An odd-looking paper-holder is just ready to
tumble on the floor. An old-fashioned sand-box, looking like a
dilapidated hour-glass, is half-hidden under a slashed copy of _The New
York World_. Mr. Greeley still sticks to wafers and sand, instead of
using mucilage and blotting-paper. A small drawer, filled with postage
stamps and bright steel pens, has crawled out on the desk. Packages of
folded missives are tucked in the pigeon-holes, winking at us from the
back of the desk, and scores of half-opened letters, mixed with seedy
brown envelopes, flop lazily about the table. Old papers lie gashed and
mangled about his chair, the _debris_ of a literary battle field. A
clean towel hangs on a rack to his right. A bound copy of _The Tribune
Almanac_, from 1838 to 1868, swings from a small chain fastened to a
staple screwed in the side of his desk; two other bound volumes stand on
their feet in front of his nose, and two more of the same kind are fast
asleep on the book-rack in the corner. Stray numbers of the almanac peep
from every nook. The man who would carry off Greeley's bound pile of
almanacs would deserve capital punishment. The Philosopher could better
afford to lose one of his legs than to lose his almanacs. The room is
kept scrupulously clean and neat. A waste paper basket squats between
Mr. Greeley's legs, but one half the torn envelopes and boshy
communications flutter to the floor instead of being tossed into the
basket. The table at his side is covered with a stray copy of _The New
York Ledger_, and a dozen magazines lie thereon. Here is an iron garden
rake wrapped up in an _Independent_. There hangs a pair of handcuffs
once worn by old John Brown, and sent Mr. Greeley by an enthusiastic
admirer of both Horace and John. A champagne basket, filled with old
scrap-books and pamphlets, occupies one corner. A dirty bust of Lincoln,
half hidden in dusty piles of paper, struggles to be seen on the top of
his desk. A pile of election tables, dirty, ragged and torn, clipped
from some unknown newspaper, looks as if they had half a mind to jump
down on the 'Old Man's' bald head. A certificate of life membership in
some tract or abolition society, and maps of the World, New York, and New
Jersey hang on the wall. A rare geological specimen of quartz rock,
weighing about ten pounds, is ready to roll down a high desk to the floor
on the first alarm. Dirty pamphlets are as plentiful as cockroaches.
His office