Litchfield enquirer., 1880-04-15
"Reminiscences of Horace Greeley.
BY 0. T. CONGDON.

The Tribune IS publishing Congdon's Record of Fifty years as Journalist, and we clip the
 following regarding Horace Greeley:
 >. do not know any man who has been more stupldly, nonsensically. and inadvertently written about than Mir. Horace Greeley
 Some even of those who desired to speak of him respectfully, have blundered. When he died, and the whole country seemed eager to honor his memory, there was most unneces- sary tone of apology for what were regarded as his eccentricitieS and weaknesses. 1 take issue upon both points. 1 do not consider him to have been an eccentric, 1 most certainly do not think him to have been a weak man. It must be remembered that ot all Journalists of his time, he put his individuality into his newspaper. He made it somewhat uncom- monly the medium of his private and personal opinions about matters which were not at all connected with public affairs. In fact, during it's first years, MT. Greeley was The Tribune and The Tribune was Mr. Greeley. He did not profess to be merely politician He had strong political attachments, but party itself was always his helper, never his master. He had opinions Of which no discussion was ever had In the caucus, upon which no popular decision was ever pronounced at the polls; and he proclaimed these in his newspaper, with out once asking whether they would help or hurt the business or his party. In the begin ming, he entertained ideas of labor reform, which were afterward somewhat modified, and he turned from the discussion of politics and the advocacy of nominees, to press these ideas upon the public attention. He did not con- slider capital punishment to be either humane or expedient, and he said SO. He was, prscti- cally and theoretically, temperance man, and even a Prohibitionist, and the readers of The Tribune were not left In ignorance of the fact. He was interested in agricultural pur- suits, and was as likely to write leading article about sorghum as one concerning the next Presidency. In his comparative youth, he held that human beings should not eat meat; but though he cherished this harmless deluson only for little while, he did so with such characteristic enthusiasm that half the world continued to the last to believe that the great editor subsisted entirely upon Graham bread and potatoes.
 There were two great pecularities of his intellectual constitution, not often found to- gether. lie was at once speculative and practical. He had boundless hospitality for new opinions, which he desired at once to sub- init to the ordeal of actual experiment But think that he found out the failures just ss soon as anybody and certainly no one could comment upon them with drier sarcasm or more good-humored frankness. If he had started Fourier phalanx, he would have been the irst to discover the weak working points remember him pulling out of his pocket small bottle of sorghum sugar, containing probably five ounces, and exhibiting it, half sheepishly and half triumphantly, as the net production of his cultivation of that new plant For mean act he had no mercy for clum- sy or careless one but little; but his fund of good nature was indomitable. He once, for some reason, reported a dinner in The Trib- une, and told the public that among the bever- ages provided were "Heidseck, claret, port, champagne and other wines" When he was chatfed about this, by those who took such liberties sometimes, he only laughed and said, "Well, l am the only man in The Tribune office who could have made such mistake as that, which, l am afraid, was literally true. Almost always overworked, he was naturally irritated by intrusions upon his privacy. For long time, his efforts to cloister himself up were, 1 am bound to say, humiliating fail ures. All sorts of people, with the greatest possible variety of bees in their bonnets, man. aged to evade the slight barriers, get into his presence, and interrupt his industry-people with machines of perpetual motion; with theories about spirituaism; with notions about the next election; with business plans only requiring a small loan to launch them upon the full tide of dividend paying experi- ment. There were others with a passionate desire to borrow small or large sums of money with anxiety to become writers upon The Tribune; with manuscripts which they wish ed to have recommended to some publisher of books; with new religions; with schemes for the abolition of every religion whatever; with mining stocks sure to pay a thousand per cent; with stories of personal destitution har- rowing to listen to, and yet only requiring the
 loan of few shillings to enable the petitioner to go to his friends; widows whose sole claim
 upon him or upon anybody was that they
 were widows orphans, sometimes suspicious
 ly we'll grown, who had nothing to plead but their orpSsnage; Irishmen who had lost every thing in desperate attempt to give the green
 island better government; negroes who, per- baps were born free and were merely fugi
 tiges from Maine or Massachasetts-ali these and many others beseiged the sanctum, and devised tricks for swindling it's occupant.
 am satisfied that if MT. Greeley could have
 locked his door and kept it locked, he would nave died much richer man. He would try
 sometimes to be extremely stern and repellant,
 but it was always lamentable fslure
 happened to witness one interview which
 was sufficiently amusing. A widow, or at
 least womanin black, wanted to go some-
 where. or set up school or start a mission in
 some far-away region in Africa, or do some
 thing for sewing girls-never mind what Mir Greeley, who was up to his eyes in work, re- peatedly told herto go away, and kept on writ ing. But going away was the last thIng which the DettiCO8ted nhilanthroDiof yroy,DooI <o a<