Mather had just come from college, where he had never learned that the ethics of journalism might require a reporter to become a deliverer of poultry, but he took the turkey. It does not detract from the moral of the story to say that Mather and another young reporter, neither quite understanding the _Sun’s_ stern code, took the bird to the Fellowcraft Club and had it roasted--a fact of which Mr. Bogart may have been unaware until now. The best news-handler that journalism has seen, Selah Merrill Clarke, was night city editor of the _Sun_ for thirty-one years. He came to the paper in 1881 from the New York _World_, where he had been employed as a reporter, and later as a desk man. In the early seventies he wrote for the _World_ a story of a suicide, and one of the newspapers of that day said of it that neither Dickens nor Wilkie Collins, with all the time they could ask, could have surpassed it. His story of the milkman’s ride down the valley of the Mill River, warning the inhabitants that the dam had broken at the Ashfield reservoir, near Northampton, Massachusetts (May 16, 1874), was another classic that attracted the attention of editors, including Dana. Clarke never thought well of himself as a reporter, and often said that in that capacity he was a failure. As a judge of news values, or news presentation, or as a giver of the fine literary touch which lent to the _Sun’s_ articles that indescribable tone not found in other papers, Clarke stood almost alone. The city editor of a New York newspaper sows seeds; the night city editor re-seeds barren spots, waters wilting items, and cuts and bags the harvest. The city editor sends men out all day for news; the night city editor judges what they bring in, and decides what space it shall have. In the handling of a big story, on which five or fifteen reporters may be engaged, the night city editor has to put together as many different writings in such a way that the reader may go smoothly from beginning to end. Chance may decree that the poorest writer has brought in the biggest news, and the man on the desk must supply quality as well as judgment. At such work Clarke was a master. It has been said of him that by the eliding stroke of his pencil and the insertion of perhaps a single word he could change the commonplace to literature. No reporter ever worked on the _Sun_ but wished, at one time or another, to thank Clarke for saving him from himself. Clarke had the faculty of seeing instantly the opportunity for improvement that the reporter might have seen an hour or a day later.