A NeiV'HampsJiire PziblisJier.
��257
��panionship of books. Many a venerable library now sequestered among the Straf- ford hills or the villages of Coos was selected in that famous store ; and their handsome Ticknor brown and bright blue and gold bindings shone warmly out from the study-shelves, long before the Olympiads of Pierce and Buchanan.
In due time John Reed (who is still a well-known and active citizen of Bos- ton) retired from the firm ; and the well-remembered name of Ticknor & Fields made its appearance in 1854.
Mr. Ticknor enjoyed the warmest intimacy with Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose retiring and sensitive disposition was perfectly supplemented by the strong individuality and active sympa- thy of the great publisher. The two gentlemen made frequent journeys in company, and were usually registered at the hotels as W. D. Ticknor and friend," in order the more easily to screen the diffident author from public observation and intrusion. It was in the year 1864, when they had just started on a journey to Washington, that the two comrades stopped for a brief rest at the Continental Hotel in Philadelphia ; and while there, almost without premonition, Mr. Ticknor died of congestion of the lungs. This sad event so profoundly shocked Haw- thorne, that within a i^w weeks, at the Pemigewasset House in Plymouth, N.H., the most eminent of American romancers himself suddenly died. Ju- lian Hawthorne thus mentions the ef- fects of the Philadelphia event on his illustrious father : "Without warning, the fair prospect was made dark by Ticknor's sudden death. Such a calamity would have been a poignant shock to Haw- thorne at the best of times, but it smote the very roots of his life now. A more untoward event — one more fatal in its
��consequences upon him — could scarce- ly have occurred. He telegraphed home the news, had the body prepared for transportation, and after its depart- ure in charge of a son of Mr. Ticknor, who had come on for the purpose, he returned to Boston, — a melancholy and grievoiis journey. He appeared to feel that there had been a ghastly mistake, — that he, and not Ticknor, should have died."
The succession of the name in the house was preserved by Howard M. Ticknor, a graduate of Harvard Col- lege in 1856 (and for eight years a clerk in the house), who entered the co-partnership on the death of his father, and remained there for nearly five years. A year after his retirement (or in 1870), Benjamin H. Ticknor, also a graduate of Harvard College, and already qualified for the business by several years of discipline as a clerk, entered the co-partnership.
Another northern emigre was James R. Osgood, who came from the Saco Valley, near Fryeburg, and under the shadow of Chocorua, and became a clerk at Ticknor's in 1855, entering the firm nine years later, and becoming its head in 1871, when James T. Fields retired, the title of the re-organized house being James R. Osgood & Co. At this time another Harvard-bred son of the founder of the house, Thomas B. Ticknor, entered the service, and be- came a clerk in the nev/ and enlarged operations of the concern.
The name of Ticknor was on the imprint of the works of Hawthorne, Holmes, Whittier, Saxe, Theodore \\'inthrop, Whipple, Bayard Taylor, Mrs. Stowe, Hillard, Agassiz, Aldrich, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Anna Dickin- son, James Parton, Stedman, Tucker- man, Stoddard, Hovvells, Mrs. Clement,
�� �
