From "Captains of Industry," by James Parton. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
1884.
I have seldom been more interested than in hearing Horace Greeley tell
the story of his coming to New York, in 1831, and gradually working his
way into business there.
He was living at the age of twenty years with his parents in a small
log-cabin in a new clearing of Western Pennsylvania, about twenty miles
from Erie. His father, a Yankee by birth, had recently moved to that
region and was trying to raise sheep there, as he had been accustomed
to do in Vermont. The wolves were too numerous there.
It was part of the business of Horace and his brother to watch the
flock of sheep, and sometimes they camped out all night, sleeping with
their feet to the fire, Indian fashion. He told me that occasionally a
pack of wolves would come so near that he could see their eyeballs
glare in the darkness and hear them pant. Even as he lay in the loft
of his father's cabin he could hear them howling in the fields. In
spite of all their care, the wolves killed in one season a hundred of
his father's sheep, and then he gave up the attempt.
The family were so poor that it was a matter of doubt sometimes whether
they could get food enough to live through the long winter, and so
Horace, who had learned the printer's trade in Vermont, started out on
foot in search of work in a village printing office.
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