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and soon after seven the work of the day began.
It is hardly necessary to say that the appearance of Horace, as he sat in the office waiting for the coming of the foreman, excited unbounded astonishment, and brought upon his friend a variety of satirical observations.
Nothing daunted, however, on the arrival of the foreman he stated the case, and endeavored to interest him enough in Horace to give him a trial.
It happened that the work for which a man was wanted in the office was the composition of a Polyglot Testament; a kind of work which is extremely difficult and tedious.
Several men had tried their hand at it, and, in a few days or a few hours, given it up. The foreman looked at Horace, and Horace looked at the foreman.
Horace saw a handsome man (now known to the sporting public as Colonel Porter, editor of the Spirit of the Times.) The foreman beheld a youth who could have gone on the stage, that minute, as Ezekiel Homespun without the alteration of a thread or a hair, and brought down the house by his “getting up” alone.
He no more believed that Ezekiel could set up a page of a Polyglot Testament than that he could construct a chronometer.
However, partly to oblige Horace's friend, partly because he was unwilling to wound the feelings of the applicant by sending him abruptly away, he consented to let him try. ‘Fix up a case for him,’ said he, ‘and we'll see if he can do anything.’
In a few minutes Horace was at work.
The gentleman to whose intercession Horace Greeley owed his first employment in New-York is now known to all the dentists in the Union as the leading member of a firm which manufactures annually twelve hundred thousand artificial teeth.
He has made a fortune, the reader will be glad to learn, and lives in a mansion up town.
After Horace had been at work an hour or two, Mr. West, the “boss,” came into the office.
What his feelings were when he saw his new man, may be inferred from a little conversation upon the subject which took place between him and the foreman.
‘Did you hire that dam fool?’
asked West with no small irritation.
‘Yes; we must have hands, and he's the best I could get,’ said the foreman, justifying his conduct, though he was really ashamed of it.
New York. Mason. Brothers. . 1855.
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