Mexico weekly ledger., 1896-05-07
Greeley's Eccentricities.
from a speech by Amos j. Cummings before
the Columbia Typographical Union
of Washington, ID. CT

tfTDm u Spt6Gn Dy AInOs 81. Suiluulukb clbEt
the Columbia Typographical Union
of Washington, ID. CO
Like Lincoln, Greeley was born in
poverty and reared in obscurity. With
a thirst for knowledge, inherited from
his mother, one of his most striking
characteristics was correctness of
spelling, and an everlasting desire to
associate with those who could not
spell. He was drowsy as q lad, and
the drowsiness remained with hum
through life. He would sleep in the
street cars, and his associates said he
"could sleep as well as he could SPELL"
When he was ten years old, he had
borrowed, read and returned every
book within seven miles of his fathers
house. He was not a college-bred
man, and he used to say, "of all the
horned cattle, a college graduate is
the worst in a newspaper office" HIS
family was so poor hat a lady once
found them all living upon milk and
bread. Horace's mother said it cost
less than 5000 a year TO clothe him,
and rs a boy he persistently dressed in
the most awkward country style. AT
fifteen he vas apprenticed to a print
er in Poultney, Vt, for six months for
his board, and the remainder of five
years for his board and forty dollars
per annum. He learned to set type in
one day as well as the average ap-
prentice could in one month. He
would never retort to a joke, but
''stuck his nose in the space-box, 'and
his intellectual accomplishments DOM
mated the baser habits of printers.
When copy ran out, he began to com
pose news items at the case, and as
they went in the paper he soon found
him self composing editorial para
graphs, which also went in. He never
had a new suit of clothes in the five
years OF his apprenticeship, and walk
ed home, five hundred miles away,
twice in that time to see his mother.
On one of these trips, when he passed
through Saratoga, N. Y, he wrote his
first newspaper article, which was
published in his paper when he re-
turned to work. He was twenty years
old when he became a journeyman,
and then worked in the smaller towns
of the North, going to New York City
sixty three years ago. He entered New
York by q towboat down the Hudson,
with ten dollars in his pocket, and
stopped first at a saloon, SIS Chatham
street, for two dollars a week. The
only work he could get was to set up
an agate edition of a pocket Tesla
ment, which all other printers refused
to work on. He was never a swift COM
position, but was assiduous and correct,
and made only five dollars a week by
working fourteen hours. He looked
SO much like a block headed country
man that he was fired from the Eren-
ing Post composing rooms simply on
that account. He then worked on the
Commercial Advertiser, and in 1882 Col.
William F. Porter took him into the
Spirit Of the Times, and to keep his job
he c~ondescended to change his home
spun suit for a five-dollar secondhand
suit he got in Chatham street. Printers
called him 'The Ghost" and he was
always lending them money. He had
a natural repugnance to luxury and
wealth. The first newspaper enter
prise he was interested in vas the
Morning Post, which died in month.
He married a school teacher, who was
attracted to him by one OF his poems;
and at the marriage ceremony he
broke a custom of his previous life by
wearing socks.