Of all the dreadful and melancholy passages in the history of human progress, none, to a thoughtful man, are more dreadful or melancholy than those which tell how men have resisted, pushed away, reviled, cursed, beaten, mobbed, crucified their benefactors. It does seem, as we read them, as if the most dreaded thing on earth had been the personal, the domestic, the social welfare; as if the deepest anxiety on the part of men of all sorts was an anxiety to escape from their health and salvation; as if the profoundest dread was a dread of mending their estates, and their utmost horror was a horror of heaven! It does seem, as we read, as if happiness, prosperity, success, were the pet aversion of mankind; as if the signs that were looked for with the most agonized apprehension were the signs that the kingdom of heaven was at hand.... We saw this conspicuously and dismally exemplified in the events of the past week. The one man who, before and above all others, was a mark for the rage of the populace, the one man whose name was loud in the rabble's mouth, and always coupled with a malediction, the one man who was hunted for his blood as by wolves, who would have been torn in pieces had the opportunity been afforded, and on whose account the dwelling of a friend was literally torn in pieces, was a man who had been the steadfast friend of these very people who hungered for his blood; their most constant, uncompromising, and public friend; thinking for them, speaking for them, writing for them; pleading their cause through the press, in the legislature, from the platform; excusing their mistakes and follies, asserting and reasserting their substantial worth and honesty and rectitude, advocating their claims as working people, vindicating their rights as men; proposing schemes for the safety of their persons, the healthfulness of their houses, the saving and increase of their earnings, the education of their children, the exemption of their homesteads from seizure in cases of debt, the enlargement of their sphere of labor, the transferring of their families from the crowded city, where they could do little more than keep themselves alive by arduous toil, to the fruitful lands of the West, where they could become noble and self-respecting men and women. This was the man whose blood was hungered for. I need not speak his name,--you know whom I mean, Horace Greeley,--a man whom some call visionary, but whose visions are all of the redemption of the people; whom some call "fool," but who, if he seem a fool, is foolish that the people may be wise; whom some call "radical," but whose radicalism is simply a determination that the popular existence shall have a sound, sure, and deep root in natural law and moral principle; at all events, a