In 1841, ten years from the time he wandered along Nassau street, without money or friends, and with all his worldly possessions tied up in a handkerchief, he began the publication of the New York Tribune, having succeeded in obtaining the necessary capital. It was a venture, and a bold one, but it proved a great success. He chose the name of the journal himself, and became its responsible editor. Though others have assisted him in his efforts, the success of the paper is his work. He has made it a great power in the land, and he is naturally proud of his work. Those who know him best say that the title dearest to his heart is that of “Founder of the New York Tribune.”
Mr. Greeley’s career has been one of incessant labor. His friends say he was never known to rest as other men do. When he goes to his farm in Westchester County for recreation, he rests by chopping wood and digging ditches. His editorial labors make up a daily average of about two columns of the Tribune, and he contributes the equivalent of about six Tribune columns per week to other journals. He writes from fifteen to twenty-five letters per day; he has published several large works; he goes thoroughly through his exchanges every day, and keeps himself well posted in the current literature of the times; he speaks or lectures about five or six times a month, and makes monthly visits to Albany and Washington, to see what is going on behind the scenes in the capitals of the State and Nation. He is constantly receiving people who come on business or from curiosity, and yet he never seems tired, though he is not always even-tempered.
He is somewhat peculiar in his personal appearance. Most people in thinking of him picture to themselves a slouchy looking man, with a white hat, a white overcoat, with one leg of his breeches caught over the top of his boot, his whole dress shabby
and not overclean, and his pockets stuffed full of newspapers, and many have imagined that he “gets himself up” so, in order to attract attention on the streets. The true Horace Greeley, however, though careless as to outward appearances, is immaculately neat in his dress. No one ever saw him with dirty linen or soiled clothes except in muddy weather, when, in New York, even a Brummel must be content to be splashed with mud. Mr. Greeley’s usual dress is a black frock coat, a white vest, and a pair of black pantaloons which come down to the ankle. His black cravat alone betrays his carelessness, and that only when it slips off the collar, and works its way around to the side. Mr. Greeley is five feet ten inches in height, and is stout in proportion. He is partly bald, and his hair is white. He has a light, pinkish complexion, and his eyes are blue, small, and sunken. His mouth is well-shaped, and his features are regular. His beard is worn around the throat and under the chin, and is perfectly white. His hands are small and soft; but his feet and legs are awkward and clumsy, and this gives to him a peculiar shuffling motion in walking. He is abstracted in manner, and when accosted suddenly replies abruptly, and as some think rudely.
One of his acquaintances thus describes him in his editorial office:
“We walk through the little gate in the counter, turn within the open doorway on our left, climb a short, narrow flight of stairs, and find ourselves in a small room, ten by fifteen, furnished with a green carpet, a bed lounge, an open book-rack, a high desk, a writing-desk, three arm-chairs, a short-legged table, and a small marble sink.
“Mr. Greeley’s back is toward us. He is seated at his desk. His head is bent over his writing, and his round shoulders are quite prominent. He is scribbling rapidly. A quire of foolscap, occupying the only clear space on his desk, is melting rapidly beneath his pen. The desk itself is a heap of confusion. Here is Mr. Greeley’s straw hat; there is his handkerchief. In front of him is a peck of newspaper clippings, not neatly rolled up, but loosely sprawled over the desk. At his left a rickety
pair of scissors catches a hurried nap, and at his right a paste-pot and a half-broken box of wafers appear to have had a rough-and-tumble fight. An odd-looking paper-holder is just ready to tumble on the floor. An old-fashioned sand-box, looking like a dilapidated hour-glass, is half-hidden under a slashed copy of The New York World. Mr. Greeley still sticks to wafers and sand, instead of using mucilage and blotting-paper. A small drawer, filled with postage stamps and bright steel pens, has crawled out on the desk. Packages of folded missives are tucked in the pigeon-holes, winking at us from the back of the desk, and scores of half-opened letters, mixed with seedy brown envelopes, flop lazily about the table. Old papers lie gashed and mangled about his chair, the débris of a literary battle field. A clean towel hangs on a rack to his right. A bound copy of The Tribune Almanac, from 1838 to 1868, swings from a small chain fastened to a staple screwed in the side of his desk; two other bound volumes stand on their feet in front of his nose, and two more of the same kind are fast asleep on the book-rack in the corner. Stray numbers of the almanac peep from every nook. The man who would carry off Greeley’s bound pile of almanacs would deserve capital punishment. The Philosopher could better afford to lose one of his legs than to lose his almanacs. The room is kept scrupulously clean and neat. A waste paper basket squats between Mr. Greeley’s legs, but one half the torn envelopes and boshy communications flutter to the floor instead of being tossed into the basket. The table at his side is covered with a stray copy of The New York Ledger, and a dozen magazines lie thereon. Here is an iron garden rake wrapped up in an Independent. There hangs a pair of handcuffs once worn by old John Brown, and sent Mr. Greeley by an enthusiastic admirer of both Horace and John. A champagne basket, filled with old scrap-books and pamphlets, occupies one corner. A dirty bust of Lincoln, half hidden in dusty piles of paper, struggles to be seen on the top of his desk. A pile of election tables, dirty, ragged and torn, clipped from some unknown newspaper, looks as if they had half a mind to jump down on the ‘Old Man’s’ bald head. A certificate of life
membership in some tract or abolition society, and maps of the World, New York, and New Jersey hang on the wall. A rare geological specimen of quartz rock, weighing about ten pounds, is ready to roll down a high desk to the floor on the first alarm. Dirty pamphlets are as plentiful as cockroaches. His office library consists of 150 volumes.
“Pen, ink, paper, scissors, and envelopes are in unfailing demand. The cry, ‘Mr. Greeley wants writing paper!’ creates a commotion in the counting-room, and Mr. Greeley gets paper quicker than a hungry fisherman could skin an eel.