James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley

[112] 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. Sterritt 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 Sterritt—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 character, 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. Sterritt right pay him what he (Mr. Sterritt) thought he had earned. He had only one request to make, and that was, that he should lot be required