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

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The specification of “mahogany stock” referred to Colonel Webb’s own supposed predilection for pistols of that description. Mr. Day and his aids may have carried these handsome weapons, but it is not on record that they made use of them, or that they had occasion to do so. Persons gunning for editors seemed to neglect Mr. Day in favour of Mr. Bennett.

No sooner was this fierce clash with Webb over than the Sun found itself bombarded from many sides in the war over Maria Monk. This woman’s “Awful Disclosures” had just been published in book form by Howe & Bates, of 68 Chatham Street, New York. They purported to be “a narrative of her sufferings during a residence of five years as a novice and two years as a black nun in the Hôtel Dieu Nunnery at Montreal.” On January 18, 1836, the Sun began to publish these shocking stories, in somewhat condensed and expurgated form. It did not vouch for their truth, but declared that it printed them from an “imperative sense of duty.” “We have no better means than are possessed by any reader,” it cautiously added, “to decide upon their truth or falsehood.”