But as New York was not fortunate enough to have the first commercial telegraph-line, the _Sun_ had to rely on its own efforts for speedy news from the convention. It ran special trains from Baltimore, “beating the United States mail train and locomotive an hour or two.” The _Sun_ soon afterward expressed annoyance at a report that it was itself a part of a monopoly which was to control the telegraph, and that it had bought a telegraph-line from New York to Springfield, Massachusetts. It insisted that there should be no monopoly, and that the use of the telegraph must be open to all. There was no suggestion that Morse intended to control his invention improperly, but the _Sun_ was not quite satisfied with the government’s lassitude. Morse had offered his rights to the government for one hundred thousand dollars, and Congress had sneered. It was not until 1846 that the telegraph was extended to New York, and in the meantime the New York papers used such other means as they could for the collection of news. Besides trains, ships, horses, and the fleet foot of the reporter, there were pigeons. Beach went in for pigeons extensively. When the _Sun_ moved from 156 Nassau Street, in the summer of 1842, it took a six-story building at the southwest corner of Nassau and Fulton Streets, securing about three times as much room as it had in the two-story building at Spruce Street. On the top of the new building Beach built a pigeon-house, which stood for half a century. The strange, boxlike cote attracted not only the attention of Mr. Bennett, whose _Herald_ was quartered just across the street, but of all the folk who came and went in that busy region. So many were the queries from friends and the quips from enemies concerning the pigeon-house that the _Sun_ (December 14, 1843), vouchsafed to explain: Why, we have had a school of carrier-pigeons in the upper apartments of the _Sun_ office since we have occupied the building. Did our contemporaries believe that we ever could be at fault in furnishing the earliest news to our readers? Or did they indulge the hope that in newspaper enterprise they could ever catch us napping? Carrier-pigeons have long been remarked for their sagacity and admired for their usefulness. They are, of all birds, the most invaluable, and as auxiliary to a newspaper cannot be too highly prized. Part of the flock in our possession were employed by the London _Morning Chronicle_ in bringing intelligence from Dublin to London, and from Paris to London, crossing both channels; therefore they are not novices in the newspaper express.