How does the introduction of Horace Greeley at the beginning of the text affect t meaning?
Adapted from "A Tribune of the People"
It emphasizes the lowly background of Greeley.
by Orison Swett Marden
Clad in a homespun tow shirt, shrunken, butternut-colored, linsey-Woolsey pantaloons,
battered straw hat, and much-mended jacket and shoes, with ten dollars in his pocket,
and all his other worldly goods packed in the bundle he carried on his back, Horace
Greeley, the future founder of the New York Tribune, started to seek his fortune in New
York
B
It emphasizes the conflict Greeley faced daily.
It reveals the history of Greeley's family.
It reveals the impact Greeley had on the Tribune.
A newspaper had always been an object of interest and delight to the little delicate,
blond 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.
3
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,