When at his type, he would often compose paragraphs for the paper, setting up the words without writing them out. He soon joined a debating society, composed of the best-informed persons of the little town of East Poultney,--the minister, the doctor, the lawyer, the schoolteachers, and the like. What was their surprise to find that the young printer knew almost every thing, and was always ready to speak, or read an essay.
He was often laughed at because of his poor clothes, and pitied because, slender and pale as he was, he never wore an overcoat; but he used to say, "I guess I'd better wear my old clothes than run in debt for new ones." Ah! they did not know that every penny was saved and sent to the father, struggling to clear a farm in the wilderness in Pennsylvania. During his four years' apprenticeship he visited his parents twice, though six hundred miles distant, and walked most of the way.
Soon after he had learned his trade, the newspaper suspended, and he was thrown out of work. The people with whom he boarded gave him a brown overcoat, not new, and with moistened eyes said good-by to the poor youth whom they had learned to love as their own. He remained a few weeks with his family, then walked fifty miles east to a town in New York State, where he found plenty of work, but no money, and in six weeks returned to the log-cabin. After trying various towns, he found a situation in Erie, taking the place of a workman who was ill, and for seven months he did not lose a day. Out of his wages--eighty-four dollars--he had used only six, less than one dollar a mouth! Putting fifteen dollars in his pocket, he took the balance of sixty-three in a note, and gave it to his father. A noble son indeed, who would not buy a single garment for himself, but carried the money home, so as to make the poor ones a trifle more comfortable!
He had become tired of working in the small towns; he determined to go to the great city of New York, and "be somebody." He walked a part of the way by the tow-path along the canal, and sometimes rode in a scow. Finally, at sunrise, Friday, Aug. 18, 1831, he landed close to the Battery, with ten dollars in his pocket, knowing, he says, "no human being within two hundred miles." His first need was a boarding-place. Over a saloon, kept by an Irishman, he found room and board for two dollars and a half a week. Fortunately, though it was the almost universal custom to use liquors, Horace was a teetotaler, and despised chewing or smoking tobacco, which he regarded "as the vilest, most detestable abuse of his corrupted sensual appetites whereof depraved man is capable;" therefore he had no fear of temptation from these sources.