a jade as Fortune.

Then he began the weary round of the printing-offices, seeking for work
and finding none, all day long. He would enter an office and ask in his
whining note:--

"Do you want a hand?"

"No," was the invariable reply; upon receiving which he left without a
word. Mr. Greeley chuckled as he told the reception given him at the
office of the "Journal of Commerce," a newspaper he was destined to
contend with for many a year in the columns of the "Tribune."

"Do you want a hand?" he said to David Hale, one of the owners of the
paper.

Mr. Hale looked at him from head to foot, and then said:--

"My opinion is, young man, that you're a runaway apprentice, and you'd
better go home to your master."

The applicant tried to explain, but the busy proprietor merely
replied:--

"Be off about your business, and don't bother us."

The young man laughed good-humoredly and resumed his walk. He went to
bed Saturday night thoroughly tired and a little discouraged. On Sunday
he walked three miles to attend a church, and remembered to the end of
his days the delight he had, for the first time in his life, in hearing
a sermon that he entirely agreed with. In the mean time he had gained
the good will of his landlord and the boarders, and to that circumstance
he owed his first chance in the city. His landlord mentioned his
fruitless search for work to an acquaintance who happened to call that
Sunday afternoon. That acquaintance, who was a shoemaker, had
accidentally heard that printers were wanted at No. 85 Chatham Street.

At half-past five on Monday morning Horace Greeley stood before the
designated house, and discovered the sign, "West's Printing-Office,"
over the second story; the ground floor being occupied as a bookstore.
Not a soul was stirring up stairs or down. The doors were locked, and
Horace sat down on the steps to wait. Thousands of workmen passed by;
but it was nearly seven before the first of Mr. West's printers arrived,
and he, too, finding the door locked, sat down by the side of the
stranger, and entered into conversation with him.

"I saw," said this printer to me many years after, "that he was an
honest, good young man, and, being a Vermonter myself, I determined to
help him if I could."

Thus, a second time in New York already, _the native quality of the man_
gained him, at the critical moment the advantage that decided his
destiny. His new friend did help him, and it was very much through