PATRICK SARSFIELD CASSIDY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVI, Issue 11, 6 July 1888, Page 5

PATRICK SARSFIELD CASSIDY.

(From the New York Journalist ) A house familiar abont Park Row, and throughout newapaperdom is that of Patrick Sarsfield Cassidy, the city editor of tbe Bund ay Mercury, and one of the " whitest " journalists who shoves a lead pencil in the metropolitan guild. Mr. Cassidy is a tall good-looking fellow, with a keen nos* for news. He was barn on All Hallow E'en — October 31, 1852— in County Donegal, Ireland, He was educated in the Emerald Isle, and at the early age of sixteen he appeared in the Dublin Chronicle as the author of a romantic poem on St. Oolumb's Conquest or the Druid's Doom, a Legend of Tory Island, which ran through six numbers of that paper, and created.considerable interest among the literary people of Ireland's, capital. He came to New York in his eighteenth year, and earned bis first money in this conntry by reporting for the World a lecture by a coloured parson in a Sullivan street church ; African eloquence was a novelty to the young Irishman, and he wrote up hia impressions in a bright and breezy style, which won him immediate recognition. After about two months' work on the World, he joined the sthfl of the (My Prets Association, then just organising. While there he wrote, in addition to bis daily work, a continued story called *' Glenveigb," for the Boston Pilot. It was a success and enjoyed a large sale in book form. It has since been republished in a couple of literarr papers. After about four years Mr. Cassidy left the City Press and went on the night force of the Associated Press bandling cable dispatches. During part of thia time he also supplied the editorial pages of two weekly papers and edited the Celtic Magazine, of which h« was part proprietor. This great strain and the night work began to tell upon his naturally vigorousconßtition,hardenedasit was by bis early shooting and fishing excursions among the beantiful Donegal hills. His eyes began to give out and physicians advised him to give np night-work. He left the Associated Press with regret and took the city editorship of the Sunday Mercury, a position which he has held with hononr to himself and satisfaction to his employer for upwards of three yean. He does not by any means confine his work to the Mercury columns, however, and his facile genius and enormous capacit" for work finds outlet as contributor and special writer upon several weekly and monthly literary publications. He is a graceful and pleasing writer of verse, and several of his poems have achieved wide circulation and popularity. The warm impulsive heart of the man naturally gives itself expression through the medium of poetry. As a reporter he was a success ; he was rarely beaten on an item. A good story is told of him when he was seat, with half a dozen New York newspapers, to report the hanging of Orill at New town, N.J. The New Jersey law had just gone into effect that only tweuty.four spectators were allowed at a hanging, and they mast ba residents of the county. An enterprising lawyer of the place had prepared to take advantage of the law and furnish the exclusive account of the hanging. To his horror and surprisa bs saw Oassidy perched on a board just outside the hotel window peeping through a knot hole in the fence into the gaol yard. He informed tbe sheriff and that functionary ordered him off. But Oassidy was standing on the hotel property, and he very justly claimed that it was not his fault if the State of New Jersey had knot holes in its gaol fences. He protested solemnly against the hanging going on until the Supreme Court of the State decided whether he had the right to stand on the hotel property and squint through the knot hole. His eloquence and legal lore completely bewildered the bucolic official and he was finally allowed to use his knot hole, and wired his story to New Turk in triumph. Mr. Oassidy is, as has been said, an indefatigable workor, a brilliant descriptive writer, and a man whose popularity is as wide as his name is well known. An old and distinguished member of the newspaper craft said this week: " I do not know any career whose contemplation has given me more pleasure than that of Mr. Oaesidy. Starting with nothing behind him but a thorough honesty, a soldier-like resolution, and a tireless desire to make the most of his opportunities, he has steadily forged ahead in newspaper life, and to-day occupies an enviable position in the esteem and affection of not only his associates but of all journalists who are acquainted with the work he has done, or tbe worker himself. He embodies the new journalism which has done so much to give a literary tone and value to mere mechanical news, and to give the reporter and editor a status as high intellectually and socially, as it long has been commercially. It is a great pleasure to us who have grown grey in the service to see that our places are to be filled by such as he. American journalism is bound to prosper and develop when such men as Cassidy become every day more and more a characteristic of the great army whose weapon ib the pen. "