Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises

[194] He had there published three editions of his “Familiar quotations,” gradually enlarging the book from the beginning. In 1859 he sold out to Sever & Francis. In 1862 he served as volunteer naval paymaster for nine months with Captain Boutelle, his brother-in-law, on board Admiral DuPont's dispatch-boat. In August, 1863, he entered the publishing house of Little, Brown & Co., nominally as clerk, but with the promise that in eighteen months, when the existing partnership would end, he should be taken into the firm, which accordingly took place in 1865. The fourth edition of his “Familiar quotations,” always growing larger, had meanwhile been published by them, as well as an edition de luxe of Walton's “Complete Angler,” in the preparation of which he made an especial and exceptionally fine collection of works on angling, which he afterwards presented to the Harvard College Library. His activity in the Waltonian sport is also commemorated in Lowell's poem, “To Mr. John Bartlett, who had sent me a seven-pound trout.” He gave to the Library at the same time another collection of books containing “Proverbs,” and still another on “Emblems.”

After his becoming partner in the firm, the literary, manufacturing, and advertising departments were assigned to him, and were retained