James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley

Accordingly, Horace Greeley was one of the two thousand Americans who crossed the Atlantic for the purpose of attending the World's Fair, and, like many others, he seized the opportunity to make a hurried tour of the most accessible parts of the European Continent. It was the longest holiday of his life. Holiday is not the word, however. His sky was changed, but not the man; and his labors in Europe were as incessant and arduous as they had been in America, nor unlike them in kind. A strange apparition he among the elegant and leisurely Europeans. Since Franklin's day, no American had appeared in Europe whose “style” had in it so little of the European as his, nor one who so well and so consistently represented some of the best sides of the American character. He proved to be one of the Americans who can calmly contemplate a duke, and value him neither the less nor the more on account of his dukeship. Swiftly he travelled. Swiftly we pursue him.

At noon on Saturday, the sixteenth of April, 1851, the steamship Baltic moved from the wharf at the foot of Canal-street, with Horace Greeley on board as one of her two hundred passengers. It was a chilly, dismal day, with a storm brewing and lowering in the north-east. The wharf was covered with people, as usual on sailing days; and when the huge vessel was seen to be in motion, and the inevitable White Coat was observed among the crowd on her deck, a hearty cheer broke from a group of Mr. Greeley's personal friends, and was caught up by the rest of the spectators. He took off his hat and waved response and farewell, while the steamer rolled away like a black cloud, and settled down upon the river.

The passage was exceedingly disagreeable, though not tempestuous. The north-easter that hung over the city when the steamer sailed “clung to her like a brother” all the way over, varying a point or two now and then, but not changing to a fair wind for more than six hours. Before four o'clock on the first day—before the steamer had gone five miles from the Hook, the pangs of seasickness came over the soul of Horace Greeley, and laid him prostrate. At six o'clock in the evening, a friend, who found him in the smoker's room, helpless, hopeless, and recumbent, persuaded and assisted him to go below, where he had strength only to un-boot