delphia in company with Nathaniel Hawthorne ; was taken suddenly ill and died there. Shortly afterwards his eldest son Howard M. Ticknor, a graduate of Harvard College in the class of 1856, was taken into the firm, which, under the name of TICKNOR & FIELDS, held a very prominent place among American publishers for over twenty years. During the period ending with the year 1867 the Old Corner was one of the best known spots

in Boston, not alone by reason of its antiquity, but equally by reason of its distinguished literary history and its habitués. Here Charles Dickens and Thackeray used to loiter and chat with their American publishers; Lowell. Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier, and Whipple the essayist, made it their head-quarters. Nearly all of their best-known writings, and those of Emerson, Hawthorne, Saxe, Winthrop, Bayard Taylor, Mrs. Stowe, Aldrich, Howells, and a host of other well-known authors, sooner or later bore the

imprint of the house of Ticknor. After the failure of Messrs. Phillips, Sampson, & Co., the "Atlantic Monthly," first suggested by Mr. Francis H. Underwood, now United States Consul to Glasgow, passed into the hands of Ticknor & Fields, and, a little later, was added "Our Young Folks," edited by J. T. Trowbridge and Lucy Larcom, "Every Saturday," edited by T. B. Aldrich, and the "North American Review," long edited by James Russell Lowell.

Still later the firm name was Fields, Osgood, & Co., then James R. Osgood & Co., then Houghton, Osgood, & Co., and again James R. Osgood & Co. The last

named firm published a remarkable series of books, which their successors inherit.

At no time in its history, from 1832 to the present time, has the firm been without a Ticknor in its copartnership. For a brief season, however, the name disappeared from the firm's imprint.

The great publishing house has just inaugurated a new tenure of life as Ticknor & Co., the copartnership consisting of Benjamin H. and Thomas B. Ticknor, sons of William D. Ticknor, and George F. Godfrey, of Bangor, Me., a gentleman of marked culture and

geniality, and one, too, who, all may rest assured, will take kindly to and will. find success in the book business. With scholarly acquirements, and with minds trained to the wants of to-day, the sons of W. D. Ticknor, both gentlemen of refined literary taste, now step to the front with strong hands and vigorous purposes, not alone to perpetuate but to add to the former reputation of the time-honored publishing house.

The new house succeeds to a rich inheritance of the books of younger American authors, those of Howells, James, Edgar Fawcett, Kate Field, Mrs. Burnett, Miss Howard, Julian Hawthorne, George W. Cable, and others. That it means to maintain the supremacy is foreshadowed by the list of important works which it has announced as forthcoming.

THE FIRST NEW ENGLAND WITCH.

BY WILLARD H. MORSE, M. D.

Ar the beginning of the seventeenth century, in an English country district, two lads romped on the same lea and chased the same butterflies. One was

a little brown-eyed boy, with red cheeks, fine round form, and fiery temper. The other was a gentle child, tall, lithe, and blonde. The one was the son of a man of wealth and a noble lady, and carried his captive butterflies to a mansion-house, and kept them in a crystal case. The other ran from the fields to a farm-house, and thought of the lea as a grain field. It might have been the year 1606, when the two were called in from their play-ground, and sent to school, thus to begin life. The farmer's boy went to a common school, and his brown-eyed play-mate entered a grammar school. From that time their paths were far apart.

The name of the tall, blonde boy was Samuel Morse. At fifteen he left school to help his father on the home farm. At twenty he had become second tenant on a Wiltshire holding, and began to be a prosperous farmer. Before he had attained the age of forty he was the father of a large family of children, among them five sons, whose names were Samuel, William, Robert, John, and Anthony. William, Robert, and Anthony ultimately emigrated to America, while Samuel, Jr., and John remained in England. Young Samuel went to London, and became a merchant and a miser. When past his fiftieth year he married. His wife died four years later, leaving a baby daughter and a son. Both children were sent up to Marlboro, where they had a home with their Uncle John, who was living on the old farm. There they grew up, and became the heirs both of John and their father. The boy was named Morgan. He received a finished education, embraced the law, and married. His only child and daughter, Mary, became the heiress of her aunt's property and her great-uncle John's estate, and was accounted a lady of wealth, station, and beauty.

Meanwhile, the family of old Samuel Morse's playfellow had also reached the fourth generation. The name of that playfellow was Oliver Cromwell, who became Lord Protector of the British Commonwealth. Of course he forgot Samuel Morse, and was sitting in Parliament when Samuel died. He had children and grandchildren who lived as contemporaries of his old playmate's children and grandchildren. Two or three years before Samuel's great granddaughter, Mary, was born, a great grandson of the Protector saw the light. This boy was named Oliver, but was called "Rummy Noll." The ancestral estate of Theodale's became his sole inheritance, and as soon as he came into the property he began to live a wild, fast life, distinguishing himself as an adventurous, if not profligate gentleman.

He travelled much; and one day in a sunny English year came to the town of his great-grandfather's nativity. There he chanced to meet Mary Morse. The beautiful girl fascinated him, but would not consent to be his wife until all of his "wild oats" were sown. Then she became Mrs. Cromwell, and was a happy wife, as well as a lady of eminence and wealth. Oliver and Mary Cromwell had a daughter Olivia, who married a Mr. Russell, and whose daughters are the present sole representatives of the Protectorate family.

As was said above, William, Anthony, and Robert Morse, brothers of Samuel, Jr., emigrated to America, and became the ancestors of nearly all of their name in this country. William and Anthony settled at Newbury, Massachusetts. The latter became a respected citizen, and among his descendants were such men as Rev. Dr. James Morse of Newburyport, Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, Rev. Sidney Edwards Morse, and others scarcely less notable.

Robert Morse, Anthony's brother, left England at about the time of the beginning of the civil war, and located in Boston as a tailor. He was a sterling old Puritan, prudent, enterprising and of strict morality. He speculated in real estate, and after a while removed to Elizabethtown, New Jersey, which place he helped to settle, and where he amassed much wealth. He had nine children. Among his descendants were some men of eminence, as Dr. Isaac Morse of Elizabethtown, Honorable Nathan Morse of New Orleans, Isaac E. Morse, long a member of Congress from Louisiana, Judge Morse of Ohio, and others.

None of these sons of Samuel, the mate of Cromwell, were great men themselves, but were notable in their descendants. Samuel's descendant came to represent a historical family; Anthony's greatest descendant invented the telegraph; and the descendants of Robert were noble Southrons. William alone of the five brothers had notoriety. Samuel, Jr., was more eminent, but William made a mark in Massachusetts' history. Settling in the town of Newbury, William Morse led an humble and monotonous life. When he had lived there more than forty years, and had come to be an old and infirm man, he was made to figure unhappily in the first legal investigation of New England witchcraft. This was in 1679-81, or more than ten years before the Salem witchcraft, and it constitutes a page of hitherto unpublished Massachusetts history. Mr. and Mrs. Morse resided in a plain, wooden house that still stands at the head of Market Street, in what is now Newburyport. William had been a farmer, but his sons had now taken the homestead, and he was supporting himself and wife by shoe-making. His age was almost three-score-years-and-ten, and he was a reputably worthy man, then just in the early years of his dotage. His wife, the "goody Elizabeth," was a Newbury woman, and apparently some few years her husband's senior.

I can easily imagine the worthy couple there in the old square room of a winter's night. On one side of the fire-place sits the old man in his hard arm-chair, his hands folded, and his spectacles awry, as he sonorously snores away the time. Opposite him sits the old lady, a little, toothless dame, with

angular features half hidden in a stiffly starched white cap, her fingers flying over her knitting-work, as precisely and perseveringly she "seams," "narrows," and "widens." At the old lady's right hand stands a cherry table, on which burns a yellow tallow candle that occasionally the dame proceeds to snuff. There is no carpet on the floor, and the furniture is poor and plain. A kitchen chair sits at the other side of the table, and in, or on it, sits a half-grown boy, a ruddy, freckled, country boy who wants to whistle, and prefers to go out and play, but who is required to stay in the house, to sit still, and to read from out the leather-covered Bible that lies open on the table before him.

"But I would like to go out and slide down hill!" begs the boy.
"Have you read yer ten chapters yit?" asks the old dame.
"N-no!"

"Wal; read on."

And the lad obeys. He is reading aloud; he is not a good reader; the chapters are in Deuteronomy; but that stint must be performed before evening; then ten chapters after six o'clock, and at eight he must go to bed. If he moves uneasily in his chair, or stops to breathe, he is reprimanded.

The boy was the grandson of the old couple, and resided with them. Under just such restrictions he was kept. Bright, quick, and full of boy life, he was restless under the enforced restraint.

In the neighborhood resided a Yankee school-master, named Caleb Powell, a fellow who delighted in interfering with the affairs of his neighbors, and in airing his wisdom on almost every known subject. He noticed that the Puritan families kept their boys too closely confined; and influenced by surreptitious gifts of cider and cheese, he interceded in their behalf. He was regarded as an oracle, and was listened to with respect. Gran' ther Morse was among those argued with, and being told that the boy was losing his health by being "kept in" so much, he at once consented to give him a rest from the Bible readings and let him play out of doors and at the houses of the neighbors. Once released, the lad declared that he "should not be put under again." Fertile in imagination, he soon devised a plan.

At that time a belief in witchcraft was universal, and afforded a solution of everything strange and unintelligible. The old shoemaker firmly believed in the supernatural agency of witches, and his roguish grandson knew it. That he might not be obliged to return to the Scripture readings, the boy practised impositions on his grandfather to which the old man became a very easy dupe.

No one suspected the boy's agency, except Caleb Powell. That worthy. knew the young man, and believed that there was nothing marvellous or superstitious about the "manifestations." Desirous of being esteemed learned, he laid claim to a knowledge of astrology, and when the "witchcraft" was the town talk he gave out that he could develope the whole mystery. The consequence was that he was suspected of dealing in the black art, and was accused, tried, and narrowly escaped with his life.

On the court records of Salem is entered: "December 3, 1679. Caleb Powell being complained of for suspicion of working with ye