im greatly and loved him dearly. Most of
the young newspaper men about Philadelphia and Washington did so. He was
an all-around modern journalist of the first class. Both as a newspaper
writer and creator and manager, he stood upon the front line, rating
with Bennett and Greeley and Raymond. He first entertained and then
cultivated the thirst for office, which proved the undoing of Greeley
and Raymond, and it proved his undoing. He had a passion for politics.
He would shine in public life. If he could not play first fiddle he
would take any other instrument. Thus failing of a Senatorship, he was
glad to get the Secretaryship of the Senate, having been Clerk of the
House.

He was bound to be in the orchestra. In those days newspaper
independence was little known. Mr. Greeley was willing to play
bottle-holder to Mr. Seward, Mr. Prentice to Mr. Clay. James Gordon
Bennett, the elder, and later his son, James Gordon Bennett, the
younger, challenged this kind of servility. The Herald stood at the
outset of its career manfully in the face of unspeakable obloquy against
it. The public understood it and rose to it. The time came when the
elder Bennett was to attain official as well as popular recognition. Mr.
Lincoln offered him the French mission and Mr. Bennett declined it.
He was rich and famous, and to another it might have seemed a kind
of crowning glory. To him it seemed only a coming down--a badge of
servitude--a lowering of the flag of independent journalism under which,
and under which alone, he had fought all his life.

Charles A. Dana was not far behind the Bennetts in his independence.
He well knew what parties and politicians are. The most scholarly and
accomplished of American journalists, he made the Sun "shine for all,"
and, during the years of his active management, a most prosperous
property. It happened that whilst I was penny-a-lining in New York
I took a piece of space work--not very common in those days--to the
Tribune and received a few dollars for it. Ten years later, meeting Mr.
Dana at dinner, I recalled the circumstance, and thenceforward we became
the best of friends. Twice indeed we had runabouts together in foreign
lands. His house in town, and the island home called Dorsoris, which he
had made for himself, might not inaptly be described as very shrines
of hospitality and art, the master of the house a virtuoso in music and
painting no less than in letters. One might meet under his roof the most
d