Above: Charles A. Dana, New York Sun.

Some time ago an attaché of a morning paper was sent by an afternoon train to Norwalk, Connecticut, for the purpose of investigating a hunted Ring thiefs transfer of property. He reached South Norwalk after four o'clock, and then rode to Norwalk in a slow street car. The only train by which he could return to the city was the Boston express, due shortly after nine and in the four hours intervening he had to interview several people and make long abstracts from the county clerk's records. He had not begun to write out his material when the train started; but sitting on one trunk in the baggage-car, with another trunk for a desk, he wrote an article a column and a half long during the two hours' journey to the city — an article of the greatest importance, which needed no correction of the editor's though the baggage-men had been playing an uproarious game of euchre, and the locomotive had been whistling furiously at every one of the numerous crossings, during its composition. Such activity as this is common among reporters, who develop above all other things, as I have said, the indispensable ability to work under pressure.

By one of those broad generalizations with which the world is apt to content itself, many people, in thinking of a great newspaper, plaee at its head a miscellaneous sort of person who does every thing in connection with it, writing every thing, reading every thing, and listening to every body. When they can fix upon his name, they address all communications to him personally, and the writer has seen envelopes at the Tribune office containing notices of births, marriages, deaths, and other such trifles — trifles as matters of news-carefully and secretly inscribed to Mr. Greeley.

The Sun Building.

But the metropolitan newspaper is a machine with too many ramifications for the control of one man, and the vast mass of details involved in its production is classified and distributed among the several members of a large staff of sub-editors, the editor-in-chief holding his subordinates responsible.

The one who resembles the fanciful creation of the public mind most is the day editor in charge. He receives and opens the mail, distributing the various matters which it brings among the several departments, putting foreign correspondence in the hands of a foreign editor, news relating to art in the hands of the art editor, local news in the hands of the city editor, political news in the hands of the political editor, scientific news in the hands of a scientific editor, and agricultural news in the hands of an agricultural editor. Each of these editors has a special branch of the paper to look after; and in addition to them there is a dramatic editor, who attends exclusively to theatrical matters; a financial editor, who reviews the money market; an "exchange" editor, whose duty it is to read the hundreds of papers sent in from outside towns; and a literary editor, who is devoted to book reviewing and literary news. Master of all is the editor-in-chief who directs the policy of the paper, writes occasional leading ar-