Nothing more than that. Perhaps Wisner rather enjoyed being questioned by admiring friends when he went to dinner at the American House that day.
Bright as the police reporter was, the ship-news man of that day lacked snap. The arrival from Europe of James Fenimore Cooper, who could have told the Sun more foreign news than it had ever printed, was disposed of in twelve words. But it must be remembered that the interview was then unknown. The only way to get anything out of a citizen was to enrage him, whereupon he would write a letter. But the Sun did say, a couple of days later, that Cooper’s newest novel, “The Headsman,” was being sold in London at seven dollars and fifty cents a copy—no doubt in the old-fashioned English form, three volumes at half a guinea each.
The Sun blew its own horn for the first time on November 9, 1833:
Its success is now beyond question, and it has exceeded the most sanguine anticipations of its publishers in its circulation and advertising patronage. Scarcely two months has it existed in the typographical firmament, and it has a daily circulation of upward of two thousand copies, besides a steadily increasing advertising patronage. Although of a character (we hope) deserving the encouragement of all classes of society, it is more especially valuable to those who cannot well afford to incur the expense of subscribing to a “blanket sheet” and paying ten dollars per annum.
In conclusion we may be permitted to remark that the penny press, by diffusing useful knowledge among the operative classes of society, is effecting the march of intelligence to a greater degree than any other mode of instruction.
The same article called attention to the fact that the “penny” papers of England were really two-cent papers. The Sun’s price had been announced as “one penny” on the earliest numbers, but on October 8, when it was a little more than a month old, the legend was changed to read “Price one cent.”
From the Collection of Charles Burnham
BARNEY WILLIAMS, THE COMEDIAN, WHO WAS THE FIRST NEWSBOY OF “THE SUN”
The Sun ran its first serial in the third month of its existence. This was “The Life of Davy Crockett,” dictated or authorized by the frontiersman himself. It must have been a relief to the readers to get away from the usual dull reprint from foreign papers that had been filling the Sun’s first page. In those days the first pages were always the dullest, but Crockett’s lively stories about bear-hunts enlivened the Sun.