Patton’s droll humour was one of the delights of the Sun office. One night Charles M. Fairbanks was writing, for the Herald, a story about “The Men Who Make the Sun Shine.” He asked Patton for something about himself.
“You may say,” replied the boss of the suburban desk, “that my characteristics are brilliancy, trustworthiness, accuracy, and poetic fervour.”
“Boss,” said a young reporter to Mr. Patton, “I often think you and I could run this paper better than the men who are running it.”
“How strange!” said Mr. Patton, looking surprised. “I know that I could, but it has never occurred to me that you would not do worse than they do.”
The sports department has been one of the Sun’s strongholds since Mr. Dana’s first years. Dana would let Amos Cummings give half a page to a race at Saratoga or Monmouth Park, and would encourage Amos to neglect his executive duties so that the paper might have a good report of a boxing-match. When William I lay dead in Berlin, the Sun’s principal European correspondent, Arthur Brisbane, was concerned, not with the future of the continent, but with the aftermath of the Sullivan-Mitchell fight at Chantilly.
The stories of the international yacht-races have always been told best in the Sun, whether the reporter was John R. Spears or William J. Henderson. Mr. Henderson, who is the ablest musical critic in America, is probably the best yachting reporter, too. While the world of music knows him through his distinguished critiques, particularly of opera, the Sun knows him as a great reporter—one who would rank high among the best it has ever had. Another Sun man who wrote yachting well is Duncan Curry, later of the American.
In turf matters the Sun has long been looked upon as an authority. In the heyday of racing the paper enjoyed the services of Christopher J. Fitzgerald, since then familiar as a starter on many race-tracks, and of Joseph Vila, now sporting editor of the Evening Sun. Fitzgerald, although a specialist in sports, was also a first-class general reporter. He is the hero of a story of the proverbial “Sun luck,” which in this case might better be called Sun persistence and activity.
In the latter part of December, 1892, the steamship Umbria, the fastest transatlantic boat of her day, was two weeks overdue at New York. Every newspaper had tugs out to watch for her first appearance. On the night of December 28 Fitzgerald was assigned to tug duty. The first tug he took down the moonlit bay broke her propeller in the ice; with the second tug he ran twenty miles beyond Sandy Hook. Presently an inward-bound liner appeared in the dark, and the other newspaper boats followed her; but this was not the Umbria, but the Britannic. An hour later a tank steamer came along, and Fitzgerald hailed her on the chance that she knew something about the missing ship.
“The Umbria,” came back the answer, “is about five miles astern, coming in slowly.”
The Sun’s tug raced to sea and soon came alongside the overdue steamer. On board was Frank Marshall White, the Sun’s London correspondent, and he had, all ready written, a story telling how the Umbria broke her machinery, and how the chief engineer lay on his back for five days trying to mend the break. Fitzgerald took White’s story and raced to Quarantine, where there was a telegraph-station, but, at that hour, no operator. Fitzgerald, himself an expert telegrapher, pounded the Sun’s call, “SX,” for ten minutes, but the Sun operator had gone home.