James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley

“ [406] us a lecture this winter.” Another is a country clergyman who has called to say how much he likes the semi-weekly Tribune, and to gratify his curiosity by speaking with the editor face to face. Gradually the throng diminishes and the pile of papers is reduced. By three or four o'clock, this preliminary botheration is disposed of, and Mr. Greeley goes to dinner.

Meanwhile, all the departments of the establishment have beep in a state of activity. It is Thursday, the day of the Weekly Tribune, the inside of which began to be printed at seven in the morning. Before the day closes, the whole edition, one hundred and sixteen thousand, forty-eight cart-loads, will have been printed, folded, wrapped, bundled, bagged, and carried to the post-office. The press-room on Thursdays does its utmost, and presents a scene of bustle and movement “easier imagined than described.” No small amount of work, too, is done in the office of publication. To-day, as we ascertain, two hundred and thirteen business letters were received, containing, among other things less interesting, eleven hundred and seventy-two dollars, and four hundred and ten new or renewed subscriptions, each of which has been recorded and placed upon the wrapper-writer's books. The largest sum ever received by one mail was eighteen hundred dollars. The weekly expenditures of the concern average about six thousand two hundred dollars, of which sum four thousand is for paper. During the six dull months of the year, the receipts and expenditures are about equal; in the active months the receipts exceed the expenditures.

It is nine o'clock in the evening. Gas has resumed. The clank of the press has ceased, and the basement is dimly lighted. The clerks, who have been so busy all day, have gone home, and the night-clerk, whom we saw this morning in his press-room pulpit, is now behind the counter of the office receiving advertisements. Night-work agrees with him, apparently, for he is robust, ruddy and smiling. Aloft in the composing room, thirty-eight men are setting type, silently and fast. No sound is heard but the click of the type, or the voice, now and then, of a foreman, or the noise of of the copy-box rattling up the wooden pipe from the editor's room below, or a muffled grunt from the tin tube by which the different rooms hold converse with one another, or the bell which calls for