All in all, the New York of Dana’s first year as an absolute editor was an interesting island, with just about as much of virtue and vice, wisdom and folly, sunlight and drabness, as may be found on any island of nine hundred thousand people. He did not set out to reform it. He did not try to turn the general journalism of that day out of certain deep grooves into which it had sunk. He had his own ideas of what news was, how it should be written, how displayed; but they were ideas, not theories. He was not perturbed because the _Sun_ had not handled a big story just the way the _Herald_ or the _Tribune_ dished it up; nor was it of the slightest consequence to him what Mr. Bennett or Mr. Greeley thought of the way the _Sun_ used the story. Dana made no rules. Other newspapers have printed commandments for their writers, but the _Sun_ has never wasted a penny’s worth of paper on rules. If there ever was a rule in the office, it was “Be interesting,” and it was not only an unwritten rule, but generally an unspoken one. Dana’s realization that journalism was a profession which could be neither guided nor governed by set rules was expressed in a speech made by him before the Wisconsin Editorial Association at Milwaukee, in 1888: There is no system of maxims or professional rules that I know of that is laid down for the guidance of the journalist. The physician has his system of ethics and that sublime oath of Hippocrates which human wisdom has never transcended. The lawyer also has his code of ethics and the rules of the courts and the rules of practice which he is instructed in; but I have never met with a system of maxims that seemed to me to be perfectly adapted to the general direction of a newspaperman. I have written down a few principles which occurred to me, which, with your permission, gentlemen, I will read for the benefit of the young newspapermen here to-night: Get the news, get all the news, get nothing but the news. Copy nothing from another publication without perfect credit. Never print an interview without the knowledge and consent of the party interviewed. Never print a paid advertisement as news-matter. Let every advertisement appear as an advertisement; no sailing under false colors. Never attack the weak or the defenseless, either by argument, by invective, or by ridicule, unless there is some absolute public necessity for so doing. Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth or the only truth. Support your party, if you have one; but do not think all the good men are in it and all the bad ones outside of it. Above all, know and believe that humanity is advancing; that there is progress in human life and human affairs; and that, as sure as God lives, the future will be greater and better than the present or the past.