He learned to read, one can scarcely tell how. When two years old, he would pore over the Bible, as he lay on the floor, and ask questions about the letters; at three, he went to the "district school," often carried through the deep snow on the shoulders of one of his aunts, or on the back of an older boy. He soon stood at the head of his little class in spelling and reading, "and took it so much to heart when he did happen to lose his place, that he would cry bitterly; so that some boys, when they had gained the right to get above him, declined the honor, because it hurt Horace's feelings so."
Before he was six years old he had read the Bible through, and "Pilgrim's Progress." Their home contained only about twenty books, and these he read and re-read. As he grew older, every book within seven miles was borrowed, and perused after the hard day's work of farming was over. He gathered a stock of pine knots, 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, fell asleep before the conversation was half completed.
When Horace was nearly ten years old, his father, who had speculated in a small way in lumber, became a bankrupt; his house and furniture were sold by the sheriff, and he was obliged to flee from the State to avoid arrest. Some of these debts were paid, thirty years afterward, by his noble son. Going to Westhaven, Vt., Mr. Greeley obtained work on a farm, and moved his family thither. They were very poor, the children sitting on the floor and eating their porridge together out of a tin pan; but they were happy in the midst of their hard work and plain food. The father and the boys chopped logs, and the little sisters, with the mother, gathered them in heaps, the voice of the latter, says Mr. James Parton, in his biography, "ringing out in laughter from the tangled brushwood in which she was often buried." Would there were thousands more of such women, who can laugh at disaster, and keep their children and themselves from getting soured with life. Everybody has troubles; and very wise are they who do not tell them, either in their faces or by their words.