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Some idea has already been given of the variety of his occupations; his College duties, his zealous participation in the charitable and intellectual movements of a very active city, his social interests, making a numerous amount of recognized claims.
To these must be added, to complete the picture of the next coming years, the remembrance of hours spent in reading aloud, by his wife's sofa, such selections of English literature as might enliven her and instruct the child; and of other hours given to direct instruction and to vigilant supervision of all the daughter's studies.
Without eminently methodical and punctual habits, such multiplied objects could not have been pursued with success, nor even without confusion and weariness.1
In summer he always sought a change of scene and habits.
He maintained that one permanent establishment was enough, and that for a part of every year it was best to be free to seek new regions, another climate and another mode of life; he therefore never owned a country-house.
Before 1840 it was much less the habit of the wealthy citizens of Boston to leave home in the summer, than it has since become; indeed, it was common enough to stay the whole year in town.
Mr. Ticknor, however, always made excursions and journeys with his family, or took lodgings for a few weeks in some pretty spot in the neighborhood of Boston,—in Watertown, Brookline, or Nahant.
Often they went to Portland and Gardiner; to Pepperell, the rural home of the Prescotts; to Round Hill, near Northampton, where Mr. Cogswell and Mr. Bancroft had opened a school; or to Hanover, where for some years there were still accounts to settle about the family property, with the old Quaker agent, Friend Williams.2
1 Among his methodical habits was that of keeping copies, or rough drafts, of his business letters, and even of some of the more important ones on other subjects. In consequence of this practice, some interesting letters which had not been preserved, or had not been obtained from his correspondents, have been available for these volumes. His punctuality was, so to speak, invariable; and he was fond of repeating an axiom on the subject: ‘Punctuality is the only virtue for which its possessor is uniformly punished.’
2 One of the farms which he inherited in New Hampshire was sold in 1825, and the rest of the property at Hanover was finally disposed of in 1830.
Boston, J. R. Osgood and company, 1876.
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