From the first, when a child in his father's log cabin, lying upon the hearth that he might read by the flickering firelight, his attention was given almost exclusively to public and political affairs. This determined his vocation as a journalist; and he seems never to have felt any attraction toward any other of the intellectual professions. He never had a thought of being a physician, a clergyman, an engineer, or a lawyer. Private questions, individual controversies had little concern for him except as they were connected with public interests. Politics and newspapers were his delight, and he learned to be a printer in order that he might become a newspaper maker. And after he was the editor of a newspaper, what chiefly engaged him was the discussion of political and social questions. His whole greatness as a journalist was in this sphere. For the collection and digestion of news, with the exception of election statistics, he had no great fondness and no special ability. He valued talent in that department only because he knew it was essential to the success of the newspaper he loved. His own thoughts were always elsewhere. Accordingly there have been journalists who as such, strictly speaking, have surpassed him. Minds not devoted to particular doctrines, not absorbed in the advocacy of cherished ideas--in a word, minds that believe little and aim only at the passing success of a day--may easily excel one like him in the preparation of a mere newspaper. Mr. Greeley was the antipodes of all such persons. He was always absolutely in earnest. His convictions were intense; he had that peculiar courage, most precious in a great man, which enables him to adhere to his own line of action despite the excited appeals of friends and the menaces of variable public opinion; and his constant purpose was to assert his principles, to fight for them, and present them to the public in the way most likely to give them the same hold upon other minds which they had upon his own. In fact, he was not so much a journalist, in the proper meaning of that term, as a pamphleteer or writer of leading articles.