And the Bucktails are enjoying it all the night long;
In the time of my boyhood ’twas pleasant to call
For a seat and cigar ’mid the jovial throng.
So far as the corner of Nassau and Frankfort Streets is concerned, L’Empire est paix. The Sun shines for all; and on the site of old Tammany’s troubles and tribulations we turn back the leaves of the past, dispel the clouds of discord, and shed our beams far and near over the Regenerated Land.
Dana changed the appearance of the Sun overnight. He kept it as a folio, for he always believed in a four-page paper, even when he was printing ten pages, but he reduced the number of columns on a page from eight to seven, widening each column a little.
The principal head-lines, which had been irregular in size and two to the page, were made smaller and more uniform, and four appeared at the top of the front page. The editorial articles, which had been printed in minion, now appeared a size larger, in brevier, and the heads on them were changed to the simple, dignified full-face type of the size that is still used.
Dana changed the title-head of the Sun from Roman, which it had been from the beginning, to Old English, as it stands to-day. He also changed the accompanying emblem. It had been a variation of the seal of the State of New York, with the sun rising in splendour behind mountains; on the right, Liberty with her Phrygian cap held on a staff, gazing at an outbound vessel; on the left, Justice with scales and sword, so facing that if not blindfolded she would see a locomotive and a train of cars crossing a bridge. These classic figures were kept, but the eagle—the State crest—which brooded above the sunburst in Beach’s time, was removed, so that the rays went skyward without hindrance.
Dana liked “It Shines for All,” the Sun’s old motto—everybody liked it, but only one newspaper, the Herald, ever had the effrontery to pilfer it—but he took it from the scroll in the emblem and replaced there the State motto, “Excelsior.”
The Sun, under its new master, rose auspiciously—master, not masters, for in spite of the number of his financial associates, Dana was absolute. The men behind him realized the folly of dividing authority. The Sun, whether under Day or one of the Beaches, had always been a one-man paper. Therefore it succeeded, just as the Herald, another journal governed by an autocrat, went ahead; but with the Tribune, where the stockholders ruled and argued, things were different.
Dana was the boss. As General Wilson wrote in his biography: