Читать книгу The Story of the Sun: New York, 1833-1918 онлайн

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As to the last survivor of them worth note, which remains, we have only to say, the little world we opened has proved large enough for us both.

The exception to the general rule of early mortality was of course the Herald. In spite of this broad attitude toward his only successful competitor, Day could not keep from swapping verbal shots with Bennett. The Sun said:

Bennett, whose only chance of dying an upright man will be that of hanging perpendicularly upon a rope, falsely charges the proprietor of this paper with being an infidel, the natural effect of which calumny will be that every reader will believe him to be a good Christian.

Day had a dislike for Colonel Webb, of the Courier and Enquirer, almost as great as his enmity toward Bennett; so when Webb assaulted Bennett on January 19, 1836, it was rather a hard story to write. This is the Sun’s account of the fray:

Low as he had fallen, both in the public estimation and his own, we were astonished to learn last evening that Colonel Webb had stooped so far beneath anything of which we had ever conceived it possible for him to be guilty, as publicly, and before the eyes of hundreds who knew him, to descend to a public personal chastisement of that villainous libel on humanity of all kinds, the notorious vagabond Bennett. But so it is.