On Saturday, December 4, Tweed, with the connivance of his keepers, escaped from his house in Madison Avenue. This made a four-column story on which Mr. Dana had not counted. Also, the advertisers had taken advantage of the new Sunday issue, and there were more than two pages of advertisements. There was nothing for it but to make an eight-page paper, for which Dana, who then believed that all the news could be told in a folio, apologised as follows:
We confess ourselves surprised at the extraordinary pressure of advertisements upon our pages this morning; and disappointed in being compelled to present the Sun to our readers in a different form from that to which they are accustomed. We trust, however, that they will find it no less interesting than usual; and, still more, that they will feel that although the appearance may be somewhat different, it is yet the same friendly and faithful Sun.
But the Sunday issue of the Sun never went back to four pages, for the eight-page paper had been made so attractive with special stories, reprint, and short fiction that both readers and advertisers were pleased. It was ten years, however, before the week-day Sun increased its size. Even during the Beecher trial (January, 1875) when the Sun’s reporter, Franklin Fyles, found himself unable to condense the day’s proceedings within a page of seven columns, the Sun still gave all the rest of the day’s news.
Cummings’s right-hand man in the news department of the Sun was Dr. John B. Wood, the Great American Condenser. All the city copy passed through his hands. He was then nearing fifty, a white-haired man who wore two pairs of glasses with thick lenses, these crowned with a green shade. He had been a printer on several papers and a desk man on the Tribune, whence Dana brought him to the Sun. Wood’s sense of the value of words was so acute that he could determine, as rapidly as his eye passed along the pages of a story, just what might be stricken out without loss. It might be a word, a sentence, a page; sometimes it would be ninety-eight per cent of the article.
Even when his sight so failed that he was unable to read copy continuously, Dr. Wood performed the remarkable feat of condensing through a reader. Willis Holly read copy to him for months, six hours a night. Holly might read three pages without interruption, while Wood sat as silent as if he were asleep. Then——
“Throw out the introduction down to the middle of the second page, begin with ‘John Elliott killed,’ and cut it off at ‘arrested him.’”
Joseph C. Hendrix, who became a member of Congress and a bank president, was a Sun cub reporter. One night he was assigned to read copy to Dr. Wood. He picked up a sheet and began:
“‘The application of Mrs. Jane Smith for divorce from her husband, John Smith—’”
“Cut out ‘her husband,’” said Wood.
“‘—who alleges cruelty,’” Hendrix continued, “‘in that he—’” Here the reporter’s writing was blurred, and Hendrix, who could not decipher it, said “Damn!”