er
they could get food enough to live through the long winter, and so
Horace, who had learned the printer's trade in Vermont, started out on
foot in search of work in a village printing office. He walked from
village to village, and from town to town, until at last he went to
Erie, the largest place in the vicinity.

There he was taken for a runaway apprentice, and certainly his
appearance justified suspicion. Tall and gawky as he was in person,
with tow-coloured hair, and a scanty suit of shabbiest homespun, his
appearance excited astonishment or ridicule wherever he went. He had
never worn a good suit of clothes in his life. He had a singularly
fair, white complexion, a piping, whining voice, and these
peculiarities gave the effect of his being wanting in intellect. It
was not until people conversed with him that they discovered his worth
and intelligence. He had been an ardent reader from his childhood up,
and had taken of late years the most intense interest in politics and
held very positive opinions, which he defended in conversation with
great earnestness and ability.

A second application at Erie procured him employment for a few months
in the office of the Erie _Gazette_, and he won his way, not only to
the respect, but to the affection of his companions and his employer.
That employer was Judge J. M. Sterrett, and from him I heard many
curious particulars of Horace Greeley's residence in Erie. As he was
only working in the office as a substitute, the return of the absentee
deprived him of his place, and he was obliged to seek work elsewhere.
His employer said to him one day:

"Now, Horace, you have a good deal of money coming to you; don't go
about the town any longer in that outlandish rig. Let me give you an
order on the store. Dress up a little, Horace."

The young man looked down on his clothes as though he had never seen
them before, and then said, by way of apology:

"You see, Mr. Sterrett, my father is on a new place, and I want to help
him all I can."

In fact, upon the settlement of his account at the end of his seven
months' labour, he had drawn for his personal expenses six dollars
only. Of the rest of his wages he retained fifteen dollars for
himself, and gave all the rest, amounting to about a hundred and twenty
dollars, to his father, who, I am afraid, did not make the very best
use of all of it.

With the great sum of fifteen dollars in his pocket, Horace now
resolved upon a