THE MANTLE OF GREELEY.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXII, Issue 17, 21 January 1910, Page 3

THE MANTLE OF GREELEY.

A story connected 'with the extremely bad hand-writing of the poet Joaqnin Miller is going the round of the American newspapers. The poet, it seems, wrote a letter in reply to an invitation to a festive gathering of an American club. The missive was quite unreadable, and the secretary of the club wrote to Miller suggesting a way out of the difficulty. "If you will be present," he said, "kindly make a cross at the bottom of this letter. If not, please draw a circle." The letter came back, with a mark at the foot, but the most careful examination did not enable the secretary to decide whether it was a cross or a circle. The story suggests that Miller may claim the mantle of Horace Greeley, whose atrocious handwriting became a byword'throughout America. Greeley was for a time editor of the New York Tribune, and there was only one compositor in the "chapel" who could handle his manuscript with any degree of confidence. It is stated that one day, while this particular man was at lunch, the other compositors secured half a dozen sheets of the paper always used by Greeley, and after covering them with a network of meaningless scribble Avrote "Leader" (as near as possible in the Greeley script), on the top of the first sheet, and placed it on the* frame of the absent one. Presently he returned, and picking up his compos-ing-stick set to work. To the astonishment of the rest of the '"ship," he went through three sides of the copy without a pause, and then suddenly came to a halt. He took the copy up in his hands, held it at every possible angle, took his glasses off and polished them, looked it up and down again, and finally remarked to a compositor near him: "The first time he ever beat me; I'll have to take it to him." Very reluctantly he walked into Greeley's room, whence he reappeared in a few seconds looking dejected and crestfallen. "The word was constitution," he remarked. "I must be going blind not to have seen that." This story is regarded with some suspicion, because Greeley himself never said anything about the incident, but perhaps he, too, was a little sensitive, and did not care to invite attention to his peculiar weakness.