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

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Locke knew about Sir John and his mission. The Matthias case had blown over, the big fire in Fulton Street was almost forgotten, and things were a bit dull on the island of Manhattan. The newspapers were in a state of armed truce. As Locke and his fellow journalists gathered at the American Hotel bar for their after-dinner brandy, it is probable that there was nothing, not even the great sloth recently arrived at the American Museum, to excite a good argument.

Locke needed money, for his salary of twelve dollars a week could ill support the fine gentleman that he was; so he laid a plan before Mr. Day. It was a plot as well as a plan, and the first angle of the plot appeared on the second page of the Sun on August 21, 1835:

CELESTIAL DISCOVERIES—The Edinburgh Courant says—“We have just learnt from an eminent publisher in this city that Sir John Herschel, at the Cape of Good Hope, has made some astronomical discoveries of the most wonderful description, by means of an immense telescope of an entirely new principle.”