(6 of 6)
Mrs. Horace Greeley was a onetime schoolmistress who never learned to keep house. A contemporary thus described her: "Mrs. Greeley was a woman rather below the medium size, thin, with dark hair and eyes. She had thin lips, irregular and somewhat defective teeth. There was little expression in her face, but that little was rather against her. She spoke quickly—not peevishly, nor angrily, as a rule, but her words had a kind of crack like the report of a rifle." Horace was kind and patient with this woman whom he addressed as "Mother." She kept cows which "Mother says shall never be killed while she lives, because they have given milk to her children. They fall down sometimes and want to die, but Mother will not let them and keeps a man to lift them up and care for them."
Horace, a lifelong Republican, was nominated for President of the United States in 1872 by the Democrats. On Oct. 30 of that year Mrs. Greeley died. On Nov. 5 Ulysses S. Grant "won 286 electoral votes to Greeley's 66. On Nov. 7, the Tribune announced: "The undersigned resumes the editorship of the Tribune, which he relinquished on embarking on another line of business six months ago. Henceforth it shall be his endeavor to make this a thoroughly independent journal, treating all parties and political movements with judicial fairness and candor, but counting the favor and deprecating the wrath of no one." But immediately there was a move to oust him from control. "My misfortunes do not come 'single files, but in battalions.' And so many of my old friends hate me for what I have done that life seems too hard to bear." On Nov. 29, aged 61, he died, some think of a broken heart.
*THE GIANT OF OLDBORNE—John Owen (Houghton Mifflin) ($2.)
*RIVER THAMES—F. V. Morley-Harper's ($6).
*EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE-Felix Riesenberg—Harcourt Brace ($2.50).
*HORACB GREELEY —Don C. Seitz—Bobbs, Merrill ($5.00).