Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/231

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people the more they would read his paper. If he was assaulted either on the street or in his office, he gave a full report the next morning under the standing head, "Bennett Thrashed Again." The announcement of his engagement which he published in The Herald is one of the most interesting specimens of news- paper literature. In a certain sense, he often put his own private journals in his paper as may be found in the following editorial printed in 1836:

We published yesterday the principal items of the foreign news, re- ceived by the Sheffield, being eight days later than our previous ar- rivals. Neither The Sun nor The Transcript had a single item on the subject. The Sun did not even know of its existence. The large papers in Wall street had also the news, but as the editors are lazy, ignorant, indolent, blustering blockheads, one and all, they did not pick out the cream and serve it out as we did. The Herald alone knows how to dish up the foreign news, or indeed domestic events, in a readable style. Every reader, numbering between thirty and forty thousand daily, acknowledges this merit in the management of our paper. We do not, as the Wall street lazy editors do, come down to our office about ten or twelve o'clock, pull out a Spanish cigar, take up a pair of scissors, puff and cut, cut and puff for a couple of hours, and then adjourn to Del- monico's to eat, drink, gormandize, and blow up our contemporaries. We rise in the morning at five o'clock, write our leading editorials, squibs, sketches, etc., before breakfast. From nine till one we read all our papers and original communications, the latter being more numerous than those of any other office in New York. From these we pick out facts, thoughts, hints and incidents, sufficient to make up a column of original spicy articles. We also give audiences to visitors, gentlemen on business, and some of the loveliest ladies in New York, who call to subscribe Heaven bless them! At one we sally out among the gentlemen and loafers of Wall street find out the state of the money market, return, finish the next day's paper close every piece of business requiring thought, sentiment, feeling, or philosophy, before four o'clock. We then dine moderately and temperately read our proofs take in cash and advertisements, which are increasing like smoke and close the day by going to bed always at ten o'clock, seldom later. That's the way to conduct a paper with spirit and success.

VITUPEEATION OF TIME

But in order to understand Bennett and his newspaper, it is necessary to be familiar with the journalism of the time. Edi- tors were just beginning to find out that the pen was mightier