William Alexander Linn, Horace Greeley Founder and Editor of The New York Tribune

[107] and the demands on his purse and influence were constant. He devoted a chapter of his autobiography to Beggars and Borrowers, but it gave no adequate idea of the money that such applicants obtained from him. He portrays many kinds of beggars — the “chronic,” the “systematic,” --and in summing up his experience says, “I can not remember a single instance in which the promise to repay was made good.” But he went on lending. To a clerk from New Hampshire, who, arriving in New York with his wife penniless, asked for a “loan” to take him back to his father's house, Greeley replied, “Stranger, I must help you get away. But why say anything about paying me? You know, and I know, you will never pay a cent.” This makes us recall that “when the Spectator went out to meet Sir Roger de Coverley he could hear him chiding a beggar asking alms for not finding some work, but at the same time handing him sixpence.”

Some applicants, however, did meet with a refusal. Chauncey M. Depew has told of finding a visitor in Greeley's editorial room when he made a call on him. The editor's patience had evidently been almost exhausted, and as he wrote on steadily he would give an occasional kick toward the caller, who