Mr. Mitchell was born in Maine in 1852, and was graduated from Bowdoin in 1871. It is curious to note, scanning the names of the editors and proprietors, how the Sun has drawn upon New England.
Benjamin H. Day was born in West Springfield, Massachusetts, April 10, 1810.
Moses Yale Beach was born in Wallingford, Connecticut, January 7, 1800.
Moses Sperry Beach was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, October 5, 1822.
Charles A. Dana was born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, August 8, 1819.
Edward P. Mitchell was born in Bath, Maine, March 24, 1852.
Frank A. Munsey was born in Mercer, Maine, August 21, 1854.
Any grouping of Sun men on the purely literary side brings the name of Hazeltine to stand with those of Dana and Mitchell. Mayo Williamson Hazeltine was a fine example of the scholar in newspaper work; an example of the way in which Dana, with his intellectual magnificence, found the best for his papers.
Educated at Harvard and Oxford and in continental Europe, Hazeltine came to the Sun in 1878, and was its literary critic until his death in 1909. During the same period he was also one of its principal writers of articles on foreign politics and sociology. His book-reviews, published in the Sun on Sundays, which made the initials “M. W. H.” familiar to the whole English-reading world, were marvels of comprehension. Many a publisher of a three-volume historical work lamented when it attracted Hazeltine’s attention, for his review, whether two columns or seven, usually compressed into that space all that the average student cared to know about the book, reducing the high cost of reading from six or eight dollars to a nickel.
Hazeltine enjoyed, under both Dana and Mitchell, practically his own choice of subjects, a free hand with them, and a generous income; and in return, for more than thirty years, he poured into the columns of the Sun a wealth of the erudition which was his by right of education, travel, an intense interest in all things intellectual, and a wonderful memory.