But nearer at hand was the "Beach at Rockaway," sung by the military poet, George P. Morris, and Coney Island. At the latter resort conditions were primitive. Unheard were the blaring of bands, and the raucous cry of the "Hot-Dog man," and the riot and roar of the rabble. Mr. Blinker, of O. Henry's "Brick Dust Row," could not then have seen his vision and found his light. For there was no mass of vulgarians wallowing in gross joys to be recognized as his brothers seeking the ideal. But he might have been as well pleased with the unpretentious hotel at the water's edge, where the urbanite could enjoy the cooling ocean breezes, and listen to the waves, and dine upon broiled chicken and succulent clams. The press of the third decade of the last century was high-priced and vitriolic. Of the morning papers now known to New Yorkers there was none. The "Sun," the first to appear, began in 1833. But of the afternoon journals there was the "Evening Post," perhaps even then "making virtue odious," as a wit of many years later was to express it, and the "Commercial Advertiser," now the "Globe," the oldest of all metropolitan journals. Before the appearance of the "Sun," the morning papers had been the "Morning Courier and New York Enquirer," the "Standard," the "Democratic Chronicle," the "Journal of Commerce," the "New York Gazette and General Advertiser," and the "Mercantile Advertiser and New York Advocate." In the evening there were the "Star," and the "American," besides the "Post" and "Commercial Advertiser." These newspapers were mere appendages of party, "organs" in the narrowest and most restricted sense, espousing blindly certain interests or ideas, expounding in long editorials the views of small groups of politicians.