Edward D. Cowen, the city editor of the Leadville Herald, who was murderously assaulted night before last by a desperado named Joy, was one of the brightest newspaper men in the West.  He came originally from Massachusetts, and has relatives living in the southern part of Illinois.  He was about thirty years of age.  He went to Leadville about three months ago to work on ex-Senator Tabor’s paper, the Herald, and was doing excellently well.  He was a protege, to a certain extent, of Mrs. Tabor No. 2.  She admired his brilliancy, and volunteered to help him in any possible way.  It was speaking of him that she said:  “My life will henceforth be devoted to assisting worthy young men.  In life we must prepare for death, and how can we better prepare for death than by helping our fellow-creatures?  Alas!” she added with a sad, sad sigh, “alas! death is, after all, what we live for.”  Young Cowen had all the social graces men and women admire; he was bright in intellect, great in heart, and hearty of manner.  The loss of no young man we know of would be more deplored than his demise.

Cowen never wholly recovered from the effects of his encounter with Joy, but he survived to joke with Field over the past tense in which this paragraph is couched, and to afford me valuable assistance in completing this character-study of our friend.

I have already referred to the “box stall” in which Field sawed his daily wood, as he was accustomed to call his work.  As the day of thinking that any old pine table, with a candle box for a chair, crowded off in any sort of a dingy garret, was good enough for the writers who contributed “copy” for a newspaper, has been succeeded by an era of quarter-sawed oak desks, swivel chairs, electric light, and soap and water in editorial quarters throughout the country, let me attempt to describe the original editorial rooms of the Daily News less than twenty years ago.  The various departments of the paper occupied what had been three four-story, twenty-five-foot buildings.  The floors of no two of these buildings above the first story were on the same level.  They had evidently been originally built for lodging houses.  The presses and storerooms for the rolls of paper filled the cellars.  The business office occupied one store, which was flanked on either side by stores that would have been more respectable had they been rented as saloons, which they were not, because of the conscientious scruples of Messrs. Lawson & Stone.  Parts of two of the buildings were still rented as lodgings.  Up one flight of stairs of the centre building, in the front, Mr. Stone had his office, which was approached through what had been a hall bedroom.  His room was furnished with black walnut, and a gloomy and oppressive air of mystery.  Mr. Stone had the genius and the appearance of a chief inquisitor.  He was as alert, daring, and enterprising an editor as the West has ever produced.