Yet this success, quick as it was, did not solve all his difficulties at once.  He was anxious to earn a good living as soon as possible, that he might marry Mary Agnew.  After looking the field over, he and a friend bought a weekly paper published in Phoenixville, a lively manufacturing town in the same county as his home.  This, with the aid of his friend, he edited and managed for a year.  He not only failed to make money, but accumulated debts which he was three years in paying off.  At the same time he found that he could no longer endure a narrow country life.  He tried to give his paper a literary tone; but the people did not want a literary paper.  They cared more for local news and gossip, which he hated.

The old ambition and aspiration to be and to do something really worth doing was still uppermost with him.  In a letter to Mary Agnew he says:  “Sometimes I feel as if there were a Providence watching over me, and as if an unseen and uncontrollable hand guided my actions.  I have often dim, vague forebodings that an eventful destiny is in store for me; that I have vast duties yet to accomplish, and a wider sphere of action than that which I now occupy.  These thoughts may be vain; they spring only from the ceaseless impulses of an upward-aspiring spirit; but if they are real, and to be fulfilled, I shall the more need thy love and the gladness of thy dear presence.”

He wrote to his friends in New York about getting work there, but they did not encourage him much.  Horace Greeley bluntly advised him to stay where he was.  The editor of the Literary World, however, offered him employment at five dollars a week.  He thereupon sold out his interest in his country paper at a loss, and went to try his fortunes in New York.  Before he had been there many weeks, Horace Greeley offered him a position on the Tribune at twelve dollars a week.  The connection thus begun lasted for the rest of his life.  It was as the Tribunes correspondent that he traveled all over the world.  He was soon able to buy stock in the Tribune company, and this was the foundation of his future fortune.

He had many literary and other distinguished friends in New York.  And during these first few years he worked very hard indeed, hoping soon to earn enough money to provide for Mary Agnew.  In 1850, after three years in New York, he was able to set the date of their marriage.  But it was postponed from time to time on account of her illness.  At last he knew that she could never be well again; yet in any case he wished the marriage ceremony performed.  They were accordingly married October 24, 1850; and two months later she was dead.

CHAPTER IX

“THE GREAT AMERICAN TRAVELER”

It had been Bayard Taylor’s boyhood ambition to become a great poet; but it seemed as if fate meant him for a great traveler.  He was sorry that this was so:  yet he was fond of travel, and never refused any opportunity to visit other lands.  In 1849, when the California gold fever was at its height, he was sent by the Tribune to the Pacific Coast.