Cummings served as editor of the Weekly Tribune and as a political writer for the daily. This is the way he came to quit the Tribune:
John Russell Young, the third managing editor of the Tribune, got the habit of issuing numbered orders. Two of these orders reached Cummings’s desk, as follows:
Order No. 756—There is too much profanity in this office.
Order No. 757—Hereafter the political reporter must have his copy in at 10.30 P.M.
Cummings turned to his desk and wrote:
Order No. 1234567—Everybody knows —— well that I get most of the political news out of the Albany Journal, and everybody knows —— —— well that the Journal doesn’t get here until eleven o’clock at night, and anybody who knows anything knows —— —— well that asking me to get my stuff up at half past ten is like asking a man to sit on a window-sill and dance on the roof at the same time.
Cummings.
The result of this multiplicity of numbered orders was that shortly afterward Cummings presented himself to the editor of the Sun.
“Why are you leaving the Tribune?” asked Mr. Dana.
“They say,” replied Amos, “that I swear too much.”