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

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Wisner was stretching the police-court pieces out to nearly two columns. Now and then, perhaps when Mr. Day was away fishing, the reporter would slip in an Abolition paragraph or a gloomy poem on the horrors of slavery. But he was so valuable that, while his chief did not raise his salary of four dollars a week, he offered him half the paper, the same to be paid for out of the profits. And so, in January of 1834, Wisner became a half-owner of the Sun. Benton, another Sun printer, also wanted an interest, and left when he could not get it.

Before it was two months old the Sun had begun to take an interest in aeronautics. It printed a full column, October 16, 1833, on the subject of Durant’s balloon ascensions, and quoted Napoleon as saying that the only insurmountable difficulty of the balloon in war was the impossibility of guiding its course. “This difficulty Dr. Durant is now endeavoring to obviate.” And the Sun added:

May we not therefore look to the time, in perspective, when our atmosphere will be traversed with as much facility as our waters?