Display 2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th-most recent stories on homepage

This is not exactly what you want, but should point you in the right direction. You would replace the call to the_post_thumbnail() with the_content() and modify the check on the number of posts to add a fourth to the vertical group.

In the small loop below, I’ve set $firstpost = ‘ first’, note the space if you’re using it along with other CSS classes.

The first post has a class of first, and the remaining 4 posts in the loop have the class ‘second’ (before the endwhile call I set the $firstpost variable to second, which should allow you to style them differently while keeping the same overall format.

<?php
$postargs=array(
   'showposts' => 5,
   'cat' => $catid,
   'orderby' => 'date',
   'order' => 'DESC'
   );

$category_box = new WP_Query($postargs);
	$firstpost = ' first';
	while ($category_box->have_posts()) :
		$category_box->the_post();
?>
<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?> " class="post-<?php the_ID(); ?> post hentry teaser<?php echo $firstpost; ?>">

..... POST FORMAT HERE .....

</div>
<?php
  $firstpost = ' second';
  endwhile; /* end while have_posts() */

?>

Hope this works for you or at least helps.

@harmck, exactly what I was looking for! thanks so much!! (and thanks, @vtxyzzy!)