“How strange!” said Mr. Patton, looking surprised. “I know that I could, but it has never occurred to me that you would not do worse than they do.” The sports department has been one of the _Sun’s_ strongholds since Mr. Dana’s first years. Dana would let Amos Cummings give half a page to a race at Saratoga or Monmouth Park, and would encourage Amos to neglect his executive duties so that the paper might have a good report of a boxing-match. When William I lay dead in Berlin, the _Sun’s_ principal European correspondent, Arthur Brisbane, was concerned, not with the future of the continent, but with the aftermath of the Sullivan-Mitchell fight at Chantilly. The stories of the international yacht-races have always been told best in the _Sun_, whether the reporter was John R. Spears or William J. Henderson. Mr. Henderson, who is the ablest musical critic in America, is probably the best yachting reporter, too. While the world of music knows him through his distinguished critiques, particularly of opera, the _Sun_ knows him as a great reporter--one who would rank high among the best it has ever had. Another _Sun_ man who wrote yachting well is Duncan Curry, later of the _American_. In turf matters the _Sun_ has long been looked upon as an authority. In the heyday of racing the paper enjoyed the services of Christopher J. Fitzgerald, since then familiar as a starter on many race-tracks, and of Joseph Vila, now sporting editor of the _Evening Sun_. Fitzgerald, although a specialist in sports, was also a first-class general reporter. He is the hero of a story of the proverbial “_Sun_ luck,” which in this case might better be called _Sun_ persistence and activity. In the latter part of December, 1892, the steamship Umbria, the fastest transatlantic boat of her day, was two weeks overdue at New York. Every newspaper had tugs out to watch for her first appearance. On the night of December 28 Fitzgerald was assigned to tug duty. The first tug he took down the moonlit bay broke her propeller in the ice; with the second tug he ran twenty miles beyond Sandy Hook. Presently an inward-bound liner appeared in the dark, and the other newspaper boats followed her; but this was not the Umbria, but the Britannic. An hour later a tank steamer came along, and Fitzgerald hailed her on the chance that she knew something about the missing ship. “The Umbria,” came back the answer, “is about five miles astern, coming in slowly.”