Till there bursts a response from the heart’s strong emotion,
And the earth echoes deep with “Long Life to the Press!”
CHARLES A. DANA.
THE FAMOUS EDITOR OF THE “SUN.”
HE man who with Greeley made the New York “Tribune” one of the greatest powers in the land, and who, from 1868 to 1897, was the chief and managing editor of the New York “Sun,” is certainly entitled to rank among our foremost men. Charles A. Dana lived a remarkable life, a life of strenuous effort and of continuous and notable achievement. He was born at Hinsdale, New Hampshire, in 1819, but his early life was passed at the village of Gaines, in Western New York, in Buffalo, and at Guildhall, Vermont. One of his earliest recollections was of being tied to a post with his mother’s garter because he had run away and gotten himself very muddy, thus displaying, at three years old, the restless spirit of enterprise which did much to make him the man he was. When he was eleven years old he returned to Buffalo to be a clerk in his uncle’s dry goods store. He was very successful as a salesman, and remained in the establishment until the failure of the business, in 1837, when he determined to prepare himself for college. He said that he found the elements of Latin very hard and disagreeable work, and he had the greatest difficulty in remembering the paradigms. Two winter terms at a country school, in his early boyhood, and two years at Harvard completed Mr. Dana’s systematic education, as too close application affected his eyesight, and he was obliged to withdraw from college at the end of his sophomore year. He had cultivated such a taste for languages, however, that no year since passed which he did not devote in part to serious study, and he became master of most spoken languages except the Slavonic and Oriental, and he began, at the age of seventy-five, the study of Russian. Harvard College afterward conferred upon him the degree which he was prevented from earning in the regular way, and is proud to count him among her most honored sons.
After leaving college Mr. Dana joined that remarkable body of men and women who conducted the Brook Farm experiment. He distinguished himself as one of the very few practical men among that band of philosophers, and gained, while at Brook Farm, a little experience in the newspaper business in conducting a publication known as “The Harbinger,” which was the organ of the association.