of a
state convention; but the sagacity with which he now commented upon
what he saw and heard made the oldest members of the Assembly lean
upon him. And when he came back to the Legislature in January, 1851,
they put him in the speaker's chair.

Raymond seems never to have wearied of study, or to have found it
difficult easily to acquire knowledge. He could read at three years of
age; at five he was a speaker. In his sixteenth year he taught school
in Genesee County, where he was born, wrote a Fourth of July ode
creditable to one of double his years, and entered the University of
Vermont. As soon as he reached an age to appreciate his tastes and to
form a purpose, he began equipping himself for the career of a
political journalist. He was not yet twenty-one when he made Whig
speeches in the campaign of 1840 and gained employment with Horace
Greeley on the _New Yorker_ and a little later on the _Tribune_. "I
never found another person, barely of age and just from his studies,
who evinced so much and so versatile ability in journalism as he did,"
wrote Greeley. "Abler and stronger men I may have met; a cleverer,
readier, more generally efficient journalist I never saw. He is the
only assistant with whom I ever felt required to remonstrate for doing
more work than any human brain and frame could be expected long to
endure. His services were more valuable in proportion to their cost
than those of any one who ever worked on the _Tribune_."[402] In 1843,
when Raymond left the _Tribune_, James Watson Webb, already acquainted
with the ripe intelligence and eager genius of the young man of
twenty-three, thought him competent to manage the _Courier and
Enquirer_, and in his celebrated discussion with Greeley on the
subject of socialism he gave that paper something of the glory which
twelve years later crowned his labours upon the New York _Times_.

[Footnote 402: Horace Greeley, _Recollections of a Busy Life_, pp.
138, 139.]

It was inevitable that Raymond should hold office. The readiness with
which he formulated answers to arguments in the Polk campaign, his
sympathy with the Free-soil movement, the canal policy, and the common
school system, produced a marked impression upon the dawning wisdom of
his readers. But it was near the end of his connection with the
_Courier_ before he yielded his own desires to the urgent solicitation
of the Whigs of the ninth ward and went to the Assembly. He had not
yet quarrelled with James