George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

1 It may be noticed that Mr. Ticknor had already (p. 331) applied to Mr. Webster this simile, which will seem to many persons amusingly inappropriate; but Mr. Ticknor was greatly in the habit of applying it thus to his grave and imposing friend, who in his hours of easy gayety justified its use in a surprising way.

2 He so calls the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company, which is substantially a trust company, a part of whose profits go to the uses of the Massachusetts General Hospital. Mr. Ticknor was a Director from 1827 to 1835, Vice-President from 1841 to 1862, and wrote an important Annual Report in 1857. He was a Trustee of the Massachusetts General Hospital—no sinecure — from 1826 to 1830. His connection with the Athenaeum and the Primary School Board have been mentioned. In 1821 he became a member of the corporation of the Boston Provident Institution for Savings,—the first savings-bank in New England, in founding which his father was much concerned, —and was a Trustee from 1838 to 1850. In 1831 he became a member of the Massachusetts Congregational Charitable Society, whose funds go to support widows and children of deceased clergymen, of various sects, mostly, of course, Orthodox or Evangelical. In this he labored actively, was Treasurer from 1831 to 1835, and in 1841-42; Vice-President, 1861-64; Chairman of Committee on Appropriations for several years, and placed on almost all committees charged with important duties. He resigned from it entirely in 1864. He was Treasurer, for two or three years, of the Farm School for Boys, which his father had wished to see founded.