Year: 1868

pay.


BE next goes to breakfast, which is g
frugal, abstemious meal with him, and con.
sists 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 lemonade with fly in
it-sometimes a house fly and sometimes 0
horse fly, according to the amount of in
spiration required to warm him up to his
daily duties. During breakfast he reads
the Tribune all through, and enjoys the
satisfaction Of knowing that all the brilliant
things in it, written by Young, and Cooke,
and Hazard, and myself, are attributed to
him by confiding and Internal public.


After breakfast he writes short edito-
rial, and puts large dash at the beginning
of it, thus -, which is the same as if
he put H. G.. after it, and takes savage
pleasure in rejecting that none of us un-
derstrappers can use that dash, except in
profane conversation when chatting over
the outrage. He writes this editorial in
his own handwriting. He does it because
he is 80 vain of his penmanship. He al
ways did take an inordinate pride in his
penmanship: He hired out once, in his
young days, as a writing master, but the
enterprise failed. The pupils could not
translate his remarks with any certainty,
His first copy was Z" Virtue is its own re-
ward" and they got it Washing with
soap is wholly absurd" and so the trus-
tees discharged him for attempting to
convey bad morals through the me-
dunn of worse penmanship. But, as
Il was saying, he writes his morning
editorial. Then he tries to read it over
and can't do it, and 80 sends it to the print
ers, and they try to read it and can't do it !;
and 80 they set it up at random, as you
may say, putting in what words they can
make out, and when they get aground on q
universal suffrage" and spar off and
paddle ahead and next morning, if the
degraded public can tell what it is all about,
they say H. q. wrote it; and if they can't,
they say it is one of those imbecile under
strappers; and that is the end Of it.


On Sundays Mr.. Greeley sits in promi-
nent pew in Mr.. Chapin's church, and lets
on that he is asleep, and the congregation
regard it as an eccentricity Of genius.


When he is going to appear in public,
Mr.. Greeley spends two hours on his toilet.
He is the most pains-taking 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 to the back
of his head, and jams an extra dent in the
side of it. He puts on his 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 un-
studied way. But his cravat-it is into the
arrangement of his cravat that he throws
al his soul-all the powers of his great
mind. After fixing at it for forty minutes
before the glass it is perfect-it is askew
every way-it overfows his coat-collar on
one side, and sinks into oblivion on the
other-it climbs and it delves around about
his neck-the knot is con5picuously dis
played under his left ear, and it stretches
one of its long ends straight out horizon
tally, and the other goes after his eye in
the good old Toodles fashion; and then,
completely and marvelously apparelled,
Mr.. Greeley strides forth, rolling like a
sailor, miracle of astounding costumery,
the awe and wonder of the nations