New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1905-09-03

harbOr to sight an incoming packet
or other ship, to board her to see what
she could give you. Or friendly
captain from Para or Buenos Avres or
Bombay sent a lad ashore before his
vessel came up to the wharf, that he
might bring you newspaper quite in
/ advance of the mail Thus there was a
sort OF haPPy-go-lucky lottery business
about 1t. You never went into the office
without thinking that something might
have turned up somewhere, a thought
which came to you with a dramatic vivid
ness, which for some reason seems hardly
to belong to the expected yellow news
/ paper despatch of to-day.
| There are dramatic situations TODAY
which belong to the world. when YOU
recognize your sons voice, though he IS
a thousand miles away. But there was
another sort of incidents in those early
days which We do not see in our twenty
story offices. In 1920 nv father, while
the editor of The Daily Advertiser"
was a member of the Constitutional
Convention of Massachusetts, con-
ventiOn which was revising the Consti-
tuition. He sat in his place, he took such
notes as he liked of the speeches. and
of course knew all the leaders. His house
was a half or a quarter of a mile from
the printing Office. AS evening approached
the different chiefs gathered in his work
room there. At that moment he could
not use his eyes, which had suffered
from an accident, so that nv mother, then
twenty-four years old, read and wrote
for him.
She moved my sisters cradle into the
basement room, and there she would
sit when Mr.. Webster and Judge Story
and, l think, John Pickering, who was
chief of our reporters there, made up
the report of the Convention for the
day.
She would rock her cradle with one
hand, while with the other she wrote
to Daniel Webster's dictation; and the
Colonel Phinney who afterward figured
in Massachusetts politics, or some of
his mates among the apprentices, sat
1T the side of the room waiting to take
the slips of copy down to the printing
office as they were ready. When the
Convention adjourned she had a hundred
or two of the ePigrams of the Con-
vention printed separately. She cut
them out and put them in what were then
called cookies in place of the verses
which the confectioners had put there,
and with these cookies she decorated
a great Convention cake which she sent
down to the printing Office for the men
to enjoy together.
\ little before l can remember, my
fathers cousin, David Hale moved into
the city of New-Yorb, and with his part
ner Mr.. Haleck esta blished The Journal
of Commerce" 1t is conservative enough
now, and among those who swear by it
are men whose heads have been whitened
by the suns of two or three hundred
summers; but it was a free lance then.
1t did not pretend to be a political jour
nal managing the politics of New-York.
1t does not become me to speak of those
politics either of this time or in another
century. | will only say in passing that
John Quincy Adams said in those days
that the politics of New-YOrk were one
of the Devils own unaccOuntables.
Hale and Halleck overstepped all par
tisan lines and made what was literally
The Journal of Commerce" With
them. | think. the dramatic scenes came