This book has grown out of such enforced leisure as one may find
in a busy life. Chapters begun in the publicity of a Pullman car
have been finished in the cheerless solitude of a hotel chamber.
Some have had their beginning in a sleepless night and their end in
a day of bronchitis. A certain pious farmer in the north country
when, like Agricola, he was about to die, requested the doubtful
glory of this epitaph: 'He was a poor sinner, but he done his best'
Save for the fact that I am an excellent sinner, in a literary sense,
the words may stand for all the apology I have to make.

The characters were mostly men and women I have known and
who left with me a love of my kind that even a wide experience
with knavery and misfortune has never dissipated. For my
knowledge of Mr Greeley I am chiefly indebted to David P.
Rhoades, his publisher, to Philip Fitzpatrick, his pressman, to the
files of the Tribune and to many books.

IRVING BACHELLER
New York City, 7 April 1900




BOOK ONE



Chapter I