The Story of the Sun: New York, 1833-1918O'Brien, Frank Michael
History
The Story of the Sun: New York, 1833-1918
O'Brien, Frank Michael
Sun (New York, N.Y. : 1833)
“And above all,” Mr. Bogart wound up, “don’t leave the house without
asking Judge Hilton whether they’ve found Stewart’s body yet.”
Julian Ralph attributed his success as a journalist chiefly to three
things--a liking for his work, the ability to get what he was sent for,
and good humour. He omitted mention of something which distinguished
him and Chamberlin and all other great reporters--hard work. Ralph
himself gives a brief but complete picture of a day’s hard work in his
description, in “The Making of a Journalist,” of the way in which he
reported the inauguration of a President:
I had myself called at five o’clock in the morning, and, having
a cab at hand, mounted the box with the negro driver and
traveled about the city from end to end and side to side. I did
this to see the people get up and the trains roll in and the
soldiers turn out--to catch the capital robing like a bride for
her wedding.
After breakfast, eaten calmly, I made another tour of the
town, and then began to approach the subject more closely,
calling at the White House, mingling with the crowds in the
principal hotels, moving between the Senate and the House of
Representatives, to report the hurly-burly of the closing
moments of a dying administration. I saw the old and the new
President, and then witnessed the inauguration ceremonies and
the parade.
Then, having seen the new family in place in the White House, I
took a hearty luncheon, and sat down at half past one o’clock
to write steadily for twelve hours, with plenty of pencils
and pads and messenger-boys at hand, and with my notebook
supplemented by clippings from all the afternoon papers,
covering details to which I might or might not wish to refer.
Cigars, a sandwich or two at supper-time, and a stout horn of
brandy late at night were my other equipments.
As Ralph remarked, that was hard work, but it was nothing when compared
with the job of reporting a national convention. “One needs only to
_see_ an inauguration,” he said. “In a national convention one must
_know_.”
Wilbur J. Chamberlin’s name is not in any book of American biography.
In library indexes his name is found only as the author of “Ordered
to China,” a series of letters he wrote to his wife while on the
assignment to report the Boxer rebellion--one of the many pieces of
_Sun_ work which he did faithfully and well. He never found time to
write books, although he wished to do so. He was a _Sun_ man from the
day he went on the staff, in 1890, until the day of his death, August
14, 1901.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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