For thirty-three years Lord inspected applicants for places in the news departments of the _Sun_, and decided whether they would fit into the human structure that Dana had built. Edward G. Riggs, who knew him as well as any one, has written thus of him: Like Dana, he has been a great judge of men. His discernment has been little short of miraculous. Calm, dispassionate, without the slightest atom of impulse, as wise as a serpent and as gentle as a dove, Lord got about him a staff that has been regarded by newspapermen as the most brilliant in the country. Independent of thought, with a placid idea of the dignity of his place, ever ready to concede the other fellow’s point of view even though maintaining his own, Lord was never known in all the years of his managing editorship of the _Sun_ to utter an unkind word to any man on the paper, no matter how humble his station. One of Lord’s notable performances as managing editor was the perfecting of the _Sun’s_ system of collecting election returns. Before 1880 the correspondents had sent in the election figures in a conscientious but rather inefficient manner--by towns, or cities. Lord picked out a reliable correspondent in each county of New York State and gave to the chosen man the responsibility of sending to the _Sun_, at nine o’clock on election night, an estimate of the result in his particular county. This was to be followed at eleven o’clock, if necessary, with the corrected figures. “Don’t tell us how your city, or township, or village went,” he said to the correspondents. “Let us have your best estimate on the county. Don’t spare the telephone or the telegraph, either to collect the returns or to get them into the _Sun_ office.” The telephone was just coming into general use for the transmission of news, and Lord saw its possibilities on an election night. As a result of the new system, improved from year to year, the _Sun_ became what it is--the election-night authority on what has happened. So confident was the _Sun_ of its figures on the night of the Presidential election of 1884 that it, alone of all the New York papers, declared the next morning that Mr. Cleveland had defeated Mr. Blaine, although the _Sun_ had been one of the most strenuous opponents of the Democratic candidate. Blaine, who had wired to the _Sun_ for its estimates, got the first news of his defeat from Lord. Eight years later, when Mr. Cleveland defeated President Harrison, the winner’s political chief of staff, Daniel S. Lamont, received the first tidings of the great and unexpected victory from Mr. Lord.