Greeley's Thoughts on Home Life

1915

Horace Greeley, the noted editor, once wrote, "I think we all, as we grow old, love to feel and know that some spot on earth is peculiarly our own — ours to possess and to enjoy — ours to improve and to transmit to our children. As we realize the steady march of years in the thinning of our blanched locks, the deepening of our wrinkles, we more and more incline to shun travel and crowds and novelties, and concentrate our affections on the few who are infolded by the dear hut, our home."

"The ax is the healthiest implement that man ever handled, and is especially so for habitual writers and other sedentary workers, whose shoulders it throws back, expanding their chests and opening their lungs," Horace Greeley wrote. "If every youth and man, from 15 to 50 years old, could wield an ax two hours a day, dyspepsia would vanish from the earth and rheumatism become decidedly scarce. I am a poor chopper, yet the ax is my doctor and delight."

Horace Greeley said: "I should have been a farmer. All my riper tastes incline to that blessed calling whereby the human family and its humbler auxiliaries are fed. Its quiet, its segregation from strife and brawls and heated rivalries, attract and delight me. I hate to earn my bread in any calling which complicates my prosperity in some sort with others' adversity — my success with others' defeat. The farmer's floors may groan with the weight of his crops, yet no one else deems himself the poorer therefor. He may grow 100 bushels of corn or forty of wheat to every arable acre without arousing jealousy or inciting to detraction."