Yale Univ/ersity Library 39002004763687 lii^^'HJi^.RAJiiiaiM YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY f 1 J ,".viM?,iS« ?W.v^ ¦¦^ : I k\-\x [YOUN& GEEELEY'S ABEIVAL Df NEW TOEK.] THE LIFE OF HOBACE GEEELEY. EDITOE OF THE UEW TOEK TEIBUNE. BY J. PARTON. '* If, on a full and final review, my life and practice shall he fouud unworthy my princi ples, let due infamy be heaped on my memory ; but let none be thereby led to distrust the prin ciples to which I proved recreant, nor yet the ability of some to adorn them by a suitablo life aud conversation. To unerring time be all this committed." Horace Greeley in 1846. NEW YOEK: .. PUBLISHED BY MASON BROTHEES. 18 5 5. Entered, according to Act of Cougress, in the year 1854, BY MASON BROTHERS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court f-* CHAPTER I. THE SCOTCH-IEISH OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. PAGE Londonderry in Ireland— The Siege— Emigration to New England— Settlement of Londonderry, New Hampshire — The Scotch-Irish introduce the culture of the potato and the manufacture of linen- Character of the Scotch-Irish— Their sim plicity-Love of fun— Stories of the early clergymen— Traits in the Scotch-Iri*. character — Zeal of the Londonderrians in the Revolution — Horace Greeley's al lusion to his Scotch-Irish ancestry 19 CHAPTER IL ANCESTORS. — PARENTAGE. — BIRTH. Origin of the Family— Old Captain Ezekiel Greeley— Zaccheus Greeley— Zaccheus the Second — Roughness and Tenacity of the Greeley race — Maternal Ancestors of Horace Greeley^John Woodbum— Character of Horace Greeley's Great-grand mother — His Grandmother— Romantic Incident— Horace Greeley is born '*as black as a chimney"— Comea to his color— Succeeds to the name of Horace 28 CHAPTER III. EARLT CHI L'D HOOD. The Village of Amherst— Character of the a^aeent country— The Greeley farm— The Tribune in the room in which its Editor was born — Horace learns to read — Book up-^de down— Goes to school in Londonderry- A district school forty years ago— Horace as a young orator— Has a mania for spelling hard words- Gets great glory at the spelling school— Recollections of his surviving schoolfel lows—His fViture eminence foretold— Delicacy of ear— Early choice of a trade — His courage and timidity— Goes to school in Bedford— A favorite among his schoolfellows— His early fondness for the village newspapei^-Lies in ambush for the post-rider who brought it— Scours the country for books— Project of sending him to an academy— The old sea-captain— Horace as a farmer's boy— Let us do our stint first— His way of fishing 34 xii CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. HIS FATHER EUINE D — E EMOVAL TO VEKMONT. PAGE New Hampshire before the era of manufactures— Causes of his father's failure— Eum in the olden time— An execution in the house — Flight of the father— Horace and the Rum Jug— Compromise with the creditors — Removal to another fann — Final ruin — ^Removal to Vermont — The winter journey — Poverty of the family — Scene at their new home — Cheerfulness iu misfortune 52 CHAPTER V. AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. Description of the country— Clearing up Land— All the family assist a la Swiss- Family-Robinson— Primitive costume of Horace— His early indifierence to dress — His manner and attitude in school- A Peacemaker among the boys — Gets into a scrape, and out of it — Assists his school-fellows in their studies— An evening scene at home— Horace knows too much— Disconcerts his teachers by his ques tions-Leaves school — The pine-knots still blaze on the hearth — Reads incessantr ly — Becomes a great draught player— Bee-hunting— Reads at the Mansion Hou^ — ^Taken for an Idiot— And for a possible President— Reads Mrs, Hemans with rapture— A Wolf Story— A Pedestrian Journey — Horace and the horseman^ Yoking the Oxen — Scene with an old Soaker — Rum in Westhaven — Horace's First Pledge — Narrow escape from drowning — His religious doubts — Becomes a Universalist — Discovers the humbug of " Democracy" — Impatient to begin his ap prenticeship ^ 57 CHAPTER VI. A PPRE NTICE SHIP. The Village of East Poultney — Horace applies for the Place— Scene in the Garden — He makes an Impression— A difficulty arises and is overcome— He enters the ofllce— Rite of Initiation — Horace the Victor — His employer's recollections of lilm —The Pack of Cards- Horace begins to pai-agraph— Joins the Debating Society — His manner of Debating— Horace and the Dandy— His noble conduct to his father— His first glimpse of Saratoga— His manners at the Table— Becomes the Town-Encyclopedia- The Doctor's Story— Recollections of one of hia fellow ap prentices — Horace's favorite Poets — Politics of the time — The Anti-Mason Excite ment—The Northern Spectator stops— The Apprentice is Free CONTENTS. XIU CHAPTER VIL HE WANDERS. PAGB Horace leaves Poultney— His first Overcoat— Home to his Father's Log House- Ranges the country for work— The Sore Leg Cured— Gets Employment, but little Money^Astonishea the Draught-Players— Goes to Erie, Pa. — Interview with an Editor — Becomes a Journeyman in the Office— Description of Erie— The Lake — His Generosity to his Father— His new clothes— No more work at Erie — Starts for New York .^^ 106 CHAPTER VIII. AEEITAL IN NE"W YORK. The' jom*ney — a night on the tow-path— He reaches the city— Inventory of his prop- erty^Looks for a boarding-house — Finds one— Expends half his capital upon clothes— Searches for employment— Berated by David Hale as a runaway ap prentice-Continues the search- Goes to church— Hears of a vacancy — Obtains work— The boss takes him for a ' fool,' but changes his opinion— Nicknamed ' the Ghost ' — Practical jokes— Horace metamorphosed — Dispute about commas — The shoemaker's boarding-house— Grand banquet on Sundays. , 118 CHAPTER IX. FROM OFFICE TO OFFICE. Leaves West's — Works on the * Evening Post '—Story of Mr, Leggett—* Commer cial Advertiser '^' Spirit of the Times ' — Specimen of his writing at this period— Naturally fond of the drama— Timothy Wiggins— Works for Mr. Redfield— The first lift 133 CHAPTER X. THE FIRST PENNY PAPER — AND WHO THOTJG-HT OP IT. Importimce of the cheap daily press— The originator of the idea— History of the idea — Dr. Sheppard's Chatham-street cogitations— The Idea is conceived— It ia horn— Interview with Horace Greeley— The Doctor thinks he is 'no common boy' — The schemer baffled- Daily papers twenty-five years ago— Dr. Sheppard comes to a resolution— The firm of Greeley and Story — The Morning Post appears— And fails— The sphere of the cheap press— Fanny Fern and the pea-nut merchant 137 xiv CONTENTS. OHAPTEK XI. THE FIEM OONTISTITES. FAGB JjOtlery printing— The Constitutionalist— Dudley S. Gregory— The lottery auicide- The firm prospers— Sudden death of Mr. Story— A new partner— Mr.. Greeley as a master— A dinner story— Sylvester Graham— Horace Greeley at the Graham House — The New Yorker projected — James Gordon Bennett 140 CHAPTER XIL EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. Character of the paper— Its early fortunes— Happiness of the Editor^Scene in the Office— Specimens of Horace Greeley's Poetry— Subjects of his Essays— His Opin ions then — His Marriage— The Silk-stocking Story— A day in Washington — His impressions of the Senate — Pecuniary difficulties — Cause of the New Yorker's ill- success as a Business— The missing letters — ^The Editor gets a nickname — ^The Agonies of a Debtor— Park Benjamin— Henry J. Raymond 151 CHAPTER XIIL THE JEFFERSONIAN. Objects of tho Jeffersonian— Its character— A novel Glorious-Victory paragraph— The Graves and Cilley duel — ^The Editor overworked 174 CHAPTER XIV. THE LOG CABIN. — "tIPPEOANOE AND TYLER TOO." Wire-pulling— The delirium of 1840— The Log Cabin — Unprecedented hit— A glance at its pages — Log Cabin jokes— Log Cabin song— Horace Greeley and the cake-basket — Pecuniary difficulties continue — The Tribune announced 180 CHAPTER XV. STAETS THE T E I B U N E . The Capital— The Daily Press of New York in 1841— The Tribune appears— The Omens unpropitious — The first week — Conspiracy to put down the Tribune The Tribune triumphs— Thomas McElrath— The Tribune alive— Industry of the Edi- tora— Thelrjindependence- Horace Greeley and John Tyler— The Tribune a Fixed Fact 191 CONTENTS. XV CHAPTEE XVI. THE TEIBUNB AND FOTJEIEKISM. FAQS What made Horace Greeley a Socialist— The hard winter of 1838— Albert Brisbane —The subject broached— Series of articles by Mr. Brisbane begun— Their effect- Cry of Mad Dog— Discussion between Horace Greeley and Henry J. Raymond — How it arose- Abstract of it in a conversational form 199 CHAPTEE XVII. THE TEIBTTHE'S SBOOSTD YEAE. Increase of price — The Tribune offends the Sixth Ward flghting-men — The oiBce Threatened — Novel preparations for defense — Charles Dickens defended — The Editor travels — Visits Washington, and sketches the Senators — At Mount Vernon —At Niagara— A hard hit at Major Noah 217 CHAPTER XVm. THE TEIBUNE AND J. FENIMOEB OOOPEE. The libel — Horace Greeley's narrative of the trial — He reviews the opening speech of Mr. Cooper's counsel— A striking illustration— He addresses the jury— Mr. Cooper sums up — Horace Greeley comments on the speech of the novelist— In doing so he perpetrates new libels— The verdict— Mr, Greeley's remarks on the same — Strikes a bee-line for New York — A new suit — An imaginary case 224 CHAPTEE XIX. THE TEIBTTNE CONTINUES. The Special Express system— Night adventures of Enoch Ward— Gig Express— Ex- ¦ press from Halifax — Baulked by the snow-dj-ifts — Party warfare then — Books published by Greeley and McEU'ath — Course of the Tribune — The Editor travels — Scenes in Washington— An incident of travel — Clay and Frelinghuysen — The exertions of Horace Greeley — ^Results of the defeat— The Tribune and Slavery —Burning of the Tribune Building— The Editor's reflections upon the Are 240 CHAPTEE XX. MAEGAEET ETTLLEE. Her writings in the Tribune— She resides with Mr. Greeley — Hia narrative — Dietetic Sparring— Her manner of writing— Woman's Eights— Her generosity— Her inde pendence—Her love of children— Margaret and Pickle- Her opinion of Mr. Gree ley— Death of Pickie 253 XVI CONTENTS. CHAPTEE XXI. EDITOEIAL EEPAETEES. PAGE At war with all the world— The spirit of the Tribune— Retorts vituperative— The Tribune and Dr. Potts— Some prize tracts suggested— An atheist's oath— A word for domestics- Irish Democracy— The modem drama— Hit at Dr. Hawks— Disso lution of the Union— Dr. Franklin's stoiy— A Pictm'e for Polk— Charles Dickena and Copyright — Charge of malignant falsehood — Preaching and Practice — Col. Webb aeverely hit— Hostility to the Mexican war— Violence incited— A few -The course of the Tribune— Wager with the Herald 263 CHAPTEE XXII. 1848! Revolution in Europe— The Tribune exults— The Slievegammon letters— Taylor and Fillmore— Course of the Tribune— Horace Greeley at Vauxhall Garden— His elec tion to Congress 1 CHAPTEE XXIII. THESE MONTHS IN OONGEESS. His objects as a Member of Congress— His first acts— The e!haplain hypocrisy— The Land Reform Bill — Distributing the Documents — Offers a novel Resolution — The Mileage Expos6— Congressional delays — Explosion iu Ihe House — Mr. Turner's oration — Mr. Greeley defends himself— The Walker Tariff— Cougress in a pet — Speech at the Piinter's Festival— The house In good humor— Traveling dead head— Pei-sonal explanations — A dry haul — The amendment game — Congression al dignity — Battle of the Books— The Eecruiting System — The last night of the Session— The 'usual gratuity'— The Inauguration Ball— Farewell to his constitu ents i CHAPTEE XXIV. ASSOCIATION IN THE TEIBTTNE OFFICE. Accessions to the corps — The course of the Tribune — Horace Greeley in Ohio — The Rochester knockings— The mediums at Mr. Greeley's house- Jenny Lind goes to see them— Her behaviop— Woman's Rights Convention— The Tribune Associa tion—The hireling system 319 OOISTTENTS. xvii CHAPTER XXV. ON THE PLATFOR M.^H INTS TOWARDS REFORMS. PAQB The Lecture System — Comparative popularity of the leading Lecturers— Horace Greeley at tho Tahemacle— His audience— His appearance — His manner of speak ing — His occasional addresses— The 'Hints' published — Its one subject, the Emancipation of Labor— The Problems of the Time— The * successful ' man— Tho duty of the State — The educated class — A narrative for workingmen— The catas trophe 326 CHAPTER XXVL THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. The Voyage out— First impression of England— Opening of the Exhibition— Char acteristic observations— He attends a grand Banquet — He sees the Sights — He speaks at Exeter Hall— The Play at Devcwshire House— Robert Owen's birth-day — Horace Greeley before a Committee of the House of Commons— He throws light upon the subject— Vindicates tho American Press— Journey to Paris— The Sights of Paris— The Opera and Ballet— A false Prophet — His opinion of the French— Journey to Italy— Anecdote— A nap in the DUigence— Arrival at Rome — In the Galleries — Scene in the Coliseum— To England again — Triumph of the American Reaper— A week in Ireland and Scotland— His opinion of the English —Homeward Bound— His arrival— The Extra Tribune 346 CHAPTER XXVn. E EOENTL Y. Deliverance from Party— A Private Platform — Last Interview with Henry Clay — Horace Greeley a Farmer— He imgates and drains — His Advice to a Yoimg Man — The Daily Times— A costly Mistake — The Isms of tho Tribune— The Tribune gets Glory— The Tribune in ParUament— Proposed Nomination for Governor— His Life written— A Judge's Daughter for Sale 375 CHAPTER XXVni. DAY AND NIGHT IN TEE TRIBUNE OFFICE. The streets before daybreak— Waking the newsboys— Morning scene in the press room — The Compositor's room— The four Phalanxes — The Tribune Directory— A lull in the Tribime office— A glance at the paper— The advertisements — Tele graphic marvels — Marine Intelligence— New Publications— Letters from the peo- XVm CONTENTS. TAOIE pie— Editorial articlea— The editorial Rooma— The Sanctum Sanctorum— Solon Robinson- Bayard Taylor- William Henry Fry— George Ripley- Charles A. Dana— F. J. Ottarson— George M. Snow— Enter Horace Greeley— His Prelimin ary botheration— The composing-room in the evening— The editors at work- Mr. Greeley's manner of writmg— Midnight— Three o'clock in tho morning— The r.nrrifivs . . _ . _ _ dal CHAPTEE XXIX. POSITION AND INFLUENCE OF HOEAOE GEEELEY. At the head of hia Profession— Extent of his Influence— Nature of his Influence— A Conservative-Radical— His Practical Suggestions- To Aspiring Young Men- Have a Home of your own— To Young Mechanics — Coming to the City — A La bor-Exchange—Pay as you go— To the Lovers of Knowledge— To Young Orators —The Colored People— To young Lawyers and Doctors— To an inquiring Slave holder — To Countiy Editors— In Peace, prepare for War — To Country Merchants — Tenement Houses 411 CHAPTEE XXX. APPEAEANOB — MANNEES — HABTTS. His person and countenance — Phrenological developments — His rustic manners- Town eccentricities— Horace Greeley in Broadway— 'Horatina' at church— Horace Greeley at-home. 431 CHAPTEE XXXI. Conclusion 434 THE LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. CHAPTER I. THE SCOTCH-IRISH OF NEW HAMPSHIEE. Londonderry in Ireland— The Siege— Emigration to New England— Settlement of Londonderry, New Hampshire— The Scotch-Irish introduce the culture of the potato and the manufacture of linen— Character of the Scotch-Irish— Their sim plicity—Love of fun— Stories of the early clergymen— Traits in the Scotch- Irish character — Zeal of the Londonderrians in the Revolution — Horace Greeley's allusion to his Scotch-Irish ancestry. , IfEW H.AMPSHIBE, the native State of Horace Greeley, was set- fled in part by colonists from Massachusetts and Connecticut, and in part by emigi'ants from the north of Ireland. The latter were called Scotch-Irish, for a reason which a glance at their history will show. Ulster, the most northern of the four provinces of Ireland, has been, during the last two hundred and fifty years, superior to the rest in wealth and civilization. The cause of its superiority is known. About the year 1613, when James I. was king, there was ai rebellion of the Catholics in the north of Ireland, Upon its sup pression, Ulster, embracing the six northern counties, and contain ing half a million acres of land, fell to the king by the attainder of the rebels. Under royal encouragement and furtherance, a com pany was formed in London for the purpose of planting colonies in that fertile province, which lay waste from the ravages of the re cent war. The land was divided into shares, the largest of which did not exceed two.thousand acres. Colonists were invited over from England and Scotland. The natives were expelled from their fastnesses in the hills, and forced to settle upon the plains. Some 20 THE SCOTCH-IEISH OF NEW HAMPSHIBB. efforts, it appears, were made to teach them arts and agriculture. Bobbery and assassination were punished. And, thus, by the in fusion of new blood, and the partial improvement of the ancient race, Ulster, which had been the most savage and turbulent of the Irish provinces, became, and remains to this day, the best culti vated, the richest, and the most civilized. One of the six counties was Londonderry, the capital of which, called by the same name, had been sacked and razed during the rebeUion. The city was now rebuilt by a company of adventurers from London, and the county was settled by a colony from Argyle- shire in Scotland, who were thenceforth called Scotch-Irish. Of what stuff these Scottish colonists were made, their after-history amply and gloriously shows. The colony took root and flourished in Londonderry. In 1689, the year of the immortal siege, the city was an important fortified town of twenty-seven thousand inhabit- aiitg, and the county was proportionally populous and productive. "William of Orange had reached the British throne. James II. re- tm-ning from France had landed in Ireland, and was making an effort to recover his lost" inheritance. The Irish Catholics were still loyal to him, and hastened to rally round his banner. But Ulster was Protestant and Presbyterian ; the city of Londonderry was Ulster's stronghold, and it was the chief impediment in the way of James' proposed descent upon Scotland. "With what reso lution and daring the people of Londonderry, during the ever-mem orable siege of that city, fought and endured for Protestantism and freedom, the world well knows. Eor seven months they held out against a besieging army, so numerous that its slain numbered nine thousand. The besieged lost three thousand men. To such ex tremities were they reduced, .that among the market quotations of the times, we find items like these:— a quarter of a dog, five shil lings and sis-pence ; a dog's head, two and six-pence ; horse-flesh, one and six-pence per pound ; horse-blood, one shiUing per quart ; a cat, four and six-pence; a rat, one shilling; a mouse, sis-pence. When aU the food that remained in the city was nine half-starved horses and a pint of meal per man, the people were still resolute. At the very last extremity, they were relieved by a provisioned fleet, and the army of James retired in despair. On the settlement of the kingdom under William and Mary, the EMIGRATION TO NEW ENGLAND. 21 Presbyterians of Londonderry did not find themselves in the en joyment of the freedom to which they conceived themselves enti tled. They were dissenters from the established church. Their pastors were not recognized by the law as clergymen, nor their places of worship as churches. Tithes were exacted for the support of the Episcopal clergy. They were not proprietors of the soil, but held their lands as tenants of the crown. They were hated alike, and equally, by the Irish Catholics and the English Episcopa lians. When, therefore, in 1617, a son of one of the leading cler gyman returned from New England with glowing accounts of that ' plantation,' a furor of emigration arose in the town and county of Londonderry, and portions of four Presbyterian congregations, with their four pastors, united in a scheme for a simultaneous remo val across the seas. One of the clergymen was first despatched to Boston to make the needful inquiries and arrangements. He was the bearer of an address to " His Excellency, the Eight Honorable Colonel Samuel Smith, Governor of New England," which assured his Excellency of " our sincere and hearty inclination to transport ourselves to that very excellent and renowned plantation, upon our obtaining from his Excellency suitable encouragement." To this address, the original of which still exists, two hundred and seven names were appended, and all but seven in the hand- writing of the individuals signing — a fact which proves the superiority of the emi grants to the majority of their countrymen, both in position and intelligence. One of the subscribers was a baronet, nine were cler gymen, and three others were graduates of the University of Ed inburgh. On the fourth of August, 1718, the advance party of Scotch- Irish emigrants arrived in five ships at Boston. Some of them re mained in that city and founded the church in Federal street, of which Dr. Channing was afterwards pastor. Others attempted to settle in Worcester ; but as they were Irish and Presbyterians, such a storm of prejudice against them arose among the enlightened Congregationalists of that place, that they were obliged to flee be fore it, and seek refuge in the less populous places of Massachusetts. Sixteen families, after many months of tribulation and wandering, selected for their permanent abode a tract twelve miles square, called Nutfleld, which now embraces the townships of London- 22 THE gCOTCH-lEISH OP NEW HAMPSHIEE. derry. Deny and Windham, in Eookingham county, New Hamp shire. The land was a free gift from the king, in consideration of the services rendered his throne by the people of Londonderry in the defence of their city. To each settler was assigned a farm of one hundred and twenty acres, a house lot, and an out lot of sixty acres. The lands of the men who had personally sei-ved during the siege, were exempted from taxation,' and were known down to the period of the revolution as the Exempt Fa/rim. The settle ment of Londonderry attracted new emigrants, and it soon became one of the most prosperous and famous in the colony. It was there that the potato was first cultivated, and there that linen was first made in New England. The English colonists at that day appear to have been unacquainted with the culture of the po tato, and the familiar story of the Andover farmer who mistook the balls which grow on the potato vine for the genuine fruit of the plant, is mentioned by a highly respectable historian of New Hamp shire as " a weU-authenticated fact." With regard to the linen manufacture, it may be mentioned aa a proof of the thrift and skill of the Scotch-Irish settlers, that, as early as the year 1748, the linens of Londonderry had so high a reputa tion in the colonies, that it was found necessary to take measures to prevent the linens made in other towns from being fraudulently sold for those of Londonderry manufactture. A town meeting was held in that year for the purpose of appointing " fit and proper peirsons to survey and inspect linens and hoUands made in the town for sale, so that the credit of our manufactory be kept up, and the purchaser of om* linens may not be imposed upon with foreign and outiandish linens in the name of ours." Inspectors and sealers were accord ingly appointed, who were to examine and stamp " all the hoUands made and to be made in our town, whether brown, white, speckled, or checked, that are to be exposed for sale ;'' for which service they were empowered to demand from the owner of said linen " sixpence, old tenor, for each piece." And this occm-red within thirty years from the erection of the first log-hut in the township of London derry. However, the people had brought their spinning and weav ing implements with them from Ireland, and their industry was not once interrupted by an attack of Indians. These Scotch-Irish of Londonderry were a very peculiar people. CHARACTER OF THE SCOTCH-IRISH. 33 They were Scoteli-Iriah in character and in name ; of Irish viva city, generosity, and daring; Scotch in frugality, industry, and reso lution ; a race in whose oomposition nature seems, for once, to have kindly blended the qualities that render men interesting with those that render them prosperous. Their habits and their minds were simple. They lived, for many years after the settlement began to thrive, upon the fish which they caught at the falls of Amoskeag, upon game, and upon such products of the soil as beans, potatoes, samp, and bailey. It is only Since the year 1800 that tea and coffee, those ridiculous and effeminating drinks, came into anything hke general use among them. It was not till some time after the Eevo lution that a chaise was seen in Londonderry, and even then it ex cited great wonder, and was deemed an unjustifiable extravagance. Shoes, we are told, were little worn in the summer, except on Sun days and holidays ; and then they were carried m the hand to within a short distance of the church, where they were put on ! There was little buying and selling among them, but much borrowing and lending. " If a neighbor killed a calf," says one writer, " no part of it was sold ; but it was distributed among relatives and friends, the poor widow always having a piece ; and the minister, if he did not get the shoulder, got a portion as good." The women were ro bust, worked on the farms in the busy seasons, reaping, mowing, and even ploughing on occasion; and the hum of the spinning- wheel was heard in every house. An athletic, active, indomitable, prolific, long-lived race. For a couple to have a dozen children, and for all the twelve to reach maturity, to marry, to have large families, and die at a good old age, seems to have been no uncom mon case among the original Londonderrians. Love of fun was one of their marked eharacteristics. One of their descendants, the Eev. J. H. Morrison, has written — "A prom inent trait in the character of the Scotch-Irish was thek ready wit. STo subject was kept sacred from it ; the thoughtless, the grave, the old, and the young, alike enjoyed it. Our fathers were serious, thoughtful men, but they lost no occasion which might promise sport. Weddings, hnskings, log-rollings and raisings — what a host of queer stories is connected with them ! Our ancestors dearly loved fun. There was a grotesque humor, and yet a seriousness, pathos and strangeness about them, which in its way has, perhaps, never been 24 THE SCOTCH-IEISH OP NEW HAMPSHIRE. equalled. It was the sternness of the Scotch Covenanter, softened by a century's residence abroad, amid persecution and trial, wedded to the comic humor and ''pathos of the Irish, and then grown wild in the woods among their own New England mountains." There never existed a people at once so jovial and so religious. This volume could be filled with a collection of their rehgious re partees aud pious jokes. It was Pat. Larkin, a Scotch-Irishman, near Londonderry, who, when he was accused of being a Catholic, because his parents were Catholics, rephed: " If a man happened to be born in a stable, would that make him a horse ?" and hft won his bride by that timely spark. Quaint, bold, and witty were the old Scotch-Irish clergymen, the men of the siege, as mighty with carnal weapons as with spiritual. There was no taint of the sanctimonious in their rough, honest, and healthy natures. During the old French war, it is re lated, a British officer, in a peculiarly " stunning " uniform, came ¦one Sunday morning to the Londonderry Meeting House. Deeply conscious was this individual that he was exceedingly well dressed and he took pains to display his finery and his figure by standing in an attitude, during the delivery of the sermon, which had the effect of withdi-awing the minds of the young ladies from the same. At length, the minister, who had both fought and preached in Londonderry ' at home,' and feared neither man, beast, devil, nor red-coat, addressed the officer thus : " Te are a braw lad ; ye ha'e a braw suit of claithes, and we ha'e a' seen them ; ye may sit doun." The officer subsided instantly, and old Dreadnought went on with his sermon as though nothing had happened. The same clergyman once began a sermon on the vain self-confidence of St. Peter, with the following energetic remarks : " Just like Peter, aye, mair forrit than wise, ganging swaggering about wi' a sword at his side ; an' a puir hand he made of it when he came to the trial ; for he only cut off a chiel's lug, an' he ought to ha' split down his h.ead.'" On another occasion, he is said to have opened on a weU- known text in this fashion : " ' I can do all things ;' ay, can ye Paul ? I'U bet ye a dollar o' that (placing a dollar on the desk). But stop! let's see what else Paul says: 'I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me ;' ay, sae can I, Paul. I draw my bet," and he returned the doUar to his pocket. They TRAlTB IN THE SCOTCH CHAEACTIlB. 25 'pruyed, a joke sometimes, those Scotch-Irish clergymen. One pastor, -dining with a new settler, who had no table, and served up his •dinner in a basket, implored. Heaven to bless the mau " in his iasket, and in his store ;" which Heaven did, for the man afterwards grew rich. "What is the difference," asked a youth, "between the Con gregationalists and Presbyterians ?" " The difference is," replied the pastor, with becoming gi-avity, "that the Congr^ationalist goes home between the services and eats a regular dinner; but the ¦Presbyterian puts off his till after meeting." And how pious they were ! For many years after the settle ment, the omission of the daily act of devotion in a single household would have excited general alarm. It is related as a fact, that the first pastor of LondondeiTy, being informed one evening that an individual was becoming neglectful of family worship, imme- •€iately repaired to his dweUing. The family had retired ; he called -np the master of the bouse, inquired if the report were true, and ¦asked him whether he had omitted family prayer that evening. The man confessed that he had ; and the pastor, having admonished him •of his fault, refused to leave the house until the delinquent had called np his wife, and performed with her the omitted observance. The "first settlers of some of the towns near Londonderry walked eveiy ¦Sunday eight, ten, twelve miles to churchy taking their children with them, and crossing the Merrimao in a canoe or on a raft. The first public enterprises of every settlement were the building of a church, (she construction of a block-house for defense against the Indians, and the establishment of a school. In the early times of ¦course, every man went to church with his gun, and the minister preached peace and good-will with a loaded musket peering above 'the sides of the pulpit. The Scotch-Irish were a singularly honest people. There is an •entry in the town-record for 1734, of a complaint against John Morrison, that, having found an axe on the road, he did not leave it at the next tavern, ' as the laws of the country doth require.' John acknowledged the fact, bnt pleaded in extenuation, that the axe was of so small value, that it would not have paid the oostof pro- ¦<:laiming. The session-, however, censured him severely, and ex horted him to repent of the evil. The following is a curious extract from the records of a Scotch-Irish settlement for 1756 : " Voted, to 2 26 THE SCOTCH-IEISH OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. give Mr. John Houston equal to forty pounds sterling, in old tenor, as the law shall find the rate in dollars or steriing money, for his yearly stipend, if he is our ordained minister. And what number of Sabbath days, annually, we shall think ourselves not able to pay him, he shall have at bis own use and disposal, deducted out of the aforesaid sum in proponion." The early records of those settle ments abound in evidence, that the people had an habitual and most scrupulous regard for the rights of one another. End, generous, and compassionate, too, they were. Far back in 1725, when the little colony was but seven years old, and the people were struggling with their first difficulties, we find the session or dering two collections in the church, one to assist James Clark to ransom his son from the Indians, which produced five pounds, and another for the relief of William Moore, whose two cows had been killed by the falling of a tree, which produced three pounds, seven teen shilhngs. These were great sums in tliose early days. We read, also, in the History of Londonderry, of MacGregor, its first pastor, becoming the champion and defender of a personal enemy who was accused of arson, but whom the magnanimous pastor believed innocent. He volunteered his defense in court. The man was condemned and imprisoned, bnt MacGregor continued his ex ertions in behalf of the prisoner until his innocence was established and the judgment was reversed. That they were a brave people need scarcely be asserted. Of that very MacGregor the story is told, that when he went out at the head of a committee, to remonstrate with a belligerent party, who were unlawfully cutting hay from the out-lands of London derry, and one of the hay-stealers, in the heat of dispute, shook his fist in the minister's face, saying, " Nothing saves you, sir, but your black coat," MacGregor instantly exclaimed, " Well, it shan't save you, sir," and pulling off his coat, was about to suit the action to the word, when the enemy beat a sudden retreat, and troubled the Londonderrians no more. The Scotch-Irish of New Hampshire were among the first to catch the spirit of the Eevolution. They confronted British troops, and successfully too, lefore the battle of Lexington. Four English soldiers had deserted from their quarters in Boston, and taken refuge in Londonderry. A party of troops, dispatched for their arrest, discovered, secured, and conveyed them HORACE Greeley's allusion to his ancestey. 37 part of the way to Boston. A band of young men assembled and pursued them ; and so overawed the British officer by the boldness of their demeanor, that he gave up his" prisoners, who were escorted back to Londonderry in triumph. There were remarkably few tories in Londonderry. The town was united almost as one man on the side of Independence, and sent, it is believed, more men to the war, and contributed more money to the cause, than any other town of equal resources in New England. Here are a few of the town-meeting " votes" of the first months of the war : " Voted, to give our men that have gone to the Massachusetts government seven dollars a month, until it be known what Congress will do in that affair, and that the officers shall have as much pay as those in the Bay government." — " Voted, that a committee of nine men be chosen to inquire into the conduct of those men that are thought not to be friends of their country." — " Voted, that the aforesaid com mittee have no pay." — " Voted, that twenty more men be raised im mediately, to be ready upon the first emergency, as minute men." — " Voted, that twenty more men be enlisted in Capt. Aiken's com pany, as minute men." — " Voted, that the remainder of the stock of powder shall be divided out to every one that hath not already re ceived of the same, as far as it will go ; provided he produces a gun of his own, in good order, and is willing to go against the enemy, and promises not to waste any of the powder, only in self-defense ; and provided, also, that he show twenty good bullets to suit his gun, and six good fiints." In 1777 the town gave a, bounty of thirty pounds for every man who enlisted for three years. All the records and traditions of the revolutionary period breathe unity and determination. Stark, the hero of Bennington, was a London- derrian. Such were the Scotch-Irish of New Hampshire ; of such material were the maternal ancestors of Horace Greeley composed ; and from his maternal ancestors he derived much that distinguishes him from men in general. In the "New Yorker" for August 28, 1841, he alluded to his Scotch-Irish origin in a characteristic way. Noticing Charlotte Elizabeth's " Siege of Derry," he wrote : " We do not like this work, and we choose to say so frankly. What is the use of revi^ving and aggravating these old stories (alas I 28 THE SCOTCH-IEISH OF NEW HAMPSHIEE. how true !) of scenes in which Christians of diverse creeds have tor tured and butchered each other for the glory of God ? We had an cestors in that same Siege of Derry,— on the Protestant side, of course,— and our sympathies are all on that side ; but we cannot forget that intolerance and persecution — especially in Ireland— are by no means exclusively Catholic errors and crimes. Who perse cutes in Ireland now ? On what principle of Christian toleration are the poor man's pig and potatoes wrested from him to pay tithes to a church he abhors ? We do hope the time is soon .coming when man will no more persecute his brother for a difference Of faith ; but that time will never be hastened by the publication of such books as the Siege of Derry." CHAPTEE II. ANCESTORS. — ^PAUBNTAaE. — BIETH. Origin of the Family — Old Captain Ezekiel Greeley — Zaccheus Greeley — Zaccheus the Second— Roughness and Tenacity of the Greeley race — Maternal Ancestors of Horace Greeley— John Woodbum — Character of Horace Greeley's Great-grand mother — His Grandmother — Romantic Incident— Horace Greeley is born " as black aa a chimney" — Comes to his color — Succeeds to the name of Horace. The name of Greeley is an old and not uncommon one in New England. It is spelt Greeley, Greely, Greale, and Greele, but all who bear the name in this country trace their origin to the same source. The tradition is, that very early in the history of New England — probably as early as 1650 — three brothers, named Greeley, emigrat ed from the neighborhood of Nottingham, England. One of them is supposed to have settled finally in Maine, another in Ehode Island, the third in Massachusetts. All the Greeleys in New Eng land have descended from these three brothers, and the branch' of the family with which we have to do, from him who settled in Mas sachusetts. Eespecting the condition and social rank of these broth ers, their occupation and character, tradition is silent. But from pi) IS CAPTAIN EZEKIEL GREELEY. 29 the fact that no coat-of-arms has been preserved or ever heard of by any member of the family, and from the occupation of the ma jority of their descendants, it is plausibly conjectured that they were farmers of moderate means and of the middle class. Tradition further hints that the name of the brother who found a home in Massachusetts was Benjamin, that he was a farmer, that he lived in Haveril, a township bordering on the south-eastern cor ner of New Hampshu'e, that he prospered there, and died respected by all who knew him at a good old age. So far, tradition. We now draw from the memory of individuals still living. The son of Benjamin Greeley was Ezekiel, "old Captain Ezekiel," who lived and greatly fiourished at Hudson, New Hampshire, and is well remembered thei-e, and in all the region round about. The cap tain was not a military man. He was half lawyer, half farmer. He was a sharp, cunning, scheming, cool-headed, cold-hearted man, one who lived by his wits, who always got his cases, always succeeded in his plans, always prospered in his speculations, and grew rich without ever doing a day's work in his life. He is remembered by his grand sons, who saw him in their childhood, as a black-eyed, black-haired, heavy-browed, stern-looking man, of complexion almost as dark as that of an Indian, and not unUke an Indian in temper. " A cross old dog," " a hard old knot," " as cunning as Lucifer," are among the complimentary expressions bestowed upon him by his descend ants. " All he had," says one, " was at the service of the rich, but he was hard upon the poor." - " His religion •was nominally Bap tist," says another, "but really to get money." "He got all he could, and saved all he got," chimes in a tliird. He died, at the age of sixty-five, with " all his teeth sound," and worth three hundred acres of good land. He is spoken of with that sincere respect which, in New England, seems never to be denied to a very smart man, who succeeds by strictly legal means in acquiring property, however wanting in principle, however destitute of feeling, that man may be. Happily, the wife of old Captain Ezekiel was a gentler and better being than her husband. And, therefore, Zaccheus, the son of old Captain Ezekiel, was a gentler and better man than his fatlier. Zaccheus inherited part of his father's land, and was a farmer all the days of his life. He was not, it appears, " too fond of work," though far more industrious 30 ANCBSTOES. PARENTAGE. BIRTH. than his father ; a man who took life easily, of strict mtegrity, kind-hearted, gentle-mannered, not ill to do in the world, but not what is called in New England " 'fore-handed." He is remembered in the -neighbcffhood where he lived chiefly for his extraordinary knowledge of the Bible. He could quote texts more readily, cor rectly, and profusely than any of his neighbors, laymen or clergy men. He had the reputation of knowing the whole Bible by heart. He was a Baptist ; and all who knew him unite in declaring that a worthier man never lived than Zaccheus Greeley. He had a large family, and lived to the age of ninety-five. His eldest son was named Zaccheus also, and he is the father of Horace Greeley. He is stUl living, and cultivates an ample domain in Erie County, Pennsylvania, acquired in part by his o^wn arduous labors, in part by the labors of his second son, and in part by the liberality of his eldest son Horace. At this time, in the seventy- third year of his age, his form is as straight, his step as decided, his constitution nearly as flrm, and his look nearly as young, as -though he were in the prime of life. All the Greeleys that I have seen or heard described, are persons of marked and pecuUar characters. Many of them are " charac ters." The word which perhaps best describes the quality for which they are distinguished is tenacity. They are, as a race, tena cious of life, tenacious of opinions and preferences, of tenacious memory, and tenacious of their purposes. One member of the family died at the age of one hundred and twenty years ; and a large proportion of the early generations lived more than three score years and ten. Few of the name have been rich, but most have been persons of substance and respectability, acquiring their property, generally, by the cultivation of the soil, and a soil, too, which does not yield its favors to the sluggard. It is the boast of those members of the family who have attended to its geneal ogy, that no Greeley was ever a prisoner, a pauper, or, worse than either, a tory ! Two of Horace Greeley's great uncles perished at Bennington, and he was fully justified in his assertion, made in the heat of the Eoman controversy a few years ago, that he was " born of republican parentage, of an ancestry which participated vividly in the hopes and fears, the convictions and efforts of the American Eevolution." And he added : " We cannot disavow nor prove rec- TOUGHNESS OF THE GEEELEY EACE. 31 reant to the principles on which that Eevolution was justified — on which only it can be justified. If adherence to these principles makes us ' the unmitigated enemy of Pius IX.,' we regret the en mity, but cannot abjure our principles." The maiden name of Horace Greeley's mother was Woodbum, Mary Woodbum, of Londonderry. The founder of the Woodbum family in this country was John Woodbum, who emigrated from Londonderry in Ireland, to London derry in New Hampshire, about the year 1725, seven years after the settlement of the original sixteen families. He came over with his brother David, who was drowned a few years after, leaving a fam ily. Neither of the brothers actually served in the siege of Lon donderry ; they were too young for that ; but they were both men of the true Londonderry stamp, men with a good stroke in their arms, a merry twinkle in their eyes, indomitable workers, and not more brave in fight than indefatigable in frolic ; fair-haired men like all their brethren, and gall-less. John Woodburn obtained the usual grant of one hundred and twenty acres of land, besides the " out-lot and home-lot " before alluded to, and he took root in Londonderry and flourished. He was twice married, and was the father of two sons and nine daugh ters, all of whom (as children did in those healthy times) lived to maturity, and all but one married. John Woodburn's second wife, from whom Horace Greeley is descended, was a remarkable wo man. Mr. Greeley has borne this testimony to her worth and in- fluence, in a letter to a friend which some years ago escaped into print: "I think I am indebted for my first impulse toward intel lectual acquirement and exertion to my mother's grandmother, who came out from Ireland among the first settlers in Londonderry. She must have been well versed in Irish and Scotch traditions, pretty well informed and strong minded ; and my mother being left motherless when quite young, her grandmother exerted great influ ence over her mental development. I was a third child, the t^wo preceding having died young, and I presume my mother was the more attached to me on that ground, and the extreme feebleness of my constitution. My mind was early filled by her with the tradi tions, ballads, and snatches of history she had learned from her grandmother, which, though conveying very distorted and incorrect 33 ANSESTOE3. PAEENTAGE. BERTH.. ideas of history, yet served to awaken in me a thirst forknowledga and a lively interest in learning and history." John Woodbmm died in 1780. Mrs. Woodburn, the subject of the passage just quoted, survived her husband many years, lived to see her children's grand children, and to acquire throughout the neighborhood the familiar tide of " Granny Woodburn." David Woodburn, the grandfather of Horace Greeley, was the eldest son of John Woodburn, and the inheritor of his estate. He married Margaret Clark, a granddaughter of that Mrs. Wilson, the touching story of whose deliverance from pirates was long a favor ite tale at the firesides of the early settlers of New Hampshire.. In l720, a ship containing a company of Irish emigrants bound to- New England was captured by pirates^ and while the ship was in their possession,, and the fate of the passengers still undecided, Mrs.. Wilson,, one of the company, gave birth to her first child. The cir cumstance so moved the pirate captain, who was himself a husband and a father, that he permitted the emigrants to pursue their voyage- unharmed. He bestowed upon Mi-s. Wilson some valuable pres ents, among others a silk dress, pieces of which are still preserved among her descendants ; and he obtained from hsr a promise that she would call the infant by the na,me of his wife. The ship- reached its destination in safety,, and the day of its deliverance from. the hands of the pirates was annually observed as a day of thanks giving by the passengers for many years. Mrs. Wilson, after the- death of her first husband, became the wife of James Clark, whose- son John was the father of Mrs. David Woodburn, whose daugh ter Mary was the mother of Horace Greeley. The descendants of John Woodburn are exceedingly numerous,. and coiftributB largely, says Mr. Parker,, the historian ef London derry, to the hundred thousand who are supposed to- have de scended from the early settlers of the town. The grandson of John Woodburn, a very genial and jovial gentleman, still owns and tiUs. the land originally granted to the family. At the old homestead^ about the year 1807, Zaccheus Greeley and Mary Woodburn were- married. Zaccheus Greeley inherited nothing from his father, and Mary Woodburn received no more than the usual household portion froni) hers. Zaccheus, as the sous of New England farmei's usually doj, HORACE GREELEY IS BOEN BLACK. 33 or did in those days, went out to work as soon as he was old enough to do a day's work. He saved his earnings, and in his twenty-fifth year was the owner of a farm in the town of Amherst, Hillsborough county. New Hampshire. There, on the third of February, 1811, Horace Greeley was born. He is the third of seven children, of whom the two elder died be fore he was born, and the four younger are still living. The mode of his entrance upon the stage of the world was, to say the least of it, unusual. The effort was almost too much for him, and, to use the language of one who was present, " he came into the world as black as a chimney." There were no signs of life. He uttered no cry ; he made no motion ; he did not breathe. But the little discolored stranger had articles to write, and was not permitted to escape his destiny. In this alarming crisis of his exist ence, a kind-hearted and experienced aunt came to his rescue, and by arts, which to kind-hearted and experienced aunts are well known, but of which the present chronicler remains in ignorance, the boy was brought to life. He soon began to breathe ; then he began to blush ; and by the time he had attained the age of twenty minutes, lay on his mother's arm, a red and smiling infant. In due time, the boy received the name of Horace. There had been another little Horace Greeley before him, but he had died in infancy, and his parents wished to preserve in their second son a living memento of thefr first. The name was not introduced into the family from any partiality on the part of his parents for the Eoman poet, but because his father had a relative so named, and because the mother had read the name in a book and liked the sound of it. The sound of it, however, did not often regale the maternal ear ; for, in New England, where the name of the courtly satirist is frequently given, its household diminutive is " Hod ;" and by that elegant monosyllable the boy was commonly called among his juvenile friends. 2* CHAPTER IIL EARLY CHILDHOOD. The Village of Amherst— Character of the adjacent country— The Greeley farm— The Tribune in the room in which its Editor was born— Horace learns to read— Book up-slde down — Goes to school in Londonderry — A district school forty years ago — Horace as a young orator — Has a mania for apelliqg hard words- Gets great glory at the spelling school— Recollections of his surviving schoolfellows— Hia future eminence foretold- Delicacy of ear— Early choice of a trade— His courage and timidity— Goea to school in Bedford — A favorite among his school fellows — His early fondness for the village newspaper — Lies in ambush for the post-rider who brought it— Scours the country for books — Project of sending him to an academy — The old sea-captain — Horace as a farmer's boy — Let us do our stint first — His way of fishing. Amheest is the county town of Hillsborough, one of the three counties of New Hampshire which are bounded on the South by the State of Massachusetts. It is forty-two miles north-west of Boston. The village of Amherst is a pleasant place. Seen from the summit of a distant hill, it is a white dot in the middle of a level plain, en circled by cultivated and gently-sloping hUls. On a nearer ap proach the traveler perceives that it is a cluster of white houses, looking as if they had alighted among the trees and might take to wing again. On entering it he finds himself in a very pretty vil lage, built round an ample green and shaded by lofty trees. It con tains three churches, a printing-office, a court-house, a jail, a tavern, half a dozen stores, an exceedingly minute watchmaker's shop, and a hundred private houses. There is not a human being to be seen, nor a sound to be heard, except the twittering of birds overhead, and the distant whistle of a locomotive, which in those remote regions seems to make the silence audible. The utter silence and the deserted aspect of the older villages in New Eng land are remarkable. In the morning and evening there is some appearance of life in Amherst; but in the hours of the day when the men are at work, the women busy with their household ¦ affairs, and the children at school, the ¦visitor may sit at the win- no otr< m o S 'h-: ^.^ ' ,* t ¦'hi f AMHEEST. 35 dow of the village tavern for an hour at a time and not see a living creature. Occasionally a pedler, with sleigh beUs round his horse, goes jingling by. Occasionally a farmer's wagon drives up to one of the stores. Occasionally a stage, rocking in its leather suspenders, stops at the post-office for a moment, and then rocks away again. Occasionally a doctor passes in a very antiquated gig. Occasion ally a cock crows, as though he were tired of the dead silence. A New York viUage, a quarter the size and wealth of Amherst, makes twice its noise and bustle. Forty years ago, however, when Horace Greeley used to come to the stores there, it was a place of some what more importance and more business than it is now, for Man chester and Nashua have absorbed many of the little streams of tr'affic which used to flow towards the county town. It is a curious evidence of the stationary character of the place, that the village paper, which had fifteen hundred subscribers when Horace Greeley was three years old, and learned to read from it, has fifteen hundred subscribers, and no more, at this moment. It bears the same name it did then, is published by the same person, and adheres to the same party. The township of Amherst contains about eight square miles of some what better land than the land of New England generally is. Wheat cannot be grown on it to advantage, but it yields fair returns of rye, oats, potatoes, Indian corn, and young men : the last-named of which commodities forms the chief article of export. The farmers have to contend against hills, rocks, stones innumerable, sand, marsh, and long winters ; but a hundred years of tillage have sub dued these obstacles in part, and the people generally enjoy a safe and moderate prosperity. Yet severe is their toil. To see them ploughing along the sides of those steep rocky hills, the plough creaking, the oxen groaning, the little boy-driver leaping from sod to sod, as an Alpine boy is supposed to leap from crag to crag, the ploughman wrenching the plough round the rocks, boy and man every minute or two uniting in a prolonged and agonizing yell for the panting beasts to stop, when the plough is caught by a hidden rock too large for it to overturn, and the solemn slowness witli which the procession winds, and creaks, and groans along, gives t" the languid citizen, who chances to pass by, a new idea of hard work, and a new sense of the happiness of his lot. 36 EAHLY CHILDHOOD. The farm owned by Zaccheus Greeley when his son Horaee was born, was four or five miles from the village of Amherst. It con sisted of eighty acres of land— heavy land to tiU— rocky, moist, and uneven, worth then eight hundred doUars, now two thousand. The house, a smaU, unpainted, but substantial and well-buUt farm house, stood, and still stands, upon a ledge or platform, half way up a high, steep, and rocky hill, commanding an extensive and al most panoramic view of the surrounding country. In whatever direction the boy may have looked, he saw rocTi. Eock is the feature of the landscape. There is rock in the old orchard behind the house ; rocks peep out from the grass in the pastures; there is rock along the road ; rook on the sides of the hiUs ; rock on their summits ; rock in the valleys ; rock in the woods ; — rock, rook, everywhere rock. And yet the country has not a barren look. I should call it a serious looking country ; one that would be congenial to grim covenanters and exiled round-heads. The prevailing colors are dark, even in the brightest month of the year. The pine woods, the rock, the shade of the hiU, the color of the soil, are all dark and serious. It is a stiU, unfrequented region. One may ride along the road upon which the house stands, for many a mile, without passing a single vehicle. The turtles hobble across the road fear less of the crushing wheel. If any one wished to know the full meaning of the word country, as distinguished from the word tovm, lie need do no more than ascend the hill on which Horace Greeley saw the light, and look around. ¦^. Yet, the voice of the city is heard even there ; the opinions of tlie city infiuence there ; for, observe, in the very room in which our hero was born, on a table which stands where, in other days, a bed stood, we recognize, among the heap of newspapers, the well- known heading of the Weekly Teibune. Such was the character of the region in which Horace Greeley passed the greater part of the first , seven years of his life. His father's neighbors were all hard-working farmers — men who work ed their own farms^-who were nearly equal in wealth, and to whom the idea of social inequality, founded upon an inequaUty in possess ions, did not exist, even as an idea. Wealth and want were alike unknown. It was a community of plain people, who had derived all their book-knowledge from the district school, and depended HORACE LEARNS TO BEAD. 37 upon the village newspaper for their knowledge of the world with out. There were no heretics among them. All the people either cordially embraced, or undoubtingly assented to the faith called Orthodox, and aU of them attended, more or less regularly, the churches in which that faith was expounded. The first great peril of his existence escaped, the boy grew apace, aud passed through the minor and ordinary dangers of infancy with out having his equanimity seriously disturbed. He was a " quiet and peaceable chUd," reports his father, and though far from robust, suffered little from actual sickness. To say that Horace Greeley, from the earliest months of his exist ence, manifested signs of extraordinary intelligence, is only to repeat what every biographer asserts of his hero, and every mother of her child. Yet, common-place as it is, the truth must be told. Horace Greeley did, as a very young child, manifest signs of extraordinary intelligence. He took to learning with the promptitude and in stinctive, irrepressible love, with which a duck is said to take to the water. His first instructor was his mother ; and never was there a mother better calculated to awaken the mind of a child, and keep it awake, than Mrs. Greeley. TaU, muscular, well-formed, with the strength of a man without his coarseness, active in her habits, not only capable of hard ¦work, but delighting in it, with a perpetual overflow of animal spirits, an exhaustless store of songs, ballads and stories, and a boundless, ex uberant good wilLtowards all living things, Mrs. Greeley was the life of the house, the favorite of the neighborhood, the natur-il friend and ally of children ; whatever she did she did " with a will." She was a great reader,, and remembered all she read. "She worked," says one of my informants, "in doors and out of door, could out-rake any man in the town, and could load the hay-wag ons as fast and aa well as her husband. She hoed in the garden ; she labored in the field ; and while doing more than the work of an ordinary man, and an ordinary woman combined, would laugh and sing all day long, and tell stories all the evening." To these sim«s the boy listened greedily, as he sat on the floor at her feet, while she spun and talked with equal energy. They " served," says Mr. Greeley, in a passage already quoted, " to awaken in me a thirst for knowledge, and a lively interest in learning and 38 EARLY CHILDHOOD. history." Think of it, you word-mongering, gerund-grinding teachers who delight in signs and symbols, and figures and "factSj" and feed little chUdren's souls on the dry, innutricious husks of knowledge ; and think of it, you play-abhorring, fiction-forbidding parents I Awaken the interest in learning, and the thirst for knowl edge, and there is no predicting what may or what may not result from it. Scarcely a man, distinguished for the supremacy or the beauty of his immortal part, has written the histoiy of his childhood, without recording the fact, that the celestial fire was first kindled in his soul by means similar to those which awakened an " interest in learning" and a " thirst for knowledge" in the mind of Horace Greeley. Horace learned to read before he had learned to talk ; that is, before he could pronounce the longer words. No one regularly taught him. When he was little more than two years old, he began to pore over the Bible, opened for his entertainment on the floor, and examine with curiosity the newspaper given him to play with. He cannot remember a time when he could not read, nor can any one give an account of the process by which he learned, except that he asked questions incessantly, first about the pictures in the news paper, then about the capital letters, then about the smaller ones, and finally about the words and sentences. At three years of age he could read easUy and correctly any of the books prepared for children; and at four, any book whatever. But he was not satisfied with overcoming the ordinary difficulties of reading. Allowing that nature gives to every child a certain amount of mental force to be used in acquiring the art of reading, Horace had an over plus of that force, which he employed in learning to read with his book in positions which increased the difficulty of the feat. All the friends and neighbors of his early chUdhood, in reporting him a prodigy unexampled, adduce as the unanswerable and clinching proof of the fact, that, at the age of four years, he could read any book in whatever position it might be placed, — right-side up, up-side down, or sidewise. His third winter Horace spent at the house of his grandfather, David Woodburn, in Londonderry, attended the district school there, and distinguished himself greatly. He had no right to at tend the Londonderry school, and the people of the rural districts A DISTRICT SCHOOL FORTY YEAES AGO. 39 are apt to be strenuous upon the point of not admitting to their school pupils from other towns ; but Horace was an engaging child; "every one liked the Uttle, white-headed fellow," says a surviving member of the school committee, " and so we favored him." A district school — and what was a district school forty years ago? Horace Greeley never attended any but a district school, and it concerns us to know what manner of place it was, and what was its routine of exercises. The school-house stood iii an open place, formed (usually) by the crossing of roads. It was very small, and of one story ; contained one apartment, had two windows on each side, a small door in the gable end that faced the road, and a low door-step before it. It was the thing called house, in its simplest form. But for its roof, windows, and door, it had been a box, large, rough, and unpainted. Within and without, it was destitute of anything ornamental. It was not enclosedby a fence ; it was not shaded by a tree. The sun in summer, the winds in winter, had their -will of it : there was no thing to avert the fury of either. The log school-houses of the pre vious generation were picturesque and comfortable ; those of the present time are as prim, neat, and orderly (and as elegant some times) as the cottage of an old maid who enjoys an annuity ; but the school-house of forty years ago had an aspect singularly forlorn and uninviting. It was built for an average of thirty pupils, but it fre quently contained flfty ; and then the little school-room was a com pact mass of young humanity : the teacher had to dispense with his table, and was lucky if he could find room for his chair. The ¦ side of the apartment opposite the door was occupied, chiefly, by a vast fireplace, four or five feet wide, where a carman's load of wood could burn in one prodigious fire. Alsng the sides of the room was a low, slanting shelf, which served for a desk to those who wrote, and against the sharp edge of which the elder pupils leaned when they were not writing. The seats were made of " slabs," inverted, supported on sticks, and without backs. The elder pupils sat along the sides of the room, — the gU'ls on oneside, the boys on the other ; the youngest sat nearest the flre, where they were as much too warm as those who sat near the door were too cold. In a school of forty pupils, there would be a dozen who were grown up, mar- 40 > EARLY CHILDHOOD. riageable young men and women. Not unfrequently married men, and occasionally married women, attended school in the winter. Among the younger pupils, there were usually a dozen who could. not read, and half as many who did not know the alphabet. The' teacher was, perhaps, one of the farmer's- sons of the district, who knew a little more than his elder pupils, and only a little ; or he was a student who was working his way through coUege. His wages were those of a farm-laborer, ten or twelve doUars a month and his board. He boarded " round^'' i. e. he lived a few days at each of the houses of the district, stopping longest at the most agreeable place. The grand qualification of a teacher was the abil ity " to do" any sum in the arithmetic. To know arithmetic was to be a learned man. Generally, the teacher was very young, some times not more than sixteen years old ; but, if he possessed the due expertness at figures, if he could read the Bible without stumbling over the long words, and without mispronouncing more than two thirds of the proper names, if he could write well enough to set a decent copy, if he could mend a pen, if he had vigor enough of character to assert his authority, and strength enough of arm to maintain it, he would do. The school began at nine in the morn ing, and the arrival of that hour was announced by the teacher's rapping upon the window frame ¦with a ruler. The boys, and the girls too, came tumbling in, rosy and glowing, from their snow balling and sledding. The first thing dope in school was reading. The " first class," consisting of that third of the pupUs who could read best, stood on the floor and read round once, each individual reading about half a page of the English Eeader. Then the second class. Then the third. Last of all, the youngest children said their letters. By that time, a third of the morning was over ; and then the reading began again ; for public opinion demanded of the teach er that he should hear every pupil read four times a day, twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon. Those who were not in the class reading, were employed, or were supposed to be employed, in ciphering or writing. When they wanted to -write, they went to the teacher with their writing-book and pen, and he set a copy, — " Procrastination is the thief of time," " Contentment is a virtue," or some other wise saw,!— and mended the pen. When they were puzzled with a "sum," they went to the teacher to have it elucidat- THE SPELLING SCHOOL. 41 ed. They seem to have written and ciphered as much or as little as they chose, at what time they chose, and in what manner. In some schools there were classes in arithmetic and regular instruc tion in writing, and one class in grammar ; but such schools, forty years ago, wei-e rare. The exercises of the morning were concluded with a general spell, the teacher giving out the words from a spell ing-book, and the pupils spelUng them at the top of their voices. At noon the school was dismissed ; at one it was summoned again, to go through, for the next three hours, precisely the same routine as that of the morning. In this rude way the last generation of children learned to read, write, and cipher. Bat they learned something more in those rude school-houses. They learned obedi ence. They were tamed and disciplined. The means employed were extremely unscientific, but the thing was done ! The means, in fact, were merely a ruler, and what was called, in contradistinc tion to that milder weapon, " the heavy gad ;" by which express ion was designated five feet of elastic sapling of one year's growth. These two implements were plied vigorously and often. Girls got their full share of them. Girls old enough to be wives were no more exempt than the young men old enough to marry them, who sat on the other side of the schoolroom. It was thought, that if a youth of either sex was not too old to do wrong, neither he nor she was too old to suffer the consequences. In some districts, a teacher was valued in proportion to his severity ; and if he were baokwird in applying the ferule and the " gad," the parents soon began to be uneasy. They thought he had no energy, and inferred that the chUdren could not be learning much. In the district schools, then, of forty years ago, all the pupUs learned to read and to obey ; most of them learned to write ; many acquired a competent knowledge of figures ; a few learned the rudiments of grammar ; and if any learned more than these, it was generally due to their unassisted and unenconraged exertions. There were no school -libraries at that time. The teachers usually possessed Uttle general information, and the little they did possess was not often made to contribute to the mental nourishment of their pupils. On one of the first benches of the Londonderry school house, near the fire, we may imagine the little white-headed fellow, whom everybody liked, to be seated during the winter of 1814.-15. He 42 EAELY CHILDHOOD. was eager to go to school. When the snow lay on the ground in drifts too deep for him to wade through, one of his aunts, who stiU Uves to teU the story, would take him up on her shoulders and carry him to the door. He was the possessor that winter, of three books, the " Columbian Orator," Morse's Geography, and a speU- ing book. From the Columbian Orator, he learned many pieces by heart, and among others, that very celebrated oration which, prob ably the majority of the inhabitants of this nation have at some pe riod of their lives been able to repeat, beginning, " You 'd scarce expect one of my age, To speak in public on the sta.ge." One of his schoolfellows has a vivid remembrance of Horace's re citing this piece before the whole school in Londonderry, before he was old enough to utter the words plainly. He had a Usping, whining little voice, says my informant, but spoke with the utmost confidence, and greatly to the amusement of the school. He spoke the piece so often in public and private, as to become, as it were, identified with it, as a man who knows one song, suggests that song by his presence, and is called upon to sing it wherever he goes. It is a pity that no one thinks of the vast importance of those " Orators " and reading books which the cihildren read and wear out in reading, learning parts of them by' heart, and repeating them over and over, till they become fixed in the memory and embedded in the character forever. And it is a pity that those books should contain so much false sentiment, inflated language, Buncombe oratory, and other trash, as they generally do ! To compile a series of Beading Books for the common schools of this country, were a task for a conclave of the wisest and best men and women that ever lived; a task worthy of them, both from its difficulty and the incalculable extent of its possible results. SpeUing was the passion of the little orator during the first win ters of his attendance at school. He spelt incessantly in school and out of school. He would lie on the fioor at his grandfather's house, for hours at a time, speUing hard words, all that he could find in the Bible and the few other books within his reach. It was the RECOLLECTIONS OP HIS SUEVIVING SCHOOLFELLOWS. 43 standing amusement of the famUy to try and puzzle the boy with words, and no one remembers succeeding. Spelling, moreover, was one of the great points of the district schools in those days, and he who could out-spell, or, as the phrase was, " spell down " the whole school, ranked second only to him who surpassed the rest in arithmetic. Those were the palmy days of the spelling- school. The pupils assembled once a week, voluntarily, at the school-house, chose " sides," and contended with one another long and earnestly for the victory. Horace, young as he was, was eager to attend the spelling school, and was never known to injure the "side "on which he was chosen by missing a word, audit soon became a prime object at the spelling-school to get the first choice, because that enabled the lucky side to secure the powerful aid of Horace Greeley. He is well remembered by his companions in or thography. They deUght still to tell of the little fellow, in the long evenings, faUing asleep in his place, and when it came his turn, his neighbors gave him an anxious nudge, and he would wake instantly, spell off his word, and drop asleep again in a moment. Horace went to school three terms in Londonderry, spending part„of each year at home. I will state as nearly as possible in their own words, what his school-fellows there remember of him. One of them can just recall him as a very smaU boy with ahead as white as snow, who "was almost always up head in his class, and took it so much to heart when he did happen to lose his place, that he would cry bitterly ; so that some boys when they had gained the right to get above him, decUned the honor, because it hurt Horace's feelings so." He was the pet of the school. Those whOm he used to excel most signally liked him as well as the rest. He was an active, bright, eager boy, but not fond of play, and seldom took part in the sports of the other boys. One muster day, this inform ant remembers, the clergyman of Londonderry, who had heard glowing accounts of Horace's feats at school, took him on his lap in the field, questioned him a long time, tried to puzzle him with hard words, and concluded by saying with strong emphasis to one of the boy's relatives, " Mark my words, Mr. Woodburn, that boy was not made for nothing." Another, besides confirming the above, adds, that Horace was in some respects exceedingly brave, and in others exceedingly tim- 44 EAELY CHILDHOOD. orous. He was never afraid of the dark, could not be frightened by ghost-stories, never was abashed in speaking or reciting, was not to be overawed by supposed superiority of knowledge or rank, would talk up to the teacher and question his decision with perfect fr-eedom, though never in a spirit of impertinence. Yet he could not stand up to a boy and fight. When attacked, he would nei ther fight nor run away, bnt " stand stiU and take it." His ear was so delicately constructed that any loud noise like the report of a gun would almost throw him into convulsions. If a gun were about to be discharged, he would either run away as fast as his slender legs carry him, or else would throw himself upon the ground and stuff grass into his ears to deaden the dreadful noise. On the fourth of July, when the people of Londonderry inflamed their patriotism by a copious consumption of gunpowder, Horace would run into the woods to get beyond the sound of the cannons and pistols. It was at Londonderry, and about his fourth year, that Horace began the habit of reading or book-devouring, which he never lost during all the yeai-s of his boyhood, youth, and appren ticeship, and relinquished only when he entered that most exacting of all professions, the editorial. The gentleman whose reminis cences I am now recording, tells me that Horace in his fifth and sixth years, would lie under a tree on his face, reading hour after hour, completely absorbed in his book ; and " if no one stumbled over him or stirred him np," would read on, unmindful of dinner time and sun-set, as long as he could see. It was his delight in books that made him, when little more than an infant, determine to be a printer, as printers, he supposed, were they who made books. " One day," says this gentleman, " Horace and I went to a black smith's shop, and Horace watched the process of horse-shoeing with much interest. The blacksmith observing how intently he looked on, said, ' You 'd better come with me and learn the trade.' ' No,' said Horace in his prompt decided way, ' I 'm going to be a printer.' He was then six years old, and very small for his age ; and this pos itive choice of a career by so diminutive a piece of humanity, mightily amused the by-standers. The blacksmith used to tell the story with great glee when Horace was a printer, and one of some note. Another gentleman, who went to school with Horace at London- RECOLLECTIONS OS HIS StTRVlVlNO SCHOOLFELLOWS. 43 derry, writes : — " I think I attended school "With Horace Greeley two summers and two winters, but have no recollection of seeing him except at the school-house. He was an exceedingly mild, quiet and inoffensive chUd, entirely devoted to his books at school. It used to be said in the neighborhood, that he was the same out of school, and that his parents were obliged to secrete his books to prevent his injuring himself by over study.' His devotion to his books, together with the fact of his great advancement beyond others of his age in the few studies then pursued in the district school, rendered him notorious in that part of the town. He was regarded as a prodigy, and his name was a household world. He was looked upon as standing alone, and entirely unapproachable by any of the little mortals around him. Beading, parsing, and spelUng, are the only branches of learning which I remember him in, or in connection with which his name was at that time mentioned, though he might have given some attention to writing and arith metic, which completed the circle of studies in the district school at that time; but in the three branches first named he excelled all, even in the winter school, which was attended by several young men and women, some of whom became teachers soon after. Though mild and qufet he was ambitions in the school ; to be at the head of his class, and be accounted the best scholar in school, seemed to be prominent objects with him, and to furnish strong motives to effort. I can recall but one instance of his missing a word in the speUing class. The classes went on to the floor to spell, and he al most invariably stood at the head of the 'first class,' embracing the most advanced scholars. He stood there at the time referred to, and by missing a word, lost his place, which so grieved him that he wept like a punished child. While I knew him he did not en gage with other children in the usual recreations and amuse ments of the school grounds ; as soon as the school was dismissed at noon, he would start for home, a distance of half a mUe, with all his books under his arm, including the New Testament, Webster's Spelling Book, English Eeader, &c., and would not return till the last moment of intermission ; at least such was his practice in the summer time. With regard to his aptness in speUing, it used to be said that the minister of the town, Eev. Mr. McGregor, once at tempted to find a word or name in the Bible which he could not 46 EARLY CHILDHOOD. spell correctly, but faUed to do so. I always supposed, however, that this was an exaggeration, for he could not have been more than seven years old at the time this was told. My father soon after re moved to another town thirty miles distant, and I lost sight of the family entirely, Horace and aU, though I always remembered the gentle, fiaxen-haired schoolmate with much interest, and often won dered what became of him ; and when the ' Log Cabin ' appeared, I took much pains to assure myself whether this Horace Greeley was the same little Horace grown np, and found it was.'' From his sixth year, Horace resided chiefly at his father's house. He was now old enough to walk to the nearest school-house, a mUe and a half from his home. He could read fluently, speU any word in the language ; had some knowledge of geography, and a little of arithmetic ; had read the Bible through from Genesis to Eevela- tions ; had read the PUgrim's Progress with intense interest, and dipped into every other book he could lay his hands on. From his sixth to his tenth year, he lived, worked, read and went to school, in Amherst and the a^oining town of Bedford. Those who were then his neighbors and schoolmates there, have a lively recoEection of the boy and his ways. Henceforth, he went to school only in the -winter. Again he at tended a school which he had no right to attend, that of Bedford, and his attendance was not merely permitted, but sought. The school-committee expressly voted, that no pupils from other towns should be received at their school, except Horace Greeley alone ; and, on •entering the school, he took his place, young as he was, at the head of it, as it were, by acclamation. Nor did his superiority ever excite envy or enmity. He bore his honors meekly. Every one liked the boy, and took pride in his superiority to themselves. All his schoolmates agree in this, that Horace never had an ene my at school. The snow lies deep on those New Hampshire hiUs in the winter, and presents a serious obstacle to the younger children in their way to the school-house ; nor is it the rarest of disasters, even now, for children to be lost in a drift, and frozen to death. (Such a calam ity happened two years ago, within a mile or two of the old Gree ley homestead.) " Many a morning," says one of the neighbors — then a stout schoolboy, now a sturdy farmer— "many a morning I HIS EARLY FONDNESS FOR THE VILLAGE NEWSPAPEE. 47 have carried Horace on my back through the drifts to school, and put my own mittens over his, to keep his Uttle hands from freez ing." He adds, " I lived at the next house, and I and my brothers often "Went down in the evening to play with him ; but he never would play with us till he had got his lessons. We could neither coax nor force him to." ^e remembers Horace as a boy of a bright and active nature, but neither playful nor merry ; one who would utter acute and " old-fashioned" remarks, and make more fun for others than he seemed to enjoy himself. His fondness for reading grew with the growth of his mind, till it amounted to a passion. His father's stock of books was smaU indeed. It consisted of a Bible, a " Confession of Faith,'' and per haps, all told, twenty volumes beside ; and they by no means of a kind calculated to foster a love of reading in the mind of a little boy. But a weehly newspaper came to the house from the vUlage of Amherst ; and, except his mother's tales, that newspaper proba bly had more to do with jthe opening of the boy's mind and the tendency of his opinions, than anything else. The family well re member the eag^ness with which he anticipated its coming. Pa per-day was the brightest of the week. An hour before the postT rider was expected, Horace would walk down the road to meet him, bent on having the first read ; and when he had got possession of the precious sheet, he would hurry with it to some secluded place, lie down on the grass, and greedily devour its contents. The paper was called (and is stUl) the Fa/rmefs Cabinet. It was mUdly Whig in politics. The selections were reUgious, agricultural, and miscellaneous ; the editorials few, brief, and amiable ; its summary of news scanty in the extreme. But it was the only bearer of tid ings from the Great World. It connected the little brown house on the rocky hill of Amherst with the general life of mankind. The boy, before he could read himself, and before he could understand the meaning of war and bloodshed, doubtless heard his father read in it of the triumphs and disasters of the Second War with Great Britain, and of the rejoicings at the conclusion of peace. He him self may have read of- Decatur's gallantry in the war with Algiers, of Wellington's victory at Waterloo, of Napoleon's fretting away his life on the roek of St. Helena, of Monroe's inauguration, of the dismantling of the fleets on the great lakes, of the progress of tho 48 EARLY CHttDHOOD. Erie Canal project, of Jackson's inroads into Florida, and the subse quent cession of that province to the United States, of the .first meeting of Congress in the Capitol, of the passage of the Missouri Compromise. During the progress of the various commercial to-ea- ties with the States of Europe, which were negotiated after the iconclusion of the general peace, the whole theory, practice, and his tory of commercial intercourse, were amply discussed in Congress •and the newspapers ; and the mind of Horace, even in his ninth year, was mature enough to take some interest in the subject, and tlerive some impressions from its discussion. The Fwrmer''s Cabinet, which brought all these and countless othei ideas and events to bear on the education of the boy, is now one of the thousand pa pers with which the Tribune exchanges. Horace scoured the country for books. Books were books in that remote and secluded region ; and when he had exhausted the col lections of the neighbora, he carried the search into the neighbor ing towns. I am assured that there was not one readable book within seven miles of his father's house, which Horace did not bor row and read during his residence in Amherst. He was never without a book. As soon, says one of his sisters, as he was dressed in the morning; he flew to his book. He read every minute of the ¦day which he could snatch from his studies at school, and on the farm. He would be so absorbed in his reading, that when his pa rents required his services, it was like rousing a heavy sleeper from his deepest sleep, to a'waken Horace to a sense of things around him and an appi-ebension of the duty required of Mm. And even then he clung to his book. He would go reading to the cellar and the cider-barrel, reading to the wood-pile, reading to the garden, reading to the neighbors ; qnd pocketing-liis book only long enough to perform his errand, he would fell to reading again the instant his mind and his hands were at liberty. He kept in a secure place an ample supply of pine knots, and as soon as it was dark he would light one of these cheap and briUiant iUuminators, put it on the back-log in the spacious fire-place, pile up his school books and his reading books on the floor, lie down on Ms back on the hearth, with his head to the flre and his feet coUed away out of the reach of stumblers ; and there he would lie and read all through the long wintei- evenings, sUent, motionless, dead SCOUES THE CODNTEY FOR BOOKS. 49 » to the world around him, alive only to the world to which he was ¦ transported by his book. Visitors would come in, chat a while, and go away, without knowing he was present, and without his being aware of their coming and going. It was a nightly struggle to get him to bed. His father required his services early in the morning, and was therefore desirous that he should go to bed early in the evening. He feared, also, for the eye-sight of the boy, read ing so many hours with his head in the fire and by the flaring, flicker ing Ught of a pine knot. And so, by nine o'clock, his father would begin the task of recaUing the absent mind from its roving, and rousing the prostrate and dormant body. And when Horace at length had been forced to beat a retreat, he kept his younger brother awake by telling over to him in bed what he had read, and by reciting the school lessons of the next day. His brother was by no means of a Uterary turn, and was prone — much to the chagrin of Horace — to faU asleep long before the lessons were aU said and the tales all told. So entire and passionate a devotion to the acquisition of knowl edge in one so young, would be remarkable in any circumstances. But when the situation of the boy is considered — living in a remote and very rural district — few books accessible — few literary persons re siding near — the school contributing scarcely anything to his mental nourishment — no other boy in the neighborhood manifesting any particular interest in learning — the people about him all engaged in a rude and hard struggle to extract the means of subsistence from a rough and rocky soil — such an intense, absorbing, and persistent love of knowledge as that exhibited by Horace Greeley, must be accounted very extraordinary. That his neighbors so accounted it, they are stUl eager to attest. ContinuaUy the wonder grew, that one small head should carry all he knew. There were not wanting those who thought that superior means of instruction ought to be placed within the reach of so superior a child. I have a somewhat vague, but very positive, and fully con firmed story, of a young man just returned from college to his father's house in Bedford, who fell in with Horace, and was so struck with his capacity and attainments that he offered to send him to an academy in a neighboring town, and bear all the ex- 50 EARLY CHILDHOOD. penses of his maintenance and tuition. But his mother could not let him go, his father needed his assistance at home, and the boy himself is said not to have favored the scheme. A wise, a fortunate choice, I cannot help believing. That academy may have been an institution where boys received more good than harm — ^where real knowledge was imparted — ^where souls were inspired with the love of high and good things, and inflamed with an ambition to run a high and good career — where boys did not lose all their modesty and half their sense — where chests were expanded — where cheeks were ruddy — where limbs were active — ^where stomachs were peptic. It may have been. But ff it was, it was a dlBferent academy from many whose praises are in aU the newspapers. It was better not to run the risk. If that young man's offer had been accepted, it is a question whether the world would have ever heard of Horace Greeley. Probably his fragile body would not have sus tained the brain-stimulating treatment which a forward and eager boy generaUy receives at an academy. A better friend, though not a better meaning one, was a jovial neighbor, a sea-captain, who had taken to farming. The captain had seen the world, possessed the yarn-spinning faculty, and be sides, being Mmself a walking traveUer's library, had a considerable collection of books, which he fi-eely lent to Horace. His salute, on meeting the boy, was not ' How do you do, Horace ?' but ' WeU, Horace, what's the capital of Turkey ?' or, i Who fought the battle of Eutaw. Springs?' or, 'How do you spejU Encyclopedia, or Kamt- schatka, or Nebuchadnezzar ?' The old gentieman used to question the boy upon the contents of the books he had lent him, and was again and again surprised at the fluency, the accuracy, and the full ness of his replies. The captain was of service to Horace in vari ous ways, and he is remembered by the family with gi-atitude. To Horace's brother he once gave a sheep and a load of hay to keep it on during the winter, thus adapting his benefactions to the various tastes of his juvenUe friends. ¦ A clergyman, too, is spoken of, who took great interest in Horace, and gave him instruction in grammar, often giving the boy er roneous information to test his knowledge. Horace, he used to say, could never be shaken on a point which he had once clearly understood, but would stand to his opinion, and-defend it against anybody and everybody — teacher, pastor, or public opinion. HIS WAY OF FISHING. 51 In New England, the sons of farmers begin to make themselves useful almost as soon as they can walk. They feed the chickens, they drive the cows, they bring in wood and water, aud soon come to perform all those offices which come under the denomiation of " chores." _ By the time they are eight or nine years old, they fre quently have tasks assigned them, which are caUed " stints," and not tiU they have done their stint are they at liberty to play. The reader may think that Horace's devotion to literature would naturally enough render the farm work distasteful to him ; and if he had gone to the academy, it might. I am bound, however, to say that aU who knew him in boyhood, agree that he was not more devoted to study in his leisure hours, than he was faithful and assid uous in performing his duty to his father during the hours of work. Fmthful is the word. He could be trusted any where, and to do anything within the compass of Ms strength and years. It was hard, sometimes, to rouse him from his books ; but when he had been roused, and was entrusted with an errand or a piece of work, he would set about it vigorously and lose no time tUl it was done. " Come," his brother would say sometimes, when the father had set the boys a task and had gone from home ; " come. Hod, let's go fishing." " No," Horace would reply, in his whining voice, "let us do our stint first." " He was always in school though," says his brother, " and as we hoed down the rows, or chopped at the wood pile, he was perpetuaUy talking about his lessons, asking questions, and narrating what he had read." ¦ Fishing, it appears, was the only sport in which Horace took much pleasure, during the first ten years of his life. But his love of fishing did not originate in what the Germans call the "sport impulse." Other boys fished for sport; Horace fished for ^sA. He fished industriously, keeping his eyes unceasingly on the fioat, and never distracting his own attention, or that of the fish, by convers ing with his companions. The consequence was that he would often catch more than aU the rest of the party put together. Shoot ing was the favorite amusement of the boys of the neighborhood, but Horace could rarely be persuaded to take part in it. When he did accompany a shooting-party, he would never carry or dis charge a gun, and when the game was found he would lie down and stop his ears till the murder had been done. CHAPTER ly. HIS FATHER RUINED — REMOVAL TO VERMONT. New Hampshire before the era of manufactures— Causes of hia father's failure— Ram in the olden time— An execution in the house— Flight of the father— Horace and the Rum Jug— Compromise with the creditors— Removal to another farm— Fi nal ruin- Removal to Vermont— The winter journey— Poverty of the family- Scene at their new home- Cheerfulness in misfortune. But while thus Horace was growing up to meet his destiny, pressing forward on the rural road to learning, and secreting char acter in that secluded home, a cloud, undisoerned by him, had come over his father's prospects. It began to gather when the boy was little more than six years old. In his seventh year it broke, and drove the family, for a time, from house and land. In his tenth, it had completed its work — his father was a i-uined man, an exile, a fugitive from his native State. In those days, before the great manufacturing towns which now afford the farmer a market for his produce had sprung into exist ence along the shores of the Merrimac, before a net- work of rail roads regulated the price of grain in the Ijjirns of New Hampshire by the standard of Mark Lane, a farmer of New Hampshire was not, in his best estate, very far from ruin. Some articles which forty years ago, were quite destitute of pecuniary value, now afford an ample profit. Fire-wood, for example, when Horace Greeley was a boy, could seldom be sold at any price. It was nsuaUy burned up on the land on which it grew, as a worthless incumbrance. Fire-wood now, in the city of Manchester, sells for six doUars a cord, and at any point within ten miles of Manchester for four dol lars. Forty years ago, farmers had little surplus produce, and that little had to be carried far, and it brought little money home. In short, before the manufacturing system was introduced into New Hampshire, affording employment to her daughters in the factory, to her sons on the land, New Hampshire was a poverty-stricjten State. CAUSES OF HIS FATHER'S FAILURE. 53 It is one of the wonders of party infatuation, that the two States which if they have not gained most, have certainly most to gain from the " American system,'' should have always been, and should StiU be its most rooted opponents. But man the partisan, Uke man the sectarian, is, always was, and ¦Will ever be, a poor creatm-e. The way to thrive in New Hampshire was to work very hard, keep the store-biU smaU, stick to the farm, and be no man's security. Of these four things, Horace's father did only one — he worked hard. He was a good workman, methodical, skillful, and persevering. But he speculated in lumber, and lost money by it. He was ' bound,' as they say in the country, for another man, and had to pay the money which that other man failed to pay. He had a free and generous nature, lived weU, treated the men whom he employed liberaUy, and in various ways swelled his account with the store keeper. Those, too, were the joUy, bad days, when everybody drank strong drinks, and no one supposed that the affairs of life could pos sibly be transacted without its agency, any more than a machine could go without the lubricating oil. A field could not be ' logged,' hay could not be got in, a harvest could not be gathered, unless the jug of liquor stood by the spring, and unless the spring was visited many times in the day by all hands. No visitor could be sent nn- moistened away. No holiday could be celebrated without drinking- booths. At weddings, at christenings, at funerals, rum seemed to be the inducement th& brought, and the tie that bound, the com pany together. Tt was rum that cemented friendship, and rum that clinched bargains ; rum that kept out the cold of winter, and rum that moderated the summer's heat. Men drank it, women drank it, children drank it. There were families in which the first duty of every morning was to serve around to aU its members, even to the youngest child, a certain portion of alcoholic liquor. Eum had to be bought with money, and money was hard to get in New Hampshire. Zaccheus Greeley was not the man to stint Ms work men. At his house and on his farm the jug was never empty. In his cellar the cider never was dry. And so, by losses which he could not help, by practices ¦Which had not yet been discovered to be unnecessary, his affairs became disordered, and he began to descend the easy steep that leads to the abyss of bankruptcy. He 54 HIS FATHER RUINED. REMOVAL TO VERMONT. arrived — ^lingered a few years on the edge — was pushed in — and scrambled out on the other side. It was on a Monday mormng. There had been a long, fierce rain, and the clouds stiU hung heavy and dark over the hills. Horace, then only seven years old, on coming down stairs in the morning, saw several men about the house; neighbors, some of them ; others were strangers ; others he had seen in the village. He was too young to know the natm-e of an Execution, and by what right the sheriff and a party of men laid hands upon his father's property. His father had walked quietly off into the woods ; for, at that period, a man's person was not exempt from seizure. Horace had a vague idea that the men had come to rob them of aU they possessed ; and wild stories are afloat in the neighborhood, of the boy's conduct on the occasion. Some say, that he seized a hatchet, ran to the neighboring fleld, and began furiously to cut down a fa vorite pear-tree, saying, " They shaU not have that, anyhow." But his mother called him off, and the pear-tree stUl stands. Another story is, that he went to one of his mother's closets, and taking as many of her dresses as he could grasp in his arms, ran away with them into the woods, hid them behind a rock, and then came back to the house for more. Others assert, that the article carried off by the indignant boy was not dresses, but a gallon of rum. But whatever the boy did, or left undone, the reader may imagine that it was to all the famUy a day of confusion, anguish, and horror. Both of Horace's parents were persons of incorruptible honesty ; they had striven hard to place such a calamity as this far from their house ; they had never experienced themselves, nor witnessed at their earlier homes, a simUar scene ; the blow was unexpected; and mingled with their sense of shame at being publicly degraded, was a feeling of honest rage at the supposed injustice of so summary a proceeding. It was a dark day ; but it passed, as the darkest day wiU. An " arrangement" was made with the creditors. Mr. Greeley gave up his own farm, temporarily, and removed to another in the adjoining town of Bedford, which he cultivated on shares, and de voted principally to the raising of hops. Misfortune still pursued him. His two years' experience of hop-growing was not satisfac tory. The hop-market was depressed. His own farm in Amherst BEGINNING THE WORLD ANEW. 55 was either ill managed or else the seasons were unfavorable. He gave up the hop-farm, poorer than ever. He removed back to his old home in Amherst. A little legal manceuvring or rascality on the part of a creditor, gave the finishing blow to his fortunes ; and, in the winter of 1821, he gave up the effort to recover himself, be came a bankrupt, was sold out of house, land, and household goods by the sheriff, and fled from the State to avoid arrest, leaving his family behind. Horace was nearly ten years old. Some of the debts then left unpaid, he discharged in part thirty years after. Mr. Greeley had to begin the world anew, and the world was all before him, where to choose, excepting only that portion of it which is included within the boundaries of New Hampshire. He made his way, after some wandering, to the town of Westhaven, in Eutland county, Vermont, about a hundred and twenty miles northwest of his former residence. There he found a large landed proprietor, who had made one fortune in Boston as a merchant, and married another in Westhaven, the latter consisting of an extensive tract of land. He had now retired from business, had set up for a coun try gentleman, was clearing his lands, and when they were cleared he rented them out in farms. This attempt to " found an estate," in the European style, signally failed. The " mansion house'' has been disseminated over the neighborhood, one wing here, another wing there ; the " lawn" is untrimmed ; the attempt at a park-gate has lost enough of the paint that made it tawdry once, to look shabby now. But this gentleman was useful to Zaccheus Greeley in the day of his poverty. He gave him work, rented him a small house nearly opposite the park-gate just mentioned, and thus, en abled him in a few weeks to transport his family to a new home. It was in the depth of ¦winter when they made the journey. The teamster that drove them stiU lives to tell how ' old Zac Greeley came to him, and wanted he should take his sleigh and horses and go over with him to New Hampshire State, and bring his family back ;' and how, when they had got a few mUes on the way, he said to Zac, said he, that he (Zac) was a stranger to him, and he did n't feel like going so far without enough to secure him ; and so Zac gave him enough to secure him, and away they drove to New Hampshire State. One sleigh was sufficient to convey all the Uttle property the law had left the famUy, and the load could not have 56 HIS FATHER RUINED. REMOVAL TO VERMONT. been a heavy one, for the distance was accompUshed in a little more than two days. The sleighing, however, was good, and the Con necticut river was crossed on the ice. The teamster remembers weU the inteUigent white-headed boy who was^so pressing with his questions, as they rode along over the snow, and who soon exhaust ed the man's knowledge of the geography of the region in which he had Uved aU his days. " He asked me," says he, " a great deal about Lake Champlain, and how far it was from Plattsburgh to this, that, and t' other place ; but. Lord ! he told me a d d sight more than I could tell him.'" The passengers in the sleigh were Horace, his parents, his brother, and two sisters, and aU arrived safely at the little house in Westhaven, — safely, but very, very poor. They pos sessed the clothes they wore on their journey, a bed or two, a few — very few— domestic utensils, an antique chest, and one or two other small relics of their former state ; and they possessed nothing more. A lady, who was then a little girl, and, as little girls in the coun try will, used to run in and out of the neighbors' houses at all hours without ceremony, tells me that, many times, during that winter, she saw the newly-arrived family taking sustenance in the follow ing manner : — A flve-quart milk-pan filled with bean porridge — an hereditary dish among the Scotch-Irish— was placed upon the floor, the children clusteiing around it. Each child was pro-vided with a spoon, and dipped into the porridge, the spoon going directly from the common dish to the particular mouth, without an intermediate landing upon a plate, the meal consisting of porridge, and porridge only. The parents sat at a table, and enjoyed the dignity of a sep arate dish. This was a homely way of dining ; but, adds my kind informant, "they seemed so happy over their meal, that many a time, as I looked upon the group, I wished our mother would let us eat in that way — it seemed so much better than sitting at a table and using knives, and forks, and plates." There was no repining in the famUy over their altered circumstances, nor any attempt to con ceal the scantiness of their furmture. To what the world caUs " ap pearances" they seemed constitutionally insensible. CHAPTEE V. Description ot the country— Clearing up Land— All the family assist a la Swiss-Fam- ily-Rohinson — Primitive costume of Horace — His early indifference to dress — His manner and attitude in school — A Peacemaker among the boys— Gets into a scrape, and out of it — Assists hia school-fellows in their studies — An evening scene at home — Horace knows too much — Disconcerts his teachers by his questions — Leaves school — The pine knots still blaze on the hearth — Reads incessantly — Becomes a great draught player — Bee-hunting — Reads at the Mansion House — Taken for an Idiot — And for a possible President — Reads Mrs. Hemans with rapture — A Wolf Stoi-y — A Pedestrian Journey — Horace and the horseman — Yoking the Oxen — Scene with an old Soaker— Rum in Westhaven— Horace's Pirat Pledge— Narrow escape fi-om drowning — His religious doubts — Becomes a Universalist — Discovers the humbug of " Dettiocracy " — Impatient to begin hia apprenticeahip. The family were gainers in some important particulars, by their change of residence. The land was better. The settlement was more recent. There was a better chance for a poor man to acquire property. And 'What is weU worth mention for its effect upon the opening mind of Horaee, the scenery was grander and more various. That part of Eutland county is in nature's large manner. Long ranges of hUls, with bases not too steep for cultivation, but rising into lofty, precipitous and fantastic summits, stretch away in every direction. The low-lands are level and fertile. Brooks and rivers come out from among the hills, where they have been officiating as water-power, and flow down through v&Ueys that open and expand to receive them, fertilizing the soil. Eoaming among these hills, the boy must have come frequently upon Uttle lakes locked in on every side, without apparent outlet or inlet, as smooth as a mirroi", as sUent as the grave. Three miles from his father's house was the great Lake Champlain. He could not see it from his father's door, but he could see the blue mist that rose from its surface every morning and evening, and hung over it, a cloud veiUng a Mystery. And he could see the long line of green knoU-like MUs that formed its opposite shore. And he could go down on Sundays to the shore itself, and stand in the immediate presence of the lake. 3* 5» AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. Nor is it a slight thing for a boy to see a great natural object which he has been learning about in his school books ; nor is it an unin- fluential circumstance for him to live where he can see it frequent ly. It was a superb country for a boy to grow up in, whether his tendencies were industrial, or 'sportive, or artistic, or poetical. There was rough work enough to do on the land. Fish were abundant in tho lakes and streams. Game abounded in the woods. Wild grapes and wild honey were to be had for the search after them. Much of the surrounding scenery is sublime, and what is not sublime is beautiful Moreover, Lake Champlain is a stage on the route of northern and southern travel, and living upon its shores 'brought the boy nearer to that world in which he was destined to move, and which he had to know before he could work in it to advantage. At Westhaven, Horace passed the next five years of his life. He was now rather tall for his age ; Ms mind was far in advance of it. Many of the opinions for wMch he has since done battle, were distinctly formed during that important period of his life to which the present chapter is devoted. At Westhaven, Mr. Greeley, as they say in the country, ' took jobs ;' and the jobs which he took were of various Mnds. He would contract to get in a harvest, to prepare the ground for a new one, to ' tend ' a saw-miU ; but his principal employ ment was clearing up land ; that is, piling up and burning the trees after they had been feUed. After a time he kept sheep and cat^ tie. In most of his undertakings he prospered. By incessant labor and by reducing his expenditures to the lowest possible point, he saved money, slowly but continuously. In whatever he engaged, whether it was haying, harvesting, sawing, or land-clearing, he was assisted by aU his family. There was littie work to do at home, and after breakfast, the house was left to take care of itself, and away went the famUy, father, mother, boys, giris, and oxen, to work together. Clearing land offers an exceUent field for family labor, as it affords work adapted to aU de grees of strength. The father chopped the larger logs, and direct ed the labor of all the company. Horace drove the oxen, and drove them none too weU, say the neighbors, and was gradually supplanted in the office of di-iver by his younger brother. Both the boys could chop the smaUer trees. Their mother and sisters PRIMITIVE COSTUME OP HORACE. 59 gathered together the light wood into heaps. And when the great logs had to be rolled upon one another, there was scope for the combined skill and strength of the whole party. Many happy and merry days the family spent together in this employment. The mother's spirit never fiagged. Her voice rose in song and laughter from the tangled brush-wood in which she was often bur ied; and no word, discordant or unkind, was ever known to break the perfect harmony, to interrupt the perfect good humor that prevaUed in the family. At mght, they went home to the most primitive of suppers, and partook of it in the picturesque and labor-saving style in which the dinner before alluded to was con sumed. The neighbors still point out a tract of fifty acres which was cleared in this sportive and Swiss-Family-Eobinson-like man ner. They show the spring on the side of the road where the fam ily used to stop and drink on their way; and they show a hem lock-tree, growing from the rocks above the spring, which used to furnish the brooms, nightly renewed, which swept the little house in which the little family Uved. To complete the picture, imagine them all clad in the same material, the coarsest kind of linen or Unsey-woolsey, home-spun, dyed with butternut bark, and the different garments made in the roughest and simplest man ner by the mother. More than three garments at the same time, Horace seldom wore in the summer, and these were — a straw hat, generally in a state of dUapidation, a"to^w-shirt, never buttoned, a pair of trousers made of the famUy material, and having the peculiarity of being very short in both legs, but shorter in one than the other. In the winter ho added a pair of shoes and a jacket. During the five years of his life at Westhaven, probably his clothes did not cost three doUars a year ; and, I believe, that during the whole period of his childhood, up to the, time when he came of age, not fifty dollars in all were expended upon his.dress. He never manifested, on any occasion, in any company, nor at any part of his early life, jthe slightest interest in his attire, nor the least care for its effect upon others. That amiable trait in human nature which inclines us to decoration, which make us desirous t6 present an agreeable figure to others, and to abhor peculiarity in our appearance, is a trait which Horace never gave the smallest evidence of possessing. 60 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. He went to school three winters in Westhaven, but not to any great advantage. He had already gone the round of district school studies, and did little more after his tenth year than walk over the course, keeping lengths ahead of all competitors, with little effort. " He was always," says one of his Westhaven schoolmates, " at the top of the school. He seldom had a teacher that could teach him anything. Once, and once only, he missed a word. His fair face was crimsoned in an instant. He was terribly cut about it, and I fancied he was not himself for a week after, I see him now, as he sat in class, with his slender body, his large head, his open, ample forehead, his pleasant smile, and his coarse, clean, homespun clothes. His attitude was always the same. He sat with his arms loosely folded, his head bent forward, his legs crossed, and one foot swinging. He did not seem to pay attention, but nothing escaped him. He appeared to attend more from curiosity to hear what sort of work we made of the lesson than from any interest he took in the subject for his o'wn sake. Once, I parsed a word egregiously wrong, and Horace was so taken aback by the mistake that he was startied from his propriety, and exclaimed, loud enough for the class to hear him, ' What a fool !' The manner of it was so ludicrous that I, and all the class, bm'st into laughter." Another schoolmate remembers him chiefiy for his gentle manner and obliging disposition. " I never," she says, " knew him to fight, or to be angry, or to have an enemy. He was a peacemaker among us. He played with the boys sometimes, and I think was fonder of spowbaUing than any other game. For girls, as girls, he never manifested any preference. On one occasion he got into a scrape. He had broken some petty rule of the school, and was required, as a punishment, to inffict a certain number of blows upon another boy, who had, I think, been a participator in the offence. The in strument of flageUation was placed in Horace's hand, and he drew off, as though he was going to deal a terrific 'blow, but it came down so gently on the boy's jacket that every one saw that Horace was shamming. The teacher interfered, and told him to strike harder ; and a little harder he did strike, but a more harmless flog ging was never administered. He seemed not to have the power, any more than the will, to infiict pain." If Horace got littie good himself from his last winters at school. DISCONCERTS HIS TEACHERS. 61 he was of great assistance to his schoolfeUows in explaining to them the difficulties of their lessons. Few evenings passed in which some strapping feUow did not come to the house with his grammar or his slate, and sit demurely by the side of Horace, wMle the dis tracting sum was explained, or the dark place in the parsing les son illuminated. The boy deUghted to render such assistance. However deeply he might be absorbed in his own studies, as soon as he saw a puzzled countenance peering in at the door, he knew his man, knew what was wanted ; and would jump up from his recumbent posture in the chimney-corner, and proceed, with a patience that is still gratefully remembered, with a perspicuity that is stUl mentioned with admiration, to impart the information re quired of him. Fancy it. It is a pretty picture. The ' Uttle white- headed fellow ' generally so abstracted, now all intelligence and ani mation, by the side of a great hulk of a young man, twice his age and three times his weight, with a countenance expressing perplex ity and despair. An apt question, a reminding word, a few figures hastily scratched on the slate, and Ught flushes on the puzzled mind. He wonders he had not thought of that : he wishes Heaven had given him such a ' head-piece.' To some of Ms teachers at Westliaven, Horace was a cause of great annoyance. He knew too much. He asked awkward ques tions. He was not to be put off with common-place solutions of serious difficulties. He wanted things to hang together, and liked to know how, if this was true, that could be true also. At length, one of his teachers, when Horace was thirteen years old, had the honesty and good sense to go to his father, and say to him, point blank, that Horace knew more than he did, and it was of no use for him to go to school any more. So Horace remained at home, read hard all that winter in a little room by himself, and taught his youngest sister beside. He had attended distiict school, altogether, about forty-five months. At Westhaven, the pine-knots blazed on the hearth as brightly and as continuously as they had done at the old home in Amherst. There was a new reason why they should ; for a candle was a lux ury now, too expensive to be indulged in. Horace's home was a favorite evening resort for the children of the neighborhood — a fact which says much for the kindly spirit of its inmates. They came 62 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. to hear his mother's songs 'and stories, to play with his brother and sisters, to get assistance from himself; and they liked to be there, where there was no stiffness, nor ceremony, nor discord. Horace cared nothing for their noise and romping, bnt he could never be induced to join in an active game. When he was not assisting some bewUdered arithmetician, he lay in the old' position, on his back in the flreplace, reading, always reading. The boys would hide his book, bnt he would get another. They would pull Mm out of his flery den by the leg ; and he would crawl back, without the least show of anger, but without the slightest inclination to yield the point. There was a game, however, which could sometimes tempt him from his book, and of which he gradually became excessively fond. It was draughts, or ' checkers.' In that game he acquired extraor dinary skUl, beating everybody in the neighborhood ; and before he had reached maturity, there were few draught-players in the coun try — ^if any — who could win two games in three of Horace Greeley. His cronies at Westhaven seem to have been those who were ft>nd of draughts. In his passion for books, he was alone among his companions, who attributed his •ontinual reading more to indolence than to his acknowledged superiority of intelUgence. It was often predicted that, whoever else might prosper, Horace never would. And yet, he gave proof, in very early Ufe, that the Yankee ele ment was strong within him. In the flrst place, he was always do- in^ something ; and, in the second, he always had something to sell. He saved nuts, and exchanged them at the store for the articles he wished to purchase. He would hack away, hours at a time, at a pitch-pine stump, the roots of which are as inflammable as pitch itself, and, tying up the roots in little bundles, and the Uttle bundles into one large one, he would " back" the load to the store, and sell it for kindling wood. His favorite out-door sport, too, at West haven, was bee-hunting, which is not only an agreeable and excit ing pastime, but occasionally rewards the hunter with a prodigious mess of honey — as much as a hundred and fifty pounds having heen frequently obtained from a single tree. This was profitable sport, and Horace liked it amazingly. His share of the honey generally found its way to the store. By these and other expedients, the boy managed always to have a little money, and when a pedler came TAKEN FOB AN IDIOT. 63 along -with books in his wagon, Horace was pretty sure to be his customer. Yet he was only half a Yankee. He could earn money, but the bargaining faculty he had not. What did he read ? Whatever he could get. But his preference was for history, poetry, and — newspapers. He had read, as I have before mentioned, the whole Bible before he was six years old. He read the Arabian Nights with intense pleasure in his eighth year ; Eobinson Cmsoe in his mnth ; Shakspeare in his eleventh ; in his twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth years, he read a good many of the common, superficial histories • — Eobertson's, Goldsmith's, and others — and as many tales and romances aa he could borrow. At Westhaven, as at Amherst, he roamed far and wide in search of books. He was fortunate, too, in living near the ' mansion-house' before mentioned, the proprietor of which, it appears, took some in terest in Horace, and, though he would not lend him books, allow ed him to come to the house and read there as often and as long as he chose. A story is told by one who lived at the ' mansion-house' when Horace used to read there. Horace entered the library one day, when the master of the house happened to be present, in conversa tion ¦with a stranger. The stranger, struck with the awkwardness and singular appearance of the boy, took Mm for little better than an idiot, and was inclined to laugh at the idea of lending books to ' such a feUow as that.' The owner of the mansion defended his conduct by extolUng the intelUgence of his prot6g§, and wound up with the usual climax, that he should " not be surprised, sir, if that boy should come to be President of the United States." People in those days had a high respect for the presidential office, and reaUy believed — many of them did — that to get the highest place it was only necessary to be the greatest man. Hence it was a very com mon mode' of praising a boy, to mate the safe assertion that he might, one day, if he persevered in well-doing, be the President of the United States. That was before the era of wire-pulling and rotation in office. He must be either a very young or a very old man who can now mention the presidential office in connection ¦with the future of any boy not extraordinarily vicious. Wire-pull ing, happUy, has robbed the schoolmasters of one of their bad argu ments for a virtuous life. Bnt we are wandering from the Ubrary. 64 AT ¦WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. The end of the story is, that the stranger looked as if he thought Horace's defender half mad himself; and, "to teU the truth," said the lady who told me the story, " we aU thought Mr. had made a crazy speech." Horace does not appear to have made a favorable impression at the ' mansion-house.' But he read the books in it, for aU that. Perhaps it was there, that he feU in with a copy of Mrs. Hemans' poems, which, where- ever he found them, were the first poems that awakened his enthu siasm, the first writings that made him aware of the better impulses of his nature. "I remember," he wrote in the Eose of Sharon for 1841, "as of yesterday, the gradual unfolding of the exceeding truthfulness and beauty, the profound heart-knowledge (to coin a Germanism) which characterizes Mrs. Hemans' poems, upon my own immature, unfolding mind. — ' Cassabianoa,' 'Things that change,' ' The Voice of Spring,' ' The TraveUer at the Source of the Nile,' ' The Wreck,' and many other poems of kindred nature are enshrined in countless hearts — especially of those whose intel lectual existence dates its commencement between 1620 and 1830 — as gems of priceless value ; as spirit-wands, by whose electric touch they were first made conscious of the diviner aspirations, the loft ier, holier energies within them.'' Such a testimony as this may teach the reader, if he needs the lesson, not to undervalue the authors whom his fastidious taste may place among the Lesser Lights of Literature. To you, fastid ious reader, those authors may have little to iuipart. But among the hills in the country, where the feelings are ft'esher, and minds are unsated by literary sweets, there may bo many a thoughtful boy and earnest man, to whom your Lesser Lights are Suns that warm, illumine, and quicken! The incidents in Horace's Ufe at Westhaven were few, and of the few that did occur, several have doubtless been forgotten. The people there remember him vividly enough, and are profuse in im parting their general impressions of his character; but the facts which gave rise to those impressions have mostly escaped their memories. They speak of him as an absorbed boy, who rarely saluted or saw a passer-by — ^who would walk miles at the road-side, following the zig-zag of the fences, without once looking np — who was often taken by strangers for a natural fool, bnt was kno-wn by A WOLF STORY. 6"} his intimates to be, in the language of one of them — " a darned smart fellow, in spite of his looks " — who was utterly blameless in all his ways, and works, and words — who had not, and could not have had, an enemy, because nature, by leaving out of his oompo sition the diabolic element, had made it impossible for him to be one. The few occurrences of the boy's life, which, in addition to these general reminiscences of his character, have chanced to escape oblivion, may as well be narrated here. As an instance of his nervous timidity, a lady mentions, that when he was about eleven years old, he came to her house one even ing on some errand, and staid till after dark. He started for home, at length, but had not been gone many minutes before he burst into the house again, in great agitation, saying he had seen a wolf by the side of the road. There had been rumors of wolves in the neighborhood. Horace declared he had seen the eyes of one glar ing upon him as he passed, and he was so overcome ¦with terror, that two of the elder girls of the family accompanied him home. They saw no wolf, nor were there any wolves about at the time ; the mistake probably arose from some phosphorescent wood, or some other bright object. A Vermont boy of that period, as a gen eral thing, cared little more for a wolf than a New York boy does for a cat, and could have faced a pack of wolves with far less dread than a company of strangers. Horace was never abashed by an audience; but two glaring eye-baUs among the brush-wood sent him fiying with terror. In nothing are mortals more wise than in their fears. That which we stigmatize as cowardice— what is it but nature's kindly warning to her children, not to confront what they cannot master, and not to undertake what their strength is unequal to? Horace was a m.atch for a rustic auditory, and he feared it not. He was not a match for a wild beast ; so he ran away. Considerate nature ! Horace, aU through his boyhood, kept his object of becoming a printer, steadily in view ; and soon after coming to Vermont, about hia eleventh year, he began to think it time for him to take a step towards the fulfilment of hia intention. He talked to his father on the subject, but received no encouragement from him. His father said, and. very trnly, that no one would take an apprentice so young. Bnt the boy was not satisfied ; and, one mormng, he trudged off to 66 AT WESTHA-VEN, VERMONT. Whitehall, a town about nine miles distant, where a newspaper was pubUshed, to make inquiries. He went to the printing office, saw the printer, and learned that his father was right. He was too young, the printer said ; and so the boy trudged home again. A few months after, he went on another and much longer pedes trian expedition. He started, with seventy-five cents in his pocket and a small bundle of provisions on a stick over his shoulder, to walk to Londonderry, a hundred, and twenty miles distant, to see his old friends and relatives. He performed the journey, stayed sev- ral weeks, and came back with a shilUng or two more money than he took with him — owing, we may infer, to the amiable way aunts and uncles have of bestowing small coins upon nephews who -visit them. His re-appearance in New Hampshire excited unbounded astonishment,^ his age and dimensions seeming ludicrously out of proportion to the length and manner of his solitary journey. He was made much of during his stay, and his journey is still spoken of there as a wonderful performance, only exceeded, in fact, by Horace's second return to Londonderry a year or two after, when he drove over the same ground, his aunt and her four children, in a ' one-horse wagon,' and drove back again, without the slightest accident. As a set-off to these marvels, it must be recorded, that on two other occasions he was taken for an idiot — once, when he entered a store, in one of the brownest of his brown studies, and a stranger inquired, " What darn fool is that ?" — and a second time, in the manner foUowing. He was accustomed to call his father " iSf?-," both in speaking to, and speaking of him. One day, while Horace was chopping wood by the side of the road, a man came up on horse-back and inquired the way to a distant town. Horace could not teU him, and, without looking up, said, " ask Sir," meaning, ask father. The stranger, puzzled at this reply, repeated his question,. and Horace again said, "ask Sir." "I am asking," shouted the man. " WeU, ask *%>," said Horace, once more. " Aint I asking, you— fool," screamed the man. " But I want you to ask Sir," said Horace. It was of no avail, the man rode away in disgust, and inquired at the next tavern "who that tow-headed fool was down the road." In a simUar absent fit it must have been, that the boy once at- YOKING THE OXEN. 67 teimpted, in vain, to yoke the oxen that he had yoked a hundred times before without difficulty. To see a small boy yoking a pair of oxen is, O City Eeader, to behold an amazing exhibition of the power of Mind over Matter. The huge beasts need not come under the yoke — twenty men could not compel them — but they do come under it, at the beck of a boy that can just stagger under the yoke himself, and whom one of the oxen, with one horn and a shake of the head, could toss over a hay-stack. The boy, with the yoke on his shoulders, and one of the ' bows ' in his hand, marches up to the 'off' ox, puts the bow round his neck, thrusts the ends of the bow through the holes of the yoke, fastens them there— and one OX is his. But the other ! The boy then removes the other bow, holds up the end of the yoke, and commands the 'near' ox to approach, and 'come under here sir.' Wonderful to relate! the near ox obeys ! He walks slowly up, and takes his place by the side of his brother, as though it were a pleasant thing to pant all day before the plough, and he was only too happy to leave the dull pasture. But the ox is a creature of habit. If you catch the near ox first, and then try to get the off ox to come under the near side of the yoke, you wiU discover that the off ox has an opinion of his own. He won't come. This was the mistake which Horace, one morning in an absent fit, committed, and the off ox could not be brought to deviate from established usage. After much coaxing, and, possibly, some vituperation, Horace was about to give it up, when his brother chanced to come to the field, who saw at a glance what was the matter, and rectified the mistake. " Ah !" his father used to say, after Horace had made a display of this kind, " that boy wUl never get along in this world. He 'U never know more than enough to come in when it rains.'' Another little story is told of the brothers. The younger was throwing stones at a pig that preferred to go in a direction exactly contrary to that in which the boys wished to drive him — a com mon case with pigs, et ceteri. Horace, who never threw stones at pigs, was overheard to say, " Now, you ought n't to throw stones at that hog ; he don't Tcnow anything." The person who heard these words uttered by the boy, is one of those libulant individuals who, in the rural districts, are called ' old soakers,' and his face, tobacco-stained, and rubicund with the 68 AT 'WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. diinks of forty years, gleamed with the Ught of other days, as he hiccoughed out the Uttle tale. It may serve to show how the boy is remembered in Westhaven, if I add a word or two respecting my interview with this man. I met him on an unfrequented road ; his hair was gray, his step was tottering ; and thinking it probable he might be able to add to iny stock of reminiscences, I asked him whether he remembered Horace Greeley. He mumbled a few words in reply ; but I perceived that he was far gone towards in toxication, and soon drove on. A moment after, I heard a voice call ing behind me. I looked round, and discovered that the voice was that of the soaker, who was shouting for me to stop. I alighted and went back to him. And now that the idea of my previous questions had had time to imprint itself upon Ms half-torpid brain, his tongue was loosened, and he entered into the subject with an enthusiasm that seemed for a time to burn up the fumes that had stupefied him. He was fuU of his theme ; and, besides confirming much that I had afready heard, added the story related above, from his own recollection. As the tribute of a sot to the champion of the Maine-Law, the old man's harangue was highly interesting. That part of the town of Westhaven was, thirty years ago, a desperate place for driiiking. The hamlet in which the family Uved longer than anywhere else in the neighborhood, has ceased to exist, and it decayed principaUy through the intemperance of its inhabitants. Much of the land about it has not been improved in the least degree, from what it was when Horace Greeley helped to clear it ; and drink has absorbed the means and the energy which should have been devoted to its improvement. A boy growing up in such a place would be likely to become either a drunkard or a tee-totaller, according to his organization ; and Horace became the latter. It is rather a singular fact, that, though both his parents and aU their ancestors were accustomed to the habitual and liberal use of intoxicating liquors and tobacco, neither Horace nor his brother could ever be induced to partake of either. They had a constitutional aversion to the taste of both, long before they under stood the nature of the human system weU enough to know that stimulants of all kinds are necessarily pernicious. Horace was therefore a tee-totaUer before tee-totaUsm came up, and he took a sort of pledge before the pledge was invented. It happened one NAERQ-V? ESCAPE FROM DRO-WNlNG. 69 day that a neighbor stopped to take dinner ¦with the family, and, as a matter of course, the bottle of rum was brought out for his entertainment. Horace, it appears, either tasted a little, or else took a disgust at the smell of the stuff, or perhaps was offended at the effects which he saw it produce. An idea struck him. He said, " Father, what will you give me if I do not drink a drop of Uquor till I am twenty-one ?" His father, who took the question as a joke, answered, "I'U give you a doUar." "It's a bargain," said Horace. And it was a bargain, at least on the side of Horace, who kept his pledge inviolate, though I have no reason to believe he ever received his doUar. Many were the attempts made by his friends, then and afterwards, to induce him to break his resolution, and on one occasion they tried to force some liquor into his mouth. But from the day on which the conversation given above occurred, to this day, he has not kno^wingly taken into his system any alco- hoUc liquid. At Westhaven, Horace incurred the second peril of his life. He was nearly strangled in coming into the world ; and, in his thirteenth year, he Was nearly strangled out of it. The family were then living on the banks of the Hubbarton river, a small stream which supplied power to the old ' Tryon Sawmill,' which the father, as sisted by his boys, conducted for a year or two. Across the river, where it was widened by the dam, there was no bridge, and people were accustomed to get over on a floating saw-log, pushing along the log by means of a pole. The boys were floating about in the river one day, when the log on which the younger brother was standing, roUed over, and in went the boy, over head and ears, into water deep enough to drown a giraffe. He rose to the surface and clung to the bark of the log, but was unable to get upon it from the same cause as that which had prevented his standing upon it — it would roU. Horace hastened to his assistance. He got upon the log to which Ms brother was cUnging, lay down upon it, and put down a hand for his brother to grasp. His brother did grasp it, and pulled with so much vigor, that the log made another rev olution, and in went Horace. Neither of the boys could swim. They clung to the log and screamed for assistance ; but no one hap pened to be near enough to hear them. At length, the younger of the drowning pafr managed, by climbing over Horace, and sousing 70 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. Mm completely under the log, to get out. Horace emerged, half- dro-wned, and again hung for life at the rough bark. But the future hero of ten thousand paragraphs was not to be drowned in a mill- pond ; so the log floated into shallower water, when, by making a last, spasmodic effort, he succeeded in springing up liigh enough to get safely upon its broad back. It was a narrow escape for both ; but Horace, 'with all his reams of articles forming in his head, came as near taking a summary departure to that bourn where no Teibune could have been set up, as a boy could, and yet not go. He went dripping home, and recovered from the effects of his ad venture in due time. This was Horace Greeley's first experience of ' log-roUing.' It was not calculated to make him like it. One of the flrst subjects which the boy seriously considered, and perhaps the first upon which he arrived at a decided opinion, was Religion. And this was the more remarkiible from the fact, that his education at home was not of a nature to direct his attention strongly to the subject. Both of his parents assented to the Ortho dox creed of New England ; his father inherited a preference for the Baptist denomination ; his mother a leaning to the Presbyter ian. But neither were members of a church, cmd neither were par ticularly devout. The father, however, vtaa somewhat strict in certain observances. He would not aUow novels and plays to b6 read in the house on Sundays, nor an heretical book at any time. The family, when they Uved near a church, attended it with con siderable regularity — Horace among the rest. Sometimes the father would require the children to read a certain number of chapters in the Bible on Sunday. And if the mother — as mothers are apt to be — was a Uttle less scrupulous upon such points, and occasionaUy winked at Sunday novel-reading, it certainly did not arise from any set disapproval of her husband's strictness. It was merely that she was the mother, he the father, of the family. The reUgious educa tion of Horace was, in short, of a nature to leave his mind, not un biased in favor of orthodoxy — that had been almost impossible in New England thirty years ago— but as nearly in equUibrium on the subject, in a state as favorable to original inquiry, as the place and circumstances of his early life rendered possible. There was not in Westhaven one individual who was known to . THE STOR-Y OF DEMETRIUS. 71 be a dissenter from the established faith ; nor was there any dis senting sect or society in the vicinity; nor was any periodical of a heterodox character taken in the neighborhood; nor did any heret ical works faU in the boy's way tUl years after his religious opinions were settled. Yet, from the age of twelve he began to doubt; and at fourteen — to use the pathetic language of one who knew him then — " he was little better than a UniversaUst." The theology of the seminary and the theology of the farm-house are two different things. They are as unlike as the discussion of the capital punishment question in a debating society is to the dis cussion of the same question among a company of criminals ac cused of murder. The unsophisticated, rural mind meddles not with the metaphysics of divinity; it takes Uttle interest in the Foreknowledge and Free-wUl difficulty, in the Election and Eespon- sibility problem, and the mamfold subtleties connected therewith. It grapples ¦with a simpler question : — ' Am I in danger of being damned f ' Is it Ukely that I shall go to heU, and be tormented with burning sulphur, and the proximity of a serpent, forever, and ever, and ever?' To minds of an ampler and more generous nature, the same question presents itself, but in another form : — Is it a fact that nearly every individual of the human family wiU forever faU of at taining the WELFARE of whioh he was created capable, and be ' lost,' beyond the hope, beyond the possibUity of recovery ?' Upon the latter form of the inquiry, Horace meditated much, and talked often during Ms thirteenth and fourteenth years. When his com panions urged the orthodox side, he would rather object, but mUdly, and say with a puzzled look, " It don't seem consistent." WhUe he was in the habit of revolving such thoughts in his mind, a cfrcumstance occurred which accelerated his progress towards a rejection of the damnation dogma. It was nothing more than his chance reading in a school-book of the history of Demetrius Polior- ctos. The part of the story which bore upon the subject of his thoughts may be out-lined thus : — Demetrius, (B. 0. 301,) surnamed PoUorcltes, besieger of cities, was the son of Antigonus, one of those generals whom the death of Alexander the Great left masters of the world. Demetrius was T>ne of the ' fast ' princes of antiquity, a handsome, brave, ingen- 72 AT WESTHAVEN, VEEMONT. uous man, but vain, rash and dissolute. He and his father ruled over Asia Minor and Syria. Greece was under the sway of Cassander and Ptolemy, who had re-established in Athens aristocratic institu tions, and held the Athenians in servitude. Demetrius, who aspired to the glory of succoring the distressed, and was not averse to re ducing the power of Ms enemies, Cassander and Ptolemy, sailed to Athens with a fleet of two hundred and fifty ships, expeUed the garrison and obtained possession of the city. Antigorus had been advised to retain possession of Athens, the key of Greece ; but he replied : — " The best and securest of all keys is the friendship of the people, and Athens was the watch-tower of the world, from whence the torch of Ms glory would blaze over the earth." Ani mated by such sentiments, his son, Demetrius, on reaching the city, had proclaimed that "his father, in a happy hour, he hoped, for Athens, had sent him to re-instate them in then- liberties, and to re store their laws and ancient form of government." The Athen ians received him with acclamations. He performed all that he promised, and more. He gave the people a hundred and fifty thousand measures of meal, and timber enough to build a hundred galleys. The gratitude of the Athenians was boundless. They be stowed upon Demetrius the title of king and god-protector. They erected an altar upon the spot where he had first alighted from his chariot. They created a priest in his honor, and decreed that he should be received in all his future visits as a god. They changed the name of the month Munychion to Demetrion, called the last day of every month Demetrius, and the feasts of Bacchus Demetria. " The gods," says the good Plutarch, " soon showed how much of fended they were at these things." Demetrius enjoyed these ex travagant honors for a time, added an Athenian wife to the number he already possessed, and sailed away to prosecute the war. A sec ond time the Athenians were threatened with the yoke of Cassander • again Demetrius, with a fieet of three hundred and thirty ships, came to their deliverance, and again the citizens taxed their ingenu ity to the utmost in devising for their deliverer new honors and more piquant pleasures. At length Demetrius, after a career of victory, feU into misfortune. His domains were invaded, his father was slain, the kingdom was dismembered, and Demetrius, with a rem nant of his army, was obliged to fly. Beaching Ephesus in want of THE STORY OF DEMETRIUS. 73 money, he spared the temple fiUed with treasure ; and fearing his soldiers would plunder it, left the place and embarked for Greece, His dependence was upon tlie Athenians, ¦with whom he had left his ¦wife, his ships, and his money. Confidently relying upon their af fection and gratitude, he pursued his voyage with aU possible ex pedition as to a secure asylum. ButtheficTcle Athenians failed him in his day of need ! At the Cyclades, Athenian ambassadors met him, and mocked him with the entreaty that he would by no means go to Athens, as the people had declared by an edict, that they would, receive no king into the city ; and as for his wife, he could find her at Megare, whither she had been conducted with the re spect due to her rank. Demetrius, who up to that moment had borne his reverses with calmness, was cut to the heart, and over come by mingled disgust and rage. He was not in a condition to avenge the ¦wrong. He expostulated with the Athenians in mod erate terms, and waited only to be joined by his galleys, and turned his back upon the ungrateful country. Time passed. Demetrius again became powerful. Athens was rent by factions. AvaUing himself of the occasion, the injured, king sailed with a consider able fieet to Attica, landed his forces and invested the city, which was soon reduced to such extremity of famine that a father and son, it is related, fought for the possession of a dead mouse that happened to fall from the oejling of the room in which they were sitting. The Athenians were compelled, at length, to open their gates to Demetrius, who marched in with Ms troops. He com manded all the citizens to assemble in the theatre. They obeyed, Utterly at his mercy, they expected no mercy, felt tlmt they deserved no meray. Tlie theatre was surrounded with armed men, Snd on each side of the stage was stationed a body of the king's own guards. Demetrius entered by the tragedian's passage, advanced across the stage, and confronted the assembled citizens, who await ed in terror to hear the signal for their slaughter. But no such signal was heard. He addressed them in a soft and persuasive tone, complained of their conduct in gentle terms, forgave their in gratitude, took them again into favor, gave the city a hundred thou sand measures of wheat, and promised the re-establishment of their ancient institutions. The people, relieved from their terror, aston ished at their good fortune, and fiUed with enthusiasm at suph 4 74 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. generous forbearance, overwhelmed Demetrius with acclama tions. Horace was fascinated by the story. He thought the conduct of Demetrius not only magnanimous and humane, but just and politic. Sparing the people, misguided by their leaders, seemed to him the best way to make them ashamed of their ingratitude, and the best way of preventing its recurrence. And he argued, if mercy is best and wisest on a small scale, can it be less so on a large ? If a man is capable of such lofty magnanimity, may not God be who made man capable of it. If, in a human being, revenge and jealousy are despicable, petty and vulgar, what impiety is it to attribute such feelings to the beneficent Father of the Universe ? The sin of the Athenians against Demetrius had every element of enormity. Twice he had snatched them from the jaws of ruin. Twice he had supplied their dire necessity. Twice he had refused all reward except the empty honors they paid to his name and person. He had condescended to become one of them by taking a daughter of Athens as his wife. He had entrusted his wife, his ships and his treasure to their care. Yet in the day of hLs calamity, when for the first time it was in their ^oto«r to render him a service, when he was coming to them with the remnant of his fortune, without a doubt of their fideUty, ¦with every reason to suppose that his mis fortunes would render Mm dearer to them than ever ; then it was that they de^fcermined to refuse him even an admittance within their gates, and sent an embassy to meet Mm with mockery and sub terfuge. Of the offences committed by man against man, there is one which man can seldom Hft his soul up to the he%ht of forgiving. It is to be sUghted ,in the day of his humiUation by those who showed him honor in the time of his prosperity. Yet man can forgive even this. Demetrius forgave it; and the nobler and greater a man is, the less keen is his sense of personal wrong, the less difficult it is for him to forgive. The poodle must show his teeth at every passing dog ; the mastiff waUss majestic and serene through a pack of snarUng curs. Amid such thoughts as these, the orthodox theory of damnation had little chance ; the mmd of the boy revolted against it more and BECOMES A UNIVERSALIST. 75 more; and the result was, that he became as our pious friend lamented, "Uttle better than a Universalist" — in fact no better. From the age of fourteen he was known wherever he lived as a champion of UniversaUsm, though he never entered a Universalist church till he was twenty years old. By what means he managed to ' reconcile' his new behef with the explicit and unmistakable declarations of what he continued to regard as Holy Writ, or how anybody has ever done it, I do not know. The boy appears to have shed his orthodoxy easily. His was not a nature to travail with a new idea for months and years, and arrive at certainty only after a struggle that rends the soul, and leaves it sore and sick for life. He was young ; the iron of our theological system had not entered into his soul ; he took the matter somewhat lightly ; and, having arrived at a theory of the Divine government, which accorded with his own gentle and forgiving nature, he let the rest of the theological science alone, and went on his way rejoicing. Yet it was no slight thing that had happened to him. A man's Faith is the man. Not to have a Faith is not to be a man. Beyond all comparison, the most important fact of a man's life is the forma tion of the Faith which he adheres to and lives by. And though Horace Greeley has occupied himself little with things spiritual, confining Mmself, by a necessity of his nature, chiefly to the pro motion of material interests, yet I doubt not that this early change in his religions belief was the event which gave to aU his subse quent life its dfrection and character. Whether that change was a desirable one, or an undesirable, is a question upon which the reader of course has a decided opinion. The following, perhaps, may be taken as the leading consequences of a deliberate and inteUigent ex change of a severe creed in which a person has been educated, for a less severe one to which he attains by the operations of his own mind: It quickens his understanding, and multiplies his ideas to an extent which, it is said, no one who has never experienced it can possibly conceive. It induces in him a habit of original reflection upon sub jects of importance. It makes Mm slow to believe a thing, merely because many believe it— .merely because it has long been believed. It renders him open to conviction, for he cannot forget that there was a time when he held opinions which he now clearly sees to be 76 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. erroneous. It dissolves the spell of Authority ; it makes Mm dis trustful of Great Names. It lessens hia terror of Public Opinion; for he has confronted it— discovered that it shows more teeth than it uses— that it harms only those who fear it — that it bows at length in homage to him whom it cannot frighten. It throws him upon his own moral resources. Formerly, Fear came to his assistance in moments of temptation ; hell-fire rolled up its column of lurid smoke before him in the dreaded distance. But now he sees it not. If he has the IntelUgence to know, the Heart to love, the WUl to choose, the Strength to do, the Eight ; he does it, and his life is high, and pure, and noble. If InteUigence, or Heart, or WUl, or Strength is wanting to him, he vaoUlates ; he is not an integer, his Ufe is not. But, in either case, his Acts are the measure of his Worth. Moreover, the struggle of a heretic with the practical difficulties of Ufe, and particularly his early struggle, is apt to be a hard one ; for, generaUy, the Eich, the Eespectable, the Talented, and the Virtuous of a nation are ranged on the side of its Orthodoxy in an overwhelming majority. They feel themselves alUed with it^de- pendent upon it. Above aU, they believe in it, and think they would be damned if they did not. They are slow to give their countenance to one who dissents from their creed, even though he aspire only to make their shoes, or clean them, and though they more than suspect that the rival shoemaker round the corner keeps a religious newspaper on his counter solely for the effect of the thing upon pious consumers of shoe-leather. ' To depart from the established Faith, then, must be accounted a risk, a danger, a thing uncomfortable and complicating. But, from the nettle Danger, alone, we pluck the flower Safety. And he who loves Truth first — Advantage second — will certainly find Truth at length, and care little at what loss of Advantage. So, let every man be fuUy persuaded in his own mind — with which safe and salgtary text we may take leave of matters theological, and resume our story. The political events which occurred during Horace Greeley's residence in Westhaven were numerous and exciting; some of them were of a . character to attract the attention of a far less for ward and thoughtful boy than he. Doubtless he read the message of President Monroe in 1821, in which the poUcy of Protection DISCOVERS THE HUMBUG OF " DEMOCRACY." 77 to American Industry was recommended strongly, and advocated by arguments so simple that a chUd could understand them ; so cogent that no man could refute them — arguments, in fact, pre cisely similar to those which the Tribune has since made familiar to the country. In the message of 1822, the president repeated his recommendation, and again in that of 1824. Those were the years of the recognition of the South American Eepublios, of the Greek enthusiasm, of Lafayette's triumphal progress through the Union ; of the occupation of Oregon, of the suppression of Piracy in the Gulf of Mexico ; of the Clay, Adams and Jackson controversy. It was during the period we are now considering, that Henry Clay made his most briUiant efforts in debate, and secured a place in the affections of Horace Greeley, which he retained' to his dying day. It was then, too, that the boy learned to distrust the party who claimed to be pre-eminently and exclusively Democratic. How attentively he watched the course of political events, how intelligently he judged them, at the age of thirteen, may be inferred from a passage in an article whioh he wrote twenty years after, the facts of which he stated from his early recoUeotion of them : " The first political ooiilest," he wrote in the Tribune for August 29th, 1846, " in whioh we ever took a distinct interest will serve to illustrate this dis tinction [between real and sham democracy]. It was the Presidential Election of 1824. Five candidates for President were offered, but one of them was withdrawn, leaving four, all of them members in regular standing of the so- called Republican or Democratic party. But a caucus of one-fourth of the members of Congress had selected one of the four CWilliam H, Crawford) as the Republiean candidate, and it was attempted to make the support of this one a test of party orthodoxy and fealty. This was resisted, we think most justly and democratically, by three -fourths of the people,, including a large major ity "of those of this State. But among the prime movers of the caucus wires was Martin Van Buren of this State, and here it was gravely proclaimed and insisted that Democracy required a blind support of Crawford in preference to Adams, Jackson, or Clay, all of the Democratic party, who were competitors for the station, A Legislature was chosen as ' Republican' before the people generally had begun to think of the Presidency, and, this Legislature, it was undoubtingly expected, would choose Crawford Electors of President. But the friends of the rival candidates at length began to bestir themselves and de mand that the New York Electors should be chosen by a direct vote of the peo ple, and not by a forestalled Legislature, This demand was vehemently re- 78 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. sisted by Martin Van Buren and those who foUowed his lead, including tho leading ' Democratic' politicians and editors of the State, the ¦ Albany Argus,' ' Noah's Enquirer, or National Advocate,' &e. &e. The feeling in favor of an Election by the people became so strong and general that Gov, Tates, though himself a Crawford man, was impelled to call a special session of the Legisla ture for this express purpose. The Assembly passed a bill giving the choice to the people by an overwhelming majority, in defiance of the exertions of Van Buren, A, C, Flagg, &a. The bill went to the Senate, to whioh body Siias Wright had recently been elected from the Northern, District, and elected by Clintonian votes on an explicit understanding that be would vote for giving the choice of the Electors to the people. He accordingly voted, on one or two abstract propositions, that the choice ought to be given to the people. But when it came to a direct vote, this same Silas 'Wright, now Governor, voted to deprive thd people of that privilege, by postponing the whole subject to the next regular session of the Legislature, when it would be too late for the peo ple to choose Electors for that time. A bare majority (17) of the Senators thus withheld from the people the right they demanded. The cabal failed iu their great object, after all, for several members of the Legislature, elected as Democrats, took ground for Mr. Clay, and by uniting with the friends of Mr, Adams defeated most of the Crawford Electors, and Cra-wford lost the Presi dency, 'We were but thirteen when this took place, but we looked on very earnestly, without prejudice, and tried to look beyond the mere names by which the contending parties were called. Could we doubt that Democracy was on one side and the Democratic party on the other 1 Will ' Democrat' attempt to gainsay it now 1 Mr, Adams was chosen President — as thorough a Democrat, in the true sense of the word, as ever lived — a plain, unaj!suming, upright, and most ca pable statesman. Ho managed the public affairs so well that nobody could really give a reason for opposing him, and hardly any two gave the same rea son. There was no party conflict during his time respecting the Bank, Tariff, Internal Improvements, nor anything else of a substantial oharacter. He kept the expenses of the government very moderate,'. He never turned a man out of office beoause of a difference of political sentiment. Yet it was deter mined at the outset that he should be put down, no matter how well he might administer the government, and a combination of the old Jackson, Crawford, and Calhoun parties, with the personal adherents of De Witt CUnton, aided by a shamefully false and preposterous outcry that he had obtained the Presi dency by a bargain with Mr, Clay, succeeded in returning an Opposition Con gress in the middle of his term, and at its close to put in General Jackson over him by a large majority. The character of this man Jackson we had studied pretty thoroughly and without prejudice. His fatal duel with Dickinson about a horse-race ; his pis toling Colonel Benton In the streets of NashviUe ; his forcing his way through SHAM AND REAL DEMOCRACY. 79 the Indian country with his drove of negroes in defiance of the express order of the Agent Dinsmore j hia imprisonment of Judge Hall at New Orleans, long after the British had left that quarter, and when martial law ought long since to have been set aside ; his irruption into Florida and capture of Spanish posts and officers without a shadow of authority to do so ; his threats to cut off the ears Of Senators who censured this conduct in solemn debate — in short, his whole life convinced us that the man never was a Democrat, in any proper sense of the term, but a violent and lawless despot, after the pattern of Cassar, Cromwell, and Napoleon, and unfit to be trusted with power. Of course, we went against him, but not against anything really Democratic in him or his party. That General Jackson in power justified all our previous expectations of him, need hardly be said. That he did more to destroy the Republican character of our government and render it a centralized despotism, than any other man could do, we certainly believe. But our correspondent and we would probably disagree with regard to the Bank and other questions which con vulsed the Union during his rule, and we will only ask his attention to one of them, the earliest, and, in our view, the most significant. The Cherokee Indians owned, and had ever occupied, an extensive tract of country lying within the geographical limits of Georgia, Alabama, &b. It was theirs by the best possible title — theirs by our solemn and reiterated Treaty stipulations. We had repeatedly bought from them slices of their lands, solemnly guarantying to them all that we did not buy, and agreeing to de fend them therein against all agressors. We had promised to keep all intrud ers out of their territory. At least one of these Treaties was signed by Geu, Jackson himself ; Others by Washington, Jefferson, Ao, All the usual pre texts for agression upon Indians failed in this case. The Cherokees had been our friends and allies for many years ; they had committed no depredations ; they were peaceful, industrious, in good part Christianized, had a newspaper printed in their own tongue, and were fast improving in the knowledge and application of the arts of civiliied life. They compared favorably every way with their white neighbors. But the Georgians coveted their fertile lands, and determined to have them ; they set them up in a lottery and gambled them off among themselves, and resolved to take possession. A fraudulent Treaty was made between a few Cherokees of no authority or consideration and sundry white agents, including one ' who stole the livery of Heaven to servo the devil in,' but everybody scoffed at this mockery, as did ninety-nine hundredths of the Cherokees, Now Georgia, during Mr, Adams' Administration, attempted to extend her jurisdiction over these poor people, Mr, Adams, finding remonstrance of no avail, stationed a part of the army at a proper point, prepared to drive all intruders out of the Cherokee country, as we had by treaty solemnly engaged to do. This answered the purpose, Georgia blustered, but dared not go fur- 80 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. ther. She went em. masse for Jackson, of course. When he came in, she pro ceeded at once to extend her jurisdiction over the Cherokees in very deed. They remonstrated— pointed to their broken treaties, and urged the President to perform his sworn duty, and protect them, but in vain, Georgia seized a Cherokee accused of killing another Cherokee in their own country, tried him for and convicted him of murder. He sued out a writ of error, carried the ease up to the U. S. Supreme Court, and there obtained a decision in his favor, establishing the utter illegality as well as injustice of the acts of Georgia in the premises, tho validity of our treaties with the Cherokees, and the conse quent duty of the President to see them enforced, any thing in auy State-law or edict to the contrary notwithstanding, was explicitely affirmed. But Presi dent Jackson decided that Georgia' was right and the Supreme Court wrong, and refused to enforce the decision of the latter. So the Court was defied, the Cherokee hung, the Cherokee country given up to the- cupidity of the Geor gians, and its rightful owners driven across the Mississippi, virtually at the point of the bayonet. That case changed the nature of our Government, making the President Supreme Judge of the Law as well as its Chief Min ister — in other words. Dictator, " Amen ! Hurrah for Jackson !" said the Pharisaic Democracy of Party and Spoils. We could not say it after them. We considered our nation perjured in the trampling down and exile of these Cherokees ; perjury would have lain heavy on our soul had we approved and promoted the deed. On another occasion, when SUas Wright was nominated for Gov ernor of the State of New York, the Tribune broke forth : " The ' notorious Seventeen ' — ^what New-Yorker has not heard of them ? — ^yet how small a proportion of our present voting population re tain a vivid and distinct recoUection of the outrage on Eepublican- ism and Popular Eights which made the ' Seventeen' so unenvi.ably notorious ! The Editor of the Tribune is of that proportion, be it small or large. Though a boy in 1824, and living a mUe across the Vermont line of the State, he can never forget the indignation awakened by that outrage, which made him for ever an adversary of the Albany Eegency and the demagogues who here and else where made use of the terms ' Democracy,' ' Democrats,' ' Demo cratic party,' to hoodwink and cajole the credulous and unthinking — to divert their attention from things to names — to divest them of independent and manly thought, and lead them blindfold wherever the intriguers' interests shaU dictate — ^to establish a real Aristocracy under the abused name of Democracy. It was 1824 whioh taught many beside us the nature of this swindle, and fired them with un- IMPATIENT TO BEGIN HIS APPRENTICESHIP. 81 conquerable zeal and resolution to defeat the fraud by exposing it to the apprehension of a duped and betrayed people." These extracts wUl assist the reader to recall the political excite ments of the time. And he may well esteem it extraordinary for a boy of thirteen — an age 'when a boy is, generaUy, most a boy — to understand them so well, and to be interested in them so deeply. It should be remembered, however, that in remote country places, where the topics of conversation are few, all the people take a de gree of interest in politics, and talk about political questions with a frequency and pertinacity of which the busy inhabitants of cities can form little idea. Horace's last year in Westhaven (182S) wore slowly away. He had exhausted the schools ; he was impatient to be at the types, and he wearied his father with importunities to get him a place in a printing-office. But his father was loth to let him go, for two reasons : the boy was useful at home, and the cautious father feared he would not do weU away fi'om home; he was so gentle, so ab sent, so awkward, so littie calculated to make his way with stran-' gers. One day, the boy saw in the " Northern Spectator,'' a weekly paper, puhUshed at East Poultney, eleven mUes distant, an adver tisement for an apprentice in the office of the " Spectator " itself. He showed it to his father, and ¦wrung from Mm a reluctant con sent to his applying for the place. "I have n't got time to go and see about it, Horace ; but if you have a mind to walk over to Poult ney and see what you can do, why you may." Horace had a mind to. 4* CHAPTER VI. APPRENTICESHIP. The Village of East Poultney— Horace applies for the Place— Scene in the Garden — He makes an Impression — A difficulty arises and ia overcome — He enters the office— Rite of Initiation— Horace the Victor— His employer's recollections of him —The Pack of Cards— Horace begins to paragraph— Joins the Debating Society— His manner of Debating— Horace and the Dandy— His noble conduct to bia father— His flrst glimpse of Saratoga— His manners at the Table — Becomes the Town-Encyclopedia — The Doctor's Story — Recollections of one of his fellow ap- "prenticea — Horace's favorite Poets — Politics of the time — The Anti-Maaon Excite ment—The Northern Spectator stops — The Apprentice is Free. East Podltney is not, decidedly not, a place which a traveler — if, by any extraordinary chance, a traveler should ever visit it — would naturally suspect of a newspaper. But, in one of the most densely-populated parts of the city of New York, there is a field ! — a veritable, indubitable fleld, with a cow in it, a rough wooden fence around it, and a small, low, wooden house in the middle of it, where an old gentleman lives, who lived there when all was rural around him, and who means to live there all his days, pasturing hia cow and raising his potatoes on ground which he could sell — but won't — at a considerable number of dollars per foot. The field in the metropolis we can account for. But that a newspaper should ever have been published at East Poultney, Eutland county, Ver mont, seems, at the flrst view of it, inexplicable. Vermont, however, is a land of villages ; and the business which is elsewhere done only in large towns is, in that State, divided among the viUages in the country. Thus, the stranger is astonished at seeing among the few signboards of mere hamlets, one or two containing most unexpected and metropolitan announcements, such as, "Silversmith," "Organ Faotoey," "Piano Foetes," "Peint- iNG Office," or " Patent Melodeons." East Poultney, for example, is little more than a hamlet, yet it once had a newspaper, and boasts a small factory of melodeona at this moment. A foreigner THE VILLAGE OF EAST POULTNEY. 83 Would as soon expect to see there an Italian opera house or a French cafe. The Poultney river is a smaU stream that flows through a valley, which widens and narrows, narrows and widens, all along its course ; here, a rocky gorge ; a grassy plain, beyond. At one of its narrow places, where the two ranges of hiUs approach and nod to one another, and where the river pours through a rocky channel — a torrent on a very small scale — the little village nestles, a cluster of houses at the base of an enormous hill. It is built round a smaU triangular green, in the middle of which is a church, with a hand some clock in its steeple, aU complete except the works, and bear ing on its ample face the date, 1805. No ¦viUage, ho-Wever minute, can get on without three churches, representing the Conservative, the Enthusiastic, and Eccentric tendencies of human nature ; and, of course. East Poultney has three. It has likewise the most remarkably shabby and dUapidated school-house in all the country round. There is a store or two; but business is not brisk, and when a customer arrives in town, perhaps, hia first difficulty will be to find the storekeeper, who has looked up his store and gone to hoe in hia garden or talk to the blacksmith. A tavern, a furnace^ a saw-mill, and forty dwelling houses, nearly complete the inventory Of the village. The place has a neglected and ' seedy ' aspect which is rare in New England. In that remote and sequestered spot, it seems to have been forgotten, and left behind in the march of prog- reaa ; and the people, giving up the hope and the endeavor to catch up, have aettled down to the tranquU enjoyment of Thinga as they Are. The viUage cemetery, near by, — more populoua far than the village, for the viUage is an old one — is upon the side of a steep ascent, and whole ranks of gravestones bow, submissive to the law of gravitation, and no man sets them upright. A quiet, slow little place is East Poultney. Thirty years ago, the people were a little more wide awake, and there were a few more of them. It was a fine spring morning in the year 1826, about ten o'clock, when Mr. Amos Bliss, the manager, and one of the proprietors, of the Northem Spectator, 'might have been seen' in the garden be hind his house planting potatoes. He heard the gate open behind him, and, without turning or looking round, became dimly conscious of the presence of a boy, But the boys of country villages go into 84 APPRENTICESHIP. whosesoever garden their wandering fancy impels them, and suppos ing this boy to be one of his own neighbors, Mr. Bliss continued his -work and quickly forgot that he was not alone. In a few min utes, he heard a voice close behind him, a strange voice, high- pitched and whining. It said, " Are you the man that carries on the printing office ?" Mr, Bliss then turned, and resting, upon his hoe, surveyed the per- • son who had thus addressed him. He saw standing before him a boy apparently about fifteen years of age, of a light, tall, and slen der form, dressed in the plain, farmer's cloth of the time, his gar ments cut with an utter disregard of elegance and fit. His trou sers were exceedingly short and voluminous ; he wore no stockings ; his shoes were of -the kind denominated 'high-lows,' and much worn down ; Ms hat was of felt, ' one of the old stamp, with so smaU a brim, that it looked more like a two-quart measure inverted than anything else ;' and it was worn far back on his head ; his hair was white, with a tinge of orange at its extremities, and it lay thinly upon a broad forehead and over a head ' rocking on shouldera which seemed too slender to support the weight of a member so disproportioned to the general outline.' The general effect of the figure and its costume was so outre, they presented such a combina tion of the rustic and ludicrous, and the apparition had come upon him so suddenly, that the amiable gardener could scarcely keep from laughing. He restrained himself, however, and replied, " Yes, I 'm the man.'' Whereupon the stranger asked, " Don't you want a boy to learn the trade?" " WeU," said Mr. BUss, " we have been thinking of it. Do you want to learn to print ?" " I 've had some notion of it," said the boy in true Yankee fash ion, as though he had not been dreaming about it, and longing for it for years. Mr. BUss was both astonished and puzzled— astonished that such a fellow as the boy looJced to be, should have ever thought of learn ing to print, and puzzled how to convey to him an idea of the ab surdity of the notion. So, with an, expresssion in his countenance, such as that of a tender-hearted dry-goods merchant mjght be sup- HORACE APPLIES FOR THE PLACE. 85 posed to assume if a hod-carrier should apply for a place in the lace department, he said, " Well, my boy — but, you know, it takes con siderable learning to be a printer. Have you been to school much ?" " No," said the boy, " I hav 'nt had much chance at school. I 've read some." "What have you read ?" asked Mr. Bliss. "WeU, I 've read some history, and some travels, and a little of most everything." " Where do you live ?" " At Westhaven.'' "How did you come over?" " I came on foot." "What's your name?" " Horace Greeley." Now it happened that Mr. Amos Bliss had been for the last three years an Inspector of Common Schools, and in fulfiUing the duties of his office — examining and Ucensing teachers — ^he had acquired an uncommon facility in asking questions, and a fondness for that ex ercise which men generally entertain for any employment in which they.suppose themselves to excel. The youth before him was — in the language of medical students — a ' fresh subject,' and the Inspector proceeded to try aU his skill upon him, advancing from easy ques tions to hard ones, up to those knotty problems with whioh he had been wont to ' stump' candidates for the office of teacher. The boy was a match for him. He answered every question promptly, clearly aind modestly. He could not be ' stumped' in the ordinary school studies; and of the books he had read he could gi've a correct and complete analysis. In Mr. Bliss's o'wn account of the inter view, he says, " On entering into conversation, and a partial exam ination of the qualifications of my new applicant, it reqnired but little time to discover that he possessed a mind of no cominon order, and an aCqufred inteUigence far beyond his years. He had had but Uttle opportunity at the common school, but he said ' he had read some,' and what he had read he weU understood and remembered. In addition to the ripe intelligence manifested in one so young, and whose instruction had been so limited, there was a single-minded- ness, a truthfulness and common sense in what he said, that at once commanded my regard." 86 APPRENTICESHIP. After half an hour's conversation with the boy, Mr. Bliss intimat ed that he thought he woul;^ do, and told him to go into the print ing-office and taUi to the foreman. Horace went to the printing- office, and there his appearance produced an effect on the tender minds of the three apprentices who were at work therein, which can be much better imagined than described, and which is most ¦vividly remembered by the two who survive. To the foreman Horace addressed himself, regardless certainly, oblivious probably, of the stare and the remarks of the boys. . The foreman, at first, was inclined to wonder that Mr. BUss should, for one moment, think it possible that a boy got up in that style could perform the most ordinary duties of a printer's apprentice. Ten minutes' talk with him, however, effected a partial revolution in Ms mind in the boy's favor, and aa he was greatly in want of another apprentice, he was not inclined to be over- particular. He tore off a slip of proof-paper, wrote a few words upon it hastily with a peneU, and told the boy to take it to Mr. BUss. That piece of paper was his fate. The words were : ' Guess we 'd better try him.'' Away went Horace to the garden, and presented his paper. Mr. Bliss, whose curiosity had been excited to a high pitch by the extraordinary contrast between the appearance of the boy and his real quaUty, now entered into a long conversation ¦with him, questioned him respecting his history, his past employments^ his parents, their oir- cumstances, his own intentions and wishes ; and the longer he talk ed, the more his admiration grew. The result was, that he agreed to accept Horaee as an apprentice, provided his father would agree to the usual terms ; and then, with eager steps, and a light heart, the happy boy took the dusty road that led to his home in West haven. "You're not going to hire that tow-head, Mr. Bliss, are you?" asked one of the apprentices at the close of the day. " I am," was the reply, " and if you boys are expecting to get any fun out of him, you 'd better get it quick, or you '11 be too late. There 's some thing in that tow-head, as you '11 find out before you 're a week older." A day or two after Horace packed up his wardrobe in a small' cotton handkerchief. Small as it was, it would have held more ; for its proprietor never had more than two shirts, and one change A DIFFICULTY ARISES AND IS OVERCOME. 87 of outer-clothing, at the same time, tiU he was of age. Father and son walked, side by side, to Poultney, the boy carrying his possess ions upon a stick over his shoulder. At Poultney, an unexpected difficulty arose, which for a time made Horace tremble in his high-low shoes. The terms proposed by Mr. Bliss were, that the boy should be bound for five years, and receive his board and twenty doUars a year. Now, Mr. Greeley had ideas of his own on the subject of apprenticeahip, and he objected to this proposal, and to every particular of it. In the first place, he had determined that no chUd of his should ever be bound at aU. In the second place, he thought five years an unreasonable time ; thirdly, he considered that twenty dollars a year and board was a compen sation ridiculously disproportionate to the services which Horace would be required to render ; and finally, on each and all of these points, he clung to his opinion with the tenacity of a Greeley. Mr. Bliss appealed to the estabUshed custom of the country ; five years was the usual period ; the compensation offered was the regular thing ; the binding was a point essential to the employer's interest. And at every pauae in the conversation, the appealing voice of Hor ace was heard : " Father, I guess you 'd better make a bargain with Mr. Bliss;'' or, ''Father, I guess it won't make much difference ;" or, "Don't you think you'd better do it, father?" At one mo ment the boy was reduced to despair. Mr. Blias had given it aa Ms ultimatum that the proposed binding was absolutely indispensa ble ; he*' could do business in no other way." " WeU, then, Hor ace," said the father, "let us go home." The father turned to go ; but Horace lingered; he could not give it up; and so the father turned again ; the negotiation was re-opened, and after a prolonged discussion, a compromise waa effected. What the terms were, that were flnaUy agreed to, I cannot positively state, for the three me moirs which I have consulted upon the subjeet give three different replies. Probably, however, they were — no binding, and no money for six months ; then the boy could, if he chose, bind himself for the remainder of the five years, at forty dollars a year, the appren tice to be boarded from the beginning. And so the father went home, and the son went stmght to the printing office and took his first lesson in the art of setting type. A few months after, it may be as well to mention here, Mr. m APPRENTICESHIP. Greeley removed to Erie county, Pennsylvania, and bought some wUd land there, from which he gradually created a farm, leaving Horace alone in Vermont. Grass now grows where the littie house stood in Westhaven, in which the family Uved longest, and the barn in which they stored their hay and kept their cattle, leans forward like a kneeling elephant, and lets in the dayUght through ten thousand apertures. But the neighbors point out the tree that stood before their front door, and the tree that shaded the kitchen window, and the tree that stood behind the house, and the tree whose apples Horace liked, and the bed of mint with which he re galed hia nose. And both the people of Westhaven and those of Amherst assert that whenever the Editor of the Tribune revisits the scenes of his early life, at the season when apples are ripe, one of the things that he is surest to do, is to; visit the apple trees that produce the fruit which he liked best when he' was a boy, and which he still prefers before all the apples of the world. The new apprentice took his place at the font, and received from the foreman his ' copy,' composing stick, and a few words of in struction, and then he addressed himself to his task. He needed no further assistance. The mysteries of the craft he seemed to comprehend intuitively. He had thought of his chosen vocation for many years ; he had formed a notion how the types must be ar ranged in order to produce the desired impression, and, therefore, all he had to acquire was manual dextenty. In perfect silence, without looking to the right hand or to the left, heedless" of the sayings and doings of the other apprentices, though they were bent on mischief, and tried to attract and distract his attention, Hor ace worked on, hour after hour, all that day ; and when he left the office at night could set type better and faster than many an ap prentice who had had a month's practice. The next day, he worked with the same silence and intensity. The boys were puzzled. They thought it absolutely incumbent on them to perform an initiat ing rite of some kind ; but the new boy gave them no handle, no excuse, no opening. He committed no greenness, he spoke to no one, looked at no one, seemed utterly oblivious of every thing save only his copy and his type. They threw type at him, but he never looked around. They talked saucily at him, but he threw back no retort. This would never do. Towards the close of the third daiy. HIS EMPLOYEfe's RECOLLECTIONS OP HIM, 89 ' the oldest apprentices took one of the large black balls with whioh printers used to dab the ink upon the type, and remarking that in his opinion Horace's hair was of too light a hue for so black an art as that which he had undertaken to learn, appUed the ball, well inked, to Horace's head, making four distinct dabs. The boys, the journeyman, the pressman and the editor, all paused in their work to observe the result of this experiment. Horace neither spoke nor moved. He went on with his work as though nothing had happened, and soon after went to the tavern where he boarded, and spent an hour in purifying his dishonored locks. And that was all the ' fun ' the boys ' got out ' of their new companion on that occasion. They were conquered. In a few days the victor and the vanquished were excellent friends. Horace was now fortunately situated. Ampler means of acquir ing knowledge were within his reach than he had ever before en joyed ; nor were there wanting opportunities for the display of his acquisitions and the exercise of his powers. " About this time," writes Mr, Bliss, " a sound, well-read theologian and a practical printer was employed to edit and conduct the paper. This opened a desirable school for intellectual culture to our young debutant. Debates en sued ; historical, political, and religious questions were discussed i and often while all hands were engaged at the font of types ; and here the purpose for whioh our young aspirant " had read some " was made manifest. Such was the correctness of his memory in what he had read, in both biblical and pro fane histor^That the reverend gentleman was often put at fault by his correc tions. He always quoted chapter and verse to prove the point in dispute. On one occasion the editor said that money waa the root of all evil, when he was corrected by the ' devil,' who said he believed it read in the Bible that the love of money was the root of all evil, " A small town library gave him access to books, by which, together with the reading of the exchange papers of the office, he improved all hia leisure hours. He became a frequent talker in our village lyoeum, and often wrote dissertations, "In the first organization of our village temperance society, the question arose as to the age when the young might become members. Fearing lest his own age might bar him, he moved that they be received when they were old enough to drink-^which was adopted nem. can. " Though modest and retiring, he was often led into political discissions with our ablest politicians, aad few would leave the field without feeling in- 90 APPRENTICESHIP. structed by the soundness of his views and the unerring correctness of his statements of political events. " Having a thirst for knowledge, he bent his mind and all his energies to its acquisition, with unceasing application and untiring devotion ; and I doubt if, in the whole term of his apprenticeship, he ever spent an hour in the common recreations of young men. He used to pass my door as he went to his daily meals, and though I often sat near, or stood in the way, so much absorbed did he appear in his own thoughts — his head bent forward and his eyes fixed upon the ground, that I have the charity to believe the reason why ho never turned his head or gave me a look, was because he had no idea I was there !" On one point the reminiscences of Mr. Bliss require correction. He thinks that hia apprentice never spent an hour in the common recreations of young men during hia residence in Poultney. Mr. BUss, however, was his senior and his employer ; and therefore observed him at a distance and from above. But I, who have con versed with those who were the friends and acquaintances of the youth, can tell a better story. He had a remarkable fondness for games of mingled skill and chance, such as whist, draughts, chess, and others ; and the office was never without its dingy pack of cards, carefully concealed from the reverend editor and the serious customers, but brought out from its hiding-place whenever the coast was clear and the boys had a leisure hour. Horace never gambled, nor would he touch the cards on Sunday ; but the deUght of playing a game occasionally was heightened, perhaps,'^l^he fact that in East Poultney a pack of cards was regarded as a thing ac cursed, not fit for saintly hands to touch. Bee-hunting, too, con tinued to be a favorite amusement with Horace. " He was always ready for a bee-hunt," aaya one who knew him well in Poultney, and bee-hunted with him often in the wooda above the village. To finish with this matter of amusement, I may mention that a danc ing-school was held occasionaUy at the village-tavern, and Horace waa earnestly (ironically, perhaps) urged to join it; but he refused. Not that he disapproved of the dance — that best of all home recrea tions — but he fancied he was not exactiy the figure for a quadrille. He occasionaUy looked in at the door of the dancmg-room, bnt never could be prevailed upon to enter it. Until he came to Uve at Poultney, Horace had never tried his hand JOINS A DEBATING SOCIETY. 91 at original composition. The injurious practice of writing ' compo sitions' was not among the exercises of any of the schools which he had attended. At Poultney, very early in his apprenticeship, he began, not indeed to write, but to compose paragraphs for the pa per as he stood at the desk, and to set them in type as he composed them. They were generally itema of newa condensed from large articles in the exchange papers ; but occasionally he composed an original paragraph of some length ; and he continued to render edi torial assistance of this kind all the whUe he remained in the office. The ' Northern Spectator' was an ' Adams paper,' and Horace was an Adams man. The Debating Society, to which Mr. Bliss alludes, was an impor tant feature in the life of East Poultney. There happened to be among the residents of the place, during the apprenticeship of Hor ace Greeley, a considerable number of inteUigent men, men of some knowledge and talent— the editor of the paper, the village doctor, a county judge, a clergyman or two, two or three persons of some political eminence, a few well-informed mechanics, farmers, and others. These gentlemen had formed themselves into a ' Lyceum,' before the arrival of Horace, and the Lyceum had become so famous in the neighborhood, that people frequently came a distance of ten mUes to attend its meetings. It assembled weekly, in the winter, at the little brick school-house. An original essay was read by the i^nber whose ' turn ' it was to do so, and then the question of the evIBig was debated ; first, by four members who had been designated at the previous meeting, and after they had each spoken once, the question waa open to the whole society. The questions were mostly of a very innocent and rndimental oharacter, as, ' Is novel-reading injurious to society?' 'Has a person a right to take life in seK-defence ?' 'Is marriage conducive to happiness V ' Do we, as a nation, exert a good moral influence in the world?' 'Do either of the ^reat parties of the day carry out the principles of the Declaration of Independence ?' ' la the Union likely to be perpetu ated ?' ' Was Napoleon Bonaparte a great man V ' Is it a person's duty to take the temperance pledge ?' et cetera. Horace joined the society, the first winter of his residence in Poultney, and, young as he was, soon became one of its leading members. " He was a real giant at the Debating Society," says /P2 APPRENTICESHIP. one of his early admirers. "Whenever he was appointed to spe^' or to read an essay, he never wanted to be excused ; he was always ready. He was exceedingly interested in the questions which he discussed, and stuck to his opinion against all opposition — not dis courteously, but still he sii.c'k to it, replying with the most perfect assurance to men of high station and of low. He had one advan tage over all his feUow members; it was his memory. He had read everything, and remembered the minutest detaUs of important events ; dates, names, places, figures, statistics— nothing had escaped him. He was never treated as a boy in the society, but as a man and an equal ; and his opinions were considered with as much de ference as those of the judge or the sheriff — more, I think. To the graces of oratory he made no pretence, but he was a fluent and interesting speaker, and had a way of giving an unexpected turn to the debate by reminding members of a fact, well known bnt over looked ; or by correcting a mi squotation, or by appealing to what are called flrst principles. He was an opponent to be afraid of ; yet his sincerity and his earnestness were so e'vident, that those whom he most signally floored liked him none the less for it. He never lost hia temper. In short, he spoke in his sixteenth year just as he speaks now ; and when he came a year ago to lecture in a neighhoring viUage, I saw before me the Horace Greeley of the old Poultney 'Forum,' as we called it, and no other." It is hardly necessary to record, that Horace neve^^ade the slightest preparation for the meetings of the DebatiriProciety in the way of dress — except so far as to put on his jacket. In the summer, he was accustomed to wear, while at work, two garments, a shirt and trowsers ; and when the reader considers that his trow- sers were very short, his sleeves tucked up above hia elbows, his shirt open in front, he wiU have before his mind's eye the picture of a youth attired with extreme simplicity. In his walks about the vUlage, he added to his dress a straw hat, valued originally at one shilling. In the winter, his clothing was really insufficient. So, at least, thought a kind-hearted lady who used to see him pass her window on his way to dinner. "He never," she says, "had an overcoat while he lived here ; and I used to pity him so much in cold weather. I remember him as a slender, pale little fellow, younger looking than he really was, iri a brown jacket much too His FIRST CJLIMPSE AT SARATOGA. 93 .ehort for him. I used to think the winds vvould blow him away sometimes, as he crept along the fence lost, in- thought, with his head down, and his hands in Ms pockets. He was often laughed at for his homely dress, by the boys. Once, when a very interest ing question was to be debated at the school-house, a young man who was noted among us for the elegance of his dress and the length of his account at the store, advised Horace to get a new ' rig out' for the occasion, particularly as he was to lead one of the sides, and an unusually large audience was expected to be present, ' No,' said Horace, ' I guess I 'd better wear my old clothes than run in debt for new ones.' " Now, forty dollars a year is sufficient to provide a boy, in the country with good and substantial clothing ; half the sum will keep him warm and decent. The reader, therefore, may be inclined to censure the young debater for his apparent pai'simony ; or worse, for an insolent disregard of the feelings of others; or, wm'st, for a pride that aped humUity. The reader, if that be the present ineUnation of his mind, will perhaps experience a revulsion of feeling when he is informed — as I now do inform him, and on the best authority — that every doUar of the apprentice's little stipend which he could save by the most rigid economy, was piously sent to his father, who was struggling in the wilderness on the other side of the AUeghanies, with the difficulties of a new farm, and an insufficient capital. And this was the practice of Horace Greeley during all the years of his apjjggnticeship, and for years afterwards ; as long, in fact, as hia father's land was unpaid for and inadequately provided with implements, buildings, and stock. At a time when fllial piety may be reckoned among the extinct virtues, it is a pleasure to record a fact like this. Twice, during his residence at Poultney, Horace visited his parents in Pennsylvania, six hundred mUes distant, walking a great part of the way, and accomplishing the rest on a slow canal boat. On one of these tedious journeys he flrst saw Saratoga, a circum stance to which he alluded seven yeara after, in a fanciful epistle, written from that famous watering-place, and published in the "New Yorker": "flaraloga ! bright city of the present ! thou ever-during ono-and-twenty 94 APPRENTICESHIP. of existence ! a wanderer by thy stately palaces and gushing fountains salutes thee ! Years, yet not many, have elapsed since, a weary roamer from a dis tant land, he flrst sought thy health-giving waters, November's sky was over earth and him, and more than all, over thee ; and its chilling blasts made mournful melody amid the waving branches of thy ever- verdant pines. Then, as now, thou wert a City of Tombs, deserted by the gay throng whose light laughter re-echoes so joyously through thy summer-robed arbors. But to him, thou wert ever a fairy land, and he wished to quaff of thy Hygeian treasures as of the nectar of the poet's fables. One long and earnest draught, ere its sickening disrelish came over him, and he flung down the cup in the bitterness of disappointment and disgust, and sadly addressed him again to his pedestrian journey. Is it ever thus with thy castles, Imagination 7 thy pictures, Fancy 1 thy dreams, 0 Hope ? Perish the unbidden thought ! A health, in sparkling Congress, to the rainbow of life ! even though its prom ise prove as shadowy as the baseless fabric of a vision. Better even the dear delusion of Hope — if delusion it must be — than the rugged reality of listless despair, (I think I could do this better in rhyme, if I had not tres passed in that line already. However, the cabin-conversation of a, canal- packet is not remarkably favorable to poetry,) In plain prose, there is a great deal of mismanagement about this same village of Saratoga, The sea son gives up the ghost too easily," &e., &e. During the four years that Horace lived at East Poultney, he boarded for some time at the tavern, which stiU affords entertain ment for man and beast — i. e. pedler and horse— in that viUage. It was kept by an estimable couple, who became exceedingly at tached to their singular guest, and he to them. Their recoUections of him are to the foUo^wing effect :— Horace at that time ate and drank whatever was placed before him ; he was rather fond of good living, ate furiously, and fast, and much. He was very fond of coffee, but cared Uttie for tea. Every oHe drank in those days, and there was a great deal of drinking at the tavern, but Horace never could be tempted to taste a drop of anything intoxicating. " I always," said the kind landlady, " took a great interest in young people, and when I saw they were going wrong, it used to distress me, no matter whom they belonged to ; but I never feared for Horace. Whatever might be going on about the vUlage or in the bar-room, I always knew he would do right." He stood on no ceremony at the table ; he fell to witiiout waiting to be asked or helped, devoured every thing right and left, stopped as suddenly as he had begun, and THE doctor's STORY. 95 vanished instantiy. One day, as Horace was stretching his long arm over to the other side of the table in quest of a distant dish, the servant, wishing to hint to him in a jocular manner, that that was not exactly the most proper way of proceeding, said, " Don't trouble yourself, Horace, /want to help you to that dish, for, you know, I have a particular regard for yon." He blushed, as only a boy with a very white face can bluah, and, thenceforth, waa leaa adventurous in exploring the remoter portions of the table-cloth. "When any topic of intereat was started at the table, he joined in it with the utmost confidence, and maintained Ms opimon against anybody, talking with great vivacity, and never angrUy. He came, at length, to be regarded as a sort of Town Encyclopedia, and if any one wanted to know anything, he went, as a matter of course, to Horace Greeley ; and, if a dispute arose between two individuals, respecting a point of history, or polities, or science, they referred it to Horace Greeley, and whomsoever hs declared to be right, was confessed to te the 'victor in the controversy. Horace never went to a tea-drinking or a party of any kind, never went on an excur sion, never slept away from home or was absent from one meal during the period of his residence at the tavern, except when he went to ¦visit his parents. He seldom went to church, bnt spent tie Sunday, usually, in reading. He was a stanch Univeraaliat, a stanch whig, and a pre-eminently stanch anti-Mason. Thus, the landlord and landlady. Much of this is curiously confirmed by a story often told in con vivial moments by a distinguished physician of New York, who on one occasion chanced to witness at the Poultney tavern the ex ploits, gastronomic and encyclopedic, to which allusion haa juat been made. "Did I ever teU you," he is wont to begin, " how and where I flrst saw my friend Horace Greeley ? WeU, thus it hap pened. It waa one of the proudeat and happiest days of my life. I was a country boy then, a farmer's son, and we Uved a few milea from East Poultney. On the day in question I was sent by my father to sell a load of potatoes at the store in East Poultney, and bring back varioua commodities in exchange. Now this was the first time, you must know, that I had ever been entrusted with so important an errand. I had been to the viUage with my father often enough, but now I was to go alone, and I felt as proud and 96 APPRENTICESHIP. independent as a midshipman the first time he goes ashore in com mand of a boat. Big with the fate of twenty bushels of potatoes, off I drove — reached the village — sold out my load — drove round to the tavern — put up my horses, and went in to dinner. This going to the tavern on my own account, all by myself, and paying my own biU, was, I thought, the crowniag glory of the whole adventure. There were a good many people at dinner, the sheriff of the county and an ex-member of Congress among them, and I felt considerably abashed at first ; but I had scarcely begun to eat, when my eyes fell upon an object so singular that I could do little else than stare at it all the while it remained in the room. It was a tall, pale, white-haired, gawky boy, seated at the further end of the table. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and he was eating with a rapidity and awkwardness that I never saw equaled before nor since. It seem ed as if he was eating for a wager, and had gone in to win. He neither looked up nor roue 2, nor appeared to pay the least attention to the conversation. My first thought was, ' This is a pretty sort of a tavern to let such a fellow as that sit at the same table with all these gentlemen ; he ought to come in with the ostler.' I thought it strange, too, that no one seemed to notice him, and I supposed, he owed his continuance at the table to that circumstance alone. And so I sat, eating little myself, and occupied in watching the won derful performance of this wonderful youth. At length the conver sation at the table became quite animated, turning upon some measure of an early Congress ; and a question arose how certain members had voted on its final passage. There was a difference of opinion; and the sheriff, a very finely-dressed personage, I thought, to my boundless astonishment, referred the matter to the unaccountable Boy, saying, 'Aint that right, Greeley?' 'No,' said the Unaccountable, without looking up, 'you 're wrong.' 'There,' said the ex-member, 'I told you so.' 'And you're wrong, too,' said the stUl-devouring Mystery. Then he laid down his knife and fork, and gave the history of the measure, explained the state of parties at the time, stated the vote in dispute, named the leading advocates and opponents of the bill, and, in short, gave a complete exposition of the whole matter. I Ustened and won dered ; but what surprised me most was, that the company receiv ed his statement as pure gospel, and as, settiing the question be- KBCOLLECTIONS of one OP HIS FELLOW APPRENTICES. 97 yond dispute — as a dictionary settles a dispute respecting the speU ing of a word. A minute after, the boy left the dining-room, and I never saw him again, till I met him, years after, in the streets of New York, when I claimed acquaintance with him as a brother Vermonter, and told him this story, to his great amusement." One of his fellow-apprentices favors me with some interesting reminiscences. He says, "I was a fellow-^apprentice with Horace Greeley at Poultney for nearly two years. We boarded together during that period at four different places, and we were constantly together." The foUowing passage from a letter from this early friend of our hero will be welcome to the reader, notwithstanding its repetitions of a few facts already known to him : — Little did the inhabitants of Bast Poultney, where Horace Greeley went to reside iu April, 1826, as an apprentice to the printing business, dream of the potent influence he was a few years later destined to exert, not only upon the politics of a neighboring State, but upon the noblest and grandest philan thropic enterprises of the age. He was then a remarkably plain-looking unso phisticated lad of fifteen, with u, slouching, careless gait, leaning away for ward as he walked, as if both his head and his heels wore too heavy for hia body. He wore a wool hat of the old stamp, with so small a brim, that it looked more like a two-quart measure inverted than a hat ; and he had a sin gular, whining voice that provoked the merriment of the older apprentices, who had hardly themselves outgrown, in their brief village residence, similar pecu liarities of country breeding. But the rogues could not help pluming themselves upon their superior manners and position ; and it must be confessed that the young 'stranger ' was mercilessly ' taken in ' by his elders in the office, when ever an opportunity for a practical joke presented itself. But these things soon passed away, and as Horace was seen to be an un usually intelligent and honest lad, he came to be better ap{)reciated. The office in which he was employed was that of the " Northem Spectator," a weekly paper then published by Messrs, Bliss & Dewey, and edited by E. G. Stone, brother to the late CoL Stone of the N. Y, Commercial Advertiser, The new comer boarded in Mr. Stone's family, by whom he was well esteemed for his boyish integrity ; and Mr, S, on examination found him better skilled in Eng lish grammar, even at that early age, than were the majority of school teach ers in those times. His superior intelligence also strongly commended him to the notice of Amos Bliss, Esq,, one of the firm already mentioned, then and now a highly-respectable merchant of East Poultney, who has marked with pride and pleasure every successive step of the ' Westhaven boy,' from that day to this, 5 98 APPRENTICESHIP. In consequence of the change of proprietorsj editors and other things per taining to the management of the Spectator office, Horace had, during the term of his apprenticeship, about as many opportunities of ' boarding round,' a^ ordinarily fall to the lot of a country schoolmaster. In 1827, he boarded at the • Eagle tavern,' whioh was then kept by Mr, Harlow Hosford, and was the head-quarters of social and fashionable life in that pleasant old village. There the balls and village parties were had, there the oysters suppers came off, and there the lawyers, politicians and village oracles nightly congregated, Horace was uo hand for ordinary boyish sports ; the rough and tumble games of wrestling, running, etc., he had no relish for ; bnt he was a diligent student in his leisure hours,, and eagerly read everything in the way of books and papers that he could lay his hands on. And it wascurious to see what a power of mental application he had — a power which enabled him, seated in the bar room, (where, perhaps, a dozen people were in earnest conversation,) to pursue imdisturbed the reading of his favorite book, whatever it might be, with evi dently as close attention and as much satisfaction as if he had been seated alone in his chamber. • If there ever was a self-made man, this same Horace Greeley is one, for he had neither wealthy or influential friends, collegiate or academic educar tion, nor anything to start him in the world, save his own native, good sense, an unconquerable love of study, and a determination to win his way by his own efforts. He had, however, a natural aptitude for arithmetical calcula tions, and could easily surpass, in his boyhood, most persons of his age in the facility and accuracy of his demonstrations ; and his knowledge of grammar has been already noted- He early learned to observe and remember political statistics, and the leading men and measures of the political parties, the va rious and multitudinous candidates for governor and Congress, not only in a single State, but in many, and finally in all the States, together with the lo cation and vote of this, that, and the other congressional districts, (whig, dem ocratic and what not,) at all manner of elections. These things he rapidly and easily mastered, and treasured in his capacious memory, till we venture to say he haa few if any equals at this time, in this particular department, in this or any other country. I never knew but one man who approached him in this particular, and that was Edwin Williams, compiler of the N, Y, State Reg ister. Another letter from the same friend contains information still more valuable. " Judging," he writes, " from what I do certainly know of him, I can say that few young men of my' acquaintance grew up. with so much freedom from everything of a vicious and corrupting nature — so strong a resolution to study everything in the way of useful knowledge — and such a quick and clear percep- POLITICS OF THE TIME. 99 tion of the queer and humorous, whether in print or in actual Ufe His love of the poets- — Byron, Shakspeare, etc., discovered itself in boyhood^ — and often have Greeley and I strolled off into the woods, of a warm day, with a volume of Byron or Campbell in our pockets, and reclining in some shady place, read it off to each other by the hour. In this Wiiy, I got such a hold of ' Childe Harold,' the ' Pleas ures of Hope,' and other favorite poems, that considerable portions have remained ever since in my memory. Byron's apoatrophe to the Ocean, and aome things in the [4tb] canto relative to the men and monuments of ancient Italy, were, if I mistake not, Ms special favorites — also the famous description of the great conflict at Waterloo. ' Mazeppa ' waa also a marked favorite. And for many of Mrs. Hemans' poems he had a deep admiration." The letter concludes with an honest burst of indignation; " Knowing Horace Greeley as I do and have done for thirty years, knowing his integrity, purity, and generosity, I can tell yon one thing, and that is, that the contempt with whioh I regard the slan ders of certain papers with respect to Ms conduct, and character, is quite ineiepressible. There is doubtless a proper excuse for the con duct of lunatics, mad dogs, and rattlesnakes ; but I know of no decent, just, or reasonable apology for such meanness (it is a hard ¦word, but a very expresaive one) as the presses aUuded to have exhibited." Horace came to Poultney, an ardent politician ; and the events ¦which occurred during his apprenticeship were not calculated to moderate his zeal, or weaken hia attachment to the party he had chosen. John Quincy Adama was president, Calhoun was vice- president, Henry Clay waa secretary of State. It was one of the best and ablest administrations that had ever ruled in Washington ; and the most unpopular one. It is among the inconveniences ot universal snfiBrage, that the party which comes before the country with the most taking popular Oey is the party which is likeliest to win. During the existence of this administration, the Opposition had a variety of popular Cries which were easy to vociferate, and weU adapted to impose on the unthinking, i. e. the majority. ' Adams had not been elected by the people.' ' Adams had, gained the presidency by a corrupt bai-gain with Henry Clay.' 'Adams was lavish of the public money.' But of all the Cries of the time, 'Hurrah for Jackson' was the most effective. Jackson was a man 100 APPRENTICESHIP. of the people. Jackson was the hero of New Orleans and the con queror of Florida. Jackson was pledged to retrenchment and reform. Against vociferation of this kind, what avaUed the faxt, evident, incontrovertible, that the affairs of the government were conducted with dignity, judgment and moderation?— that the coun try enjoyed prosperity at home, and the respect of the world ? — that the claims of American citizens against foreign governments were prosecuted with diUgence and success ? — that treaties highly advantageous to American interests were negotiated with leading nations in Europe and South America? — that the public revenue ¦ was greater than it had ever been before ? — ^that the resources of the country were made accessible by a liberal system of internal improvement ? — that, nevertheless, there were surplus milUons in the treasury ? — that the administration nobly disdained to employ the executive patronage as a means of securing its continuance in power ? — All this avaUed nothing. ' Hurrah for Jackson ' carried the day. The Last of the Gentlemen of the Eevolutionary school re tired. The era of wire-pulling began. That deadly element was introduced into our political system which rendered it so exquisitely vicious, that thenceforth it worked to corruption by an irreaistible necessity ! It is called Eotation in Office. It is embodied iu the maxim, ' To the victors belong the spoils.' It has made the word office-holder synonymous with the word sneak. It has thronged the capital with greedy sycophants. It has made politics a game of cunning, with enough of chance in it to render it interesting to the low crew that play. It has made the president a pawn with which to make the firat move — a puppet to keep the people amused while their pockets are picked. It haa excluded from the service of the State nearly every man of abiUty and worth, and enabled bloated and beastly demagogues, without a ray of talent, without a senti ment of magnammity, ilUterate, vulgar, insensible to shame, to exert a power in this republic, which its greatest statesmen in their gi'eatest days never wielded. In the loud contentions of the period, the reader can easily be lieve that our argumentative apprentice took an intense intereat. The vUlage of Eaat Poultney cast little more — ^if any more — ^than half a dozen votes for Jackson, but how much tMs result was owing to the efforts of Horace Greeley cannot now be ascertained. All THE ANTI-MASON EXCITEMENT. 101 agree that he contributed his full share to the general babble which the election of a President provokes. During the whole adminis tration of Adams, the revision of the tariff with a view to the bet ter protection of American manufactures was among the most prominent topics of public and private discussion. It was about the year 1827 that the Masonic excitement arose. Militaiy men teU ns that the bravest regiments are subject to panic. Eegiments that bear upon their banners the most honorable distinc tions, whose colors are tattered with the buUets of a hundred fights, wUl on a sudden falter in the charge, and fly, like a pack of cowards, from a danger which a pack of cowards might face with out ceasing to be thought cowards. SimUar to these causeless and irresistible panics of war are those frenzies of fear and fury mingled which sometimes come over the mind of a nation, and make it for a time incapable of reason and regardleaa of juatioe. Such seems to have been the nature of the anti-Masomc mania which raged in tho Northern States from the year 1827. A man named Morgan, a printer, had published, for gain, a book in which the harmless secrets of the Order of Free Masons, of which he was a member, were divulged. PnbUc curiosity cauaed the book to have an immense sale. Soon after its pnbUcation, Morgan an nounced another volume which was to reveal unimagined horrors ; but, before the book appeared, Morgan disappeared, and neither ever came to light. Now arose the queation. What became of Mor gan f and it rent the nation, for a time, into two imbittered and angry factions. " Morgan !" said the Free Masons, " that perjured traitor, died and waa buried in the natural and ordinary fashion." "Morgan!" said the anti-Masons, "that martyred patriot, waa drag ged from his home by Masonic ruffians, taken in the dead of night to the shores of the Niagara river, murdered, and thrown into the rapids." It is impossible for any one to conceive the utter delirium into which the people in some parts of the country were thrown by the agitation of this subject. Books were written. Papers were established. Exhibitions were got up, in which the Masonic cere monies were caricatured or imitated. Families were divided. Fa thers -disinherited then- sons, and sons forsook their fathers. Elec tions were influenced, not town and county elections merely, but State and national elections. There were Masonic candidates and 102 APPEENTICESHIP. anti-Masonic candidates in every election in the Northem States for at least two years after Morgan vanished. Hundreds of Lodges bowed to the storm, sent in their charters to the central authority, and voluntarily ceased to exist. There are families now, about the country, in which Masonry is a forbidden topic, because its intro duction would revive the old quarrel, and turn the peaceful tea-table into a scene of hot and interminable contention. There are stUl old ladies, male and female, abont the country, who wiU tell you with grim gravity that, if you trace np Masonry, through all its Orders, tUl you come to the grand, tip-top, Head Mason of the world, you wiU discover that that dread individual and the Chief of the Society of Jesuits are one and the same Person ! I have been tempted to use the word ridiculous in connection with this affair; and looking back upon it, at the distance of a quarter of a century, ridiculous seems a proper word to apply to it. But it did not seem ridiculous then. It had, at least, a serious side. It was believed among the anti-Masons that the Masons were bound to protect one another in doing injustice ; even the commission of treason and murder did not, it was said, exclude a man from the shelter of his Lodge. It was aUeged that a Masomc juiy dared not, or would not, condemn a prisoner who, after the fnUest proof of his guilt had been obtained, made the Masonic sign of distress. It was asserted that a judge regarded the oath which made him a Free Mason as more sacred and more binding than that wTiich admitted him to the bench. It is in vain, said the anti-Masons, for one of us to seek justice against a Mason, for a jury cannot be obtained with out its share of Masonic members, and a court cannot be found ¦without its Masonic judge. Our apprentice embraced the anti-Masomc side of Qiis contro versy, and embraced it warmly. It was natural that he should. It was inevitable that he should. And for the next two or three years he expended more breath in denouncing the Order of the Free-Masons, than upon any other subject — perhaps than all other subjects put together. To this day secret societies are his special aversion. But we must hasten on. Horace had soon learned his trade. He became the best hand in the office, and rendered important assist ance in editing the paper. Some numbers were almost entirely his INVENTOEY OP HIS POSSESSIONS. 103 work. But there was Ul-luck about the little establishment. Several times, as we have seen, it changed proprietors, but none of them could make it prosper; and, at length, in the month of June, 1830, the second month of the apprentice's fifth year, the Northem Spectator was discontinued ; the printing-office was broken up, and the apprentice, released from his engagement, became his own mas ter, free to wander whithersoever he could pay his passage, and to work for whomsoever would employ him. His possessions at this crisis were— a knowledge of the art of printing, an extensive and very miscellaneous library in his mem ory, a wardrobe that could be stuffed into a pocket, twenty dollars in cash, and — a sore leg. The article last named played too serious a part in the history of its proprietor, not to be mentioned in the inventory of his property. He had injured his leg a year before in stepping from a box, and it troubled him, more or less, for three years, sweUing occasionally to four times its natural size, and oblig ing him to stand at hia work, with the leg propped up in a most horizontal and uncomfortable position. It was a tantalizing feature of the case that he could walk without much difficulty, but stand ing was torture. As a printer, he had no particular occasion to walk ; and by standing he was to gain his subsistence. Horace Greeley was no longer a Boy. His flgure and the ex pression of his countenance were stUl singularly youthful ; but he was at the beginning of his twentieth year, and he was henceforth to confront the world as a man. So far, hia life had been, upon the whole, peaceful, happy and fortunate, and he had advanced towards his object without interruption, and with sufficient rapidity. His constitution, originally weak, Labor and Temperance had rendered capable of great endurance. His mind, originally apt and active, incessant reading had stored with much that is most valuable among the discoveries, the thoughts, and the fancies of past genera tions. In the conflicts of the Debating Society, the printing-office, and the tavern, he had exercised his powers, and tried the correct ness of his opinions. If his knowledge was incomplete, if there were ¦wide domains of knowledge, of whioh he had little more than heard, yet what he did know he knew well ; he had learned it, not as a task, but because he wanted to know it; it partook of the vitality of his own mind ; it was his own, and he could use it. 104 APPEENTICESHIP. If there had been a People's College, to which the new eman cipated apprentice could have gone, and where, earning his subsist ence by the exercise of his trade, he could have spent half of each day for the next two years of his Ufe in the systematic study of Language, History and Science, under the guidance of men able to guide him aright, under the influence of women capable of attracting his regard, and worthy of it — it had been weU. But there was not then, and there is not now, an institution that meets the want and the need of such as he. At any moment there are ten thousand young men and women in this country, strong, intelligent, and poor, who are about to go forth into the world ignorant, who would gladly go forth instruct ed, if they could get knowledge, and earn it as they get it, by the labor of their handa. They are the sons and daughters of our farm ers and mechanics. They are the very elite among the young people of the nation. There is talent, of all kinds and all degrees, among them — talent, that ia the nation's richest posaession — talent, that could bleaa and glorify the nation. Should there not be — can there not be, somewhere in this broad land, a Univeesity-To-wn — where all trades could be carried on, all arts practiced, aU knowl edge accessible, to whioh those who have a desire to become ex cellent in their calling, and those who have an aptitude for art, and those who have fallen in love with knowledge, could accomplish the ¦wish of their hearts without losing their independence, •without becoming paupers, or prisoners, or debtors ? Surely such a University for the People is not an impossibUity. To found such an institu tion, or assemblage of institutions — to flnd out the conditions upon which it could exist and prosper — were not an easy task. A Com mittee could not do it, nor a 'Board,' nor a Legislature. It is an enterprise for One Man— a man of boundless disinterestedness, of immense administrative and constructive talent, fertile in ex pedients, courageous, persevering, physically strong, and morally great — a man born for his work, and devoted to it ' with a quiet, deep enthusiasm'. Give such a man the indispensable land, and twenty-five years, and the People's College would be a dream no more, but a triumphant and imitable reality; and the founder thereof would have done a deed compared with which, either 105 for its difficulty or for its results, such triumphs as those of Traf algar and Waterloo would not be worthy of mention. There have been self-sustaining monasteries I Will there never be self-sustaining colleges? Is there anything like an inherent impossibility in a thousand men and women, in the fresh strength of youth, capable of a just subordination, working together, each for all and aU for each, with the assistance of steam, machinery, and a thousand fertile acres — earning a subsistence by a few hours' labor per day, and securing, at least, half their time for the acqui sition of the art, or the language, or the science whioh they prefer ? I think not. We are at present a nation of ignoramuses, our ig norance rendered only the more conapicuoua and misleading, by the faint intimations of knowledge which we acquire at our schools. Are we to remain such for ever ? But if Horace Greeley derived no help from schools and teachers, he received no harm from them. He finished Ms apprenticeship, an uncontaminated young man, with the means of independence at his flnger-ends, ashamed of no honest employment, of no decent habitation, of no cleanly garb. " There are unhappy times," says Mr. Carlyle, " in the world's history, when he that is least educated wUl chiefly have to say that he is least perverted; and, with the mtdtitude of false eye-glasses, convex, concave, green, or even yellow, has not lost the natural use of his eyes." " How were it," he asks, " if we sunnised, that for a man gifted with natural vigor, with a man'a character to be developed in him, more especially if in the way of literature, as thinker and writer, it is actuaUy, in these strange days, no special misfortune to be trained up among the uneducated classes, and not among the educated ; but rather, of the two misfortunes, the smaUer ?" And again, he observes, " The grand result of schooling is a mind with just vision to discern, with fi-ee force to do ; the grand schoolmaster is peaotioe." 5* CHAPTER VIJ. HE WANDEES. Horace leaves Poultney— His first Overcoat— Home to his Father's Log House— Ranges the country for work— The Sore Leg Cured- Gets Employment, bnt little Money— Astoniahes the Draught-Players— Goes to Erie, Pa,— Interview with an Editor- Becomes a Journeyman in theOfflce— Description of Erie— The Lake — His Generos ity to his Father— His New Clothea— No more work at Erie-Starts for New York, " Well, Horace, and where are you going now ?" asked the kind landlady of the tavern, as Horace, a few days after the closing of the printing-office, appeared on the piazza, equipped for the road — i. 6., with his jacket on, and -with his bundle and his stick in his hand. " I am going," was the prompt and sprightly answer, " to Penn sylvania, to see my father, and there I shaU stay tiU my leg gets weU." With these words, Horace laid down the bundle and the stick, and took a seat for the last time on that piazza, the scene of many a peaceful triumph, where, as Political Gazetteer, he had often given the information that he alone, of all the town, could give ; where, as political partisan, he had often brought an antagonist to extrem ities ; where, aa oddity, he had often fixed the gaze and t^wiated the neck of the passing pedler. And was there no demonstration of feeling at the departure of so distinguished a personage? There waa. Bnt it did not take the form of a silver dinner-service, nor of a gold tea ditto, nor of a piece of plate, nor even of a gold pen, nor yet of a series of reso lutions. While Horace sat on the piazza, talking with Ms old friends, who gathered around him, a meeting of two individuals was held in the corner of the bar-room. They were the landlord and one of Ms boarders ; and the subject of their deliberations were, ari old brown overcoat belonging to the latter. The land lord had the floor, and his speech was to the foUowing purport : — HORACE LEAVES POULTNEY. 107 " He felt like doing something for Horace before he went. Horace was an entirely unspeakable person. He had lived a long time in the house ; he had never given any trouble, and we feel for him as for our own son. Now, there is that brown over-coat of yours. It 's cold on the canal, all the summer, in the mornings and even ings. Horace is poor and his father is poor. You are owing me a Uttle, as much as the old coat is worth, and what I say ia, let us give the poor feUow the overcoat, and caU om- account squared." This feeling oration was received with every demonstration of ap proval, and the proposition was carried into effect forthwith. The landlady gave him a pocket Bible. In a few minutes more, Horace rose, put his stick through his Uttle red bundle, and both over his shoulder, took the overcoat upon his other arm, said ' Good-bye,' to his friends, promised to write as soon as he was settled again, and set off upon his long journey. His good friends of the tavern foUowed him with their eyes, until a turn of the road hid the bent and shambling figure ft'om their sight, and then they turned away to praise him and to wish him weU. Twenty-five years have passed ; and, to this hour, they do not tell the tale of his departure without a certain sweUing of the heart, without a certain gUstening of the softer pair of eyes. It was a fine, cool, breezy morning in the month of June, 1830. Nature had assumed those robes of briUiant green which she wears only in June, and welcomed the wanderer forth with that heavenly smUe which plays upon her changeful countenance only when she is attired in her best. Deceptive smile ! The forests upon those hiUs of hilly Eutland, brimming with foliage, concealed their granite ribs, their chasms, their steeps, their precipices, their morasses, and the reptiles that lay coiled among them ; but they were there. So did the aUuring aspect of the world hide from the wayfarer the struggle, the toil, the danger that await the man who goes out from his seclusion to confront the world alone — the world of which he knows nothing except by hearsay, that cares nothing for him, and takes no note of his arrival. The present wayfarer was destined to be quite alone in his conflict with the world, and he was destined to wrestle with it for many years before it yielded him anything more than a show of submission. How prodigal of help is the Devil to his scheming and guileful servants ! But the Powers Celestial — 108 HE WANDERS. i/»«i/ love their chosen too wisely and too well to diminish by one care the burthen that makes them strong, to lessen by one pang the agony that makes them good, to prevent one mistake of the foUy that makes them ¦wise. Light of heart and step, the traveler walked on. In the after noon he reached Ann Harbor, fourteen miles from Poultney ; thence, partly on canal-boat and partly on foot, he went to Schenectady, and there took a ' Une-boat' in the Erie Canal. A week of tedium in the slow line-boat — a walk of a hundred mUes through the woods, and he had reached his father's log-house. He arrived late in the evening. The last ten miles of the journey he performed after dark, guided, when he could catch a glimpse of it through the dense foliage, by a star. The journey required at that time about twelve days : it is now done in eighteen hours. It coat Horace Greeley about seven dollars ; the present cost by railroad is eleven dollars ; diatance, six hundred mUes. He found his father and brother transformed into backwoodsmen. Their little log-cabin stood in the midst of a narrow clearing, which was covered with blackened stumps, and smoked with burning tim ber. Forests, dense and almost unbroken, heavily timbered, abound ing in wolvea and every other deacription of ' varmint,' extended a day's journey in every direction, and in some directions many days' journey. The country was then so wUd and ' new,' that a hunter would sell a man a deer before it was shot ; and appointing the hour when, and the spot where, the buyer was to caU for his game, would have it ready for him as punctnaUy as though he had ordered it at Fulton mai'ket. The wolves were so bold, that their bowlings could be heard at the house as they roamed about in packs in search of tiie sheep ; and the solitary camper-out could hear them breathe and see their eye-balls glare, as they prowled about tis smoldering fire. Mr. Greeley, who had brought from Vermont a fondness for rearing sheep, tried to continue that branch of rural occupation in the wil derness ; but after the wolves, in spite of his utmost care and pre caution, had kUled a hundred sheep for Mm, he gave up the at tempt. But it was a level and a very fertile region — ' varmint' al ways select a good ' location' — and it has since been subdued into a beautiful land of wheat and woods. Horace stayed at home for several weeks, assisting his father. GETS EMPLOYMENT. 109 fishing occasionally, and other'wise amusing himself; while his good mother assiduously nursed the sore leg. It healed too slowly for its impatient proprietor, who had learned ' to labor,' Twt ' to wait ;' and so, one morning, he walked over to Jamestown,- a town twenty miles distant, where a newspaper was struggling to get published, and applied for work. Work he obtained. It was very freely given ; but at the end of the week the workman received a promise to pay, but no payment. He waited and worked four days longer, and discovering by that time that there was really no money to be had or hoped for in Jamestown, he walked home again, as poor as before. And now the damaged leg began to swell again prodigiously ; at one time it was as large below the knee as a demijohn. Cut off from other employment, Horace devoted all his attention to the unfortu nate member, but without result. He heard abont this time of a famous doctor who Uved in that town of Pennsylvania whioh exults in the singular name of 'North-East,' distant twenty-five miles from hia father's clearing. To him, as a last resort, though the family could Ul afford the trifling expense, Horace went, and stayed with him a month. " You don't drink liquor," were the doctor's flrst words as he examined the sore, " if you did, you 'd have a bad leg of it." The patient thought he h^d a bad leg of it, without drinking liquor. The doctor's treatment was skillfvil, and finally successful. Among other remedies, he subjected the limb to the action of electricity, and from that day the cure began. The patient left North-East greatly relieved, and though the leg was weak and troublesome for many more months, yet it gradually re covered, the wound subsiding at length into a long red scar. He wandered, next, in an easterly direction, in search of employ ment, and found it in the village of Lodi, fifty milea off, in Oata- raugus county, New York. At Lodi, he seems to have cheriahed a hope of being able to remain awhile and earn a little money. He wrote to his friends in Poultney describing the paper on which he worked, " as a Jackson paper, a forlorn affair, else I would have sent you a few numbers." One of his letters written from Lodi to a friend in Vermont, contains a passage which may serve to show what was going on in the mind of the printer as he stood at the case setting up Jacksonian paragraphs. " You are aware that an no HE WANDERS. important election is close at hand in this State, and of course, a great deal of interest is felt in the result. The regular Jacksonians imagine that they wUl be able to elect Throop by 20,000 majority ; but after having obtained all the information I can, I give it as my decided opinion, that if none of the candidates decUne, we shall elect Francis Granger, governor. This county will give him 1000 majority, and I estimate the vote in the State at 125,000. I need not inform you that such a result 'will be highly satisfactory to your humble servant, H. Greeley." It was a result, however, which he had not the satisfaction of contemplating. The confident and yet cautious manner of the passage quoted is amusing in a politician not twenty years of age. At Lodi, as at Jamestown, our roving journeyman found work much more abundant than money. Moreover, he was in the camp of the enemy ; and so at the end of his sixth week, he again took bundle and stick and marched homeward, with very Uttle more money in his pocket than if he had spent his time in idleness. On his way home he feU in with an old Poultney friend who had recently settled in the wilderness, and Horace arrived in time to assist at the ' warming ' of the new cabin, a duty which he performed in a way that covered him with glory. In the course of the evening, a draught-board was introduced, and the stranger beat in swift succession half a dozen of the best players in the neighborhood. It happened that the place was rather noted for its skilful draught-players, and the game was played in cessantly at private houses and at public. To be beaten in so scan dalous a manner by a passing stranger, and he by no means an ornamental addition to an evening party, and young enough to be the son of some of the vanquished, nettled them not a little. They challenged the victor to another encounter at the tavern on the next evening. The chaUenge was accepted. The evening arrived, and there was a considerable gathermg to witness and take part in the struggle — among the rest, a certain Joe WUson who had been spe cially sent for, and whom no one had ever beaten, since he came into the settlement. The great Joe was held in reserve. The party of the previous evening, Horace took in turn, and beat with ease. Other players tried to foil his 'Yankee triclcs,' but were themselves foiled. The reserve was brought up. Joe Wilson took his seat at GOES TO ERIE, PA. Ill the table. He played Ms deadUest, pausing long before he hazarded a move ; the company hanging over the board, hushed and anxious. They were not kept many minutes in suspense; Joe was overthrown ; the unornamental stranger was the conqueror. Another game — the same result. Another and another and another ; but Joe lost every game. Joseph, however, was too good a player not to re spect so potent an antagonist, and he and all the party behaved well under their discomfiture. The board was laid aside, and a lively conversation ensued, which was continued ' with unabated spirit to a late hour.' The next morning, the traveler went on his way, leav ing behind him a moSt distinguished reputation as a draught-player and a poUtician. He remained at home a few days, and then set out again on his travels in search of some one who could pay him wages for his work. He took a ' bee line ' through the woods for the town of Erie, thirty miles off, on tlie shores of the great lake. He had ex hausted the smaUer towns ; Erie was the last possible move in that corner of the board ; and upon Erie he fixed his hopes. There were two printing offices, at that time, in the place. It waa a town of five thousand inhabitants, and of extensive lake and inland trade. The gentleman still lives who saw the weary pedestiian enter Erie, attired in the homespun, abbreviated and stockingless style with which the reader is already acquainted. His old black, felt hat slouched down over his shoulders in the old fashion. The red cot ton handkerchief still contained his wardrobe, and it was carried on the same old stick. The country frequenters of Erie were then, and are stiU, particularly rustic in appearance ; but our hero seemed the very embodiment and incarnation of the rustic Principle ; and among the crowd of Pennsylvania farmers that thronged the streets, he swung along, pre-eminent and peculiar, a marked person, the observed of aU observers. He, as was his wont, ebserved nobody, but went at once to the office of the Erie Gazette, a weekly paper, pubUshed then and still by Joseph M. Sterritt. • '•I was not," Judge Sterritt is accustomed to relate, "I was not in the printing office when he arrived. I came in, soon after, and saw him sitting at the table reading the newspapers, and so absorbed in them that he paid no attention to my entrance. My first feeUng was one of astonishment, that a fellow so singularly 'green 'in his 112 HE WANDERS. appearance should be reading, and above all, reading so intentiy. I looked at him for a few moments, and then, finding tiiat he made no movement towards acquainting me with his business, I took up my composing stick and went to work. He continued to read for twenty minutes, or more ; when he got up, and coming, close to my case, asked, in his peculiar, whining voice, "Do you want any help in the printing business?" " Why," said I, running my eye involuntarily up and down the extraordinary flgure, " did you ever work at the trade ?" " Yes,'' was the reply; " I worked some at it in an office in Ver mont, and I should be wilUng .to work under instruction, if yon could give me a job." Now Mr. Sterritt did want help in the printing business, and could have given him a job ; but, unluckUy, he misinterpreted this modest reply. He at once concluded that the timid applicant was a runaway apprentice; and runaway apprentices are a class of their fellow-creatures to whom employers cherish a common and decided aversion. Without communicating his suspicions, he merely said that he had no occasion for further assistance, and Horace, without a word, left the apartment. A similar reception and the same result awaited him at the other office ; and so the poor wanderer trudged home again, not in the best spirits. "Two or three weeks after this interview," continues Judge Sterritt — he is a judge, I saw him on the bench — " an acquaint ance of mine, a farmer, called at the office, and inquired if I want ed a journeyman. I did. He said a neighbor of hia had a son who learned the printing business somewhere Do^wn East, and wanted a place. ' What sort of a looking fellow ia he ?' said I. He described him, and I knew at once that he was my supposed runaway apprentice. My friend, the farmer, gave him a high char acter, however; so I said, ' Send him along,' and a day or two after along he came." The terms on which Horace Greeley entered the office of the Erie Gazette were of his own naming, and therefore peculiar. He would do the best he could, he said, and Mr. Sterritt might pay him what he (Mr. Sterritt) thought he had earned. He had only one request to make, and that was, that he should not be required THE TOWN OF ERIE. 113 to work at the press, unless the office was so much hurried that his services in that department could not be dispensed with. He had had a little difficulty ¦with his leg, and press work rather hurt him than otherwise. The bargain included the condition that he was to board at Mr. Sterritt's house ; and when he went to dinner on the day of hia arrival, a lady of the famUy expreased her opinion of him in the foUowing terms : — " So, Mr. Sterritt, you 've hired that fellow to work for you, have you ? WeU, you won't keep him three days." In three days she had changed her opinion ; and to this hour the good lady cannot bring herself to speak otherwise than kindly of him, though she is a stanch daughter of turbulent Erie, and ' must say, that certain articles which appeared in the Tribune during the War did reaUy seem too bad from one who had been himself an Eriean.' But then,- ' he gave no more trouble in the house than if he had 'nt been in it.' Erie, famous in the Last War but one, as the port whence Com modore Perry sailed out to victory — ^Erie, famous in the last war of aU, as the place where the men, except a traitorous thirteen, and the women, except their faithful wives, all fose as One Man against the EaUway Trains, saying, in the tone which is generally described as ' not to be misunderstood ' : " Thus far shalt thou go without stopping for refreshment, and no farther," and achieved as Break of Gauge men, the distinction accorded in another land to the Break o' Day boys — Erie, which boasts of nine thousand inhabit ants, and aspires to become the Buffalo of Pennsylvania — Erie, which already has business enough to sustain many stores wherein not every article known to traffic is sold, and where a man cannot consequently buy coat, hat, boots, physic, plough, crackers, grind stone and penknife, over the same counter — ^Erie, which bas a Mayor and Aldermen, a dog-law, and an ordinance against shooting off guns in the street under a penalty of five dollars for each and every offence — Erie, for the truth cannot be longer dashed from utterance, is the shabbiest and most broken-down looking large town, /, the present writer, an individual not whoUy untraveled, ever saw, in a free State of this Confederacy. The shores of the lake there are ' bluffy,' sixty feet or more above the water, and the land for many miles back is nearly a dead level, exceedingly fertile, and quite iminteresting. No, not quite, For 114 HE WANDERS. much of the primeval forest remains, and the gigantic trees that were saplings when Columbus played in the streets of Genoa, tower aloft, a hundred feet without a branch, with that exquisite daintiness of taper of which the eye never tires, which architecture has never equaUed, which only Grecian architecture approached, and was beautiful because it approached it. The City of Erie is merely a square mile of this level land, close to the edge of the blufl^ with a thousand houses buUt upon it, which are arranged on the plan of a corn-field — only, not more than a third of the houses have ' come up.' The town, however, condenses to a focus around a piece of ground called ' The Park,' four acres in extent, surrounded with a low, broken board fence, that was white-washed a long time ago, and therefore now looks very forlorn and pig-pen-ny. The side- walks around ' The Park ' present an animated scene. The huge hotel of the place is there — a cross between the Astor House and a country tavern, having the magnitude of the former, the quality of the latter. There, too, is the old Court-House, — ^its uneven brick floor covered with the chips of a mortising machine, — its gaUeries up near* the high ceiling, kept there by slender poles, — ^its vast cracked, rusty stove, sprawling all askew, and putting forth a system of stovepipes that wander long through space before they flnd the chimney. Justice is administered in that Court-house in a truly free and easy stylci and to hear the drowsy olerk, with his heels in the air, administer, 'twixt sleep and awake, the tremendous oath of Pennsylvania, to a brown, abashed farmer, with his right hand raised in a manner to set off his awkwardness to the best advantage, is worth a journey to Erie. Two sides of ' The Park ' are occupied by the principal stores, before which the country wagons stand, presenting a con tinuous range of muddy wheels. The - marble structure around the corner is not a Greek temple, though buUt in the style of one, and quite deserted enough to be a ruin — it is the Erie Cus tom -House, a fine example of governmental management, as it is as much too large for the business done in it as the Custom House of New York is too smaU. The Erie of the present year is, of course, not the Erie of 1831, when Horace Greeley walked its streets, with his eyes on the pave ment and a bundle of exchanges in his pocket, ruminating on the THE LAKE. 115 prospects of the next election, or thinking out a copy of verses to send to his mother. It was a smaller place, then, ¦with fewer brick blocks, more pigs in the street, and no custom-house in the Greek style. But it had one feature which has not changed. The Lake was there! An island, seven miles long, but not two mUes wide, once a part of the main land, Ues opposite the town, at an apparent distance of half a mUe, though in reality two miles and a half from the shore. This island, which approaches the main land at either extremity, forms the harbor of Erie, and gives to that part of the lake the ef fect of a river. Beyond, the Great Lake stretches away further than the eye can reach. A great lake in fine weather is like the ocean only in one particu lar — ^you cannot see across it. The ocean asserts itself; it is demon strative. It heaves, it flashes, it sparkles, it foams, it roars. On the stiUest day, it does not quite go to sleep ; the tide steals up the white beach, and glides back again over the shells and pebbles musicaUy, or it murmurs along the sides of black rooks, with a subdued though al ways audible voice. The ocean is a U^ving and life-giving thing, ' fair, and*freah, and ever free.' The lake, on a flne day, Ilea dead. No tide breaks upon its earthy shore. It is as blue as a blue ribbon, as blue as the sky ; and vessels come sailing out of heaven, and go sail ing into heaven, and no eye can discern where the lake ends and heaven begins. It is as smooth as a mirror's face, and as dull as a mirror's back. Often a Ught mist gathers over it, and then the lake is gone from the prospect ; but for an occasional sail dimly descried, or a streak of black amoke left by a passing steamer, it would give absolutely no sign of its presence, though the spectator is standing a quarter of a mUe from the shore. Oftener the mist gathers thick ly along the horizon, and then, so perfect is the iUusion, the stran ger will swear he sees the opposite shore, not fifteen miles off. There is no excitement in looking upon a lake, and it has no effect upon the appetite or the complexion. Yet there is a quiet, languid beauty hovering over it, a beauty aU its own, a charm that grows upon the mind the longer you Unger upon the shore. The Castle of Indolence should have been placed upon the bank of Lake Erie, where its inmates could have lain on the grass and gazed down, 116 HE WANDERS. through all the slow hours of the long summer day, upon the lazy, hazy, blue expanse. When the wind blows, the lake wakes up ; and still it is not the ocean. The waves are discolored by the earthy bank upon which they break with un-oceanllke monotony. They neither advance, nor recede, nor roar, nor swell. A great lake, with aU its charms, and they are many and great, is only an infinite pond. The people of Erie care as much for the lake as the people of Niagara care for the cataract, aa much as people generally care for anything wonderful or anything beautiful which they can see by turning their heads. In other words, they care for it as the means by which lime, coal, and lumber may be transported to another and a better market. Not one house is buUt along the shore, though the shore ia high and level. Not a path has been worn by human feet above or below the bluff. Pigs, sljeep, cows, and aweet-brier bushea occupy the unenclosed ground, whioh seems so made to be built upon that it is surprising the handsome houses of the town should have been built anywhere else. One could almost say, in a weak moment. Give me a cottage on the bluff, and I wUl lioe at Erie I It was at Erie, probably, that Horace Greeley first saw the uni form of the American navy. The United States and Great Britain are each permitted by treaty to keep one vessel of war in commis sion on the Great Lakes. The American vessel usuaUy lies in the harbor of Erie, and a few officers may be seen about the town. What the busy journeyman printer thought of those idle gentiemen, apparently the only quite useless, and certainly the best dressed, persona in the place, may be guessed. Perhaps, however, he passed them by, in hia absent way, and saw them not. In a few days, the new comer waa in high favor at the office of the Erie Gazette. He is remembered there as a remarkably correct and reliable compositor, though not as a rapid one, and his steady devotion to his work enabled him to accomplish more than faster workmen. He was soon placed by his employer on the footing of a regular journeyman, at the usual wages, twelve dollars a month and board. AU the intervals of labor he spent in reading. As soon aa the hour of cessation arrived, he would hurry off his apron, wash his hands, and lose himself in his book or his newspapers, often forgetting his dinner, and often forgetting whether he had No MORE WORK AT ERIE. 117 Lis dinner or not. More and more, he became absorbed in politics. It is said, by one who worked beside him at Erie, that he could tell the name, post-office address, and something of the history and political leanings, of every member of Congress ; and that he could give the particulars of every important election that had occurred within his recollection, even, in some instances, to the county majorities. And thus, in earnest work and earnest reading, seven profitable and not unhappy months passed swiftly away. He never lost one day's work. On Sundays, he read, or walked along the ahorea of the lake, or sailed over to the Island. His better fortune made no change either in his habits or his appearance ; and hia employer waa surprised, that month after month passed, and yet his strange journeyman drew no money. Once, Mr. Sterritt ventured to rally him a little upon hia persistence in wearing the hereditary homespun, saying, " Now, Horace, you have a good deal of money coming to you ; don't go about the town any longer in that out landish rig. Let me give you an order on the store. Dress up a little, Horace." To which Horace repUed, looking down at the ' out landish rig,' as though he had never seen it before, " You see, Mr. Sterritt, my father is on a new place, and I want to help him all I can." However, a short time after, Horace did make a faint effort to dress up a little ; but the few articles whioh he bought were so extremely coarse and common, that it was a question in the office whether his appearance was improved by the change, or the contrary. At the end of the seventh month, the man whose sickness had made a temporary vacancy in the office of the Gazette, returned to his place, and there was, in consequence, no more work for Horace Greeley. Upon the settlement of his account, it appeared that he had drawn for his personal expenses during his residence at Erie, the sum of six dollars ! Of the remainder of his wages, he took about fifteen dollars in money, and the rest in the form of a note ; and with all this wealth in his pocket, he walked once more to his father's house. This note the generous fellow gave to his father, reserving the money to carry on his own personal warfare with the world. And now, Horace was tired of dallying with fortune in conn- 118 ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. try printing offices. He said, he thought it was time to do some thing, and he formed the bold resolution of going straight to New York and seeking his fortune in the metropoUs. After a few days of recreation at home, he tied up his bundle once more, put his money in his pocket, and plunged into the woods in the direction of the Erie Canal. CHAPTER yill, ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. The jouniey — a night on the tow-path — He reachea the city — Inventory of his property — Looks for a boarding -house-^Finda one— Expenda half hia capital upon clothea — Searches for employment — Berated by David Hale as a runaway apprentice — Continues the search — Goes to church-^Hears of a vacancy — Obtains work— The boss takes him for a ' dam fool,' but changes his opinion — Nicknamed ' the Ghost ' — Practical jokes — Horace metamorphosed — Dispute about commas — The ahoe- maker'a boarding-house — Grand banquet on Sundaya. He took the canal-boat at Buffalo and came as far as Lockport, whence he walked a few mUes to Gaines, and stayed a day at the house of a friend whom he had known in Vermont. Next morn ing he walked back accompanied by his friend to the canal, and both of them waited many hours for an eastward-bound boat to pass. Night came, but no boat, and the adventurer persuaded his friend to go home, and seb out himself to walk on the tow-path to wards Albion. It was a very dark night. He walked slowly on, hour after hour, looking anxiously behind Mm for the expected boat, looking more anxiously before him to discern the two fiery eyes of the boats bound to the west, in time to avoid being swept into/ihe canal by the tow-line. Towards mormng, a boat of the slower sort, a scow probably, overtook him ; he went on board, and tired with his long walk, lay down in the cabin to rest. Sleep was tardy in aUghting upon hia eye- ''ids, and he had the pleasure of hearing his merits and his costume fully and freely discussed by his fellow passengers. It was Monday morning. One passen ger, explained the coming on board of- the stranger at so unusual an INVENTORY OF HIS PROPERTY. 119 hour, by suggesting that he- had been courting all night. Sunday evening in country places ia sacred to love. His appearance was so exceedingly unlike that of a lover, that this sally created much amusement, in which the wakeftil traveler shared. At Eochester he took a faster boat. Wednesday night he reached Schenectady, where he left the canal and ¦walked to -Albany, as the canal between those two towns is much obstructed by locks. He reached Albany on Thursday morning, just in tinie to see the seven o'clock steam boat move out into the stream. He, therefore, took passage in a tow-boat which started at ten o'clock on the same morning. At sunrise on Friday, the eighteenth of August, 1831, Horace Greeley landed at WhitehaU, close to the Battery, in the city of New York. New York was, and is, a city of adventurers. Few of our emi nent citizens wore born here. It is a common boast among New Yorkers, that this great merchant and that great millionaire came to the city a ragged boy, with only three and sixpence in his pocket ; and now look at him ! In a list of the one hundred men who are esteemed to be the most ' successful ' among the citizens of New York, it is probable that seventy-five of the namea would be those of men who began their career here in circumstances that gave no promise of future eminence. But among them all, it is questionable whether there was one who on his arrival had so lit tle to help, so much to hinder Mm,- as Horace Greeley. Of solid cash, his stock was ten dollars. His other property con sisted of the clothes he wore, the clothes he carried in hia small bundle, and the stick with whioh he carried it. The clothes he wore need not be described ; they were those which had already astomshed the people of Erie. The clothes he carried were very few, and precisely simUar in cut and quality to the garments which he exhibited to the pubUc. On the violent supposition that his wardrobe could in any case have become a saleable commodity, we may compute that he was worth, on this Friday morning at sun rise, ten dollars and aeventy-flve centa. He had no friend, no ac quaintance here. There was not a human being upon whom he had any claim for help or advice. Hia appearancef was all against him. He looked in his round jacket like an overgrown boy. No one was likely to observe the engaging beauty of his face, or the noble round of his brow under tliat overhanging hat, over that 120 ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. long and stooping body. He was somewhat timorous in his inter course with strangers. He would not intrude upon their attention ; he had not the faculty of pushing his way, and proclaiming his mer its and his desires. To the arts by which men are conciUated, by which unwUling ears are forced to attend to an unwelcome tale, he was utterly a stranger. Moreover, he had neglected to bring with him any letters of recommendation, or any certificate of his skill as a printer. It had not occurred to him that anything of the kind was necessary, so unacquainted was he with the life of cities. His first employment was to find a boarding-house where he could live a long time on a smaU sum. Leaving the green Battery on his left hand, he stroUed off into Broad-street, and at the corner of that street and Wall discovered a house that in his eyes had the aspect of a cheap tavern. He entered the bar-room, and asked the price of board. " I guess we 're too high for you," said the bar-keeper, after bestowing one glance upon the inquirer. " WeU, how much a week do you charge ?" " Six doUara." " Yes, that 's more than I can afford," said Horace with a laugh at the enormous miatake he had made in inquiring at a houae of such pretensions. He turned up Wall-street, and sauntered into Broadway. Seeing no house of entertainment that seemed at all suited to his circum stances, he sought the water once more, and wandered along the wharves of the North River as far as Washington-market. Board ing-houses of the cheapest kind, and drinking-hona^ of the lowest grade, the former frequented chiefly by emigrants, the latter by sailors, were numerous enough in that neighborhood. A house, which combined the low groggery and the cheap boarding-house in one smaU estabUshment, kept by an Irishman named M'Gorlick, chanced to be the one that flrst attracted the rover's attention. It looked so mean and squalid, that he was tempted to enter, and again inquire for what sum a man could buy a week's shelter and sustenance. " Twenty shUlings," was the landlord's reply. " Ah,'' said Horace, " that sounds more like it." Ho engaged to board with Mr. M'Gorlick on the instant, and SEARCHES FOR EMPLOYMENT. 131 proceeded soon to test the quaUty of his fare by taking breakfast in the bosom of Ms family. The cheapness of the entertainment was its best recommendation. After breakfast Horace performed an act whioh I believe he had never spontaneously performed before. He bought some clothes, with a view to render himself more presentable. They were of the commonest kind, and the garments were few, but the purchase absorbed nearly half hia capital. Satisfied with his appearance, he now began the round of the printing-offices, going into every one he could find, and asking for employment — ^merely asking, and going away, without a word, as soon as he was refused. In the course of the mormng, he found himself in the office of the Journal of Commerce, and he chanced to direct his inquiry, 'if they wanted a hand,' to the late David Hale, one of the proprietors of the paper. Mr. Hale took a survey of the person who had presumed to- ad dress him, and replied in substance as foUows : — " My opinion is, young man, that you 're a runaway apprentice, and you 'd better go home to your master." Horace endeavored to explain his position and cfrcumstances, but the impetuous Hale could be brought to no more gracious response than, " Be off about your business, and don't bother us." Horace, more amused than indignant, retired, and pursued his way to the next office. All that day he walked the streets, cUmb- ed into upper stories, came down again, ascended other heights, descended, dived into basements, traversed passages, groped through labyrinths, ever asking the same question, ' Do yon want a hand ?' and ever receiving the same reply, in various degrees of civility, 'No.' He walked ten times aa many miles as he needed, for he was not aware that nearly all the printing-offices in New York are in the same square mile. He went the entfre length of many streets which any body could have told Mm did not contain one. He went home on Friday evening very tired and a little dis couraged. Early on Saturday morning he resumed the search, and continued it with energy tiU the evening. But no one wanted a hand. Busi ness seemed to be at a stand-stUl, or every office had its fuU comple ment of men. On Saturday evening he was stiU more fatigued. He resolved to remain in the city a day or two longer, and then, if 6 122 ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. stiU unsuccessful, to turn his face homeward, and inquire for work at the towns through which he passed. Though discouraged, he was not disheartened, and stUl less alarmed. The youthful reader should observe here what a sense of inde pendence and what fearlessness dwell in the spirit of a man who has learned the art of Uving on the mere necessaries of life. If Horace Greeley had, after another day or two of trial, chosen to leave the city, he would have carried with him about four doUars ; and ¦with that sum he could have walked leisurely and with an unanxious heart aU the way back to his father's house, six hundred mUes, inquiring for work at every to^wn, and feeling himself to be a free and independent American citizen, traveUing on his own honestly- earned means, undegraded by an obligation, the equal in social rank of the best man in the best house he passed. Blessed is the young man who can walk thirty miles a day, and dine contentedly on half a pound of crackers ! Give him four dollars and summer weather, and he can travel and revel like a prince incog, for forty days. On Sunday morning, our hero arose, refreshed and cheerful. He went to church twice, and spent a happy day. In the morning he Induced a man who lived in the house to accompany him to a small Universalist church in Pitt street, near the Dry Dock, not less than three miles distant from M'Gorlick's boarding-house. In the evening he found his way to a Unitarian church. Except on one occasion, he had never before this Sunday heard a sermon which accorded with his own religious opinions ; and the pleasure with which he heard the benignity of the Deity asserted and proved by able men, was one of the highest he had enjoyed. In the afternoon, as if in reward of the pious way in which he spent the Sunday, he heard news which gave him a faint hope of being able to remain in the city. An Irishman, a friend of the landlord, came in the course of the afternoon to pay his usual Sun day visit, and became acquainted with Horace and his froitless search for work. He was a shoemaker, I believe, but he lived in a house which was much frequented by journeymen pi:inters. From them he had heard that hands were wanted at West's, No. 85 Chat ham street, and he recommended his new acquaintance to make immediate application at that office. Accustomed to country hours, and eager to seize the chance. HE BEARS OP A VACANCY. 123 Horace was in Chatham street and on the ateps of the designated house by half-past five on Monday morning. West's printing office waa in the second story, the ground floor being occupied by Mc Elrath and Banga as a bookstore. They were publishers, and West was their printer. Neither store nor office was yet opened, and Horace sat down on the steps to wait. Had Thomas McElrath, Esquire, happened to pass on an early walk to the Battery that morning, and seen our hero sitting on those steps, ¦with his red bundle on his knees, his pale face supported on his hands, his attitude expressive of dejection and anxiety, his attire extremely unornamental, it would not have occurred to Thomas Mc Elrath, Esquire, as a probable event, that one day he would be the paetneb of that sorry figure, and proud of the connection ! Nor did Miss Eeed, of PhUadelphia, when she saw Benjamin Franklin pass her father's house, eating a large roll and carrying two others under his arms, see in that poor wanderer any likenesa of her future hus band, the husband that made her a proud and an immortal wife. The princes of the mind always remain incog. tiU they come to the throne, and, doubtless, the Coming Man, when he comes, will appear in a strange disguise, and no man will know him. It seemed very long before any one came to work that morning at No. 85. The steps on which our friend was seated were in the narrow part of Chatham-street, the gorge through wMch at morn ing and evemng the swarthy tide of mechanics pours. By six o'clock the stream has set strongly down-town-ward, and it gradu ally swells to a torrent, bright with tin ketties. Thousands passed by, but no one stopped tiU nearly seven o'clock, when one of Mr. West's journeymen arrived, and finding the door stUl locked, he sat down on the steps by the aide of Horace Greeley. They fell into conversation, and Horace stated his circumstances, something of his history, and his need of employment. LuckUy this journeyman waa a Vermonter, and a kind-hearted inteUigent man. He looked upon Horace as a countryman, and was struck with the singular candor and artlessness with which he told his tale. " I saw," aaya he, " that he was an honest, good young man, and being a Vermonter myself, I determined to help him if I could." He did help him. The doors were opened, the^en began to arrive ; Horace and hia newly-found friend ascended to the office, 124 ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. and soon after seven the work of the day began. It is hardly neces sary to say that the appearance of Horace, as he sat in the office waiting for the coming of the foreman, excited unbounded astonish ment, and brought upon his frieind a varieumed the *lod — Rest thee in God. A series of poems, entitled " Historic Pencilings," appear in the first voluine of the Ne'w Yorker, over the initials " H. G." These were the poetized reminiscences of Ms boyish historical reading. Of these poems the foUowing ia, perhaps, the tao^ pleasing and char acteristic : NERO'S TOMB. " When Nero perished by the jnstest doom, # « 9|C « * Some hand unseen strewed flowers iipdn his gr4ve." Btbon. The tyrant slept in death ; His long career of blood had ceased fOfever, And but an empire's exectating breath Remained to teU of crimes exampled never. Alone remained? Ah ! no ; Roine^s scatlied and blackened WaUs tetold the story Of conflagrations broad and baleful glo'w. Such was the halo of the despot's glory I And round his gilded tomb Came crowds of sufferers — but not to weep — Not theirs the 'wish to Ught the house of gloom With sympathy. No 1 Curses ¦wild and deep His only requiem made. But soft 1 see, strewed around Ms dreamleaa bed The trophies bright of many a verdant glade, The living's tribute to the honored dead. 158 EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. What mean those gentle flowers ? So sweetly smiling in the face of wrath — Children of genial suna and fostering showers. Now crushed and trampled in the miUion's path — What do they, withering here ? Ah ! spurn them not ? they teU of sorrow's flow — There has been one to shed affection's tear. And 'mid a nation's joy, to feel a pang of woet No 1 scorn them not, those flowers. They speak too deeply to each feeling heart — They teU that Guilt hath still its holier hours — That none may e 'er from earth unmourned depart ; That none hath all effaced The speU of Eden o 'er his spirit oast. The heavenly image in his features traced — Or quenched the love unchanging to the last I Another of the ' Historic PencUings,' was on the ' Death of Per icles.' TMs was its last stanza : — No I let the brutal conqueror StiU glut his soul with war. And let the ignoble mUlion With shouts surround his car; Bnt dearer far the lasting fame Which twines its wreaths with peace — Give me the tearless memory Of the mighty one of Greece. Only one of his poems seems to have been inspired by the ten der passion. It is dated May 31st, 1834. Who this bright Vision was to whom the poem was addressed, or whether it was ever vis ible to any but the poet's eye, has not transpired. FANTASIES. They deem me cold, the thoughtiess and Ught-hearted, In that I worsMp not at beauty's shrine ; FANTASIES. They deem me cold, that through the years departed, I ne'er have bowed me to some form divine. They deem me proud, that, where the world hath flattered, I ne'er have knelt to languish or adore ; > They think not that the homage idly scattered Leaves the heart bankrupt, ere its spring is o'er. No ! in my soul there glows but one bright vision. And o'er my heart there rules but one fond speU, Bright'ning my hours of sleep with dreams Elysian Of one unseen, yet loved, aye cherished well ; Unseen ? Ah ! no ; her presence round me Ungers, Chasing each wayward thought that tempts to rove ; Weaving Affection's web with fairy fingers. And waking thoughts of purity and love. Star of my heaven ! thy beams shaU guide me ever. Though clouds obscure, and thorns bestrew my path ; As sweeps my bark adown life's arrowy river Thy angel smUe ahaU soothe misfortune's wrath ; And ah 1 should Fate ere speed her deadliest arrow, Should vice aUnre to plunge in her dark sea. Be this the only shield my soul shall borrow — One glance to Heaven — one burning thought of thee 1 I ne'er on earth may gaze on those bright features, Nor drink the light of that soul-beaming eye ; But wander on 'mid earth's unthinking creatures, Unloved in life, and unlamented die ; But ne'er shaU fade the speU thou weavest o'er me, Nor fail the star that Kghts my lonely way ; StiU shall the night's fond dreams that Ught restore me, Though Fate forbid its gentler beams by day. I have not dreamed that gold or gems adorn thee — That Flatt'ry's voice may vaunt thy matchless form ; I Uttle reck that worldlings aU may scorn thee, Be but thy sottl stUl pure, thy feeUngs warm ; 159 160 EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER, Be thine bright Intellect's unfiiding treasures. And Poesy's more deeply-hallowed spell. And Faith the zest which heightens all thy pleasures. With trusting love^Maid of my soul 1 fareweU 1 One more poem claims place here, if from its autobiographical character alone. Those who believe there is such a thing as regen eration, who know that a man can act and live -in a disinterested spirit, will not read this poem with entire incredulity. It appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger for August, 1840. THE FADED STARS. I mind the time when Heaven's high dome Woke in iny soul a wondrous thrUl-^ When every leaf an Nature's tome Bespoke creations marvels stiU ; When mountain cliff and sweeping glade, Ais morn unclosed her rosy bars, . Woke joys intense^-but naught e'er bade My heart leap tip, like yon, bright stars ! Calm ministrairts to God's high glory! Pure gems around His burning throne ! Mute watchers o'er man's strange, sad story Of Crime and Woe through ages gone ! 'Twas yours the mUd and haUowing speU That lured me from ignoble gleams-^ Taught me where sweeter fountains swell Than ever bless the worldling's dreams. How changed was life ! a w&ste no more, Beset by Waint, and Pain, and Wrong ; Earth seemed a glad and fairy shore, Vocal with Hope's inspiring song. But ye, bright sentinels of Heaven ! Far glories of Night's radiant sky! Who, as ye gemmed the brow of Even, Has ever deemed Man born to die ? SUBJECTS OF HIS ESSAYS. 161 'Tis faded now, that wondrous grace That once on Heaven's forehead shone ; I read no more in Nature's face A soiU responsive to my own. A dimness on my eye and spirit. Stem time has cast in hurrying hy; Few joys iny hardier years inherit, And leaden dullness rules the sky. Yet mourn not I — a stern, high duty Now nerves my arm and fires my brain ; Perish the dream of shapes of beauty, So that this strife be not in vain ; To war on Fraud entrenched with Power — On smooth Pretence and specious Wrong — This task be miue, though Fortune lower ; For this be banished sky and song. The subjects upon which the editor of the New Yorker used to descant, as editor, contrast curiously ¦with those upon which, as poet, he aspired to sing. Turning over the well-printed pages of that journal, we find calm and rather elaborate eaaaya upon ' The Interests of Labor,' ' Our Relations with France^' ' Speculation,' ' The Science of Agriculture,' ' Usury Lawa,' ' The Currency,' ' Over trading,' ' Divorce of Bank and State,' ' National Conventions,' ' In ternational Copyright,' ' Relief Of the Poor,' ' The PubUc Lands,' ' Capital Punishment,' ' The Slavery Question,' and scores of others equally nnromantic. There are, also, election returns given with great minuteness, and numberless paragraphs recording nomina- tionsi The New Yorker gradually became the authority in the de partment of political stati^cs. There were many people who did not conader an election ' safe,^ or ' lost,' HntU they saw the figures in this New Yorker. And the New Yorker deserved this distinc tion ; for there never lived an editor more scrupulous upon the point of literal and absolute correctness than Horace Greeley. To quote the language of a proof-reader — " If there is a thing that wUl make Horaee furious, it is to have a name spelt wrong, or a mistake 162 EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. in election returns." In fact, he was morbid on the subject, tiU time toughened him ; time, and proof-readers. The opinions which he expressed in the columns of the New Yorker are, in general, those to which he still adheres, though on a few subjects he used language which he would not now use. His opinions on those subjects have rather advanced than changed. For example : he is now opposed to the punishment of death in aU cases, except when, owing to peculiar circumstances, the immediate safety of the community demands it. In June, 1836, he wrote : — " And now, having fuUy expressed our conviction that the punish ment of death is one which should sometimes be infiicted, we may add, that we would have it resorted to as unfrequently as possible. Nothing, in our view, but cold-blooded, premeditated, unpalUated murder, can fully justify it. Let this continue to be visited with the sternest penalty." Another example. The foUowing is part of an article on the Slavery Question, which appeared in July, 1834. It differs from his present writings on the same subject, not at aU in doctrine, though very much in tone. Then, he thought the North the ag gressor. Since then, we have had Mexican Wars, Nebraska biUs, etc., and he now writes as one assaUed. " To a philosophical observer, the existence of domestic servitude in one portion of the Union while it is forbidden and condemned in another, would indeed seem to afford no plausible pretext for variance or alienation. The Union was formed with a perfect knowledge, on the one hand, that slavery ex isted at the south, and, on the other, that it was utterly disapproved and dis countenanced at the north. But the framers of the constitution saw no reason for distrust and dissension in this circumstance. Wisely avoiding all discuss ion of a subject so delicate and exciting, they proceeded to the formation of ' a more perfect union,' which, leaving each section in the possession of its undoubted right of regulating its own internal government and enjoying its own speculative opinions, provided only for the common benefit and mutual well-being of the whole. And why should not this arrangement be satisfac tory and perfect 7 Why should not even the existing evils of one section be left to the correction of its own wisdom and virtue, when pointed out by the unerring finger of experience % ********* We entertain no doubt that the system of slavery is at the bottom of most of the evils which afflict the communities of the south— that it has occasioned HIS OPINIONS THEN. 163 the decline of Virginia, of Maryland, of Carolina. We see it even retarding the growth of the new State of Missouri, and causing her to fall far behind her sister Indiana in improvement and population. And we venture to assert, that if the objections to slavery, drawn from a correct and enlightened politi cal economy, were once fairly placed before the southern public, they would need no other inducements to impel them to enter upon an immediate and effective courae of legislation, with a view to the ultimate extinction of the evil. But, right or wrong, no people have a greater disinclination to the lec tures or even the advice of their neighbors ; and we venture to predict, that whoever shall bring about a change of opinion in that quarter, must, in this case, reverse the proverb which declares, that ' a prophet hath honor except in his own country.' " * 4e 4: 4: if: 4c 4: After extolling the Colonization Society, and condemning the form ation of anti-slavery societies at the North, as irritating and useless, the editor proceeds : — " We hazard the assertion, that there never existed two distinct races — so diverse as to be incapable of amalga mation — ^inhabiting the same district of country, and in open and friendly contact with each other, that maintained a perfect equality of political and social condition. * * * jj remains to be proved, that the history of the nineteenth century will afford a direct con tradiction to all former experience. * * * "VjTg cannot close without reiterating the expression of onr firm conviction, that if the African race are ever to be raised to a degree of comparative happiness, intelUgence, and freedom, it must be in some other region than that which has been the theatre of their servitude and degra dation. They muat ' come up out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage ;' even though they should be forced to cross the sea in their pUgrimage and wander forty years in the wilder ness." Again. In 1835, he had not arrived at the Maine Law, but was feeling his way towards it. He wrote thus : " Were we called upon to indicate simply the course which should be pursued for the eradication of this crying evil, our compliance would be a far easier matter. We should say, unhesitatingly, that the vending of alcohol, or of liquors of which alcohol forms a leading component, should be regulated by the laws whieh govern the sale of other insidious, yet deadly, poisons. It should be kept for sale only by druggists, and dealt out in small portions, and with like regard to the oharacter aud ostensible purpose of the applicant. 164 EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. as in the case of its counterpart, » * * » But we must not forget, that we are to determine simply what may be done by the friends of temperance for the advancement of the noble cause in which they are engaged, ra-ther than what the more ardent of them (with Whom we are proud to rank our selves) would desire to see accomplished. We are to look at things as they are; and, in that view, all attempts to interdict the sale of intoxiealang liquors in our h