MR. HORACE GREELEY


There has been something almost tragic about the close of Mr.
Greeley's career. After a life of, on the whole, remarkable success
and prosperity, he fell finally under the weight of accumulated
misfortunes. Nobody who heard him declare that "he accepted the
Cincinnati Convention and its consequences," but must be struck by
the illustration of what is called "the irony of fate," which nearly
everything that occurred afterwards affords. His nomination, from
whatever point of view we look at it, was undoubtedly a high honor.
The manner in which it was received down to the Baltimore Convention
was very flattering. Whether it was a proper thing to "beat Grant"
or not, that so large and so shrewd a body of his countrymen should
have thought Mr. Greeley the man to do it was a great compliment. It
found him, too, in possession of all the influence which the
successful pursuit of his own calling could give a man--the most
powerful editor in the Union, surrounded by friends and admirers,
feared or courted by nearly everybody in public life, and in the
full enjoyment of widespread popular confidence in his integrity. In
six short months he was well-nigh undone. He had endured a
humiliating defeat, which seemed to him to indicate the loss of what
was his dearest possession, the affection of the American people; he
had lost the weight in public affairs which he had built up by
thirty years of labor; he saw his property and, as he thought, that
of his friends diminished by the attempt to give him a prize which
he had in his own estimation fairly earned, and, though last not
least, he found his home invaded by death, and one of the strongest