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. He walked from
village to village, and from town to town, until at last he went to
Erie, the largest place in the vicinity.

There he was taken for a runaway apprentice, and certainly his
appearance justified suspicion. Tall and gawky as he was in person,
with tow-coloured hair, and a scanty suit of shabbiest homespun, his
appearance excited astonishment or ridicule wherever he went. He had
never worn a good suit of clothes in his life. He had a singularly
fair, white complexion, a piping, whining voice, and these
peculiarities gave the effect of his being wanting in intellect. It
was not until people conversed with him that they discovered his worth
and intelligence. He had been an ardent reader from his childhood up,
and had taken of late years the most intense interest in politics and
held very positive opinions, which he defended in conversation with
great earnestness and ability.