with the clustering foliage of unknown trees, moved along the bright wall of our apartment until we were speechless with admiration. A column farther on, in a wonderful valley of this wonderful moon, life at last burst upon the seers: In the shade of the woods on the southeastern side we beheld continuous herds of brown quadrupeds, having all the external characteristics of the bison, but more diminutive than any species of the bos genus in our natural history. Its tail was like that of our bos grunniens; but in its semicircular horns, the hump on its shoulders, the depth of its dewlap, and the length of 74 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" its shaggy hair, it closely resembled the species to which I have compared it. It had, however, one widely distinctive feature, which we afterward found common to nearly every lunar quadruped we have discovered; namely, a remarkable fleshy appendage over the eyes, crossing the whole breadth of the forehead and united to the ears. We could most distinctly perceive this hairy veil, which was shaped like the upper front outline of the cap known to the ladies as Mary Queen of Scots cap, lifted and lowered by means of the ears. It immediately occurred to the acute mind of Dr. Herschel that this was a providential contrivance to protect the eyes of the animal from the great extremes of light and darkness to which all the inhabitants of our side of the moon are periodically subjected. The next animal perceived would be classed on earth as a monster. It was of a bluish lead color, about the size of a goat, with a head and beard like him, and a single horn, slightly inclined forward from the perpendicular. The female was destitute of the horn and beard, but had a much longer tail. It was gregarious, and chiefly abounded on the acclivitous glades of the woods. In elegance of symmetry it rivaled the antelope, and like him it seemed an agile, sprightly creature, running with great speed and springing from the green turf with all the unaccountable antics of the young lamb or kitten. This beautiful creature afforded us the most exquisite amusement. The mimicry of its movements upon our white-painted canvas was as faithful and luminous as that of animals within a few yards of a camera obscura when seen pictured upon its tympan. Frequently, when attempting to put our fingers upon its beard, it would suddenly bound away into oblivion, as if conscious of our earthly impertinence; but then others would appear, whom we could not prevent nibbling the herbage, say or do what we would to them. So, at last, the people of earth knew something concrete about the live things of the moon. Goats with RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 75 beards were there, and every New Yorker knew goats, for they fed upon the rocky hills of Harlem. And the moon had birds, too: On examining the center of this delightful valley we found a large, branching river, abounding with lovely islands and water-birds of numerous kinds. A species of gray pelican was the most numerous, but black and white cranes, with unreasonably long legs and bill, were also quite common. We watched their piscivorous experiments a long time in hopes of catching sight of a lunar fish; but, although we were not gratified in this respect, we could easily guess the purpose with which they plunged their long necks so deeply beneath the water. Near the upper extremity of one of these islands we obtained a glimpse of a strange amphibious creature of a spherical form, which rolled with great velocity across the pebbly beach, and was lost sight of in the strong current which set off from this angle of the island. At this point clouds intervened, and the Herschel party had to call it a day. But it had been a big day, and nobody who read the Sun wondered that the astronomers tossed off "congratulatory bumpers of the best 'East India particular,' and named this place of wonders the Valley of the Unicorn." So ended the Sun story of August 26, but an editorial paragraph assured the patrons of the paper that on the morrow there would be a treat even richer. What did the other papers say? In the language of a later and less elegant period, most of them ate it upsome eagerly, some grudgingly, some a bit dubiously, but they ate it, either in crumbs or in hunks. The Daily Advertiser declared: No article has appeared for years that will command so general a perusal and publication. Sir John has 76 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" added a stock of knowledge to the present age that will immortalize his name and place it high on the page of science. The Mercantile Advertiser, knowing that its lofty readers were unlikely to see the moon revelations in the lowly Sun, hastened to begin reprinting the articles in full, with the remark that the document appeared to have intrinsic evidence of authenticity. The Times, a daily then only a year old, and destined to live only eighteen months more-later, of course, the title was used by a successful daily-said that everything in the Sun story was probable and plausible, and had an " air of intense verisimilitude." The New York Sunday News advised the incredulous to be patient: Our doubts and incredulity may be a wrong to the learned astronomer, and the circumstances of this wonderful discovery may be correct. The Courier and Enquirer said nothing at all. Like the Journal of Commerce, it hated the Sun for a lucky upstart. Both of these sixpenny respectables stood silent, with their axes behind their backs. Their own readers, the Livingstons and the Stuyvesants, got not a line about the moon from the blanket sheets, but they sent down into the kitchen and borrowed the Sun from the domestics, on the shallow pretext of wishing to discover whether their employees were reading a moral newspaper-as indeed they were. The Herald, then about four months old, said not a word about the moon story. In fact, that was a period in which it said nothing at all about any subject, for the fire of that summer had unfortunately wiped out its plant. On the very days when the moon stories appeared, Mr. Bennett stood cracking his knuckles in RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 77 front of his new establishment, the basement of 202 Broadway, trying to hurry the men who were installing a double-cylinder press. Being a wise person, he advertised his progress in the Sun. It may have vexed him to see the circulation of the Sun-which he had imitated in character and price-bound higher and higher as he stood helpless. The third instalment of the literary treasure so obligingly imported by the " medical gentleman immediately from Scotland" introduced to Sun readers new and important regions of the moon-the Vagabond Mountains, the Lake of Death, craters of extinct volcanoes twenty-eight hundred feet high, and twelve luxuriant forests divided by open plains "in which waved an ocean of verdure, and which were probably prairies like those of North America." The details were satisfying: Dr. Herschel has classified not less than thirty-eight species of forest trees and nearly twice this number of plants, found in this tract alone, which are widely different to those found in more equatorial latitudes. Of animals he classified nine species of mammalia and five of oviparia. Among the former is a small kind of reindeer, the elk, the moose, the horned bear, and the biped beaver. The last resembles the beaver of the earth in every other respect than its destitution of a tail and its invariable habit of walking upon only two feet. It carries its young in its arms, like a human being, and walks with an easy, gliding motion. Its huts are constructed better and higher than those of many tribes of human savages, and from the appearance of smoke in nearly all of them there is no doubt of its being acquainted with the use of fire. The largest lake described was two hundred and sixty-six miles long and one hundred and ninety-three 78 THE STORY OF " THE SUN" wide, shaped like the Bay of Bengal, and studded with volcanic islands. One island in a large bay was pinnacled with quartz crystals as brilliant as fire. Near by roamed zebras three feet high. Golden and blue pheasants strutted about. The beach was covered with shell-fish. Dr. Grant did not say whether the fire-,making beavers ever held a clambake there. The Sun of Friday, August 28, 1835, was a notable issue. Not yet two years old, Mr. Day's newspaper had the satisfaction of announcing that it had achieved the largest circulation of any daily in the world. It had, it said, 15,440 regular subscribers in New York and 700 in Brooklyn, and it sold 2,000 in the streets and 1,220 out of town-a grand total of 19,360 copies, as against the 17,000 circulation of the London Times. The doublecylinder Napier press in the building at Nassau and Spruce Streets-the corner where the Tribune is to-day, and to which the Sun had moved on August 3-had to run ten hours a day to satisfy the public demand. People waited with more or less patience until three o'clock in the afternoon to read about the moon. That very issue contained the most sensational instalment of all the moon series, for through that mystic chain which included Dr. Grant, the supplement of the Edinburgh Journal of Science, the " medical gentleman immediately from Scotland," and the Sun, public curiosity as to the presence of human creatures on the orb of night was satisfied at last. The astronomers were looking upon the cliffs and crags of a new part of the moon: But whilst gazing upon them in a perspective of about half a mile we were thrilled with astonishment to perceive four successive flocks of large winged creatures, wholly unlike any kind of birds, descend with a slow, even motion from the cliffs on the western side RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 79 and alight upon the plain. They were first noticed by Dr. Herschel, who exclaimed: " Now gentlemen, my theories against your proofs, which you have often found a pretty even bet, we have here something worth looking at. I was confident that if ever we found beings in human shape it would be in this longitude, and that they would be provided by their Creator with some extraordinary powers of locomotion. First, exchange for my Number D." This lens, being soon introduced, gave us a fine halfmile distance; and we counted three parties of these creatures, of twelve, nine, and fifteen in each, walking erect toward a. small wood near the base of the eastern precipices. Certainly they were like human beings, for their wings had now disappeared, and their attitude in walking was both erect and dignified. Having observed them at this distance for some minutes, we introduced lens H.z., which brought them to the apparent proximity of eighty yards-the highest clear magnitude we possessed until the latter end of March, when we effected an improvement in the gas burners. About half of the first party had passed beyond our canvas; but of all the others we had a perfectly distinct and deliberate view. They averaged four feet in height, were covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs, from the top of the shoulders to the calves of the legs. The face, which was of a yellowish flesh-color, was a slight improvement upon that of the large orang-utan, being more open and intelligent in its expression, and having a much greater expanse of forehead. The mouth, however, was very prominent, though somewhat relieved by a thick beard upon the lower jaw, and by lips far more human than those of any species of the Simia genus. In general symmetry of body and limbs they were infinitely superior to the orang-utan; so much so that, but for their long wings, Lieutenant Drummond said they would look as well on a parade-ground as some of the old cockney militia. The hair on the head was a darker 80 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" color than that of the body, closely curled, but apparently not woolly, and arranged in two curious semicircles over the temples of the forehead. Their feet could only be seen as they were alternately lifted in walking; but from what we could see of them in so transient a view, they appeared thin and very protuberant at the heel. Whilst passing across the canvas, and whenever we afterward saw them, these creatures were evidently engaged in conversation; their gesticulation, more particularly the varied action of the hands and arms, appeared impassioned and emphatic. We hence inferred that they were rational beings, and, although not perhaps of so high an order as others which we discovered the next month on the shores of the Bay of Rainbows, that they were capable of producing works of art and contrivance. The next view we obtained of them was still more favorable. It was on the borders of a little lake, or expanded stream, which we then for the first time perceived running down the valley to the large lake, and having on its eastern margin a small wood. Some of these creatures had crossed this water and were lying like spread eagles on the skirts of the wood. We could then perceive that their wings possessed great expansion, and were similar in structure to those of the bat, being a semi-transparent membrane expanded in curvilineal divisions by means of straight radii, united at the back by the dorsal integuments. But what astonished us very much was the circumstance of this membrane being continued from the shoulders to the legs, united all the way down, though gradually decreasing in width. The wings seemed completely under the command of volition, for those of the creatures whom we saw bathing in the water spread them instantly to their full width, waved them as ducks do theirs to shake off the water, and then as instantly closed them again in a compact form. Our further observation of the habits of these creatures, who were of both sexes, led to results so very remarkable that I prefer they should be first laid before RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 81 the public in Dr. Herschel's own work, where I have reason to know that they are fully and faithfully stated, however incredulously they may be received.. The three families then almost simultaneously spread their wings, and were lost in the dark confines of the canvas before we had time to breathe from our paralyzing astonishment. We scientifically denominated them the vespertilio-homo, or man-bat; and they are doubtless innocent and happy creatures, notwithstanding some of their amusements would but ill comport with our terrestrial notions of decorum. So ended the account, in Dr. Grant's words, of that fateful day. The editor of the supplement, perhaps a cousin of the " medical gentleman immediately arrived from Scotland," added that although he had of course faithfully obeyed Dr. Grant's injunction to omit "these highly curious passages," he did not " clearly perceive the force of the reasons assigned for it," and he added: From these, however, and other prohibited passages, which will be published by Dr. Herschel with the certificates of the civil and military authorities of the colony, and of several Episcopal, Wesleyan, and other ministers who, in the month of March last, were permitted under the stipulation of temporary secrecy to visit the observatory and become eye-witnesses of the wonders which they were requested to attest, we are confident his forthcoming volumes will be at once the most sublime in science and the most intense in general interest that ever issued from the press. New York now stopped its discussion of human slavery, the high cost of living-apples cost as much as four cents apiece in Wall Street-and other familiar topics, and devoted its talking hours to the man-bats of the moon. The Sun was stormed by people who wanted back numbers of the stories, and flooded with demands 82 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" by mail. As the text of the Journal of Science article indicated that the original narrative had been illustrated, there was a cry for pictures. Mr. Day was busy with the paper and its overworked press, but he gave Mr. Locke a free hand, and that scholar took to Norris & Baker, lithographers, in the Union Building, Wall Street, the drawings which had been intrusted to his care by the "medical gentleman immediately from Scotland." Mr. Baker, described by the Sun as quite the most talented lithographic artist of the city, worked day and night on his delightful task, that the illustrations might be ready when the Sun's press should have turned out, in the hours when it was not printing Suns, a pamphlet containing the astronomical discoveries. " Dr. Herschel's great work," said the Sun, "is preparing for publication at ten guineas sterling, or fifty dollars; and we shall give all the popular substance of it for twelve or thirteen cents." The pamphlets were to be sold two for a quarter; the lithographs at twenty-five cents for the set. Most newspapers that mentioned the discovery of human creatures on the moon were credulous. The Evening Post, edited by William Cullen Bryant and Fitz-Greene Halleck-" the chanting cherubs of the Post," as Colonel Webb was wont to call them-only skirted the edge of doubt: That there should be winged people in the moon does not strike us as more wonderful than the existence of such a race of beings on earth; and that there does or did exist such a race rests on the evidence of that most veracious of voyagers, Peter Wilkins, whose celebrated work not only gives an account of the general appearance and habits of a most interesting tribe of flying Indians, but also of those more delicate and engaging RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 83 traits which the author was enabled to discover by reason of the conjugal relations he entered into with one of the females of the winged tribe. Peter Wilkins was the hero of Robert Paltock's imaginative book, " The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, a Cornish Man," published in London in 1750. Paltock's winged people, said Southey, were " the most beautiful creatures of imagination that were ever devised." The instalment of the discoveries printed on August 29 revealed to the reader the great Temple of the Moon, built of polished sapphire, with a roof of some yellow metal, supported by columns seventy feet high and six feet in diameter: It was open on all sides, and seemed to contain neither seats, altars, nor offerings, but it was a light and airy structure, nearly a hundred feet high from its white, glistening floor to the glowing roof, and it stood upon a round, green eminence on the eastern side of the valley. We afterward, however, discovered two others which were in every respect facsimiles of this one; but in neither did we perceive any visitants except flocks of wild doves, which alighted on its lustrous pinnacles. Had the devotees of these temples gone the way of all living, or were the latter merely historical monuments? What did the ingenious builders mean by the globe surrounded with flames? Did they, by this, record any past calamity of their world, or predict any future one of ours? I by no means despair of ultimately solving not only these, but a thousand other questions which present themselves respecting the object in this planet; for not the millionth part of her surface has yet been explored, and we have been more desirous of collecting the greatest possible number of new facts than of indulging in speculative theories, however seductive to the imagination. 84 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" The conclusion of this astounding narrative, which totalled eleven thousand words, was printed on August 31. In the valley of the temple a new set of man-bats was found: We had no opportunity of seeing them actually engaged in any work of industry or art; and, so far as we could judge, they spent their happy hours in collecting various fruits in the woods, in eating, flying, bathing, and loitering about upon the summits of precipices. One night, when the astronomers finished work, they neglectfully left the telescope facing the eastern horizon. The risen sun burned a hole fifteen feet in circumference through the reflecting chamber, and ruined part of the observatory. When the damage was repaired, the moon was invisible, and so Dr. Herschel turned his attention to Saturn. Most of the discoveries here were technical, as the Sun assured its readers, and the narrative came to an end. An editorial note added: This concludes the supplement with the exception of forty pages of illustrative and mathematical notes, which would greatly enhance the size and price of this work without commensurably adding to its general interest. In order that our readers may judge for themselves whether we have withheld from them any matter of general comprehension and interest, we insert one of the notes from those pages of the supplement which we thought it useless to reprint; and it may be considered a fair sample of the remainder. For ourselves, we know nothing of mathematics beyond counting dollars and cents, but to geometricians the following new method of measuring the height of the lunar mountains, adopted by Sir John Herschel, may be quite interesting. Perhaps the pretended method of measuring lunar mountains was not interesting to laymen, but it may have been the cause of an intellectual tumult at Yale. RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 85 At all events, a deputation from that college hurried to the steamboat and came to New York to see the wonderful supplement. The collegians saw Mr. Day, and voiced their desire. "Surely," he replied, "you do not doubt that we have the supplement in our possession? I suppose the magazine is somewhere up-stairs, but I consider it almost an insult that you should ask to see it." On their way out the Yale men heard, perhaps from the " devil," that one Locke was interested in the matter of the moon, that he had handled the supplement, and that he was to be seen at the foot of the stairs, smoking his cigar and gazing across City Hall Park. They advanced upon him, and he, less brusque than Mr. Day, told the scientific pilgrims that the supplement was in the hands of a printer in William Street-giving the name and address. As the Yale men disappeared in the direction of the printery, Locke started for the same goal, and more rapidly. When the Yalensians arrived, the printer, primed by Locke, told them that the precious pamphlet had just been sent to another shop, where certain proofreading was to be done. And so they went from post to pillar until the hour came for their return to New Haven. It would not do to linger in New York, for Professors Denison Olmsted and Elias Loomis were that very day getting their first peep at Halley's comet, about to make the regular appearance with which it favours the earth every seventy-six years. But Yale was not the only part of intellectual New England to be deeply interested in the moon and its bat-men. The Gazette of Hampshire, Massachusetts, insisted that Edward Everett, who was then running for Governor, had these astronomical discoveries in mind when he declared that "we know not how soon 86 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" the mind, in its researches into the labyrinth of nature, would grasp some clue which would lead to a new universe and change the aspect of the world." Harriet Martineau, who was touring America at the time, wrote in her " Sketches of Western Travel" that the ladies of Springfield, Massachusetts, subscribed to a fund to send missionaries to the benighted luminary. When the Sun articles reached Paris, they were at once translated into illustrated pamphlets, and the caricaturists of the Paris newspapers drew pictures of the man-bats going through the streets singing "Au Clair de la Lune." London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow made haste to issue editions of the work. Meanwhile, of course, Sir John Herschel was busy with his telescope at the Cape, all unaware of his expanded fame in the north. Caleb Weeks, of Jamaica, Long Island, the Adam Forepaugh of his day, was setting out for South Africa to get a supply of giraffes for his menagerie, and he had the honour of laying in the great astronomer's hand a clean copy of the pamphlet. To say that Sir John was amazed at the Sun's enterprise would be putting it mildly. When he had read the story through, he went to Caleb Weeks and said that he was overcome; that he never could hope to live up to the fame that had been heaped upon him. In New York, meanwhile, Richard Adams Locke had spilled the beans. There was a reporter named Finn, once employed by the Sun, but later a scribe for the Journal of Commerce. He and Locke were friends. One afternoon Gerard Hallock, who was David Hale's partner in the proprietorship of the Journal of Commerce, called Finn to his office and told him to get extra copies of the Sun containing the moon story, as the Journal had decided, in justice to its readers, that it must reprint it. RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 87 Perhaps at the Sun office, perhaps in the tap-room of the Washington Hotel, Finn met Locke, and they went socially about to public places. Finn told Locke of the work on which he was engaged, and said that, as the moon story was already being put into type at the Journal office, it was likely that it would be printed on the morrow. " Don't print it right away," said Locke. "I wrote it myself." The next day the Journal, instead of being silently grateful for the warning, denounced the alleged discoveries as a hoax. Mr. Bennett, who by this time had the Herald once more in running order, not only cried " Hoax! " but named Locke as the author. Probably Locke was glad that the suspense was over. He is said to have told a friend that he had not intended the story as a hoax, but as satire. " It is quite evident," he said, as he saw the whole country take the marvellous narrative seriously, " that it is an abortive satire; and I am the best self-hoaxed man in the whole community." But while the Sun's rivals denounced the hoax, the Sun was not quick to admit that it had gulled not only its own readers but almost all the scientific world. Barring the casual conversation between Locke and Finn, there was no evidence plain enough to convince the layman that it was a hoax. The Sun fenced lightly and skilfully with all controverters. On September 16, more than two weeks after the conclusion of the story, it printed a long editorial article on the subject of the authenticity of the discoveries, mentioning the widespread interest that had been displayed in them: Most of those who incredulously regard the whole narrative as a hoax are generously enthusiastic in panegyrizing not only what they are pleased to denomi 88 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" nate its ingenuity and talent, but also its useful effect in diverting the public mind, for a while, from that bitter apple of discord, the abolition of slavery, which still unhappily threatens to turn the milk of human kindness into rancorous gall. That the astronomical discoveries have had this effect is. obvious from our exchange papers. Who knows, therefore, whether these discoveries in the moon, with the visions of the blissful harmony of her inhabitants which they have revealed, may not have had the effect of reproving the discords of a country which might be happy as a paradise, which has valleys not less lovely than those of the Ruby Colosseum, of the Unicorn, or of the Triads; and which has not inferior facilities for social intercourse to those possessed by the vespertiliones-homines, or any other homines whatever? Some persons of little faith but great good nature, who consider the " moon story," as it is vulgarly called, an adroit fiction of our own, are quite of the opinion that this was the amiable moral which the writer had in view. Other readers, however, construe the whole as an elaborate satire upon the monstrous fabrications of the political press of the country and the various genera and species of its party editors. In the blue goat with the single horn, mentioned as it is in connection with the royal arms of England, many persons fancy they perceive the characteristics of a notorious foreigner who is the supervising editor of one of our largest morning papers. We confess that this idea of intended satire somewhat shook our own faith in the genuineness of the extracts from the Edinburgh Journal of Science with which a gentleman connected with our office furnished us as "from a medical gentleman immediately from Scotland." Certain correspondents have been urging us to come out and confess the whole to be a hoax; but this we can by no means do until we have the testimony of the English or Scotch papers to corroborate such a declaration. In the mean time let every reader of the account examine it and enjoy his own opinion. Many intelli RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 89 gent and scientific persons will believe it true, and will continue to do so to their lives' end; whilst the skepticism of others would not be removed though they were in Dr. Herschel's observatory itself. The New York showmen of that day were keen for novelty, and the moon story helped them to it. Mr. Hannington, who ran the diorama in the City Saloonwhich was not a barroom, but an amusement house-on Broadway opposite St. Paul's Church, put on "The Lunar Discoveries; a Brilliant Illustration of the Scientific Observation of the Surface of the Moon, to Which Will Be Added the Reported Lunar Observations of Sir John Herschel." Hannington had been showing " The Deluge " and " The Burning of Moscow," but the wonders of the moon proved to be far more attractive to his patrons. The Sun approved of this moral spectacle: Hannington forever and still years afterward, say we! His panorama of the lunar discoveries, in connexion with the beautiful dioramas, are far superior to any other exhibition in this country. Not less popular than Hannington's panorama was an extravaganza put on by Thomas Hamblin at the Bowery Theatre, and called " Moonshine, or Lunar Discoveries." A Sun man went to review it, and had to stand up; but he was patient enough to stay, and he wrote this about the show: It is quite evident that Hamblin does not believe a word of the whole story, or he would never have taken the liberties with it which he has. The wings of the man-bats and lady-bats, who are of an orange color and look like angels in the jaundice, are well contrived for effect; and the dialogue is highly witty and pungent. Major Jack Downing's blowing up a whole flock of 90 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" winged lunarians with a combustible bundle of Abolition tracts, after vainly endeavoring to catch a long aim at them with his rifle, is capital; as are also his puns and jokes upon the splendid scenery of the Ruby Colosseum. Take it altogether, it is the most amusing thing that has been on these boards for a long time. Thus the moon eclipsed the regular stars of the New York stage. Even Mrs. Duff, the most pathetic Isabella that ever appeared in " The Fatal Marriage," saw her audiences thin out at the Franklin Theatre. Sol Smith's drolleries in " The Lying Valet," at the Park Theatre, could not rouse the laughter that the burlesque manbats caused at the Bowery. All this time there was a disappointed man in Baltimore; disappointed because the moon stories had caused him to abandon one of the most ambitious stories he had attempted. This was Edgar Allan Poe, and the story he dropped was "Hans Pfaall." In the spring of 1835 the Harpers issued an edition of Sir John Herschel's " Treatise on Astronomy," and Poe, who read it, was deeply interested in the chapter on the possibility of future lunar investigations: The theme excited my fancy, and I longed to give free rein to it in depicting my day-dreams about the scenery of the moon; in short, I longed to write a story embodying these dreams. The obvious difficulty, of course, was that of accounting for the narrator's acquaintance with the satellite; and the equally obvious mode of surmounting the difficulty was the supposition of an extraordinary telescope. Poe spoke of this ambition to John Pendleton Kennedy, of Baltimore, already the author of " Swallow Barn," and later to have the honour of writing, as the result of a jest by Thackeray, the fourth chapter of the second volume of "The Virginians." Kennedy RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 91 assured Poe that the mechanics of telescope construction were so fixed that it would be impossible to impart verisimilitude to a tale based on a superefficient telescope. So Poe resorted to other means of bringing the moon close to the reader's eye: I fell back upon a style half plausible, half bantering, and resolved to give what interest I could to an actual passage from the earth to the moon, describing the lunar scenery as if surveyed and personally examined by the narrator. Poe wrote the first part of " Hans Pfaall," and published it in the Southern Literary Messenger, of which he was then editor, at Richmond, Virginia. Three weeks afterward the first instalment of Locke's moon story appeared in the Sun. At the moment Poe believed that his idea had been kidnapped: No sooner had I seen the paper than I understood the jest, which not for a moment could I doubt had been suggested by my own jeu d'esprit. Some of the New York journals-the Transcript, among others-saw the matter in the same light, and published the moon story side by side with "Hans Pfaall," thinking that the author of the one had been detected in the author of the other. Although the details are, with some exceptions, very dissimilar, still I maintain that the general features of the two compositions are nearly identical. Both are hoaxes-although one is in a tone of mere banter, the other of down-right earnest; both hoaxes are on one subject, astronomy; both on the same point of that subject, the moon; both professed to have derived exclusive information from a foreign country; and both attempt to give plausibility by minuteness of scientific detail. Add to all this, that nothing of a similar nature had even been attempted before these two hoaxes, the one of which followed immediately upon the heels of the other. Having stated the case, however, in this form, I am 92 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" bound to do Mr. Locke the justice to say that he denies having seen my article prior to the publication of his own; I am bound to add, also, that I believe him. Nor can any unbiassed person who reads, for purpose of comparison, the "Astronomical Discoveries" and "Hans Pfaall" suspect that Locke based his hoax on the story of the Rotterdam debtor who blew his creditors to bits and sailed to the moon in a balloon. Chalk and cheese are much more alike than these two products of genius. Poe may have intended to fall back upon "a style half plausible, half bantering," as he described it, but there is not the slightest plausibility about "Hans Pfaall." It is as near to humour as the great, dark mind could get. " Mere banter," as he later described it, is better. The very episode of the dripping pitcher of water, used to wake Hans at an altitude where even alcohol would freeze, is enough proof, if proof at all were necessary, to st"ip the tale of its last shred of verisimilitude. No child of twelve would believe in Hans, while Locke's fictitious "Dr. Grant " deceived nine-tenths-the estimate is Poe's-of those who read the narrative of the great doings at the Cape of Good Hope. Locke had spoiled a promising tale for Poe-who tore up the second instalment of "Hans Pfaall" when he " found that he could add very little to the minute and authentic account of Sir John Herschel "-but the poet took pleasure, in later years, in picking the Sun's moon story to bits. "That the public were misled, even for an instant," Poe declared in his critical essay on Locke's writings, " merely proves the gross ignorance which, ten or twelve years ago, was so prevalent on astronomical topics." According to Locke's own description of the telescope, RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 93 said Poe, it could not have brought the moon nearer than five miles; yet Sir John-Locke's Sir John-saw flowers and described the eyes of birds. Locke had an ocean on the moon, although it had been established beyond question that the visible side of the moon is dry. The most ridiculous thing about the moon story, said Poe, was that the narrator described the entire bodies of the man-bats, whereas, if they were seen at all by an observer on the earth, they would manifestly appear as if walking heels up and head down, after the fashion of flies on a ceiling. And yet the hoax, Poe admits, " was, upon the whole, the greatest hit in the way of sensation-of merely popular sensation-ever made by any similar fiction either in America or Europe." Whether Locke intended it as satire or not-a debatable point-it was a hoax of the first water. It deceived more persons, and for a longer time, than any other fake ever written: and, as the Sun pointed out, it hurt nobody-except, perhaps, the feelings of Dr. Dick, of Dundee-and it took the public mind away from less agreeable matters. Some of the wounded scientists roared, but the public, particularly the New York public, took the exposure of Locke's literary villainy just as Sir John Herschel accepted it-with a grin. As for the inspiration of the moon story, the record is nebulous. If Poe was really grieved at his first thought that Locke had taken from him the main imaginative idea-that the moon was inhabited-then Poe was oversensitive or uninformed, for that idea was at least two centuries old. Francis Godwin, an English bishop and author, who was born in 1562, and who died just two centuries before the Sun was first printed, wrote " The Man in the Moone, or a Discourse of a Voyage Thither by Domingo 94 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" Gonsales, the Speedy Messenger." This was published in London in 1638, five years after the author's death. In the same year there appeared a book called " The Discovery of a World in the Moone," which contained arguments to prove the moon habitable. It was written by John Wilkins-no relative of the fictitious Peter of Paltock's story, but a young English clergyman who later became Bishop of Chester, and who was the first secretary of the Royal Society. Two years later Wilkins added to his " Discovery of a World " a " Discourse Concerning the Possibility of a Passage Thither." Cyrano de Bergerac, he of the long nose and the passion for poetry and duelling, later to be immortalized by Rostand, read these products of two Englishmen's fancy, and about 1650 he turned out his joyful " Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires de la Lune." But Bergerac had also been influenced by Dante and by Lucian, the latter being the supposed inspiration of the fanciful narratives of Rabelais and Swift. Perhaps these writers influenced Godwin and Wilkins also; so the trail, zigzagged and ramifying, goes back to the second century. It is hard to indict a man for being inspired, and in the case of the moon story there is no evidence of plagiarism. If " Hans Pfaall" were to be compared with Locke's story for hoaxing qualities, it would only suffer by the comparison. It would appear as the youthful product of a tyro, as against the cunning work of an artist of almost devilish ingenuity. Is there any doubt that the moon hoax was the sole work of Richard Adams Locke? So far as concerns the record of the Sun, the comments of Locke's American contemporaries, and the belief of Benjamin H. Day, expressed in 1883 in a talk with Edward P. Mitchell, the answer must be in the negative. Yet it must be set down, as a literary curiosity at least, that it has been RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 95 believed in France and by at least one English antiquary/ of repute that the moon hoax was the work of a FrenchJ man-Jean Nicolas Nicollet, the astronomer. Nicollet was born at Cluses, in Savoy, in 1786. First a cowherd, he did not learn to read until he was twelve. Once at school his progress was rapid, and at nineteen he become preceptor of mathematics at Chambry. He went to Paris, where in 1817 he was appointed secretary-librarian of the Observatory, and he studied astronomy with Laplace, who refers to Nicollet's assistance in his works. In 1823 he was appointed to the government bureau of longitudes, and at the same time was professor of mathematics in the College of Louis le Grand. He became a master of English, and through this knowledge and his own mathematical genius he was able to assemble, for the use of the French life-insurance companies, all that was known, and much that he himself discovered, of actuarial methods; this being incorporated in his letter to M. Outrequin on " Assurances Having for Their Basis the Probable Duration of Human Life." He also wrote "Memoirs upon the Measure of an Arc of Parallel Midway Between the Pole and the Equator " (1826), and " Course of Mathematics for the Use of Mariners " (1830). In 1831 Nicollet failed in speculation, losing not only his own fortune but that of others. He came to the United States, arriving early in 1832, the very year that Locke came to America. It is probable that he was in New York, but there is no evidence as to the length of his stay. It is known, however, that he was impoverished, and that he was assisted by Bishop Chanche, of Natchez, to go on with his chosen work-an exploration of the Mississippi and its tributaries. He made astronomical and barometrical observations, determined 96 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" the geographical position and elevation of many important points, and studied Indian lore. The United States government was so well pleased with Nicollet's work that it sent him to the Far West for further investigations, with Lieutenant John C. Fr6 -mont as assistant. His " Geology of the Upper Mississippi Region and of the Cretaceous Formation of the Upper Missouri " was one of the results of his journeys. After this he tried, through letters, to regain his lost standing in France by seeking election to the Paris Academy of Sciences, but he was black-balled, and, broken-hearted, he died in Washington in 1843. The Englishman who believed that Nicollet was the author of the moon hoax was Augustus De Morgan, father of the late William De Morgan, the novelist, and himself a distinguished mathematician and litterateur. He was professor of mathematics at University College, London, at the time when the moon pamphlet first appeared in England. His "Budget of Paradoxes," an interesting collection of literary curiosities and puzzles, which he had written, but not carefully assembled, was published in 1872, the year after his death. Two fragments, printed separately in this volume, refer to the moon hoax. The first is this: "Some Account of the Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made by Sir John Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope."-Second Edition, London, 12mo, 1836. This is a curious hoax, evidently written by a person versed in astronomy and clever at introducing probable circumstances and undesigned coincidences. It first appeared in a newspaper. It makes Sir J. Herschel discover men, animals, et cetera, in the moon, of which much detail is given. There seems to have been a French edition, the original, and English editions in America, whence the work came into Britain; but PUItSimEs DAL"Y, r, tU&NJ. H. DAY. Ar AS 'I'ONORIMCAI. DI)SCOUVKI, Wo fher dio*e."a ",r.?oM r.m, '~.. rs Fr ' ~l ~-t"f..-f..i. 's aSwYlSU ^ * or^. l J t <~ rk *~h ~~~~e~~i~t d tu a aica *#i r w h~ew c e. t sf hit WtTb. wia l t2 qib i [v p.1 ow4 p%- e1 FW t tW thrrbog h Seff.} tura rrk., ya "Ud jthltmitne t's Lth thw* t f d- (H-m f the I di u a - cP".,N". de. ir1 lrt Iiy _ o t _ ttof ths ba"t4 r"a 4iaPt t st aint~ t ti ce; itt f tt | tiw Sl a ittS abrtbt ta;l w t 1u*4, * ld do = king I.d6t tde 8tib pb, rit tttkta } ep, Ogttf= Feistlafit t I LuxHE WeKA*^. FIRST Pi;;; eea. a"~hS atgl ~t', ~( "~>~ i Ola THE MOO HOAXm diht J "..~ * ' ' t,. THE FIRST INSTALLMENT OF THE MOON HOAX A MOON SCENE, FROM LOCKE'S GREAT DECEPTION 1,4, (-, l: / - Y I RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 97 whether the French was published in America or at Paris I do not know. There is no doubt that it was produced in the United States by M. Nicollet, an astronomer, once of Paris, and a fugitive of some kind. About him I have heard two stories. First, that he fled to America with funds not his own, and that this book was a mere device to raise the wind. Secondly, that he was a prot6g6 of Laplace, and of the Polignac party, and also an outspoken man. That after the Revolution he was so obnoxious to the republican party that he judged it prudent to quit France; which he did in debt, leaving money for his creditors, but not enough, with M. Bouvard. In America he connected himself with an assurance office. The moon story was written, and sent to France, chiefly with the intention of entrapping M. Arago, Nicollet's especial foe, into the belief of it. And those who narrate this version of the story wind up by saying that M. Arago was entrapped, and circulated the wonders through Paris until a letter from Nicollet to M. Bouvard explained the hoax. I have no personal knowledge of either story; but as the poor man had to endure the first, it is but right that the second should be told with it. The second fragment reads as follows: "The Moon Hoax; or, the Discovery That the Moon Has a Vast Population of Human Beings." By Richard Adams Locke.-New York, 1859. This is a reprint of the hoax already mentioned. I suppose "R. A. Locke" is the name assumed by M. Nicollet. The publisher informs us that when the hoax first appeared day by day in a morning newspaper, the circulation increased fivefold, and the paper obtained a permanent footing. Besides this, an edition of sixty thousand was sold off in less than one month. This discovery was also published under the name of A. R. Grant. Sohnke's Bibliotheca Mathematica" confounds this Grant with Professor R. Grant of Glasgow, the author of the "History of Physical Astronomy," who is accordingly made to guarantee the dis 98 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" coveries in the moon. I hope Adams Locke will not merge in J. C. Adams, the codiscoverer of Neptune. Sohnke gives the titles of three French translations of " The Moon Hoax " at Paris, of one at Bordeaux, and of Italian translations at Parma, Palermo, and Milan. A correspondent, who is evidently fully master of details, which he has given at length, informs me that " The Moon Hoax" first appeared in the New York Sun, of which R. A. Locke was editor. It so much resembled a story then recently published by Edgar A. Poe, in a Southern paper, "Adventures of Hans Pfaall," that some New York journals published the two side by side. Mr. Locke, when he left the New York Sun, started another paper, and discovered the manuscript of Mungo Park; but this did not deceive. The Sun, however, continued its career, and had a great success in an account of a balloon voyage from England to America, in seventy-five hours, by Mr. Monck Mason, Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, and others. I have no doubt that M. Nicollet was the author of "The Mooan Hoax,'" written in a way which marks the practised observatory astronomer beyond all doubt, and by evidence seen in the most minute details. Nicollet had an eye to Europe. I suppose that he took Poe's story and made it a basis for his own. Mr. Locke, it would seem, when he attempted a fabrication for himself, did not succeed. In his remark that "there seems to have been a French edition, the original," Augustus De Morgan was undoubtedly misled, for every authority consultable agrees that the French pamphlets were merely translations of the story originally printed in the Sun; and De Morgan had learned this when he wrote his second note on the subject. The M. Arago whom De Morgan believes Nicollet sought to entrap was Dominique Francois Arago, the celebrated astronomer. In 1830, as a reward for his many accomplishments, he was made perpetual secre RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 99 tary of the Paris Academy of Sciences, and in the following year-the year of Nicollet's fall from grace-he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. As to the intimation that. Arago was really misled by the moon story, it is unlikely. W. N. Griggs, a contemporary of Locke, insists in a memoir of that journalist that the narrative was read by Arago to the members of the Academy, and was received with mingled denunciation and laughter. But hoaxing Arago in a matter of astronomy would have been a difficult feat. Surely the discrepancies pointed out by Poe would have been noticed immediately. It is, however, easy to understand De Morgan's belief that Nicollet was the author of the moon story. Much of the narrative, particularly parts which have here been omitted, is made up of technicalities which could have come only from the pen of a man versed in the intricacies of astronomical science. They were not put into the story to interest Sun readers, for they are far over the layman's head, but for the purpose of adding verisimilitude to a yarn which, stripped of the technical trimmings, would have been pretty bald. It was plain to De Morgan that Nicollet was one of the few men alive in 1835 who could have woven the scientific fabric in which the hoax was disguised. It was also apparent to him that Nicollet, jealous of the popularity of Arago, might have had a motive for launching a satire, if not a hoax. And then there was Nicollet's presence in America at the time of the moon story's publication, Nicollet's knowledge of English, and Nicollet's poverty. The coincidences are interesting, if nothing more. Let us see what the French said about Nicollet and the story that came to the Sun from " a medical gentle 1oo THE STORY OF "TTHE SUN" man immediately from Scotland." In a sketch of Nicollet printed in the " Biographie Universelle " (Michaud, Paris, 1884), the following appears: There has been attributed to him an article which appeared in the daily papers of France, and which, in the form of a letter dated from the United States, spoke of an improvement in the telescope invented by the learned astronomer Herschel, who was then at the Cape of Good Hope. It has been generally and with much probability attributed to Nicollet. With the aid of this admirable improvement Herschel was supposed to have succeeded in discovering on the surface of the moon live beings, buildings of various kinds, and a multitude of other interesting things. The description of these objects and the ingenious method employed by the English astronomer to attain his purpose was so detailed, and covered with a veneer of science so skilfully applied, that the general public was startled by the announcement of the discovery, of which North America hastened to send us the news. It has even been said that several astronomers and physicists of our country were taken in for a moment. That seems hardly probable to us. It was easy to perceive that it was a hoax written by a learned and mischievous person. The " Nouvelle Biographie G&n6rale " (Paris, 1862), says of Nicollet: He is believed to be the author of the anonymous pamphlet which appeared in 1836 on the discoveries in the moon made by Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope. Cruel, consistent Locke, never to have written down the details of the conception and birth of the best invention that ever spoofed the world! He leaves history to wonder whether it be possible that, with one word added, the French biographer was right, and that RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 101 it was " a hoax written by a learned and a mischievous person." Certain it is that Nicollet never wrote all of the moon story; certain, too, that Locke wrote much, if not all of it. The calculations of the angles of reflection might have been Nicollet's, but the blue unicorn is the unicorn of Locke. No man can say when the germ of the story first took shape. It might have been designed at any time after Herschel laid the plans for his voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, and that was at least two years before it appeared in the Sun. Was Nicollet in New York then, and did he and Locke lay their heads together across a table at the American Hotel and plan the great deceit? There was one head full of figures and the stars; another crammed with the imagination that brought forth the fire-making biped beavers and the fascinating, if indecorous, human bats. If they never met, more is the pity. Whether they met, none can say. Go to ask the ghosts of the American Hotel, and you find it gone, and in its place the Woolworth Building, earth's spear levelled at the laughing moon. Whatever happened, the credit must rest with Richard Adams Locke. Even if the technical embellishments of the moon story were borrowed, still his was the genius that builded the great temple, made flowers to bloom in the lunar valleys, and grew the filmy wings on the vespertilio-homo. His was the art that caused the bricklayer of Cherry Street to sit late beside his candle, spelling out the rare story with joyous labour. It must have been a reward to Locke, even to the last of his seventy years, to know that he had made people read newspapers who never had read them before; for that is what he really accomplished by this huge, complex lie. 102 THE STORY OF "TTHE SUN" " From the epoch of the hoax," wrote Poe, " the Sun shone with unmitigated splendor. Its success firmly established the ' penny system ' throughout the country, and (through the Sun) consequently we are indebted to the genius of Mr. Locke for one of the most important steps ever yet taken in the pathway of human progress." CHAPTER IV DAY FINDS A RIVAL IN BENNETT The Success of "The Sun" Leads to the Founding of the "Herald."-Enterprises and Quarrels of a Furious Young Journalism.-The Picturesque Webb.-Maria Monk. TI iE usefulness of Richard Adams Locke as a Sun reporter did not end with the moon hoax. Far from expressing regret that its employee had gulled half the earth, the Sun continued to meet exposure with a, calm and almost flippant front, insisting that it would never admit the non-existence of the man-bats until official contradiction arrived from Edinburgh or the Cape of Good Hope. The paper realized the value, in public interest, of Locke's name, and was proud to announce, in November of 1835, that it had commissioned Locke to write another series of articles, telling the story of the ' Life and Adventures of Manuel Fernandez, otherwise Richard C. Jackson, convicted of the murder of John Roberts, and to be executed at the Bellevue Prison, New York, on Thursday next, the 19th instant." This was a big beat, for the young men of the Courier and Enquirer, and perhaps of the Herald, had been trying to get a yarn from the criminal, a Spaniard who had served in foreign wars, had been captured by savages in Africa, and had had many other adventures. Fernandez was convicted of killing another sailor for his attention to Fernandez's mistress, a Mrs. Schultz; 108 104 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" and for about three weeks Locke spent several hours a i day in the condemned man's cell. The "Life and Adventures," which was printed on the first page of the Sun, ran serially from November 14 to November 25, and was read with avidity. It was ironical that the hero of the story, who had expressed to Locke an eagerness to have his career set before the public in its true light, was prevented from reading the later instalments; for the law, taking no cognizance of the literary side of the matter, went about its business, and Fernandez was hanged in the Bellevue 4yard on the 19th, a morning when the Sun's narrative had wrecked the sailor off the coast of Wales. Mr. Locke reported the execution and drew upon the autopsy to verify the " Adventures." It is an interesting fact that the corpse of Fernandez exhibited marks of all those serious injuries which are recorded in the course of our narrative of his life, more particularly that dreadful fracture of his vertebrae which he suffered in Leghorn. The mere word of a " medical gentleman immediately from Scotland " was no longer to be relied upon! The Sun's story of the great fire of December, 1835, sounds like Locke, but it may have been written by one of the other bright young men who worked for Benjamin H. Day. Among them were William M. Prall, who succeeded Wisner as the court reporter, and Lucius Robinson. " Robinson seemed to be a young man of excellent ideas, but not very highly educated," Mr. Day remarked about fifty years later. Perhaps the Day standards were very high. Robinson was twenty-six when he worked on the Sun. He had been educated at an academy in Delhi, New York, and DAY FINDS A RIVAL IN BENNETT 105 after that had studied law and been admitted to the bar. He was too poor to practise at once, and went into newspaper work to make a living. After leaving the Sun he was elected district attorney of Greene County, and in 1843 was appointed master of chancery in New York. He left the Democratic party when the Republican party was organized, but returned to his old political allegiance after the Civil War. In 1876 he was elected Governor of New York-an achievement which still left him a little less famous than his fellow reporter, Locke. " Give us one of your real Moscow fires," sighed the Sun in the first week of its existence. The prayer was answered a little more than two years later, when about twenty blocks south of Wall Street, between Broad Street and the East River, were consumed. The fire started late in the evening of Wednesday, December 16, and all that the Sun printed about it the next morning was one triple-leaded paragraph: POSTSCRIPT-HALF PAST 1 O'CLOCK-A TREMENDOUS CONFLAGRATION is now raging in the lower part of the city. The Merchants' Exchange is in flames. Nearly all the blocks in the triangle bounded by William and Wall Streets and the East River are consumed! Several hundred buildings are already down, and the firemen have given out. God only knows when the fire will be arrested. On Friday morning the Sun had two and a half columns about the fire, and gave an approximately correct estimate that seven hundred buildings had been burned, at a loss of twenty million dollars. The calamity provided an opportunity for the fine writing then indulged in, and the fire reporter did not overlook it; nor did he forget Moscow. Here are typical extracts: 106 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" Where but thirty hours since was the rich and prosperous theater of a great and productive commerce, where enterprise and wealth energized with bold and commanding efforts, now sits despondency in sackcloth and a wide and dreary waste of desolation reigns. It seemed as if God were running in his anger and sweeping away with the besom of his wrath the proudest monuments of man. Destruction traveled and triumphed on every breeze, and billows of fire rolled over and buried in their burning bosoms the hopes and fortunes of thousands. Like the devouring elements when it fed on Moscow's palaces and towers, it was literally a " sea of fire," and the terrors of that night of wo and ruin rolling years will not be able to efface. The merchants of the First Ward, like Marius in the ruins of Carthage, sit with melancholy moans, gazing at the graves of their fortunes, and the mournful mementoes of the dreadful devastation that reigns. On the afternoon of the following day the Sun got out an extra edition of thirty thousand copies, its normal morning issue of twenty-three thousand being too small to satisfy the popular demand. The presses ran without stopping for nearly twenty-four hours. On Monday, the 21st, the Sun had the enterprise to print a map of the burned district. Copies of the special fire editions went all over the world. At least one of them ran up against poetic justice. When it reached Canton, China, six months after the fire, the English newspaper there classed the story of the conflagration with Locke's "Astronomical Discoveries," and begged its readers not to be alarmed by the new hoax. The Sun had grown more and more prosperous. In the latter part of 1835 its four pages, each eleven and one-half by eighteen inches, were so taken up with advertising that it was not unusual to find reading-matter in only five of the twenty columns. Some days the publisher would apologize for leaving out advertisements, DAY FINDS A RIVAL IN BENNETT 107 on other days, for having so little room for news. He promised relief, and it came on January 4, 1836, when the paper was enlarged. It remained a four-page Sun, but the pages were increased in size to fourteen by twenty inches. In announcing the enlargement, the third in a year, the Sun remarked: We are now enabled to print considerably more than twenty-two thousand copies, on both sides, in less than eight hours. No establishment in this country has such facilities, and no daily newspaper in the world enjoys so extensive a circulation. In the first enlarged edition Mr. Day made the boast that the Sun now had a circulation more than double that of all the sixpenny respectables combined. He had a word, too, about the penny papers that had sprung up in the Sne's wake: One after another they dropped and fell in quick succession as they had sprung up; and all, with but one exception worth regarding, have gone to the " receptacle of things lost upon earth." Many of these departed ephemerals have struggled hard to keep within their nostrils the breath of life; and it is a singular fact that with scarcely an exception they have employed, as a means of bringing a knowledge of their being before the public, the most unlimited and reckless abuse of ourselves, the impeachment of our character, public and private; the implications, moral and political; in short, calumny in all its forms. As to the last survivor of them worth note, which remains, we have only to say, the little world we opened has proved large enough for us both. The exception to the general rule of early mortality was of course the Herald. 6n spite of this broad attitude toward his only succe ful competitor, Day could 108 THE STORY OF "THE SUN" not keep from swapping verbal shots with Bennett. The Sun said: Bennett, whose only chance of dying an upright man will be that of hanging perpendicularly upon a rope, falsely charges the proprietor of this paer with being an infidel, the natural effect of which