ell, how much do you charge?"

"Six dollars."

"Yes, that's more than I can afford."

He walked on until he descried on the North River, near Washington
Market, a boarding-house so very mean and squalid that he was tempted
to go in and inquire the price of board there. The price was two
dollars and a half a week.

"Ah!" said Horace, "that sounds more like it."

In ten minutes more he was taking his breakfast at the landlord's
table. Mr. Greeley gratefully remembered this landlord, who was a
friendly Irishman by the name of McGorlick. Breakfast done, the
newcomer sallied forth in quest of work, and began by expending nearly
half of his capital in improving his wardrobe. It was a wise action.
He that goes courting should dress in his best, particularly if he
courts so capricious a jade as Fortune.

Then he began the weary round of the printing offices, seeking for work
and finding none, all day long. He would enter an office and ask in
his whining note:

"Do you want a hand?"

"No," was the inevitable reply, upon receiving which he left without a
word. Mr. Greeley chuckled as he told the reception given him at the
office of the _Journal of Commerce_, a newspaper he was destined to
contend with for many a year in the columns of the _Tribune_.

"Do you want a hand?" he said to David Hale, one of the owners of the
paper.

Mr. Hale looked at him from head to foot, and then said:

"My opinion is, young man, that you're a runaway apprentice, and you'd
better go home to your master."

The applicant tried to explain, but the busy proprietor merely replied:

"Be off about your business, and don't bother us."

The young man laughed good-humouredly and resumed his walk. He went to
bed Saturday night thoroughly tired and a little discouraged. On
Sunday he walked three miles to attend a church, and remembered to the
end of his days the delight he had, for the first time in his life, in
hearing a sermon that he entirely agreed with. In the meantime he had
gained the good will of his landlord and the boarders, and to that
circumstance he owed his first chance in the city. His landlord
mentioned his fruitless search for work to an acquaintance who happened
to call that Sunday afternoon. That acquaintance, who was a shoemaker,
had accidently heard that printers were wanted at No. 85 Chatham Street.

At half-past five on Monday morning Horace Greeley stood before the
designated house, and discovered the sign,