OKS

(1811-1872)

[Footnote 14: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

[Illustration: Horace Greeley. [TN]]

Horace Greeley was one of the few persons whose manhood fulfilled the
precocious promise of his youth. He could read before he could speak
plainly, and at the age of six he had declared that his purpose in life
was to be a printer. At eleven he tried to be apprenticed at the village
printing-office and was unsuccessful; at the age of fourteen he was
taken on as an apprentice in the office of the _Northern Spectator_, at
East Poultney, Vt.

His family were of Scotch-Irish origin, but had lived in the northern
part of New Hampshire for several generations. Horace was born in
Amherst, N. H., February 3, 1811. So quick of apprehension was he, and
so active was his intellect, that the commonest of common-school
education was for him sufficient. His schooling was only that which he
could obtain during three or four months in winter; for at other seasons
of the year he labored in the field with his father and brothers; and
when he went to be an apprentice for five years in the printing-office,
he was paid a very slender pittance, the greater part of which he gave
to his father, whose income was probably next to nothing.

In June, 1830, the newspaper office in which young Greeley was learning
his trade became insolvent, and Greeley, then in his twentieth year, was
released from his indentures. He tramped from office to office as a
journeyman printer, and his father having removed to the then "new
country of western Pennsylvania," the youngster, with ten dollars in his
pocket, walking part way and part way earning his passage on a tug-boat,
entered the city of New York, August 18, 1831. For days he sought in
vain for employment among the printing-offices of the metropolis. He was
gawky, poorly clad, and doubtless presented a very grotesque appearance
to the cityfied people to whom he vainly applied for employment. Finally
he effected an entrance into one of the printing-offices of the city,
and, much to the surprise of those who sneered at his ungainly and
unpromising figure, he straightway proved himself to be a competent,
careful, and skilful printer. For fourteen months or more, he picked up
odd jobs in the offices of the newspapers, always making friends and
always managing to save a little money.

Finally, at the beginning of 1833, in partnership with Francis V. Story,
a printer, he established a penny