ibune,' he said. 'Come and see me at twelve
tomorrow.

And then they went away.

If I had been a knight of the garter I could not have been treated with
more distinguished courtesy by those hard-handed men the rest of the
day. I bade them goodbye at night and got my order for four dollars. One
Pat Devlin, a great-hearted Irishman, who had shared my confidence and
some of my doughnuts on the curb at luncheon time, I remember best of
all.

'Ye'll niver fergit the toime we wurruked together under Boss
McCormick,' said he.

And to this day, whenever I meet the good man, now bent and grey, he
says always, 'Good-day if ye, Mr Brower. D'ye mind the toime we pounded
the rock under Boss McCormick?

Mr Greeley gave me a place at once on the local staff and invited me
to dine with him at his home that evening. Meanwhile he sent me to the
headquarters of the Republican Central Campaign Committee, on Broadway,
opposite the New York Hotel. Lincoln had been nominated in May, and the
great political fight of 1860 was shaking the city with its thunders.

I turned in my copy at the city desk in good season, and, although the
great editor had not yet left his room, I took a car at once to keep my
appointment. A servant showed me to a seat in the big back parlour of
Mr Greeley's home, where I spent a lonely hour before I heard his heavy
footsteps in the hail. He immediately rushed upstairs, two steps at a
time, and, in a moment, I heard his high voice greeting the babies. He
came down shortly with one of them clinging to his hand.

'Thunder!' said he, 'I had forgotten all about you. Let's go right in to
dinner.

He sat at the head of the table and I next to him. I remember how,
wearied by the day's burden, he sat, lounging heavily, in careless
attitudes. He stirred his dinner into a hash of eggs, potatoes, squash
and parsnips, and ate it leisurely with a spoon, his head braced often
with his left forearm, its elbow resting on the table. It was a sort of
letting go, after the immense activity of the day, and a casual observer
would have thought he affected the uncouth, which was not true of him.

He asked me to tell him all about my father and his farm. At length I
saw an absent look in his eye, and stopped talking, because I thought he
had ceased to listen.

'Very well! very well!' said he.

I looked up at him, not knowing what he meant.

'Go on! Tell me all about it,' he added.

'I like the country best,' said he, when I