The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-10-31
THE MAKERS OF THE NATIc
By Clark Mills Brink. A nNNICaI IN VIII

By Clark Mills Brink.
 ARTICLE XIII.
 When the time came tor the speaker to ho introduced we SEW standing before us the oldest looking specimen of the hu- man kind 1t was ever my fortune to set, ,yes upon He had the brow of a phil Dsopher and the face of baby. The top n his head was bald and the sides and back were covered with long, yellowish- white hidr-hair not white with age, but pf that genuine tow variety. stringy and shiny. which he probably had at birth ard which would be his so long as any remained upon his glistening pate. His face was of the full moon variety, fair in color. with red checks and an ex- precision benevolent enough for Santa Claus. His eyes were rather small, usu- ally half-closed and reinforced by a pair of large. round-windowed goggles. which increased the infantile and bland express sion of his countenance- Under his chm and on his neck was d hedge of the same yelow-white hair. sticking in every direction like quills upon the tretful por- cupine. His figure awkward and almost ridiculous. was clothed in garments that seemed to have been gathered with a pitchfork from the miscellaneous collec- ton of a Jews secondhand clothing store. His coat was too long and his trousers were too short. That coat was gray. almost white. and looked as If its previous cwEer must have been miller fblanched with his toil;'' those trousers were striped and hardly reached the top of the wearer's shoes When he spoke his voice was high and shril all most a squeak, He stood with his feet straddled apart, and while speaking tetered back and forth from one foot to the other during a large part of his iec- ture.
 That man, with the baby face and tow head, the scarecrow costume, teterinS attitd1e and squeaky voice., was Horace Greedy, as he was described to the writer by a boy friend who had heard the great editor make an address at an agricultural fair in an eastern State. Yet. although he was not an Apollo in outward appearance. Horace Greeley wielded an influence for a generation. perhaps not equaled, in our century by any other man who spoke mainly from the editors chair.
 Horace Greeley was born February 3. 181l, in Southern New Hampshire, "a good State" as Daniel Webster once said; to go from" He came from good tocratic or distinguished. but in the sense of sturdy and virtuous. He traced his desceEt from the sound and virile Scotch. Irish of Ulster. strain from which have come az stanch and brainy men and Ncmen as America has pro duced. Horace was precocionS 2hlid who couitl, when years old read the ohildren's stories to which h. has access ana who at the age of had been through inc Bible, proper names and all. Not many opportunities for schooling came 10 this child of poverty, but he Was an invd terate reaicr almost from infancy and everything waS grtst that came to hls mill. He read every ,!, book to 'Mcther GCosc.' from Shakespeare to .le farmers alAsnac. He read prob ably by the time he was 15 years old about every bit of printed matter within q radius of seven miles from his fath- CTS house. As he had a prodiSlous memory and both retained and assimi- lated all he read. this miscellaneous ab- sorption of all sorts of mental pabulum was possibly not bad substitute for a more formal education.
 If ever a man was foreordained to a particular calling then Horace Greeley was foreordained to be the editor of d newspaper. When only years old he declared that he was going to be rrint- CT, and at b he was anprenticnd to learn the trade in the office of a paper in East Poultney, Vt His life there was un- evsntful. In 1881 he made his way to New York City to conquer fortune. He was then ''an overgrown, awkward white-hcaded, forlorn-looling boy, q pack suspended on stan over his right simplicity since the primitive fig leaves of Eden Innocent of the world and it's ways he seemed to the denizen Of the city almost like wanderer from some other planet. His ungalnly mo- tions had something so grotesque in their gracelessness that people stopped in the streets S to gaze ears at hlm, nf ace Young Greeley The young printer wandered over the city seeking work, visiting every print ing office that he could !Ii. ind getting a
 
 cheap boarding house to eke out his scanty income and making friends by his modesty, amiability and his remark able ability. With some of these friends he edited The Evening Post. the first penny daily that was ever published The undertaking did not prove financial ly successful and after its collapse he es- abolished The New Yorker, which built up quite an extensive circulation for those days. But it did more than this It's crisp editorials on political topics and cI r ent events its genius for treat ing political statistics in a convincing way and it's open eye for news had at tracted the attention of men piOmi- nent ip political affairs One day In lS3S the young editor had call from two Thurlow Weed and Lewis Benedict Weed the editor of The Albany Evening Journal and Benedict the chairman of the State Committee of the Whig Party. They asked Greeley t. serve as editor of a campaign paper which they We're de- sircus of issuing in the approaching po- Iitcal contest The salary was placed at N, GOO. This Was tn turning point of Greelev's career, for it not only gave scope tor his genius as political editor. but 1t also opened the way for his ulti- mate association in that political trium- vtrate of Seward, Weed and Greeley which for a long time controlled the Whlg and early Republican destnies of New York and eXerted a powerful in- fuence JIon the politics of the nation. and contributed largely to the success that year of the WhiGs in New York.
 In 1540 Greeley was chosen again tc