Cummings worked so hard that in 1873 he broke down and the _Sun_ sent him to Florida. There he wandered about, exploring rivers, studying the natives, and writing for the _Sun_, over the signature of “Ziska,” a series of travel letters as interesting as any that ever appeared in a newspaper. When he returned to New York in 1876, John Kelly, then endeavouring to raise Tammany from the mire into which Tweed had dropped it, persuaded Cummings to become managing editor of the New York _Express_. Cummings did not stay long on the _Express_, being disgusted with Kelly’s hostility toward Tilden’s candidacy for the presidential nomination, and he went back to the _Sun_. [Illustration: DANIEL F. KELLOGG ] [Illustration: AMOS B. STILLMAN ] [Illustration: JOHN B. BOGART ] For the next ten years his efforts were mostly in the direction of improving the weekly issue. In 1886 he was elected to the House of Representatives from a West Side district, but he maintained his connection with the _Sun_, and in 1887 he became editor of the _Evening Sun_, then just started. In 1888 Cummings resigned from the House, saying that he was too poor to be a Congressman, but on the death of Representative Samuel Sullivan (“Sunset”) Cox he consented to take the vacant place and continue Cox’s battles for the welfare of the letter-carriers. His service in the House lasted fifteen years. Cummings was a great labour advocate, not only in behalf of letter-carriers, but of printers, navy-yard employees, and musicians. He had the last-named in mind when he said in a speech on an alien-labour bill: As the law now stands, when a German student, or one of those fellows that swill beer along the Rhine, desires to come here for the summer, all he has to do is to get a saxophone or some other kind of musical instrument, call himself an artist, and be allowed to land here. That was Amos’s convincing, if inelegant, style. When he introduced a bill to compensate navy-yard men for labour already performed, but not paid for, Representative Holman, of Indiana, asked: “How much money will it take out of the Treasury?” “None of your business!” snapped Cummings. “The government must pay its just debts.” While he was in the House, Cummings wrote a series of articles on the big men of Washington. He was a delegate to the Democratic national conventions of 1892 and 1896. He died in Baltimore May 2, 1902, and a Republican House of Representatives voted a public funeral to this militant Democrat. Greater news men than Cummings followed him, undoubtedly, but there was no newspaperman in New York before his time who knew better what news was or how to handle it; not even the elder Bennett, for that great man knew only the news that looked big. Cummings was the first to know the news that felt big. It was Cummings and his work that Henry Watterson had in mind when he one day remarked to Mr. Dana: “The _Sun_ is a damned good paper, but you don’t make it.”