James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley

[81] zeal and resolution to defeat the fraud by exposing it to the apprehension of a duped and betrayed people.

These extracts will assist the reader to recall the political excitements of the time. And he may well esteem it extraordinary for a boy of thirteen—an age when a boy is, generally, most a boy—to understand them so well, and to be interested in them so deeply. It should be remembered, however, that in remote country places, where the topics of conversation are few, all the people take a degree of interest in politics, and talk about political questions with a frequency and pertinacity of which the busy inhabitants of cities can form little idea.

Horace's last year in Westhaven (1825) wore slowly away. He —had exhausted the schools; he was impatient to be at the types, and he wearied his father with importunities to get him a place in a printing-office. But his father was loth to let him go, for two reasons: the boy was useful at home, and the cautious father feared he would not do well away from home; he was so gentle, so absent, so awkward, so little calculated to make his way with strangers. One day, the boy saw in the ‘Northern Spectator,’ a weekly paper, published at East Poultney, eleven miles distant, an advertisement for an apprentice in the office of the ‘Spectator’ itself. He showed it to his father, and wrung from him a reluctant consent to his applying for the place. ‘I have n't got time to go and see about it, Horace; but if you have a mind to walk over to Poultney and see what you can do, why you may.’

Horace had a mind to.