When Taylor’s second part had been deposited and paid for, I saw coming down the street in a furiously driven carriage Mr. Sauer, with the first part of his message.  I slipped out at a back door and was not seen, and Sauer returned for the continuation of his telegram.  When Smalley’s first dispatch had been put on, I saw Sauer coming again with his second.  Then I sat tight and saw that the message had been written in columns of words on large paper, so that the counting should be rapid.  It made a huge packet, and he deposited it with evident satisfaction and turned to go out, when he saw Archibald Forbes, who was writing his telegram to the “Daily News” at the table in the office, and turned to speak to him.  When leaving him he caught sight of me in the corner, and started as if he had been hit by a bullet, then made as if he had not seen me and was going out, but reconsidered and came to speak to me.  “Well, what have you done?” he said.  I replied that I had put about 5000 words on, and was only waiting for the odds and ends from Smalley.  He flushed with surprise and vexation, and began to curse the telegraph officials “who never kept their engagements,” and went off in a towering rage.  My 6000 words went on before a single word of the message to the “Herald” could go.

Mr. Young had ordered for that evening a magnificent dinner for his staff, to which mine was invited to celebrate his unquestioned feat.  While waiting for the dinner to come on, he took me apart and asked confidentially what we had really done.  I told him, and he asked if we cabled, to which I replied that as to that I knew nothing, that I had wired G.W.  Smalley in London, but what he had done I could not say.  “Well,” said he, “if you have cabled you have beaten us, and if you have not cabled you may have beaten us,” and then he went on to say that if I would drop the “Tribune” and come over to the “Herald” he would give me a good post and good pay.  “No,” I replied, “I have taken service with the ‘Tribune’ for the campaign, and I cannot desert them.” (My recompense was a curt dismissal from the “Tribune” as soon as the urgent work of the reporting of the opening was done.) Mr. Whitelaw Reid’s nerve had failed him when it came to the question of the expense of cabling, and the 6000 words had gone by steamer from Queenstown.  I had given the “Tribune” the best beat it had ever had except the Sedan report, if the editor had had the courage to profit by it.  The “Herald” received 150 words of its report in time for the press the next morning, and had to make up its page of dispatches from matter sent by post in advance and by expansion of the 150 words received.  Edmund Yates, in his autobiography, tells a story of the affair which is in every important detail untrue, and he probably knew nothing of it except what Young had admitted, and that was certainly very little, for Young was a very reticent man, and not likely to tell his defeat even to his staff.