Sunday he walked three miles to attend a church, and remembered to the
end of his days the delight he had, for the first time in his life, in
hearing a sermon that he entirely agreed with. In the meantime he had
gained the good will of his landlord and the boarders, and to that
circumstance he owed his first chance in the city. His landlord
mentioned his fruitless search for work to an acquaintance who happened
to call that Sunday afternoon. That acquaintance, who was a shoemaker,
had accidently heard that printers were wanted at No. 85 Chatham Street.

At half-past five on Monday morning Horace Greeley stood before the
designated house, and discovered the sign, "West's Printing Office,"
over the second story, the ground floor being occupied as a bookstore.
Not a soul was stirring up stairs or down. The doors were locked, and
Horace sat down on the steps to wait. Thousands of workmen passed by;
but it was nearly seven before the first of Mr. West's printers
arrived, and he, too, finding the door locked, sat down by the side of
the stranger, and entered into conversation with him.

"I saw," said the printer to me many years after, "that he was an
honest, good young man, and being a Vermonter myself, I determined to
help him if I could."

Thus, a second time in New York already, _the native quality of the
man_ gained him, at the critical moment, the advantage that decided his
destiny. His new friend did help him, and it was very much through his
urgent recommendation that the foreman of the printing office gave him
a chance. The foreman did not in the least believe that the
green-looking young fellow before him could set in type one page of the
polyglot Testament for which help was needed.