they love their chosen too wisely and too well to diminish by one care the burthen that makes them strong, to lessen by one pang the agony that makes them good, to prevent one mistake of the folly that makes them wise.

Light of heart and step, the traveler walked on. In the afternoon he reached Comstock's Fording, fourteen miles from Poultney; thence, partly on canal-boat and partly on foot, he went to Schenectady, and there took a 'line-boat' on the Erie Canal. A week of tedium in the slow line-boat-a walk of a hundred miles through the woods, and he had reached his father's log-house. He arrived late in the evening. The last ten miles of the journey he performed after dark, guided, when he could catch a glimpse of it through the dense foliage, by a star. The journey required at that time about twelve days it is now done in eighteen hours. It cost Horace Greeley about seven dollars; the present cost by railroad is eleven dollars; distance, six hundred miles.

He found his father and brother transformed into backwoodsinen. Their little log-cabin stood in the midst of a narrow clearing, which was covered with blackened stumps, and smoked with burning tim ber. Forests, dense and almost unbroken, heavily timbered, abounding in wolves and every other description of 'varmint,' extended a day's journey in every direction, and in some directions many days' journey. The country was then so wild and 'new,' that a hunter would sell a man a deer before it was shot; and appointing the hour when, and the spot where, the buyer was to call for his game, would have it ready for him as punctually as though he had ordered it at Fulton market. The wolves were so bold, that their howlings could be heard at the house as they roamed about in packs in search of the sheep; and the solitary camper-out could hear them breathe and see their eye-balls glare, as they prowled about his smoldering fire. Mr. Greeley, who had brought from Vermont a fondness for rearing sheep, tried to continue that branch of rural occupation in the wil derness; but after the wolves, in spite of his utmost care and precaution, had killed a hundred sheep for him, he gave up the attempt. But it was a level and a very fertile region—' varmint' al ways select a good 'location'--and it has since been subdued into a beautiful land of grass and woods.

Horace staid at home for several weeks, assisting his father,

fishing occasionally, and otherwise amusing himself; while his good mother assiduously nursed the sore leg. It healed too slowly for its impatient proprietor, who had learned 'to labor,' not 'to wait;' and so, one morning, he walked over to Jamestown, a town twenty miles distant, where a newspaper was struggling to get published, and applied for work. Work he obtained. It was very freely given; but at the end of the week the workman received a promise to pay, but no payment. He waited and worked four days longer, and discovering by that time that there was really no money to be had or hoped for in Jamestown, he walked home again, as poor as before.

And now the damaged leg began to swell again prodigiously; at one time it was as large below the knee as a demijohn. Cut off from other employment, Horace devoted all his attention to the unfortunate member, but without result. He heard about this time of a famous doctor who lived in that town of Pennsylvania which exults in the singular name of 'North-East,' distant twenty-five miles from his father's clearing. To him, as a last resort, though the family could ill afford the trifling expense, Horace went, and staid with him a month. "You don't drink liquor," were the doctor's first words as he examined the sore, “if you did, you'd have a bad leg of it." The patient thought he had a bad leg of it, without drinking liquor. The doctor's treatment was skillful, and finally successful. Among other remedies, he subjected the limb to the action of electricity, and from that day the cure began. The patient left North-East greatly relieved, and though the leg was weak and troublesome for many more months, yet it gradually recovered, the wound subsiding at length into a long red scar.

He wandered, next, in an easterly direction, in search of employment, and found it in the village of Lodi, fifty miles off, in Cataraugus county, New York. At Lodi, he seems to have cherished a hope of being able to remain awhile and earn a little money. He wrote to his friends in Poultney describing the paper on which he worked, 66 as a Jackson paper, a forlorn affair, else I would have sent you a few numbers." One of his letters written from Lodi to a friend in Vermont, contains a passage which may serve to show what was going on in the mind of the printer as he stood at the case setting up Jacksonian paragraphs. "You are aware that an

important election is close at hand in this State, and of course, a great deal of interest is felt in the result. The regular Jacksonians imagine that they will be able to elect Throop by 20,000 majority; but after having obtained all the information I can, I give it as my decided opinion, that if none of the candidates decline, we shall elect Francis Granger, governor. This county will give him 1000 majority, and I estimate his vote in the State at 125,000. I need not inform you that such a result will be highly satisfactory to your humble servant, H. Greeley.” It was a result, however, which he had not the satisfaction of contemplating. The confident and yet cautious manner of the passage quoted is amusing in a politician but twenty years of age.

At Lodi, as at Jamestown, our roving journeyman found work much more abundant than money. Moreover, he was in the camp of the enemy; and so at the end of his sixth week, he again took bundle and stick and marched homeward, with very little more money in his pocket than if he had spent his time in idleness. On his way home he fell in with an old Poultney friend who had recently ettled in the wilderness, and Horace arrived in time to assist at :he 'warming' of the new cabin, a duty which he performed in a way that covered him with glory.

In the course of the evening, a draught-board was introduced, and the stranger beat in swift succession half a dozen of the best players in the neighborhood. It happened that the place was rather noted for its skillful draught-players, and the game was played incessantly at private houses and at public. To be beaten in so scandalous a manner by a passing stranger, and he by no means an ornamental addition to an evening party, and young enough to be the son of some of the vanquished, nettled them not a little. They challenged the victor to another encounter at the tavern on the next evening. The challenge was accepted. The evening arrived, and there was a considerable gathering to witness and take part in the struggle among the rest, a certain Joe Wilson who had been specially sent for, and whom no one had ever beaten, since he came into the settlement. The great Joe was held in reserve. The party of the previous evening, Horace took in turn, and beat with ease. Other players tried to foil his 'Yankee tricks,' but were themselves foiled. The reserve was brought up. Joe Wilson took his seat at

the table. He played his deadliest, pausing long before he hazarded a move; the company hanging over the board, hushed and anxious. They were not kept many minutes in suspense; Joe was overthrown; the unornamental stranger was the conqueror. Another gamethe same result. Another and another and another; but Joe lost every game. Joseph, however, was too good a player not to respect so potent an antagonist, and he and all the party behaved well under their discomfiture. The board was laid aside, and a lively conversation ensued, which was continued 'with unabated spirit to a late hour.' The next morning, the traveler went on his way, leaving behind him a most distinguished reputation as a draught-player and a politician.

He remained at home a few days, and then set out again on his travels in search of some one who could pay him wages for his work. He took a 'bee line' through the woods for the town of Erie, thirty miles off, on the shores of the great lake. He had exhausted the smaller towns; Erie was the last possible move in that corner of the board; and upon Erie he fixed his hopes. There were two printing offices, at that time, in the place. It was a town of five thousand inhabitants, and of extensive lake and inland trade.

The gentleman still lives who saw the weary pedestrian enter Erie, attired in the homespun, abbreviated and stockingless style with which the reader is already acquainted. His old black felt hat slouched down over his shoulders in the old fashion. The red cotton handkerchief still contained his wardrobe, and it was carried on the same old stick. The country frequenters of Erie were then, and are still, particularly rustic in appearance; but our hero seemed the very embodiment and incarnation of the rustic Principle; and among the crowd of Pennsylvania farmers that thronged the streets, he swung along, pre-eminent and peculiar, a marked person, the observed of all observers. He, as was his wont, observed nobody, but went at once to the office of the Erie Gazette, a weekly paper, published then and still by Joseph M. Sterrett.

"I was not," Judge Sterrett is accustomed to relate, "I was not in the printing office when he arrived. I came in, soon after, and saw him sitting at the table reading the newspapers, and so absorbed in them that he paid no attention to my entrance. My first feeling was ore of astonishment, that a fellow so singularly 'green' in his

appearance should be reading, and above all, reading so intently I looked at him for a few moments, and then, finding that he made no movement towards acquainting me with his business, I took up my composing stick and went to work. He continued to read for twenty minutes, or more; when he got up, and coming close to my case, asked, in his peculiar, whining voice,

"Do you want any help in the printing business?"

"Why," said I, running my eye involuntarily up and down the extraordinary figure, "did you ever work at the trade?"

"Yes," was the reply; "I worked some at it in an office in Vermont, and I should be willing to work under instruction, if you could give me a job."

Now Mr. Sterrett did want help in the printing business, and could have given him a job; but, unluckily, he misinterpreted this modest reply. He at once concluded that the timid applicant was a runaway apprentice; and runaway apprentices are a class of their fellow-creatures to whom employers cherish a common and decided aversion. Without communicating his suspicions, he merely said that he had no occasion for further assistance, and Horace, without a word, left the apartment.

A similar reception and the same result awaited him at the other office; and so the poor wanderer trudged home again, not in the best spirits.

"Two or three weeks after this interview," continues Judge Sterrett-he is a judge, I saw him on the bench-"an acquaintance of mine, a farmer, called at the office, and inquired if I wanted a journeyman. I did. He said a neighbor of his had a son who learned the printing business somewhere Down East, and wanted a place. 'What sort of a looking fellow is he?' said I. He described him, and I knew at once that he was my supposed runaway apprentice. My friend, the farmer, gave him a high char acter, however; so I said, 'Send him along,' and a day or two after along he came."

The terms on which Horace Greeley entered the office of the Erie Gazette were of his own naming, and therefore peculiar. He would do the best he could, he said, and Mr. Sterrett might pay him what he (Mr. Sterrett) thought he had earned. He had only one request to make, and that was, that he should not be required