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the poor and the weak, and his delight was to stand by the under dog in the fight.
In these qualities he was a great and an exceptional man, and his friends valued him and loved him as truly as his foes detested.
But was he great always and in everything?
Were his thoughts always thoughts of reality, and his utterances and acts always the utterances and acts of wisdom? Who would say so?
No man attains to that height, and no man ever scorned the impostures of sham goodness and unattainable perfection more than Ben Butler.
He was no pretender and no hypocrite.
He lived his life, a life full of energy, of effort, of success, and of failure, and he has passed to the allotted reward; while we who remain may well be grateful to Heaven that such a man has been, Nor farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
Where they alike in trembling hope repose-
The bosom of his Father and his God.
It will be noted that while
Dana was the youngest of the great New York journalists, he knew them all personally, and had at various titles professional or business relations with each of them.
He was, of course, intimate with
Greeley, and more or less sympathetic with the tastes and learning of
William Cullen Bryant.
As he was the survivor of the group, he was requested and consented to write his recollections of
Bryant,
Bennett,
Greeley,
Webb,
Brooks, Beach, and
Noah.
In 1890 he dictated to his stenographer a brief account of Beach and a longer one of
Bennett, but, unfortunately, never finished the series or published either of the sketches.
As Beach was the founder of the
Sun, and
Bennett of the
Herald, and as these are now the leading journals of the country in their respective lines, the sketches as corrected by
Dana's own hand are here inserted:
... Moses Y. Beach was a business man and a newspaper manager rather than what we now understand as a
