Clad in a homespun tow shirt, shrunken, butternut-colored,
linsey-woolsey pantaloons, battered straw hat, and much-mended jacket
and shoes, with ten dollars in his pocket, and all his other worldly
goods packed in the bundle he carried on his back, Horace Greeley, the
future founder of the New York Tribune, started to seek his fortune in
New York.
A newspaper had always been an object of interest and delight to the
little delicate, tow-haired boy, and at the mature age of six he had
made up his mind to be a printer. His love of reading was unusual in
one so young. Before he was six he had read the Bible and "Pilgrim's
Progress" through.
Like the children of all poor farmers, Horace was put to work as soon
as he was able to do anything. But he made the most of the
opportunities given him to attend school, and his love of reading;
stimulated him to unusual efforts to procure books. By selling nuts and
bundles of kindling wood at the village store, before he was ten he had
earned enough money to buy a copy of Shakespeare and of Mrs. Hemans's
poems. He borrowed every book that could be found within a radius of
seven miles of his home, and by many readings he had made himself
familiar with the score of old volumes in his log-cabin home.
Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton draws a pleasing picture of the farmer boy reading
at night after the day's work on the farm was done. "He gathered a
stock of pine knots," she says, "and, lighting one each night, lay down
by the hearth and read, oblivious to all around him. The neighbors came
and made their friendly visits, and ate apples and drank cider, as was
the fashion, but the lad never noticed their coming or their going.
When really forced to leave his precious books for bed, he would repeat
the information he had learned, or the lessons for the next day to his
brother, who usually, most ungraciously, fell asleep before the
conversation was half completed."
"Ah!" said Zaccheus Greeley, Horace's father, when the boy one day, in
a fit of abstraction, tried to yoke the "off" ox on the "near" side:
"Ah! that boy will never know enough to get on in the world. He'll
never know more than enough to come in when it rains!"
Yet this boy knew so much that when at fourteen he secured a place as
printer in a newspaper office at East Poultney, Vermont, he was looked
up to by his fellow-printers as equal in learning to the editor himself.
At first they tried to make merry at his expense, poking fun at his
odd-looking garments, his uncouth appearance, and his pale, delicate
face and almost white hair, which subsequently won for him the nickname
of "Ghost." But when they saw that Horace was too good humored and too
much in earnest with his work to be disturbed by their teasing, they
gave it up. In a short time he became a general favorite, not only in
the office, but in the town of Poultney, whose debating and literary
societies soon recognized him as leader. Even the minister, the lawyer,
and the school-teachers looked up to the poor, retiring young printer,
who was a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge, ready at all times to
speak or to write an essay on any subject.
But the Poultney newspaper was obliged to suspend soon after Horace had
learned his trade, and, penniless,--for every cent of his earnings
beyond what furnished the bare necessaries of life had been sent home
to his parents in the wilderness,--he faced the world once more.
After working in different small towns wherever he could get a "job,"
reading, studying, enlarging his knowledge all the time when not in the
office, he made up his mind to go to New York, "to be somebody," as he
put it.
When he stepped off the towboat at Whitehall, near the Battery, that
sunny morning in August, 1831, with only the experience of a score of
years in life, a stout heart, quick brain, nimble fingers, and an
abiding faith in God as his capital, his prospects certainly were not
very alluring.
"An overgrown, awkward, white-headed, forlorn-looking boy; a pack
suspended on a staff over his right shoulder; his dress unrivaled in
sylvan simplicity since the primitive fig leaves of Eden; the
expression of his face presenting a strange union of wonder and apathy:
his whole appearance gave you the impression of a runaway apprentice in
desperate search of employment. Ignorant alike of the world and its
ways, he seemed to the denizens of the city almost like a wanderer from
another planet."
Such was the impression Horace Greeley made on a New Yorker on his
first arrival in that city which was to be the scene of his future work
and triumphs.
He tramped the streets all that day, Friday, and the next, looking for
work, everywhere getting the same discouraging reply, "No, we don't
want any one."
At last, when weary and disheartened, his ten dollars almost gone, he
had decided to shake the dust of New York from his feet, the foreman of
a printing office engaged him to do some work that most of the men in
the office had refused to touch. The setting up of a Polyglot
Testament, with involved marginal references, was something new for the
supposed "green" hand from the country. But when the day was done, the
young printer was no longer looked upon as "green" by his
fellow-workers, for he had done more and better work than the oldest
and most experienced hands who had tried the Testament.
But, oh, what hard work it was, beginning at six o'clock in the
morning, and working long after the going down of the sun, by the light
of a candle stuck in a bottle, to earn six dollars a week, most of
which was sent to his dear ones at home.
After nearly ten years more of struggle and privation, Greeley entered
upon the great work of his life--the founding and editing of the New
York Tribune. He had very little money to start with, and even that
little was borrowed. But he had courage, truth, honesty, a noble
purpose, and rare ability and industry to supplement his small
financial capital. He needed them all in the work he had undertaken,
for he was handicapped not only by lack of means, but also by the
opposition of some of the New York papers.
In spite of the adverse conditions he succeeded in establishing one of
the greatest and most popular newspapers in the country. The Tribune
became the champion of the oppressed, the guardian of justice, the
defender of truth, a power for good in the land. Through his paper
Greeley became a tribune of the people. No thought of making money
hampered him in his work. Unselfishly he wrought as editor, writer, and
lecturer for the good of his country and the uplifting of mankind. "He
who by voice or pen," he said, "strikes his best blow at the impostures
or vices whereby our race is debased and paralyzed, may close his eyes
in death, consoled and cheered by the reflection that he has done what
he could for the emancipation and elevation of his kind."
Well, then, might he rejoice in his life work, for his voice and pen
had to the last been active in thus serving the race.
He died on November 29, 1872, at the age of sixty-one. So great a man
had Horace Greeley, the poor New Hampshire farmer boy, become that the
whole nation mourned for his death. The people felt that in him they
had lost one of their best friends. A workman who attended his funeral
expressed the feeling of his fellow-workmen all over the land when he
said, "It is little enough to lose a day for Horace Greeley who spent
many a day working for us." "I've come a hundred miles to be at the
funeral of Horace Greeley," said a farmer.
The great tribune had deserved well of the people and of his country.