d them against the enemies of France.
The Greeley of the popular heart was clad as Bennett said he was clad.
It was in vain, even pathetically in vain, that he published in his
newspaper the full bill of his fashionable tailor (the fact that it was
receipted may have excited the animosity of some of his contemporaries)
to show that he wore the best broadcloth, and that the folds of his
trousers followed the city fashion of falling outside his boots. If this
revelation was believed, it made no sort of impression in the country.
The rural readers were not to be wheedled out of their cherished
conception of the personal appearance of the philosopher of the
Tri-bune.

That the Tri-bune taught Old Phelps to be more Phelps than he would
have been without it was part of the independence-teaching mission of
Greeley's paper. The subscribers were an army, in which every man was a
general. And I am not surprised to find Old Phelps lately rising to
the audacity of criticising his exemplar. In some recently-published
observations by Phelps upon the philosophy of reading is laid down this
definition: "If I understand the necessity or use of reading, it is to
reproduce again what has been said or proclaimed before. Hence, letters,
characters, &c., are arranged in all the perfection they possibly can
be, to show how certain language has been spoken by the original author.
Now, to reproduce by reading, the reading should be so perfectly like
the original that no one standing out of sight could tell the reading
from the first time the language was spoken."

This is illustrated by the highest authority at hand: I have heard
as good readers read, and as poor readers, as almost any one in this
region. If I have not heard as many, I have had a chance to hear nearly
the extreme in variety. Horace Greeley ought to have been a good reader.
Certainly but few, if any, ever knew every word of the English language
at a glance more readily than he did, or knew the meaning of every mark
of punctuation more clearly; but he could not read proper. 'But how
do you know?' says one. From the fact I heard him in the same lecture
deliver or produce remarks in his own particular way, that, if they had
been published properly in print, a proper reader would have reproduced
them again the same way. In the midst of those remarks Mr. Greeley took
up a paper, to reproduce by reading part of a speech that some one else
had made; and his reading did not sound much