Dave Ramsey, a compositor on one of these sixpennies, the _Journal of Commerce_, had an obsession. It was that a penny paper, to be called the _Sun_, would be a success in a city full of persons whose interest was in humanity in general, rather than in politics, and whose pantry-shelves were of negligible width. Why his mind fastened on the _Sun_ as the name of this child of his vision is not known; perhaps it was because there was a daily in London bearing that title. It was a short name, easily written, easily spoken, easily remembered. Benjamin H. Day, another printer, worked beside Dave Ramsey in 1830. Ramsey reiterated his idea to his neighbour so often that Day came to believe in it, although it is doubtful whether he had the great faith that possessed Ramsey. Now that due credit has been given to Ramsey for the idea of the penny _Sun_, he passes out of the record, for he never attempted to put his project into execution. Nor was Day’s enthusiasm for a penny _Sun_ so big that he plunged into it at once. He was a business man rather than a visionary. With the savings from his wages as a compositor he went into the job-printing business in a small way. He still met his old chums and still talked of the _Sun_, but it is likely that he never would have come to start it if it had not been for the cholera. There was an epidemic of this plague in New York in 1832. It killed more than thirty-five hundred people in that year, and added to the depression of business already caused by financial disturbances and a wretched banking system. The job-printing trade suffered with other industries, and Day decided that he needed a newspaper--not to reform, not to uplift, not to arouse, but to push the printing business of Benjamin H. Day. Incidentally he might add lustre to the fame of the President, Andrew Jackson, or uphold the hands of the mayor of New York, Gideon Lee; but his prime purpose was to get the work of printing handbills for John Smith, the grocer, or letter-heads for Richard Robinson, the dealer in hay. Incidentally he might become rich and powerful, but for the time being he needed work at his trade. Ben Day was only twenty-three years old. He was the son of Henry Day, a hatter of West Springfield, Massachusetts, and Mary Ely Day; and sixth in descent from his first American ancestor, Robert Day. Shortly after the establishment of the Springfield _Republican_ by Samuel Bowles, in 1824, young Day went into the office of that paper, then a weekly, to learn the printer’s trade. That was two years before the birth of the second and greater Samuel Bowles, who was later to make the _Republican_, as a daily, one of the greatest of American newspapers. [Illustration: BENJAMIN H. DAY A Bust in the Possession of Mrs. Florence A. Snyder, Summit, N. J. ]