previous next
[27] had already acquired a perfect knowledge of typesetting and the mechanical makeup of a newspaper. During his apprenticeship he took his first lesson in the art of thinking on his feet in the presence of an audience. The audience to be sure were the members of a debating club, which he had organized. He was very ambitious and was doubtless looking forward to a political career. He saw the value of extempore speech to the man with a future, and he wisely determined to possess himself of its advantage. He little dreamt, however, to what great use he was to devote it in later years. There were other points worth noting at this time, and which seemed to prophecy for him a future of distinction. He possessed a most attractive personality. His energy and geniality, his keen sense of humor, his social and bouyant disposition, even his positive and opinionated temper, were sources of popular strength to him. People were strongly drawn to him. His friends were devoted to him. He had that quality, which we vaguely term magnetic, the quality of attaching others to us, and maintaining over them the ascendency of our character and ideas.

In the midst of all this progress along so many lines, the days of his apprenticeship in the Herald office came to an end. He was just twenty. With true Yankee enterprise and pluck, he proceeded to do for himself what for seven years he had helped to do for another-publish a newspaper. And with a brave heart the boy makes his launch on the uncertain sea of local journalism and becomes editor and publisher of a real, wide-awake sheet, which he calls the Free Press. The paper was independent in politics and

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: