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once gained, he always maintained it. For this attainment he was admired by his mates, but seems not to have been envied. He cared little for the ordinary sports which so much amuse children at this age, but, as early as his fifth or sixth year, preferred to steal away with a book to some secluded place, and devour its contents. In other respects he was quite singular; he never would fight a boy whatever might be the provocation; if another was disposed to quarrel with him, he quietly stood and bore the infliction, which soon became more tiresome to the author than to the recipient. He is described at this time as a delicate, flaxen-haired child, of a gentle and retiring disposition, remarkable mainly for his attachment to books. This grew with his mind, till it became the all absorbing passion of his life. As he grew older, he ransacked all the libraries in the neighborhood to satisfy his intellectual appetite; but so far were they from satiating it, they seemed only to act as stimulants. He borrowed from the minister, from the village collection, from every source in his reach, till he became a walking encyclopedia. It was a peculiarity of his manner of reading that he became so absorbed in his book as to lose all apparent consciousness of what was going on about him. Thus he stored his mind with that knowledge which was to be so invaluable to him in after life. It was the only education that nature offered him, and he

gladly availed himself of it; so that when time came for reflection, he possessed a perfect mine of informa tion, whose treasures were as exhaustless in extent as they were difficult in acquisition.

There is hardly a boy in New England so small but that upon the farm some work can be found simple enough for his capacities. From the time that spring opens, each season brings to the juvenile his proportion of light labor. The corn is to be dropped; the team to be driven for the plow; the stock to be fed; the horse to be ridden between the rows of corn and potatoes, previous to hoeing; the gathering of apples, and the various autumnal crops, afford work for all sizes and all ages. Horace never evaded these for his book, but by diligence in accomplishing his apportioned job, managed to save time for his favorite indulgence, without interfering with the requirements of the farm. Among sports he was fond only of fishing, and his "luck" always excelled that of his companions, "because that while they fished for fun, he fished for fish."

When only ten years old his father became involved in debt, by signing the obligations of some of his neighbors, was unable to meet the pecuniary demands upon him, and, as a consequence, his little farm, house, and all that in the childhood of Horace went to make up home, was swept away by creditors. IIis father, a ruined bankrupt, was forced to flee the

state to avoid arrest, and left his family behind him. After thirty years Horace discharged the last of these obligations with honor. The family, with the little wreck of their household furniture, followed the father to Westhaven, Vermont, where he had hired a small house, and here they survived the first winter in extreme indigence. In this new region the book of Nature afforded more various beauties than at Amherst, and it was of all others the delight of the boy's contemplation. Lake Champlain, with its grand and beautiful environs, lay within three miles of the cottage and here and there among those hills, little streams, like threads of silver, wound about, with an occasional lake in their course, like a string of beads about the neck of a child. The hills lifted their sum mits to the clouds, and their sloping sides, covered with verdure, extended as far as the eye could reach. The whole extent of country became a grand cradle for Greeley's imagination. The circumstances in which the family were now placed compelled the utmost economy in every habit; the usual dress of Horace was a hat, cotton shirt, and a pair of pants, whose counterpart cannot be found, perhaps, upon the poorest wayfarer of modern times. It is stated that during his residence in Westhaven, his clothing did not average a cost of three dollars a year, and that until he was twenty-one probably not fifty dollars were expended upon his dress. Economy was

the study of the family, and their teacher stern necessity. The habits which he was here forced to learn will perhaps account for some of the apparent eccentricities of his subsequent life. The family did save something by their frugality, and it became a ruling principle of Horace never to incur the slightest unnecessary expense while there remained debt unpaid. To his store of intellectual knowledge Horace added but little in Westhaven. The schools were much the same as in Amherst, certainly no better; and though for a while he attended regularly, he could oftener inform the teacher than learn from him. The text books also being much the same, his mind found a respite and recreation in assisting boys older than himself, and three times as large, to master difficulties which he had solved long ago. At length he became to the teachers somewhat of an annoyance, by his inquisitiveness, which they were unable to satisfy, and as a final result he was kept at home. Here he assisted the other children in their studies, and continued his reading. At the age of fifteen he had thoroughly perused Robinson Crusoe, the Arabian Nights, Shakspeare, Robertson's and Goldsmith's histories, and as many romances and works of fiction as he could lay hold of.

Horace had always cherished the idea of becoming a printer. His father gave him but little encouragement, but at eleven permitted him to walk to White

hall, where a news paper was published, to talk with the proprietor. That individual informed him that he was too young to think of it, so he had nothing to do but to return, work, and wait. With impatience he did so for four years longer, when occurred a circumstance which caused an epoch in his history. In the Northern Spectator, published at East Poultney, Vermont, he saw an advertisement for an apprentice, and determined to apply for the place.

In the spring of 1826, the gentlemanly editor of that paper was hoeing potatoes in his garden one morning, when in walked a boy, rudely clad, to inquire after the situation. How little thought the editor of that journal, that the uncouth lad-the "devil" -would one day not merely control a journal like his own, but edit and manage the first journal in America! Mr. Bliss thought he had indeed an unpromising look, but upon asking him a few questions, discovered that there was something more than ordinary about him. In the language of that gentleman, “On entering into conversation, and a partial examination of the qualification of my new applicant, it required but little time to discover that he possessed a mind of no common order, and an acquired intelligence far beyond his years. He had had but little opportunity at the common school, but he said he had read some,' and what he had read he well understood and remembered. In addition to the ripe intelligence

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