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side the playmates whom he liked best, without regard to their spelling ability.
All his school-fellows testified in later years to his early love of books, and that not one of the few volumes which the neighborhood afforded escaped him, and they recalled also his interest in the weekly newspaper for which his father subscribed.
The first book that
Greeley owned was The Columbian Orator, given to him by an uncle when, five years old, he lay sick with the measles.
At
Westhaven, Vt., the Greeleys lived near the house of the landowner who gave them employment, and he allowed Horace access to his library; and thus, by the time the boy was fourteen years old, he had read the
Arabian Nights,
Robinson Crusoe,
Shakespeare, and some history.
During the family's last year's residence in New Hampshire Horace's repute as a student induced a man of means to offer to send the lad, at his own expense, to Phillips Academy at Exeter, and afterward to college.
Some men, after going through such struggles as Greeley encountered, would have regretted in later years the loss of this opportunity.
Greeley did not. On the contrary, he expressed his thanks that his parents did not let him be indebted to any one of whom he had not a right to expect such a favor, and
