The Republican journal., 1897-10-28
Charles A. Dana.
Charles Anderson Dana, editor of the Sun
died yesterday afternoon.

SlIdlIC ~ 00AAos
Charles Anderson Dana, editor of the Sun
died yesterday afternoon.
These 10 words at the top of the first
column on the editorial page Of yesterday S
Sun constituted the sole reference in that
paper to the death of the great editor.
How like the Sun and how like Dana! If
Mr.. Dana could have seen himself as the
newspaper world saw him, and could have
written of his own death as he would of
that of another great editor, what a mag
niicent column he would have made
sturdy as the Dorian, and as beautiful as
the Ionic! Boston Evening Record.
The fact that the Sun made no alluson
to the death of it's famous editor save the
10 words printed at the head of the edi-
tOrial columns, was his own desire.
One of the last wishes Mr.. Dana ex-
pressed to his son when he knew that his
end was not far off was:
"Paul, when 1 am gone don't have long
obituary of me printed in the Sun. Simply
announce my going away; that is all. -
And this request was needed.
The passing away of the venerable editor
will cause no change in the editorial policy
of the Sun.
1t is annouced on competent authority
that Paul Dana, the only son of Mr. Dana,
who has long been connected with the pa
per, will succeed to the office made vacant
by the death of his father. While Mr..
Dana did not control the stock of the pa
per he owned a large share, and this, to-
gether with that owned by his close friends
and supporters, gave him practical con
troll of the publication. 1t was always
his wish that his son should succeed him,
and it is certain that this wish will be
gratified.
Mr.. Dana's versatility was perhaps
never moreclearly illustrated in actual life
than when he visited the Vatican; and
spent an hour Gaping Italian verses and
quoting alternate lines from the 'Inferno"
to the Pope. Soon after he returned he
attended prize fight one evening, after
beating his son at post prandial game of
billiards. This very year he had added
Russian to his list of languages, grown a
new rose, and written a monograph on
the proper culture of mushrooms.
Eugene Field had his wish, expressed
in the poets license, when he wrote those
breezy western verses on ''Mr. Dana Of the
New York Sum- He died before the
great editor, and now that the latter has
also passed away, Fields lines come back
with fresh interest and homely power.
One cannot but think the epitaph the poet
suggested is one such as Mr. Dana might
have written for himself.
'But bless ye, Mr.. Dana may you live
thousand years,
To sort O. keep things lively in the vale of
human tears
An may l live thousan' too,-a thousau
less a day,
For l shouldn't like to be on earth to hear
you'd passed away.
And when it comes your time to go You'll
need no Latin chaff
Nor geographic data put in your epitaph
But one straight line of English and of truth
will let folks know
The homage md the gratitude md reverence
they owe;
You II need no epitaph but this: "Here
sleeps the man who run
That best nd brightest paper, the New York
Sun
Commenting editorially on the death of
Mr.. Dana the n. Y. Times says: ''Of what
may be called the art of the editor he was
master, and a master by the possession of
intellectual qualities that can fairly be
called great. He was man of very wide
and varied interest-a scholar, in a way
dreamer, politician, a man of affairs;
with touch of Montaigne's philosophy
and large share of Montaigne's untring
curiosity and imperturbable aloofness
from the conventional standards of the
thought and feeling of his time.
This remarkable range of interest gave
to his Judgment of what journal should
contain, great independence, certainty,
and precision, without the slightest trace
of narrowness. His motto might easily
have been paraphrase of the antique say
ing, No thing human is to me aiien-if
it's new. ="