Born in the little town of Lancaster, it was his mischance to have attached himself early in life to the fortunes of Mr. Buchanan, whom he long served with fidelity and effect. But when Mr. Buchanan came to the Presidency, Forney, who aspired first to a place in the Cabinet, which was denied him, and then to a seat in the Senate, for which he was beaten—through flagrant bribery, as the story ran—was left out in the cold. Thereafter he became something of a political adventurer. The days of the newspaper “organ” approached their end. Forney’s occupation, like Othello’s, was gone, for he was nothing if not an organ grinder. Facile with pen and tongue, he seemed a born courtier—a veritable Dalgetty, whose loyal devotion to his knight-at-arms deserved better recognition than the cold and wary Pennsylvania chieftain was willing to give. It is only fair to say that Forney’s character furnished reasonable excuse for this neglect and apparent ingratitude. The row between them, however, was party splitting. As the friend and backer of Douglas, and later along a brilliant journalistic soldier of fortune, Forney did as much as any other man to lay the Democratic party low. I can speak of him with a certain familiarity and authority, for I was one of his “boys.” I admired him greatly and loved him dearly. Most of the young newspaper men about Philadelphia and Washington did so. He was an all-around modern journalist of the first class. Both as a newspaper writer and creator and manager, he stood upon the front line, rating with Bennett and Greeley and Raymond. He first entertained and then cultivated the thirst for office, which proved the undoing of Greeley and Raymond, and it proved his undoing. He had a passion for politics. He would shine in public life. If he could not play first fiddle he would take any other instrument. Thus failing of a Senatorship, he was glad to get the Secretaryship of the Senate, having been Clerk of the House. He was bound to be in the orchestra. In those days newspaper independence was little known. Mr. Greeley was willing to play bottle-holder to Mr. Seward, Mr. Prentice to Mr. Clay. James Gordon Bennett, the elder, and later his son, James Gordon Bennett, the younger, challenged this kind of servility. The Herald stood at the outset of its career manfully in the face of unspeakable obloquy against it. The public understood it and rose to it. The time came when the elder Bennett was to attain official as well as popular recognition. Mr. Lincoln offered him the French mission and Mr. Bennett declined it. He was rich and famous, and to another it might have seemed a kind of crowning glory. To him it seemed only a coming down—a badge of servitude—a lowering of the flag of independent journalism under which, and under which alone, he had fought all his life.