Mr Greeley gave me a place at once on the local staff and invited me to dine with him at his home that evening. Meanwhile he sent me to the headquarters of the Republican Central Campaign Committee, on Broadway, opposite the New York Hotel. Lincoln had been nominated in May, and the great political fight of 1860 was shaking the city with its thunders. I turned in my copy at the city desk in good season, and, although the great editor had not yet left his room, I took a car at once to keep my appointment. A servant showed me to a seat in the big back parlour of Mr Greeley's home, where I spent a lonely hour before I heard his heavy footsteps in the hail. He immediately rushed upstairs, two steps at a time, and, in a moment, I heard his high voice greeting the babies. He came down shortly with one of them clinging to his hand. 'Thunder!' said he, 'I had forgotten all about you. Let's go right in to dinner. He sat at the head of the table and I next to him. I remember how, wearied by the day's burden, he sat, lounging heavily, in careless attitudes. He stirred his dinner into a hash of eggs, potatoes, squash and parsnips, and ate it leisurely with a spoon, his head braced often with his left forearm, its elbow resting on the table. It was a sort of letting go, after the immense activity of the day, and a casual observer would have thought he affected the uncouth, which was not true of him. He asked me to tell him all about my father and his farm. At length I saw an absent look in his eye, and stopped talking, because I thought he had ceased to listen. 'Very well! very well!' said he. I looked up at him, not knowing what he meant. 'Go on! Tell me all about it,' he added. 'I like the country best,' said he, when I had finished, 'because there I see more truth in things. Here the lie has many forms--unique, varied, ingenious. The rouge and powder on the lady's cheek--they are lies, both of them; the baronial and ducal crests are lies and the fools who use them are liars; the people who soak themselves in rum have nothing but lies in their heads; the multitude who live by their wits and the lack of them in others--they are all liars; the many who imagine a vain thing and pretend to be what they are not liars everyone of them. It is bound to be so in the great cities, and it is a mark of decay. The skirts of Elegabalus, the wigs and rouge pots of Madame Pompadour, the crucifix of Machiavelli and the innocent smile of Fernando Wood stand for something horribly and vastly false in the people about them. For truth you ve got to get back into the woods. You can find men there a good deal as God made them, genuine, strong and simple. When those men cease to come here you'll see grass growing in Broadway. I made no answer and the great commoner stirred his coffee a moment in silence.