Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-12-28
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HORACE GREELEY,S BROTHER.
He Leads Hermit's Life and Displays
Family characteristics.

Family characteristics.
CoRRY Pa.), November 23d. = Five
miles west of this place, near the village
of Columbus, in an old, weather-beaten
frame house, the only brother of the great
editor, Horace Greeley. lives the life of a
hermit. Barnes Greeley, who is now
nearly so years of age, has lived on this
farm for the past sixty years. He is known
far and wide, in Erie and Warren coun-
ties, on account of his family and his many
eccentricities, and because of his never
failing good nature, his abundant and un-
affected warm-heartedness, and his keen
though somewhat erratic intelligence. The
old-farmer is tall and spare, but of powerful
build, and is noted for his slovenly dress
and his antipathy for water, both inter-
nally and externally. He saws that water
taken into the system in immoderate guam
titles is fully as injurious as whisky. In
his slovenliness of attire may doubtless be
found a family characteristic which, in
Horace Greeley, has been too often attrib-
uted by his critics to weak affectation
for the purpose of attracting public atten-
ton.
The farm on which Barnes Greeley has
lived SO long is large and fertile one, but
it has look of desertion and neglect. He
seems to care to make only living out of
what would have made thriftier man in
dependently rich long ago. 1t was on this
farm that Horace and Barnes Greeley
were boys together, and it was here that
Horace, who had gone to the great East
to learn the printers trade, came some
times to spend vacation, and even in
those days the yearnings of Horace's am
bition were plainly shown. In their
tramps through the forests he would con-
tide to his brother his dreams of future
greatness. Long afterward, when Horace
Greeley became great editor and man
whose name was known on both sides of
the Atlantic, he did not forget his brother
up in the wilds of Pennsylvania. One
day he sent for Barnes to come to New
York and made him his travelling agent
and then gave him place on his editor
ial staff, and offered him various positions
from all of which the farmer retired in
turn, and eventually went back to his farm
disappointed man.
Do you want to know why returned
home ?" he still asks his neighbors some
times. We'll, Pll tell you. / wasn't fit
to fill any place would accept, so / came
home. l preferred to be king among
hogs rather than be hog among kings.''
Barnes Greeley's antipathy to water is not
a whit stronger than his dislike to whisky.
He is strong Prohibitionist, and advo-
Gates the doctrine Of :" no whisky or free
whisky" His present good health he at
tributes in great measure to the fact that
he never uses tobacco and always abstained
from whisky. Although remarkably well
preserved physically for a man of his years,
MIR. Greeley is convinced that he is ap-
preaching his second childhood, and figures
out by some mathematical system OF his
own that in fifteen years his mind will be-
come blank, and that five yenrs later he
will die at the exact age of one hundred
years He has never married and is the
last representative of the only branch OF
the Greeley family.