The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1868-11-13
The private Habit. of Horace GreeIe,
BY MARK TWAIN, OF THE TRIBUNE.

Mr.. Greeley gets up at three O'CLOCK
in the morning; for it is one OF his Ia
yorite maxims, that only early rising
can keep the health unimpaired and the
brain vigorous. He then wakes ap all
the household, and assemblies them In
the library, by candle-light, and, after
quoting the beautiful lines:
Early to bed and early to rise
Make man healty, wealthy and wise"
he appoints each individuals task for
the day, sets him at it with encour-
. aging words, and goes back TO bed
! again. mention here, in no fault
finding spirit, but with the Difference
Justly due man who is older and wiser
and worthieI than |, that he snores aw-
fully. In q moment of irritation, once,
l was rash enough to say never would
sleep with him until he broke himself
of this unfortunate habit. have kept
my word with bigoted and unwavering
determination. ......
At half.past eleven o'clock MIR. Gree
ley rises again. He shaves himself.
He considers that there is great virtue
and economy in shaving himself. He
does it with a dull razor, sometimes
huhiming part Of tune, Che knows part
of tune, and takes au innocent delight
in regarding it as tho first half of "Old
Hundred;" but parties familiar with
that hymn have felt Obliged to confess
that they could not recognize it, and,
therefore, the noise he makes is doubt
less an unconscious original composition
of Mr.. Greeley's) and sometimes, when
the razor is especially dull, he accom-
panies himself with formula like this:
t'Damn the damned razor, and the
damned outcast who made it'll. G.
He then goes into his model garden,
and applies his vast store of agricul-
tural knowledge to the amelioration of
his cabbages; after which he wri tes
an able agricultural article for the in
struction of American farmers, his soul
cheered the while with the reflection
that if cabagSs were worth eleven dol
dars apiece his model farm would pay.
He next goes to breakfast, which isa
frugal, abstemous meal with him, and
consists of nothing but just such things
as the market affords; nothing more.
He drinks nothing but water-nothing
whatever but water, and coffee, and tea,
and Scotch ale, and lager beer, and lem
onade with a fly in it-sometimes a
house-hy and sometimes horse-fy, ac-
cording to the amount of inspiration
required to warm him up to his daily
duties. During breakfast he reads the
Tribune all through, and enjoys the sat
isfaction OF knowing that all the bril-
liant things in it, written by Young, and
| Cooke, and Hazard, aud myself, are at.
tributed to him by confiding and in
fernal public.
After breakfast he writes O short edi-
torial, asd puts large dash at the be-
ginning of it, thus ~, which is the
same as if he put II. g. after it, and
takes a savage pleasure in rejecting
that none of us understrappers can use
that dash, except in profane conversa-
tiou when chatting over the outrage.
He writes this editorial in his own hand
writing. He does it because he is so
vain of his penmanship. He always did
take an inOrdinate pride in his penman-
ship. He hired out once, in his young
days, rs u writing master, but the ca
! terprise failed. The pupils could not
transl ate his remarks with any certain
ty. His first copy was "Virtue is its
own reward" and they got it Washing
with soap is wholly absurd" and 30 the
trustees discharged him for attempting
to convey bad morals, through the me-
dium of worse penmanship. But, as /
was saying, he writes his morning edi-
toral. Then he tries to read it over,
and can't do it; and so sends it to the
printers, and they try to read it, and
can't do it; and so they set it up at
random, as you may say, putting in
what words they can make out, and
when they get aground on a long word
they put in Reconstruction" or "uni-
versal suffrage" and spar off and pad
die ahead, and the next morning, If the
degraded public can tell what it is all
about, they say III. G. wrote 1t, and if
they can't, they say it is one of those
imbecile undcrstrappers, and that is
the end of it.
On Sundays Mr. Greeley sits in
prominent pew in Mr.. Chapin's church,
and let's on that he is asleep, and the
congregation regard it as an eccentrci-
ty of genius.
When he is going to appear in public,
Mr.. Greeley spends TWO hours on his
toilet He is the most painstaking and
elaborate man about getting up his
dress that lives in America. This is his
chiefest and his pleasantest foible. He
puts on his old white overcOat, and
turns up the collar. He puts on soiled
shirt, saved from the wash, and leaves
one end of the collar unbuttoned. He
puts on his most dilapidated hat,
turns it wrong side before, cants it on
the back of his head, and jams an extra
| IL l., 90 =
most atrocious boots, and spends fifteen
minutes tucking the left leg of his
pants into his boot-top in what shall
seem the most careless and unstudied
way. But his cravat--it is into the ar
rangement of his cravat that
he throws all his soul, all the
powers of his great ~ mind. ~ After
fixing at it for forty minutes
before the glass it is perfeot-iti is askGw
every way-it overfows his coat collar
on one side, asd sinks into oblivion on
the other-it climbs and 1t delves around
about his neok-the knot is conspicu.
ously displayed under his left ear, and
it stretches one of its long ends straight
out horizontally, and the other goes
after his eye, in the good old Toodle's
lfashieu-and then, completely and mar
vellously apparalled, Mr.. Greeley strides
forth, rolling like sailor, miracle of
astounding costumery, the awe and
wonder of the natives. .r....~.
But | haven't time to tell the rest of
his private habits. Suffice it that he is
an upright and On honest mana prac.
tical, great-brained mana useful man
to bis nation and his generation-a ia
nous man, who has justly earned his
celebrity-and withal the worst-dressed
man in this or any other country,
even though he does take 80 thun-
dering much pains, and put on so many
frills about it.
Sixteen hundred bags of gunpowder,
piled up near Granly Ford, Nevada, for
the use of the Central Pacific Railroad,
were accidentally exploded, few days