started to seek his fortune in New York.

A newspaper had always been an object of interest and delight to
the little delicate, tow-haired boy, and at the mature age of six
he had made up his mind to be a printer. His love of reading was
unusual in one so young. Before he was six he had read the Bible
and "Pilgrim's Progress" through.

Like the children of all poor farmers, Horace was put to work as
soon as he was able to do anything. But he made the most of the
opportunities given him to attend school, and his love of reading;
stimulated him to unusual efforts to procure books. By selling
nuts and bundles of kindling wood at the village store, before he
was ten he had earned enough money to buy a copy of Shakespeare
and of Mrs. Hemans's poems. He borrowed every book that could be
found within a radius of seven miles of his home, and by many
readings he had made himself familiar with the score of old
volumes in his log-cabin home.

Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton draws a pleasing picture of the farmer boy
reading at night after the day's work on the farm was done. "He
gathered a stock of pine knots," she says, "and, lighting one each
night, lay down by the hearth and read, oblivious to all around
him. The neighbors came and made their friendly visits, and ate
apples and drank cider, as was the fashion, but the lad never
noticed their coming or their going. When really forced to leave
his precious books for bed, he would repeat the information he had
learned, or the lessons for the next day to his brother, who
usually, most ungraciously, fell asleep before the conversation
was half completed."