of General
Harrison. I was introduced to a singular looking man in rustic dress. He
was writing an editorial. His face had a peculiar infantile smoothness,
and his long flaxen hair fell down over his shoulders. I little dreamed
then that that uncouth man in tow trousers was yet to be the foremost
editor in America, and a candidate, unwisely, for President of the
United States. Horace Greeley, for it was he, who sat before me, has
been often described as a man with the "face of an angel, and the walk
of a clod-hopper." Ten years later I became well acquainted with him,
and from that time a most cordial friendship existed until his dying
day. He visited me as a speaker at our State convention in Trenton, N.Y.
I had him at my house at supper when my mother asked him if he would
take coffee. His droll reply was: "I hope to drink coffee, madame, in
heaven, but I cannot stand it in this world." After supper I informed my
guest that it was customary for my good mother and myself (for I was not
yet married), to have family worship immediately at the close of that
meal and asked him whether he would not join us. He cordially replied
that he would be most happy to do so, and it is quite probable that I
may be one of the few,--perhaps the only--clergyman in this land who
ever had Horace Greeley kneeling beside him in prayer. He attired
himself in the famous old white coat, and shambled along with my mother
to the place of meeting. He quite captivated her with a most pathetic
account of his idolized boy "Pickie," who had died a short time before.
Mr. Greeley was one of the most simple-hearted, great men whom I have
ever met; without a spark of ordinary vanity he was intensely
affectionate in his sympathies and loved a genuine kind word that came
from the heart. He relished more a quiet talk with an old friend in his
home at Chappaqua than all the glare of public notoriety. "Come up," he
often said to me, "and spend a Saturday at the farm. The good boys do
come and see me up there sometimes." Probably no man lived a purer life
than Horace Greeley. He was the most devoted of husbands to one of the
most eccentric of wives. His defenses of the spiritual sanctity of
marriage in reply to Dale Owen are among the most powerful productions
of his ever powerful pen. It were well that they should be reproduced
now at a time when the laxity of wedlock and the wicked facilities for
divorce are working such peril to our domestic life.

John Brig