[175]
the Tribune. However, we keep good spirits and good digestion, and for “constitutional” ride a horse for two hours daily. . .. The Household Poetry is not published yet, but there is hope for it within a few months.
The Cyclopaedia sells pretty well, notwithstanding.
Of volume I. five thousand have gone already, and the tide rises still.... Send on a biography of Gustave Dore.
On August 6, 1861,
Dana, in a letter to his friend
Huntington, commented upon the defeat at
Bull Run as an awful blow for which
Scott was mainly responsible.
It had sickened
Greeley, and kept him from the office two weeks. It had been made the occasion of his extraordinary card placing the
Tribune in leading-strings.
It had produced a crisis in all kinds of business as well as in the affairs of the government.
It brought the war home to every interest, private as well as public.
It cut down the income of the
Tribune, and curtailed the sale of books.
Ruin seemed to be staring every one in the face, editors and writers along with the rest.
Dana's publishers were paying no dividends; taxes of every kind were increasing, and hard times seemed to be so certain that he thought of letting his house.
Happily the necessity for that measure of retrenchment passed away with the return of business activity, which characterized the vigorous prosecution of the war.
The financial crisis had passed, but it was swiftly followed by a crisis in
Dana's personal and professional career which resulted in severing his connection with the
Tribune, as heretofore related.
On April 11th he wrote again to
Huntington.
I quote in part as follows:
... To put my news butt-end first, let me say that I have left the Tribune, and have just written to your brother to send on the share of stock in his hands as security, in order
