Lowell’s letter in reply is manly and courteous. He even says that he has felt somewhat cramped by the knowledge that a corresponding editor ought to recognize the views of an “Executive Committee.” “I have felt that I ought to work in my own way, and yet I have also felt that I ought to try to work in their way, so that I have failed of working in either.”
Young authors may read with interest these words,—not too proud: “I think the Executive Committee would have found it hard to get some two or three of the poems I have furnished from any other quarter.” “Beaver Brook,” for instance, “To Lamartine,” or several of the early Biglow papers! No! It would be hard to get them furnished “from any other quarter.” And the anonymous Executive Committee flinched at the four dollars and eighty cents which had to be paid for each of these! With one and another such jar, however, the connection between Lowell and the “Standard” lasted, in one or another form, for four or five years.
I hope it is not too late for us still to expect a full memoir of Mr. Gay’s life and work. As a permanent contribution to literature, “The Popular History of America” will preserve his memory. It is the first of the composite histories wrought by the hands of many experts; but it all went under his careful supervision, and ought to be called by his name. At Chicago, at New York, in the “Tribune,” and as coadjutor with Mr. Bryant in the “Evening Post” office, he showed what his great capacity as an editor was.
I have never seen in print his story of that fearful night when Lincoln was killed. But one hears it freely repeated in conversation, and I see no reason why it should not be printed now.
With the news of the murder of Lincoln, there came to New York every other terrible message. The office of the “Tribune,” of course, received echoes from all the dispatches which showed the alarm at Washington. There were orders for the arrest of this man, there were suspicions of the loyalty of that man. No one knew what the morrow might bring.
In the midst of the anxieties of such hours, to Mr. Gay, the acting-editor of that paper, there entered the foreman of the typesetting-room. He brought with him the proof of Mr. Greeley’s leading article, as he had left it before leaving the city for the day. It was a brutal, bitter, sarcastic, personal attack on President Lincoln,—the man who, when Gay read the article, was dying in Washington.
Gay read the article, and asked the foreman if he had any private place where he could lock up the type, to which no one but himself had access. The foreman said he had. Gay bade him tie up the type, lock the galley with this article in his cupboard, and tell no one what he had told him. Of course no such article appeared in the “Tribune” the next morning.
SYDNEY HOWARD GAY
But when Gay arrived on the next day at the office, he was met with the news that “the old man” wanted him, and the intimation that “the old man” was very angry. Gay waited upon Greeley.