During no small part of its four score and five years of intelligent interest in the world’s thoughts and doings it has been the _Sun’s_ fortune to be regarded as in a somewhat exceptional sense the newspaper man’s newspaper. If in truth it has merited in any degree this peculiar distinction in the eyes of its professional brethren it must have been by reason of originality of initiative and soundness of method; perhaps by a chronic indifference to those ancient conventions of news importance or of editorial phraseology which, when systematically observed, are apt to result in a pale, dull, or even stupid uniformity of product. Mr. Dana wrote more than half a century ago to one of his associates, “Your articles have stirred up the animals, which you as well as I recognise as one of the great ends of life.” Sometimes he borrowed Titania’s wand; sometimes he used a red hot poker. Not only in that great editor’s time but also in the time of his predecessors and successors the _Sun_ has held it to be a duty and a joy to assist to the best of its ability in the discouragement of anything like lethargy in the menagerie. Perhaps, again, that was one of the things that helped to make it the newspaper man’s newspaper. However this may be, it seems certain that to the students of the theory and practice of journalism, now happily so numerous in the land, the chronicler of one highly individual newspaper’s deeds and ways is affording an object lesson of practical value, a textbook of technical usefulness, as well as a store of authoritative history, entertaining anecdote, and suggestive professional information. And a much wider audience than is made up of newspaper workers present or to come will find that the story of a newspaper which Mr. O’Brien has told with wit and knowledge in the pages that follow becomes naturally and inevitably a swift and charming picture of the town in which that newspaper is published throughout the period of its service to that town--the most interesting period in the existence of the most interesting city of the world. It is a fine thing for the _Sun_, by all who have worked for it in its own spirit beloved, I believe, like a creature of flesh and blood and living intelligence and human virtues and failings, that through Mr. Munsey’s wish it should have found in a son of its own schooling a biographer and interpreter so sympathetically responsive to its best traditions. EDWARD P. MITCHELL. CONTENTS CHAPTER I SUNRISE AT 222 WILLIAM STREET PAGE _Benjamin H. Day, with No Capital Except Youth and Courage, Establishes the First Permanent Penny Newspaper.--The Curious First Number Entirely His Own Work_ 21 CHAPTER II THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE “SUN”