Henry Oscar Houghton; a biographical outline

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

21 25iosrapi)ical Outline

BY

HORACE E. SCUDDER

CAMBRIDGE

intro at ttje Ktoersioe

M DCCC XCVII

Copyright, 1897,
BY HORACE E. SCUDDEE

PREFACE

WHEN the family of Mr. Houghton asked
me to prepare a memorial of his life I gladly
consented, for it was a grateful task to recall
his vigorous personality. I did not fully per-
ceive till I came to write my book how im-
possible it would be to make anything like
an adequate Life: there were very few let-
ters which I could use, for almost the whole
of Mr. Houghton's correspondence was of a
business sort, and it was difficult to detach
him from his business. I was bent on pre-
senting him individually, yet some of his
most notable achievements were accomplished
through and with the hearty cooperation of
his associates. I am sure they will not mis-
understand the concentration of my attention
on him.

I was compelled, after I had sketched the

262567

vi PREFACE

beginning o£ his life by means of such scanty
documents as I could procure, to rely largely
upon my own recollections and impressions.
The portrait thus is drawn from my own
point of view. It is no more than an out-
line. If conditions had been more favorable,
not only would I gladly have filled out the
sketch with a more detailed treatment, but I
would have tried to correct my own view by
a comparison with that of one and another of
Mr. Houghton's acquaintances and friends.
In truth I fear I have strayed somewhat from
the task set me of preparing a memorial vol-
ume. I can only plead that after thirty years'
constant intercourse with Mr. Houghton, his
personality was too vivid for me to treat it
with the studied impartiality of a historian.

NOTE ON THE PORTRAITS

THE frontispiece is from a photograph taken in 1893
for use by Mr. Robert Gordon Hardie when painting
the portrait presented by Mr. Houghton to his partners
and associates, which hangs in the Counting Room of the
Riverside Press.

The picture facing page 12 represents Mr. Houghton
just before entering college, and his sister Marilla, after-
wards Mrs. Gallup, who was two years his junior.

The portrait facing page 56 gives the aspect of Mr.
Houghton at the time when he went into business with
Mr. Bolles.

The three-quarters portrait opposite page 74 is from
a photograph taken about 1860.

The figure which faces page 82 is from a photograph
taken in Paris when Mr. Houghton was there in 1864.

The portrait opposite page 110 is from a photograph
taken in 1878.

In the Aldermanic Chamber at the City Hall, Cam-
bridge, hangs a painting by Mr. Hardie which was pre-
sented to the city by various persons engaged in the
business of the Press, and at the several offices of
Houghton, Mifflin and Company. The photogravure
facing page 132 is from this painting, and Mr. Hardie
in executing the portrait had before him a photograph
taken by Sarony about 1884.

The latest portrait of Mr. Houghton is that facing
page 152, and is from a photograph taken in 1895.

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON was born on the
30th of April, 1823, in Sutton, a hill town of
Caledonia County, in the northeastern corner
of Vermont. His mother, who was forty-three
years old at the time, was Marilla, daughter
of Captain James Clay, of Putney, Vermont,
an officer in the Revolutionary army. His
father, six years his wife's senior, was Cap-
tain William Houghton, a native of Bolton,
Massachusetts. Bolton had been set off from
Lancaster, and Lancaster had been the home
of the Houghton family since John Hough-
ton, of Lancaster, England, came to America
in the Abigail in 1635. Captain William
Houghton was somewhat of a rover, and took
his growing family with him as he moved
from one place to another up the Connecticut
valley and into the Vermont hills, and even,

2 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

when his children had begun to establish
themselves, into the southwest part of New
York State.

There were six sons and six daughters, and
a period of nearly twenty-one years separated
Henry Oscar, who was the youngest but one,
from his sister Stella, who was the oldest in
the family. Of the six sons, two became
clergymen, one died in his early manhood,
two were merchants, and the youngest was
the printer and publisher. He had one sister
younger than himself, Marilla Houghton, who
became a teacher, married Dr. J. C. Gallup,
and established the large girls' school in
Clinton, New York, now known as Houghton
Seminary. Mr. Houghton outlived all his
brothers and sisters, but during their lifetime
his relations with them were very close. He
was, at one time, under the watch and ward
of his brother Daniel, eight years his senior ;
his brother Albert Gallatin became his busi-
ness partner in 1866 ; he owed much to his
oldest sister and her husband, David Scott,
and the long period when he and his younger
sister were the only ones left made the connec-

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 3

tion between them one of special tenderness.
The family scattered widely, five of the mem-
bers going to Alabama ; but when the young-
est son was born no one was yet married, and
probably all were gathered in the home at
Sutton.

Sutton is high up on one of the long lines
of rolling hills which run north and south. It
looks off upon Burke Mountain in the south-
east and the Willoughby Gap about six miles
to the northeast. The Gap and Lake form
strikingly picturesque points in the landscape,
but otherwise the country is not marked by
more noticeable features than the hills which
one climbs only to find other hills lying be-
yond. The country is a farming and graz-
ing district, and has changed little since the
Houghton family lived there. The plain
house in which Mr. Houghton was born still
stands in the village, and there are persons
living who remember the little shock-headed
boy, with hair hanging over his forehead,
who made one of the figures in the household.

Captain Houghton moved to Sutton in
1820. It was one of the resting-places in his

4 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

roving life. He was a tanner by trade, but
had failed in business in Lyndon, his previous
home, and seems to have gained his livelihood
in Sutton by working for the farmers there.
The family was large and it was a hard strug-
gle to keep the wolf from the door. That
the worst did not befall them was due largely
to the energy and thrift of the mother, whom
her son often spoke of with admiration for
her force of character. The Houghtons did
not strike root very deeply in the thin soil
of Sutton, and, after a few years, once more
moved on to Bradford. In one of his ad-
dresses before the Vermont Association, Mr.
Houghton gave a slight reminiscence of this
time of his early youth.

" When I was a very small boy, not over
ten years old," he said, "my family emigrated
from the northern part of Vermont, from the
little town of Sutton, a famous maple-sugar
town, to the town of Bradford, on the Con-
necticut River; and my duty on that jour-
ney, besides riding on the furniture wagon,
was to help drive the cows which we had to
take with us. One Saturday evening, just at

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 5

dusk, we came to the little town of Ryegate,
and the signs of thrift and industry, as shown
by the green fields, attracted my father, so
that he stopped at what was then a Scotch
village. I remember that I was frightened
nearly out of my wits by the landlady, who,
while stirring her oatmeal porridge, com-
plained volubly because we did not go on to
the next tavern. So fearful and depressed
was I that I could not taste of that wonderful
dish, which, they say, is ' the food of horses
in England, and of men in Scotland.' But
when I was lighted up to bed by the land-
lord's daughter, as she handed me the candle
to go to my little chamber, she put her soft
hand on my head, — and I have felt the sym-
pathetic touch of that soft hand for over fifty
years." The reminiscence was used in intro-
ducing a reference to Mr. Whitelaw Reid,
whose mother was a native of Ryegate, but it
was indicative of a nature singularly suscepti-
ble to little kindnesses.

At Bradford there was a country academy,
and here the boy had for three years his
schooling, but at thirteen began to earn his

6 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

living by binding himself as apprentice in the
office of the Free Press, at Burlington, then
owned by H. B. Stacy, where he served for
six years. Mr. Houghton liked in a quiet
way to observe anniversaries; and when he
was in Vermont in 1894, he visited the Free
Press office in Burlington on the 27th of
October, and stood by the window where, on
that same day fifty-eight years before, he
took his place at the case as an apprentice.
Of his first journey from his home into the
world, where he was to make his way at first
on foot, as it were, he wrote, nearly sixty
years after : —

" On October 26, 1836, hours before dawn,
I started in the mail-coach from Bradford,
on the Connecticut River, for Burlington, on
Lake Champlain, to be initiated into a know-
ledge of printing, an occupation which I have
followed chiefly since that time until the pres-
ent, and am still in my humble way engaged
in it. On the way over the hills from Brad-
ford to Montpelier, a heavy snow-storm was
falling, and the apple-trees were loaded with
frozen apples. At high noon of that day we

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 7

halted for dinner in this village [Montpelier],
then as now the capital of the State. I re-
member with what wonder my boyish eyes
looked upon the State House, then standing
on this site, with its tall columns, and with
what admiration they rested on the member
from my native town, dressed in the tradi-
tional blue coat with brass buttons, the usual
apparel of statesmen of that day, so very dif-
ferent from the farmer's frock in which I had
been accustomed to see him in his native vil-
lage. Many hours after dark we arrived in
Burlington, having made a journey of eighty
miles during the day."

It was while he was in the printing-office
that he had an encounter which he liked to
relate in after years for its curious connection
with a large interest in his business lif e. One
day a pale, slim man came into the office, and
showed the young compositor a printed list of
words which he carried with him. " My lad,"
he said, " when you use these words, will you
please spell them according to this list ? " —
theater, center, and the like. It was Noah
Webster, who was traveling about the coun-

8 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

try, and, with the shrewdness which sent him
to the censors of spelling, was visiting the
printing-offices, and persuading the composi-
tors to adopt his reforms. Webster had
already published his dictionary, but the
young printer was to be one of the principal
agents in making the book in its ultimate
form the great handbook of the American
people.

Captain Houghton and his family had mean-
while made another move to Nunda Valley,
in Livingston County, New York ; but Daniel
Houghton was a student in the University of
Vermont, at Burlington, where he was looking
forward to the life of a clergyman. He kept
a brotherly watch over the young apprentice,
and stood to him very much in loco parentis.
There is a letter by him to his mother, written
in June, 1839, which carries with it a very
distinct air of authority. His father was at
the time in Bradford, and the mother and son
seemed to be arranging in his absence what
should be done about the boy's education.

"Maria mentioned," Daniel Houghton
writes, "that you would like to have Oscar

HENRY OSCAK HOUGHTON 9

come home and go to school there a year.
Did I know that you had a good school, a
preceptor amply competent to teach the
classics, I should have no objections to his
going. I wish to have him fit for college;
he might possibly do it in one year, but it
probably will be better for him not to enter
until two years from August. I intend to
have him go to school steady after next Au-
gust, whether he goes home or not. The only
objection to his going home would be that
the advantages would not be as good as here,
and the expense of the journey. Should it
be desirable to have him at home a year, and
should the school be suitable, I have no objec-
tions to have him go home in the fall. Please
inform me respecting the school, — whether
the teacher is a graduate and of what college,
etc."

The work in the printing-office confirmed
the young apprentice in rudimentary know-
ledge, and after a long day spent in manual
labor he applied himself to books in the even-
ing, but in the fall of 1839 it was decided
that he should go home to Nunda and enter

10 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

the academy there. He appears to have spent
at least two years there and at Wyoming, for
another migration of the family had shifted
the scene from Nunda to Portage, near Wyo-
ming. How much he was master of himself
at this time is curiously evident in a bundle
of faded boyish compositions, translations, and
exercises in a debating club. Both the hand-
writing and the spelling bear testimony to the
influence upon him of his work at type-setting,
and, though the literary form is not altogether
smooth, there is a vigor and independence in
the thought which indicates a good degree of
maturity and self-reliance. It strikes one as
felicitous that he should be writing with deter-
mination on Decision of Character, — an essay
which interested him so much that he pro-
duced a " revised edition " a couple of months
later ; and that he should have amused him-
self, in a composition on the New Year, with
the following calculation : —

" Perhaps we might very profitably, as we
commence the new year, look back and see
how we have spent the old one. Allowing
seven hours for sleep, there are seventeen hours

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 11

in each day to be improved in some way or
other ; and, allowing another three hours for
work or play (as the case may be), we have
fourteen hours left, about half of which we
generally spend in school ; and probably there
are not many of us, if any, who study more than
four hours out of school, which leaves three
hours in each day unaccounted for, and, not
reckoning Sundays, we have 313 days in a year ;
and, losing at the rate of three hours in each
day, at the end of the year we should come
out minus thirty-nine days and three hours,
and in ten years something over a whole year ;
and, taking into consideration the maxim that
6 time is money,' we might suppose each hour
to be worth a sixpence, which would amount
in one year to $58.68f , and in ten years to
$586.87£."

II

APPARENTLY, the year before entering col-
lege was spent again at the case in Burlington,
but in the fall of 1842, when he was nineteen
years old, he was able to pass an examination
and enter the University of Vermont. He
used to say that he had three York shillings
in his pocket when he entered college, two of
which he used for getting himself in order in
his room, leaving twelve and a half cents for
further expenses. But he had been inured
to hardship, he had perforce acquired the
most frugal habits, and he had the very great
advantage of familiarity with a craft which
gave him considerable support as he worked
his way through college. He was, however,
chiefly indebted for his support to the gen-
erous aid of Mr. David Scott, who had mar-
ried his sister Stella, and was engaged in
business in Alabama. He used in later life
to illustrate the stringency of his means at

•'».• «J o e

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 13

this time by telling how he received a letter
on which the postage had not been prepaid.
Between his absolute lack of the needed
twenty-five cents and his resentment at being
forced by his correspondent to pay, he was
inclined to refuse the letter ; but curiosity and
hope conspired to defeat his pride, and he
borrowed the money, opened the letter, and
found it contained money from his brother-
in-law, or at any rate a promise of aid. The
following extracts from letters written by Mr.
Scott to his young brother-in-law during these
years will indicate, brief as they are, not only
the ready aid which he gave, but the generous
spirit and the friendly counsel accompanying
the aid: —

September 1, 1843. — "A letter from
Stella after she arrived at Dana, Massachu-
setts, tells me that you are straitened for
funds to progress in your college course. If
you will inform me what amount is necessary
to carry you through, I will endeavor to assist
you. In a few months exchanges will be
down, and I can then remit you the necessary
sums from time to time to defray your ex-

14 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

penses, which you can refund at your conven-
ience. . . .

"I am in hopes you will improve your
time, and when you get through college come
South and get into business of some kind."

April, 1844. — "I enclose twenty dollars
in South Carolina money, which is the best I
can find at present. I hope it will relieve
your present difficulties as long as it will last.
I shall be pleased to hear from you fre-
quently, how you are getting along, and it
will afford me pleasure to assist you from
time to time as you may stand in need. Do
not be backward in letting your wants be
known."

1845. — "I enclose $50; let me know
when you will stand in need of more funds.

"Please acknowledge the receipt of this
amount.

"It will be necessary for you to study book-
keeping, so as to understand accounts. If
you could improve the appearance of your
handwriting, it would be desirable."

The University of Vermont at that time
was a modest institution, with the Eev. Dr.

HENRY OSCAK HOUGHTON 15

John Wheeler for President, and a Faculty
of half a dozen professors, of whom the Rev.
Joseph Torrey, Professor of Intellectual and
Moral Philosophy, was perhaps the most emi-
nent. There was a library of about ten thou-
sand volumes, and the body of students did
not much exceed a hundred in number. But
no one who knows the spirit of our New Eng-
land colleges in the early half of this century
will be disposed to measure the worth of the
training received by the meagreness of equip-
ment or the paucity of numbers. The Uni-
versity of Vermont, like other New England
colleges, took its impress from a few control-
ling spirits, and, at the time when Mr.
Houghton was in Burlington, the Marsh
family was a prominent factor in collegiate
life, and James Marsh was the prophet of
Coleridge in America. It is a coincidence
that one of Mr. Houghton's contemporaries
at college, a young instructor then, afterward
the well-known Professor W. G. T. Shedd,
became, through the same influence, the
American editor of Coleridge's writings, and
that one of the latest enterprises in which

16 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

Mr. Houghton took an active interest was the
publication in America of Coleridge's Letters.
He was unmistakably affected in his judg-
ment by the strong attraction this writer had
for him in college days. There was a philo-
sophical and theological bent given to the
minds of students at that time, which is ap-
parent in the system of education followed in
the University. As if to justify such a name
for the institution, the studies were divided
into four departments, under the names of
the Department of English Literature, the
Department of Languages, the Department of
Mathematics and Physics, and the Department
of Political, Moral, and Intellectual Philoso-
phy, which comprised recitations and lectures
in Political Economy, the Principles and Forms
of Government, Laws of Nature and Nations,
Ethics, Natural Theology, and Evidences of
Revealed Religion, Logic, and Metaphysics.
In later life Mr. Houghton was a strong ad-
vocate of the country college. He was pre-
judiced in its favor no doubt by the fact of
his own history, but a strong ground for his
confidence lay in his recognition of the per-

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 17

sonal force exerted by a few men of power
upon a small body of students, and especially
of the gradual convergence of prescribed
courses toward an ultimate philosophical
statement of the doctrines which should fur-
nish the young student with a rational law
of living.

The records of the University library give
some indication of the character of the read-
ing in which Mr. Houghton engaged inde-
pendently of his regular college work. It is
a meagre list for the four years, not more
than thirty books in all ; and some of these
were clearly direct aids to prescribed study.
It is probable that, with his irregular prepara-
tion for college and his necessity to eke out
his means with labor, he had little leisure for
many excursions in literature ; but the qual-
ity of his reading shows the man who throve
on a strong diet. The first book he took
out in his Freshman year was the first volume
of Winthrop's History of New England,
following it shortly with a two-volume work
by Charles Mills on the History of the
Crusades. A long gap, from the middle of

18 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

October to the middle of March, was closed
by William Godwin's Enquirer, and before
the year closed he had taken out three vol-
umes of Dr. Johnson's writings, Tanner's
Narrative of Adventures among the Indi-
ans, and two volumes of Leighton's works.
In his Sophomore year he appears to have
drawn but a single book, a volume of Shake-
speare; in his Junior year his reading was
mainly in ancient and English history. His
Senior year shows half the entire list: he was
making his way in Scotch metaphysics, but he
was also reading Kent's Commentaries, Mil-
ton's prose works, Butler's Analogy, Fenelon,
and Bacon's works. When recalling his col-
lege days, he was wont to speak of Milton in
his prose writings as having a strong influ-
ence on his intellectual life, especially with re-
gard to the theological problems which he was
engaged in solving; he pondered at times the
expediency of issuing a library edition of Mil-
ton's prose ; he looked forward to publishing
Leighton in his Library of Old Divines, and
there were few of his publications in which he
took greater pride than the edition of Bacon's

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 19

works edited by James Spedding, reprinted
by him at the outset of his publishing career,
upon terms which made Mr. Spedding a warm
advocate of American publishers' modes of
business.

With the package of school compositions is
another of similar essays written during the
college course. Some of them help to explain
the choice of books from the college library,
and the subjects have somewhat the air of
having been assigned by a college officer.
"The Idea of Liberty among the Ancient
Greeks/' "The Study of the Classics," "Im-
portance of Mathematical Studies," "Beauty
of Thought makes Beauty of Style," " What
is Education," are the set pieces in the old-
fashioned display of collegiate pyrotechnics.
But now and then there is a phrase, a turn of
thought, a whole paper it may be, which has
a personal interest as showing how the young
student thought and felt, or what was engag-
ing his mind. The presidential election which
occurred in his Junior year was that in which
Clay played the losing game against Polk.
The tariff of 1842 had become a party watch-

20 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

word, and the annexation of Texas was a burn-
ing question. Like many other ardent young
men of his day, Mr. Houghton was an enthusi-
astic follower of Clay, and he was old enough
to have shared in the slogan of " Tippecanoe
and Tyler too," and to have shared likewise
in the disappointment over Tyler's defection.
In one of his college essays he defines his
political position. " One of the parties," he
says, " as it seems to me, has fixed its stand
upon principles, while the other has broken
away, in a measure, from all principle, and
seeks to build it all up by flattering the
caprices of the multitude. The one advocates
a sound national currency, protection to home
industry, and an equitable distribution of the
sales of the public lands ; while the other sets
forth no principles definitely, but promises to
do everything well, if the people will only let
them have the power. During the adminis-
tration of the government for five or six years
previous to 1840 [when the Whigs came into
power under Harrison], the country was com-
pelled to undergo a series of changes, experi-
ments, and expedients, when the whole nation

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 21

arose in its might and shook off its thralldom.
But, seeing its anticipations all blasted, it sank
back into lethargy. But now, hope having
dawned upon it once more, the whole country
is rising at the ' blast of the bugle ' which is
being reechoed from Maine to Georgia, and
from Boston harbor to the Mississippi."

He devoted one of his compositions to an
inquiry into the policy of annexing Texas.
His argument against annexation was based
on the moral weakness which overtook nations
when they turned their attention to the ex-
tension of territory, rather than to the devel-
opment of internal resources. Such lust of
power, he maintains, leads to party strife and
distraction within the state itself; and, after
citing Greece, Rome, and England, he sud-
denly turns for an instance of comparison
to Delaware and New York, " the former of
which is one of the smallest States in the
Union, is out of debt, and seems to be thriv-
ing, from the fact that she is not torn by
sectional interests. The latter is one of the
largest, and possesses, perhaps, a greater va-
riety of resources than any other State in

22 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

the Union. But at one time she is embark-
ing largely in internal improvements ; at an-
other she is stopping her public works, and
allowing them to go to ruin when well-nigh
completed. Now she is borrowing money
to defray the expenses of government, now
levying a direct tax to pay her debts, just as
sectional interests or parties predominate.

" The interests of every part of the Union at
the present time seem to be at war with each
other, but it is so equally balanced that it is
confidently hoped that there will always be a
sufficient number of the wise and honorable
in our national councils to prevent one por-
tion of the Union triumphing over another.
But add the foreign territory of Texas to our
Union, and the worst results are to be feared
from the clashing of sectional interests, —
nothing less than anarchy and disunion, and
when that day arrives it will be truly said
that ' our glory has departed.' "

The turn of the argument is a characteris-
tic one, for Mr. Houghton often showed in
discussion a curious faculty for seizing upon
some illustration whose pertinency was not

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 23

immediately apparent, but which, by some
involution of his mind, had an effectiveness
for him, and served by its picturesqueness or
other striking quality to drive home the point
he was making. His Commencement part was
upon " The Necessity and True Method of a
System of State Education." It is interesting
to notice, that though he drew from the col-
lege library Grimke on Education and an Ab-
stract of Massachusetts School Reports for
the years 1838-1840, his oration began with a
quotation from Bacon, took in Milton by the
way, and showed the influence of Coleridge in
the closing paragraph.

" Since the state is admitted to have a moral
being, with moral attributes and a moral char-
acter, the system of education which it adopts
should be nothing else but a means of self-
education ; and this must be limited and di-
rected, as has been intimated, by the wants
which it feels. If, then, it would have a con-
tinued and healthful growth, it will strive to
know its own wants, and will use, as far as
possible, the means to satisfy them. Its phy-
sical wants every nation feels to a greater or

24 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

less extent ; but the higher wants which be-
long to the intellectual and moral nature are
not so soon awakened, and for that very rea-
son, when they begin to be felt, their claims
assume a paramount importance. The high-
est energies of the state should be directed
to their satisfaction; since, by seeking the
highest moral and intellectual culture of all
its members, it will inevitably seek its own,
so that in the state and the individual will
be realized the vision of the prophet, ' whose
appearance and work was, as it were, a wheel
in the middle of a wheel, and whithersoever
the spirit went the wheels went, for the spirit
of the living creature was in the wheels.' '

The class of 1846, of which Mr. Houghton
was a member, contained in its last year twenty-
four students, and of that number about a
fourth are still living, fifty years after gradua-
tion. One of the number, Mr. Neziah Wright
Bliss, at the time hailing from Bradford, and
now a resident of Chicago, has kindly given me
his recollections of his fellow-student. He had
known the Houghton family in Bradford; in-
deed, a sister of his at one time was engaged

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 25

to be married to a brother of Mr. Houghton.
Oscar Houghton he had known but slightly,
since he was but a boy when he left Bradford.
" Some days/' Mr. Bliss says, " or perhaps
weeks, after my entering with the Freshman
class of 1842 at Burlington, a tall young man,
slim and very much bent or bowed, as homely of
feature as Abraham Lincoln, and as awkward
and ungainly in person and manners, came up
to me on the campus, and asked if I was Nezi
Bliss (my name is Neziah) of Bradford, telling
me he was Oscar Houghton. Of course I knew
all about him at once (as to his antecedents),
and was glad to know him again. I was very
small for my age (I was then sixteen), and,
having been prepared to enter a year before
(but remained at the academy a year longer on
account of size as much as age), I was unusually
well prepared for those days. Several of my
former classmates at the academy were then
Sophomores at various colleges, — one now
Rev. 0. T. Lanphear, at Burlington. I found
that Oscar had been, in fact was then, a type-
setter in a printing-office, and was so poorly
prepared to enter college that he could barely

26 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

squeeze in. The reason for this was entirely
legitimate: he had to support himself, while
preparing to enter college, by an industry that
was not very lucrative ; and he had to attend
the academy as he could, and oftentimes study
by himself without instructors. All this he
told me, and, without in any way announcing
any boastful determination, said he was going
to try it and see if he could catch up and keep
up ; that it would be hard work, as he would
still have his living to make, as well as his tui-
tion and expenses of text-books and clothing
to meet. In entering, he registered himself as
of Portage, New York, which was doubtless
the place to which his father's family removed
from Bradford, and his room the first year
was No. 4 South College ; the next year he
roomed and boarded at Mrs. Coon's ; the third
year he again roomed in college (North Col-
lege, No. 2), registering those two years as of
Burlington ; but in our Senior year he roomed
at Mr. Cook's, and registered as of Dana, Mas-
sachusetts, and so wrote his name and place
of birth, as well as date, in my autographs of
the class. Of course, under these adverse cir-

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 27

cumstances, Mr. Houghton's beginnings in the
class were inconspicuous, and little attention
was paid to him at first by the class gener-
ally, in which were a considerable number of
well-prepared students of mature age, notably
Aiken and Lull, Belcher and Divoll, Hitch-
cock and Jameson, May and Prentiss, Steb-
bings and Wainwright, and later Nelson ; but
being a personal friend, I could not but no-
tice, and did notice, how gradually, day by
day and week by week, Oscar Houghton was
gaining and growing, delivering better recita-
tions and becoming better known to his class,
more, I am convinced, by his inveterate good-
nature and his sterling honesty and integrity
than by his increase in scholarship. It was
the custom for all the students of that day to
attend prayers in the chapel at sunrise and
sunset the year round, and religious services
at the chapel at first, and later at the White
Church (so called), unless a permit had been
obtained to attend elsewhere. I obtained a
permit to attend St. Paul's Episcopal Church,
then in charge of Bishop Hopkins, a man of
great force. Houghton, being a member of

28 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

the Methodist Church at Burlington, of course
attended there. One Sunday he invited me
to go with him to church, which I did, and
found carpeted aisles, cushioned seats, chan-
deliers, an upholstered pulpit, and a fashion-
ably dressed, beribboned and bejeweled au-
dience. I was taken by surprise, as the
Methodists of my native town insisted on
the rule of excessive plainness and simplicity,
and on making the seats, as well as psalms,
penitential. I called Oscar's attention to the
difference, and asked if he was sure of the
place. He was embarrassed, but got out of
the dilemma by explaining that, even in the
Methodist Church, what was the enforced rule
in poorer neighborhoods could not be en-
forced in wealthier ones.

" At that time there were only two public
societies in the college, the Phi Sigma Nu and
the University Institute, and the practice was,
after sufficient time had elapsed, for the upper
classes to form some estimate of the charac-
ter and capacities of the Freshmen, to take
the class list, and for the society, which for
that year had the choice, to select the first or

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 29

second name on the list, and then take every
other one in the list to its end, so that one
half of each class went to each society some-
what by lot. Houghton and I both fell to
the Phi Sigma Nu. At that time the parties
in the societies were divided on the lines of
Church or Non-Church, Liberals or Conserva-
tives, but, with the usual exaggeration of col-
lege life, were denominated Blues and Bloats.
Without any essential reason on either of our
parts, Houghton fell to the Blues and I to
the Bloats, and my party was in power in
holding the offices during our entire college
course; but we always elected Houghton to an
office, generally that of treasurer, on account
of the universal love and respect with which
he was regarded, for he never in his life (I
believe) made himself offensive in any way to
any one. Early in the history of our society
life, Oscar Houghton began to take part in the
debates. To do so was by no means general ;
a few members generally were the speakers,
and the great mass of members were listeners
only. It was as hard, up-hill work for Mr.
Houghton to take part in the debates as it

30 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

was to work up in his recitations. He was
troubled immensely with what I suppose the
French call mauvaise honte. He would get
up, bent over almost in a semicircle, and be-
gin a stammering, hesitating, awkward, lum-
bering speech, but nevertheless always with
a thought or idea at the bottom which he
could not express or get out; he would be
openly laughed at by some and pitied by his
more intimate friends, and he would give up
and sit down, laughing himself with the others
at his own failure, and by that means relieving
both those who laughed and those who pitied
of all embarrassment ; but he would soon be
up again, and sooner or later he would some-
how and after a fashion express a thought on
the subject under discussion that would com-
mand the attention and respect of all. This
went on in the society and in the class-room,
and not so slowly as you might suppose, be-
cause, when we held our Sophomore exhi-
bition, May 16, 1844, Houghton had so
advanced that he was assigned the honorable
place of the closing speech of the afternoon,
his subject being a characteristic one, for the

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 31

handling of which he was evidently peculiarly
well qualified, to wit, ' The True Ideal of a
Manly Character ; ' while to your late Judge
John W. May, the oldest and most accom-
plished scholar of the class, was assigned the
closing address of the evening, his subject
being ' Heroism.' At our Junior exhibition,
Mr. Houghton opened the evening exercises
by an address on * The Idea of Liberty among
the Ancient Greeks,' and again, in our grad-
uation exercises, opened the second session,
his subject being ( The Necessity and True
Method of a System of State Education/

" His success and standing in his class in
scholarship was equal to, if not greater than,
his success as an essayist ; and at the close of
our college years no man commanded more
the respect of the class than did Mr. Hough-
ton, and I am sure no man was so universally
esteemed and loved. If I were to estimate
the elements of his character which brought
to him the great measure of success that was
accorded to him in his lif e, I should say it was
his entire and incorruptible honesty and in-
tegrity, bred in the bone and reaching clear

32 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

through, patent upon the face of all his acts.
This, supplemented by his exceeding kindness
of heart and never-failing good-nature, gave
him those advantages that commanded the
success he met and deserved. . . .

" And now, Mr. Scudder, I have written to
you my impressions of my friend and class-
mate, just as I should wish you to have writ-
ten me had I inquired instead of you, giving
you the facts as they were at the time, not
undertaking (after the event) to make out
any great things as earnests or prognostica-
tions of the success afterwards attained. Mr.
Houghton never seemed to me, as in the case
of some I have known, to set up any special
ideal to which he would strive to attain. I
don't think he ever thought of ' aiming high,'
or particularly of ' aiming' at all, but I do
think he quietly and unostentatiously was de-
termined to do as thoroughly and well as he
could whatever his hand found to do, and
that he in everything and everywhere con-
scientiously did his work, leaving the conse-
quences to follow as a matter of course, with-
out in any case particularly contemplating

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 33

them ; and I believe it was this that largely
commanded the confidence of his business
associates in Cambridge, which to an unusual
degree contributed to his success. He has
gone, but he has left a most fragrant memory
among his friends, and to his family a name
and a character that will command the utmost
respect of all."

To this vivid reminiscence by Mr. Bliss
may be added the memorabilia of other of
Mr. Houghton's surviving classmates. Mr.
William H. Dodge, now of Westboro', Mas-
sachusetts, writes : —

" I was not intimately acquainted with Mr.
Houghton outside of his immediate college
duties, but in the class and lecture room I sat
near him during our entire college course.
He was one of the older members of our
class, being, I think, nearly twenty-four at
graduation, and had then a well-developed,
steady, reliable, and manly character.

" As I remember him, while not particularly
excelling in any department of college study,
he never failed or did poor work, but was a
well-balanced, all-round, good average student.

34 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

His written productions were always heavily
loaded with good, sound sense. Had he spent
less time in the printing-office, working for
money to help pay his expenses, he would
doubtless have taken higher rank in college
work. I think he gave very little if any time
to college games or social pleasures that would
not yield some profit to present or coming
real life-work."

Mr. Horace E. Stebbings, of Chicago, adds
his recollection in these words : —

" I am glad to contribute any information,
however little, in relation to the college life of
my friend Houghton, for he was my friend
and I always called him ' Oscar.' We were
classmates for four years. Our time — his
time especially — was fully occupied. We
had fewer leisure hours together perhaps
than students now have. We often worked
together, however, and saw new things and
realized new relations as a result of our work.
How can I cut it short ? Houghton was one
of the most genial, kind-hearted young men of
them all, and hence perhaps I was drawn to
him. It always seemed to me that I was his

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 35

welcome companion, — persona grata in mod-
ern phrase, — and I loved him for that. He
was lightly built in frame, and so seemed
taller in stature than most ; deliberate of
speech ; of lively intelligence ; an earnest,
honest, unsophisticated Yankee boy. He was
a printer, as you know, and earned money by
his art while in college. Most young men of
that time ' paddled their own canoe.' He set
types, read proof, etc., in fact did almost
everything at times, in the printing-office of
Chauncy Goodrich, of Burlington, Vermont.
There he met Father O'Calligan, an amiable
old priest of the town, who wrote books of va-
rious sorts, one Of Usury. He and Hough-
ton together corrected the proofs. The old
gentleman would sometimes get inspired re-
reading his own text, and stop the really
useful work and consume the time lecturing
Houghton, his audience of one, on the topics
of the chapters. Houghton said he didn't
think it made any difference to him, since he
was paid by the hour. The two became really
attached to each other, — the one a highly
educated, confirmed old Papist, the other a

36 HENKY OSCAR HOUGHTON

young Protestant student, and a zealous Meth-
odist at that. It always seemed to me a funny
relationship, but serves to show how very easy
it is to throw away dogma when warm hearts
and loving natures meet.

" I remember how we often picked out the
Greek together by the roots, and wondered
how far we should ever go to reap the ripe
crops that grow out of these. Houghton,
like many other students, did not like to be
hindered and limited by the study of what
seemed to him unimportant details. We were,
for instance, put upon an indigestible diet of
Greek prosody for a while. Houghton said :
' I wonder if Professor thinks I care any-
thing about the feet of those old Greek poets.
I care a great deal more about their heads.* "

When Mr. Houghton was seventy years
old, a notice of the fact in the press brought
a brief note of congratulation to him from
another classmate, J. W. Taylor, of Syracuse,
New York, in which the writer says : " It
must be now near fifty years since I became
acquainted with you, daily toiling up the steep
ascent of College Hill, in Burlington, to the

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 37

recitations in Alma Mater. I remember it
seemed to me a wonderful achievement that
you should be able to set type all day at the
case, and still find time to study and make
the three trips from down town and back
again and have any vitality left ! Through
the lapse of time I can see the wonderful
nerve it required, and the iron will to back it.
But the same determined spirit has borne its
fruit through these fifty years."

It is pleasant to show the response to this
friendly spirit of his classmates, in a letter
which Mr. Houghton wrote to Mr. Stebbings,
December 1, 1887 : —

4 PARK STREET, BOSTON,
December 1, 1887.

MY OLD FRIEND AND CLASSMATE STEB-
BINGS, — I have often thought of you, and
was very glad to receive your photograph.
I supposed it represented you, although it
was very different from the stubbed young
man that I knew in college; and I should
have responded, but I did not know where to
address you, until I met Jameson, who kindly
gave me your address, and agreed to be the

38 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

medium through which I could convey my
shadow to you in return for yours. I think
it is very pleasant to have the faces of our old
friends, even if the gray hairs have begun to
show. I think I am a little younger than I
was forty years ago when we were together,
and I am quite anxious to know whether you
retain that umbrella that you broke over the
head of the Sophomore who was trying to
intrude himself into your room without per-
mission.

I heard that Mr. Bliss was at Burlington
this year at Commencement. I think I should
have gone there to meet him alone if I had
known he was to have been there. I was
there a week or more after the Commence-
ment, and heard of him. He and I were
great friends in college, and I have always
taken a kindly interest in him. I wish he
would send me his photograph, and I shall be
very glad to retaliate if he should do so. I
am glad to believe that both you and he are
prospered so far as this world's goods go, and
I am delighted with the description of your
family. I should be glad to see any of them

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 39

if they come to Boston, and I should like to
take you to my house and show you mine. I
have three of the best girls that there are
in the country, except yours, and they are a
great comfort to me. I have a son also, who
is with me in the business, and who has been
married a year or more. My son lives in the
house he was born in, and my girls are still
with me.

Reciprocating heartily your blessings, and
hoping we may meet either here or in Chicago,
I am, as ever,

Your friend,

H. 0. HOUGHTON.

m

WHEN he was graduated from the Univer-
sity of Vermont in 1846, Mr. Houghton was
in debt for his education to the amount of
$300, but he was equipped for seeking his
fortune with a college training, knowledge of
a craft, good health, and indomitable energy.
His intention, like that of many young grad-
uates, was to take up school-teaching until
the way opened for a permanent vocation;
and he appears to have had a partial engage-
ment for the winter of 1846-47 to teach in
Hardwick, Massachusetts, not far from Dana,
where his parents were now residing. But,
missing the first opportunity which presented
itself, he fell back upon his craft as a printer,
and found also a chance to do reporter's
work on the Boston Traveller. It is not
improbable that the steps which led him into
printing as a vocation were taken somewhat
reluctantly; for a college education was re-

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 41

garded in his youth as more distinctly the
entrance upon one of the learned professions
than it is to-day, and the exertions and sacri-
fices required for securing such an education
would seem scarcely justified by a mechani-
cal occupation afterward. I never heard Mr.
Houghton speak in this strain, but I have
often heard him set a high value on the disci-
plinary collegiate training of his day, which
supposed hard intellectual labor for four years.
Certainly in his case the effect of this training
upon his success as a printer and captain of
industry was very great. He was not espe-
cially dexterous as a mechanic. His work at
the case, to be sure, had given him facility in
setting type, and I recall an odd illustration
of special expertness which his practice had
given him. He had no liking for games, but
when his children were playing the familiar
letter-game, which consists in constructing a
word out of a jumble of letters, he would
take the unassorted letters and arrange them
at once in their proper order. He knew the
parts of a printing-press, but he had not
the skill which some master printers had, as

42 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

the late Mr. Welch, for example, to take a
press apart and put it together again. What
he did have, the gift especially of his college
training, was the power, so much more sub-
stantial than mere empiricism, to make his
experiments in his head, — to see what he
wished to accomplish, and what means, me-
chanical or other, were needed to produce the
desired result. This power was unquestion-
ably confirmed by many years of experience,
so that his knowledge of what went to the
making of a good book — paper, ink, cut of
type, presswork — was unhesitating, but it
was a power which sprang rather from the
logical faculty behind the eye than from the
eye and touch ; and it was, as I have said, a
native gift trained and ordered by intellec-
tual discipline.

Another element of success in his vocation
which he brought with him from college was
also a native gift, enhanced in value by colle-
giate training, — the gift of good taste, that
quality of selection and reserve which lies at
the bottom of genuine success in any mechanic
art that appeals in the last analysis to the cul-

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 43

tivated eye and mind. It was an unfailing
source of pleasure to him to examine the work
of the great Italian printers, whose masters
were in turn the artists of the illuminated
missals of the days before printing, and he
never wearied of inculcating those fundamen-
tal principles of good proportion and simpli-
city which may be traced in all the acceptable
work from Aldus down. There was a certain
rule of proportion for the printed page, which
an architect once formulated for him ; it was
a rule which mechanically confirmed what his
own good taste had fixed independently ; and,
in any discussion as to a proposed page, he
was pretty sure to apply the rule as an author-
ity, but he did not need the rule to satisfy
himself : his eye was quite as trustworthy.
It was the custom in the office, never inter-
mitted to the last, to refer every specimen
page and every title-page to him for approval,
and no book could be carried forward or com-
pleted until the letters H. 0. H. were upon
these pages.

" The fact has often been commented on,"
says Mr. Houghton in his address on Early

44 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

Printing in America, " that the printing of
the first printers excelled in beauty of exe-
cution that of any subsequent issues of the
printing-press. The reason for this, I think,
will be apparent when we consider that the
first types were imitations of the chirography
of the monks, and from long experience and
practice this chirography had come to be very
beautiful ; but, as was inevitable when speed
became an important element and the types
became mechanical appliances, this love of
beauty gave way, as has been the case always,
to utility and speed. The old German text,
also, through the process of years, has gradu-
ally given way to the more common Latin
text, and, as we see in the modern newspaper,
the process of deterioration still goes on in
obedience to the demands of haste. There
is a return now among the cultivated to the
more careful printing of earlier times. An
evidence that this early printing was, as near
as could be, transcripts of the careful penman-
ship of the old monks, can be seen in the
great folios in that remarkable library at
Cairo, where it is difficult even for an expert,

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 45

without close inspection, to say whether these
books were printed or written."

A brief series of letters to his parents after
leaving the University, and before setting up
for himself as a printer in Cambridge, gives in
a random fashion Mr. Houghton's apparently
desultory occupation for these two or three
years. The letters give also, especially to
those who knew him in his later years, curious
little intimations of his temperament, and of
the resolute spirit which attended him in the
early reaching out after a definite plan of
life.

BOSTON, October 20, 1846.

DEAR PARENTS, — I found when I arrived
in Worcester that the paper which had been
sent me had been nearly a week on the road,
and the situation had been filled up when I
arrived, and therefore I came on to Boston the
next morning. When I got here I found Pres-
ident Wheeler at the hotel where I stopped,
and he gave me a very flattering recommen-
dation, by the aid of which I have succeeded
in getting a situation for a month at least in
the Daily Traveller office, one of the best

46 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

papers in the city. My business is to be, if
I am prospered so as to do it readily, that of
reporter; that is, going about the city and
picking up the news and writing it out for
the paper, attending lectures and giving ac-
counts of them. Perhaps I may come home
at the end of the month, and perhaps stay
longer. My salary is not very large at first,
but if I remain and succeed well it is to be
increased. I have found several acquaint-
ances in the city, and by means of one of
them I obtained board in a private family the
first day I came here, so that it has not cost
me as much as it would at a public house ; and
I have earned about two dollars in cash in a
printing-office, besides going on top of Bun-
ker Hill Monument, out to Cambridge, etc. ;
and I am not at all sorry I came here; in
fact it seems to me providential.

I wish you would send me all the letters
and papers that have come for me since I left.
If you will pay the postage on the letters, and
get Mr. Kussell or Johnson to do them all up
in one package, they will come cheaper than
they would separately, as they will then come

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 47

by weight. If you can send me some more
stockings and my two best night-shirts by Mr.
Russell, I should like it. They could proba-
bly find me at the Daily Traveller office on
Court Street. I wish the letters directed
" Traveller Printing - office, Boston." I am
anxious to hear from you, how you are get-
ting along, and I will endeavor to write again
soon if you answer this immediately. I think
I shall be able to send you papers occasion-
ally. I am very much pleased with Boston,
and have been treated very courteously and
kindly by gentlemen who were entire strangers
to me. I spent an hour or two in the library
of the University in Cambridge, which con-
sists of 52,000 volumes. I called on Mrs.
Chamberlin yesterday, and found her quite
smart.

Very affectionately your son,

H. 0. HOUGHTON.

BOSTON, October 13, 1847.

DEAR PARENTS, — I am getting rather anx-
ious to hear from you, as I have not heard
a syllable since I left home. Neither have I

48 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

heard anything from Manila or Maria. Albert
spent nearly two weeks in Boston, and has
written to me two or three times since, short
business letters. I bought a quantity of cran-
berries for him a few days since. He and his
family sailed from New York about the first
of October.

Soon after my return from home Mr. Dick-
inson sold a large part of his establishment,
but I was retained in his employ and promoted
to the office of proof-reader, which is about
the highest notch as to dignity in the printing-
office.

I saw in my paper last evening a little para-
graph saying that a Mr. Haywood, a drover
from Jaffrey, New Hampshire, had his pocket-
book stolen from him, or else lost it, containing
$3000 in bank-bills. He was in Brighton at
the time. I feared from the description that
it might be Elizabeth's husband. If so, they
must feel very bad about it.

I wrote to Mr. Scott that you would send
him what cheese you could spare. Mother, if
you will knit for me, or get them knit for me,
three or four pairs of good substantial socks,

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 49

I will pay you 50 cents a pair, or any price you
please. I want them knit long, so that they
will come up to the tops of my boots. I have
a quantity of old clothes, such as my old over-
coat, pantaloons, etc., which I would like to
send home, if you would wish them, but I
hardly know how to send them. I have not
seen Russell this fall; has he been down yet?
I hope he will call on me when he comes.
I think my health is growing better, if any-
thing. I am anxious to know how you are
getting along, and I hope you will write to
me, if not more than two lines, and direct
Dickinson's Type Foundry, 4 Wilson Lane,
Boston. My earnest prayer is that your last
days may be made comfortable, and when you
leave this world you may be prepared for a
better habitation in another.

Affectionately your son,

OSCAR.

BOSTON, September 2, 1848.

DEAR PARENTS, — You will notice, by a
circular that I sent to-day, that I have changed
my place of business, as I intimated I might

50 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

do when at home. Business declined at the
Boston Type Foundry, so that they thought
they could not afford to keep two proof-read-
ers, and of course I was discharged. They
expressed themselves perfectly satisfied with
me, however, and gave me a letter of recom-
mendation. Mr. Band made me an offer soon
after to come into his office and take in extra
proof-reading, by which arrangement, if I am
prospered, I hope to do better than I have
been doing.

The Traveller folks told me they wished to
send me to Worcester to attend a Democratic
Convention next Wednesday. If there are
any delegates from your quarter, please to
send some word by them.

Did Daniel come home this summer ? Why
did he not come to Boston ? Albert is not
coming this summer, and Mr. Ready has not
yet arrived. Do not fail to let me hear from
you soon, and direct care of G. C. Band & Co.,
No. 3 Cornhill.

Affectionately your son,

OSCAR.

P. S. I went on Wednesday last to Ply-

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 51

mouth, and put my foot on the rock where
the Pilgrims landed.

The following is the circular referred to in
the previous letter : —

A CARD.

TO PRINTERS, PUBLISHERS, AND AUTHORS.

The undersigned, formerly proof-reader in Mr.
S. N. Dickinson's stereotype foundry, has taken a
desk in the office of G. C. Kand & Company for
the purpose of accommodating those printers who
may need extra assistance in proof-reading, or
whose business will not warrant the constant em-
ployment of a professional reader. By this ar-
rangement, it is believed, proofs can be read with
promptness and dispatch, and at about the same
expense as in the office where the work of composi-
tion is performed.

If a long and varied experience, the facilities
afforded by a regular collegiate education, and a
thoroughly practical knowledge of printing, may
tend in any degree to inspire confidence, it is
hoped the undertaking may meet with encourage-
ment.

Attention given, also, to the preparation of
manuscripts for the press when desired.

52 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

KEFEKENCES. — Mr. S. Phelps ; James M. Shute,
agent of the Boston Type and Stereotype Foundry ;
C. C. P. Moody, former partner of Mr. Dickinson ;
Messrs. Freeman & Bolles ; Messrs. Andrews &
Punchard, editors of The Daily Evening Travel-
ler ; and a large number of authors and publishers.

N. B. For reading first proofs, an intelligent
boy provided to read copy without extra charge.

H. O. HOUGHTON.
No. 3 COBNHILL, BOSTON,
August 29, 1848.

BOSTON, November 16, 1848.

DEAR PARENTS, — I was very agreeably
surprised one morning in finding a letter on
my desk from mother. I know not who
brought it there, but I have not had such a
treat for some time past. I thank you for
your invitation to Thanksgiving, and designed
to avail myself of it; my business, however,
is of such a nature that I cannot tell possibly
whether I can be there or not on that day.
But I hope to be permitted to drop in upon
you in the course of two or three weeks. I
went to Connecticut, and made James * a visit

1 An older brother, Kev. James Clay Houghton, of Granby,
Conn.

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 63

on Saturday last. I found them all well.
They have a fine girl, some ten months old,
with a white head and a deep-blue eye. James
was away on Sunday, and did not return until
Monday, and I had the visit with his family
all to myself. I returned to Boston on Tues-
day, after having had a very pleasant time.

I have recently had an offer to go into busi-
ness here which seems to me very favorable.
Mr. Freeman, of the firm of Freeman & Bolles,
who are among the best printers in the city,
if not the very best, has offered to sell me one
half of the office for $100 down and the rest
in yearly payments of $250 each. He esti-
mates that the half of the office will be worth
about $3000, which is to be left to referees
to say. Messrs. Little & Brown, who are the
most extensive publishers of law books in New
England, if not in the United States, propose
to make a contract with us to do all their
printing that we can do, at a stipulated price,
which will probably of itself be sufficient to
keep a large establishment in operation. They
are building a large office in Cambridge, the
rent of which is to be about half Freeman &

54 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

Bolles are now paying in the city. Mr. Bolles
has been in business here about twenty years,
and offers to put his experience on a par with
my education, if I will go in with him. Gen-
tlemen here in the city have agreed to sign
a note for me, by which I can raise $500 or
$600. Persons here who are acquainted with
the business tell me that it is a good oppor-
tunity, and that we can probably make $2000
a year clear of expenses. Mr. Scott1 and
James both speak very favorably of it, and
James tried to raise some additional funds for
me, but did not succeed. I will try and come
home soon, and tell you more about it. Till
then adieu.

Affectionately your son,

H. 0. HOTJGHTON.

P. S. Albert has a daughter a month or
two old. They call it Maria, I believe. Mr.
Scott's family are well. He said nothing
about the cheese. I have not heard from
Marilla for a long time. Write soon. I am
almost out of socks.

1 Mr. David Scott, his brother-in-law.

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 55

The last of these letters shows Mr. Hough-
ton just on the eve of establishing himself in
business with Mr. Bolles, but still lacking the
funds needed to complete the bargain. There
is a story that he was at work on the morning
of the day when the option was to expire.
There was a rap at the door, and, in response
to his "Come in," there entered a countryman,
who inquired, "Is this Oscar Houghton?"
He was told that it was. " Well, now, Oscar,
I 'm right glad to see you," said the stranger;
"my wife Sarah said that when I came to
Boston I must be sure and see her cousin
Oscar." The visitor proved to be a well-to-
do New England farmer. He inquired after
his relative's affairs, and Mr. Houghton told
him of his plans, and stated that the hour
had come when he must give an answer to
the offer made him, but that he must give up
the chance for lack of the needed money.
"How much do you lack, Oscar?" asked
the farmer. "About five hundred dollars,"
was the reply. Whereupon the visitor, who
had become thoroughly interested, offered to
make up the amount in a loan. As nearly

56 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

as can now be known, the amount which Mr.
Houghton raised was fifteen hundred dollars,
one third of which was raised from friends on
his promissory note, one third was lent by
Mr. David Scott, and one third by his cousin's
husband, Eufus Heywood, of East Jaffrey,
New Hampshire.

The office was first established on Keming-
ton Street, in Cambridge, and a glimpse of
the activity of the new business is seen in a
paragraph of a letter to one of his sisters,
written from Cambridge, March 5, 1849 :
"Your favor dated February 10 was not re-
ceived until this evening. I had business in
town, and went to the post-office and found
it advertised. You know, I suppose, that I
now live in Cambridge, and when you write
again please direct there. I should be much
gratified to see you, and hope I may have the
opportunity before you leave on your mis-
sion. I have been designing to visit home, if
permitted so to do, about the first of April,
but it would be very difficult for me to leave
now. We have about thirty persons in our
employ, are chock-full of business, and hardly

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 57

settled yet. Please to let me know your
plans definitely, as I am very desirous of see-
ing you before you go."

A year later he was writing to his parents :

CAMBRIDGE, February 18, 1850.
DEAR PARENTS, — I am getting quite anx-
ious to hear from you, and I write with the
hope that you will give me a few lines in
return. Daniel was here a few days ago, and
left here for Dana, and I suppose he told you
all about me, and perhaps made a sorry story.
I sent a gold dollar by him for mother, which
I trust he delivered. Our business has given
us a good deal of trouble, both before and
since I was home, but we are getting along
more smoothly, I think, now ; and I am con-
fident, with the help of Providence, we shall
prosper. The "strike" will, I think, work
to our advantage in the end, as we get better
prices now, and are driving a heavier business
than ever. I suppose you saw in the Trav-
eller an account of the " striking " one of
our women received some time since. There
has been quite a noise made about it.

58 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

I received a letter from Maria a few days
since ; she appeared to be in fine health and
spirits. The Sioux had all gone a-hunting,
and she and Mr. Hancock had gone 200
miles further north among the Winnebagoes,
where the thermometer stood the first week
or two in January at 27 and 30 degrees below
zero.

,We shall look for Albert in March. I
think I shall try and coax him to go home.
Harriet appears to be getting along finely,
and likes Boston and Boston people much
better than she did. Her father wrote that
she might come home with Albert in March,
but she wrote back she did not wish to go
until fall. Harriet Fyler is keeping house
this winter for Governor Collier, and has not
yet gone to Wetumpka.

Do let us hear how you are getting along,
and if you are in need let me know it. May
the Lord help you is the prayer of

Your affectionate son,

OSCAR.

The religious expression at the close of this

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 59

letter was not a mere form of words. Mr.
Houghton in his earliest years had been
under the influence of the Congregational
church, but the example of his eldest sister
led him to cast in his lot with the Meth-
odists. During his college days his read-
ing and thinking had at one time led him
to question the doctrinal basis of his re-
ligion, and he was inclined for a while to
the Unitarian statement ; but he worked out
the problem with the result of becoming
more securely established on the foundations
of his early faith, at the same time that he
acquired a habit of mind which gave him
intellectual sympathy with a wide range of
religious expression. Dean Huntington, of
Boston University, wrote of him : " He did
not care always to do what was simply con-
ventional, or the thing that some one else
expected him to do, but he had clear ideas of
duty as he saw it, and this duty he was glad
to do with all his strength. His type was
ethical. The emotional kind of piety did not
affect him deeply. He laid the emphasis of his
belief upon integrity, justice, frugality, self-

60 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

respect, and charity to the suffering and
needy." It is a confirmation of the sturdy
character of his loyalty to the Methodist form
of religion, which he believed to be the most
practical order and the freest from the perils
which beset institutional religion, that he never
swerved from an identification with it, though
the engagement to be married, which he
formed at the beginning of his career, was
with a member of the Congregational Church;
and he was brought into intimate and very
admiring relations with her family, though
he married afterward a member of the Baptist
communion, and though, as years went on,
his wife and some of his own children passed
over into the Episcopal Church. The intimate
connection with the Methodist Church, though
it brought him into positions of service and
responsibility in the denomination, did not
restrict or narrow his sympathy. He had a
very great appreciation of the work of the
American Board of Commissioners for For-
eign Missions; and he was wont to dilate
upon the admirable organization of the Rom-
ish Church, as well as upon the great impor-

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 61

tance of the contention of that church that
education of the young should be primarily
religious. It was not merely that his busi-
ness brought him into close relations with
intellectual men of various creeds, and that
his business sagacity forbade him to make the
lines of his enterprise coincide with the lines
of his ecclesiastical relationship, but his nature
was catholic in its sympathy ; he was at once
too large a man to be narrowly sectarian, or
to be religiously indifferent.

Upon first coming to Boston he had con-
nected himself with the Bromfield Street
Methodist Episcopal Church, and after estab-
lishing himself in Cambridge, he returned for
a while to that church home. Dr. Warren,
now President of Boston University, was pas-
tor of the church during a portion of that
time, and writes : —

" He was the Assistant Superintendent of
the Sunday-school of the Bromfield Street
Church when, with less than four years' expe-
rience in the ministry, I was sent thither to be
the pastor of such men as he, and of yet older
and riper saints, such as Mother Monroe,

62 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

Jacob Sleeper, Isaac Rich, David Snow, and
others of their generation. Mr. Houghton
was already a man of mark in the goodly
congregation that filled the house. It was
natural that it should be so. He was a man
of liberal education, clear-headed, warm-
hearted, prosperous in business, one of the
comparatively few who came to church in his
own family carriage, driving all the way from
his Cambridge home, yet ready to remain to
attend the Sunday-school and to do his part
in the work of the church. Whenever I now
think of those days, and realize that he was
riper than his pastor by ten or more years of
Christian experience and of world-experience,
I marvel that he could have listened so atten-
tively, and that he could have evinced his
friendly feelings in such manifold and encour-
aging methods as he did."

There was another reason why Mr. Hough-
ton clung to his Boston connection. He had
made the acquaintance of Miss Elizabeth Har-
ris, and the acquaintance had ripened into
love, so that an engagement of marriage took
place; but Miss Harris was frail in health

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 63

and was attacked by consumption, a more dis-
tinctive New England disease then than now,
and died, so that the marriage did not take
place. Many of Mr. Houghton' s friends will
remember the strong and kindly presence in
his household of Miss Mary Harris, "Aunt
Mary," as she was familiarly known, the real
aunt of Miss Elizabeth Harris, and the titular
aunt of the young family that afterward grew
up under her eye, for she made her home with
Mr. Houghton for many years before her
death ; the respect and affection he had for
her, and the confidence she had in him, were
manifest to all who knew the two together.
How much this beautiful connection meant
may be seen from the impulse which led Mrs.
Houghton to give to her eldest daughter the
name of Elizabeth Harris.

IV

THE quarters in Kemington Street soon be-
came insufficient for the growing business,
and there was need of a more substantial
establishment. As has been seen, the most
important connection of the new firm was
that with Messrs. Little, Brown & Company,
of Boston, then as now an eminent publishing
house, especially of law books. The moving
spirit at that date was Mr. James Brown, a
warm friend of the elder John Murray, from
whom he named a son, who has succeeded
him in business. Mr. Brown gave the young
printer substantial encouragement, and by his
advice and aid Mr. Houghton, who was now
by himself, became Mr. Brown's tenant in a
brick, domestic-looking building on the banks
of the Charles Eiver. The building had for-
merly been used by the city of Cambridge as
a house for the town poor, and stood almost
in the open country. Mr. Brown had bought

HENKY OSCAR HOUGHTON 65

the estate, and the building, after being re-
modeled, was occupied by the firm of H. 0.
Houghton & Company. Mr. Houghton and
Mr. Brown were desirous of giving the new
press a significant name, and tried various ex-
periments, till Mr. Brown said one day : " This
press stands by the side of the Charles Kiver ;
why not call it ' The Kiverside Press ' ? " and
this most natural name was then given it, so
that now the term Riverside has come to cover
a thickly populated district, and to be applied
to various neighboring industries.

It was in 1852 that the firm of H. 0.
Houghton & Company was established at the
Riverside Press,1 and on September 12, 1854,
Mr. Houghton was married to Miss Nanna
W. Manning, who was at the time a teacher
in the Cambridge High School. The first
house occupied by the couple was in Ellery
Street, but shortly after, by the aid and with
the wise advice of Miss Mary Harris, he built

1 An old payroll book shows for the first week, ending
January 18, 1849, a list of sixteen names, aggregating $74.
The increase of the business is seen by that for April 10,
1852, when there were fifty names and a total of $575.22.

66 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

the house on Main Street, now Massachusetts
Avenue, still the home of the family. He
added an apartment easy of access on the
ground-floor for the use of his parents, who
came to live with him. His mother died in
1858 ; and his father afterward went to the
home of William Houghton, the oldest of the
sons, in Nunda, where he died.

There was a period, therefore, of about ten
years when Mr. Houghton may be said to
have been establishing himself. He was mar-
ried, had a house of his own, and saw a young
family growing up about him. He was in full
control of a printing-office ; for though he did
business under the firm name of H. 0. Hough-
ton & Company, the company was a friend
who had embarked money in the enterprise
and assumed no share in the management.
He was in close relation with the Harvard
Street Methodist Episcopal Church, where he
was Superintendent of the Sunday-school,1 and

1 He was Superintendent from 1850 to the end of 1853.
For several years after that he resumed his connection with
the church in Boston, but returned to the Harvard Street
church in 1862, was then made a trustee, and resumed his
office of Superintendent in 1864, retaining it till his death. .

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 67

he was taking his part in the government of
the young city of Cambridge as a member of
the school committee, as well afterward as a
member of the Common Council and of the
Board of Aldermen.

There were two connections which he main-
tained in business that were of great impor-
tance to him. The firm of Little, Brown &
Company, besides being very large law pub-
lishers, took the lead in enterprises calling for
a good deal of capital. They planned and
carried out a series of dignified historical and
political works, of the kind to which we eas-
ily give the name of monumental, like the
writings of John Adams and John Quincy
Adams, and the speeches of Daniel Webster.
They undertook also that long series of Brit-
ish Poets and British Essayists, neat, sober
volumes in black cloth, each preceded by a
steel-plate portrait of the author. A few of
the volumes of the British Poets, those least
in demand, like the poems of Bishop Heber,
were simply small editions from English sheets
bound uniform with the others ; most of the
books, however, were passed under the critical

68 HENKT OSCAR HOUGHTON

supervision of Professor Francis J. Child, with
occasionally the aid of Mr. C. E. Norton
and Mr. James Russell Lowell, and reset and
stereotyped here. Much of this mechanical
work fell to Mr. Houghton, and he was
brought thus into friendly relations with the
editors, and into very close relations with Mr.
Brown, whom he always looked upon as the
most far-sighted and courageous publisher
whom he had known, — a man who saw his
business in a large way, and yet had the
resolution and decision to keep clear of specu-
lative ventures. "Mr. Houghton," the elder
man once said to him impressively, "never
hesitate to stop any enterprise which is not
paying : if you see a part of your business
to be unprofitable, cut it off, no matter how
much it hurts ; " and Mr. Houghton laid the
advice to heart.

The other house with which the young
printer made an alliance was the firm of Tick-
nor & Fields, which was rapidly acquiring a
list of books in general literature, and mak-
ing friends amongst English and American
authors, especially of poetry and belles-lettres

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 69

generally. If the volumes of the British
Poets stood for substantial standard literature,
the decorous brown-clad volumes with blind
side-stamps will even now bring up delight-
ful associations in the minds of readers who
were young men and women in the decade of
1850-1860. When, a few years ago, the old
firm name of Ticknor & Company was revived
for a short time, Mr. Howells, with the en-
thusiasm of reminiscence, urged the new firm
to hunt up the old-fashioned die, get some
brown cloth made of the pattern of the old,
and burst forth in a sort of resurrection suit,
with the expectation of creating a genuine
furore among book-lovers.

As Mr. Brown in the one house had been
the one to take the initiative, so Mr. Fields,
with his love of literature, gave direction to
the list of the other ; and, as good books de-
mand good printing, he had very frequent
recourse to Mr. Houghton. But the two men
were nearer of an age than were Mr. Hough-
ton and Mr. Brown, so that the relations were
of a different sort ; and Mr. Houghton was so
confident of himself in his own art that he

70 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

took the position of an adviser in mechanical
matters, and not always that of a mere execu-
tive agent of the publisher. Once he invited
Mr. Fields to look at a shelf of books in his
counting-room. He had collected a number
of the recent publications of Ticknor & Fields,
and ranged them with special reference to
showing the irrational irregularity of sizes of
paper used in the manufacture.

For Mr. Houghton was devoting himself
with the greatest ardor, not simply to the
development of his business, but to the im-
provement of his art, and in doing this he was
governed by a few broad, fundamental princi-
ples. I have spoken already of the clearness
with which he saw the correct proportions of
a page, and how pleased he was at finding
that what his eye saw to be correct, a canon
of architectural proportions confirmed. By a
similar direct judgment, he early and always
protested against the use of sizes of paper
except the old, accepted dimensions, and re-
garded any departure from these as a futile
attempt to secure individuality. He tried to
enforce system and regularity in this respect

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 71

into the books which he made for his custom-
ers ; and when he had the power to order, as
he did later in his own publishing house, the
canon of regularity in paper was one which
he would not have infringed.

He carried the underlying principle of
beauty through simplicity into his typography.
He at once discarded the customary typo-
graphic ornaments, though he pleased himself
later when he was in England with having
devices and initial letters designed expressly
for him by a daughter of one of his printing
friends, Mr. Whittingham. He discarded also
the common expedients for securing variety
by means of change in type ; his aim was, not
to startle, not to distract, but to make his type
so clear, simple, and orderly that it should do
its plain work of expressing language with the
least ostentation. In all this he was helped
by the constant handling of the best English
books of the day, and he studied the work
of Aldus, Bodoni, Baskerville, Pickering, and
other master printers ; but it is to be noted that
he went straight to the mark from the start, and
had apparently no false notions to get rid of.

72 HENRY OSCAK HOUGHTON

It is not easy for the book-lover of to-day,
accustomed to seeing well-printed books, to
appreciate the important contribution which
Mr. Houghton made to the art of book-mak-
ing in America. There were other good
printers contemporaneous with him, such men,
for example, as Mr. Alvord and Mr. Trow, but
no one seems to have emphasized with such
distinction the few but fundamental laws of
good printing, and he had, as we have shown,
the occasion at his hand in his close associa-
tion with two important publishers of the best
literature. After all, the force which lay be-
hind this manifestation of an art was the char-
acter of the man himself. He knew a good
thing in printing, and he was not the man to
give up his knowledge to the opinion of any
one else. He was so much more positive
than most of his customers, and he impressed
his own convictions on them so determinedly,
that he had his own way; his tenacity and
his energy made him a most effective reformer
in printing when he was engaged strictly in
minding his own business.

His management of the printing-office was

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 73

marked by an unwearying attention to every
detail, and, hard as he made his men work, he
worked harder than any. On one occasion he
found himself drawn into contention with his
compositors. They made demands which he
thought were unreasonable, and they seemed
to have the advantage of him in the situation.
He quietly went about amongst some teach-
ers and other well-educated young women in
Cambridge, persuaded them to put themselves
under his tuition, privately trained them to
set type, and, when the battle seemed to have
gone against him, suddenly appeared with his
reinforcements, established them in his com-
posing-room, and from that day to the end
not only had no further strike, but gave to
the entire composing-room a character for in-
dustry, skill, and courtesy. He was one of
the first to demonstrate on a considerable scale
the practicability of the employment of women
in this capacity ; and it was characteristic of
him that he should draw to himself the best-
educated and best-mannered girls, and not be
aiming for the lowest-priced. He long had a
proof-reader, Miss Harris, on whose services
he set a very high value.

THE reputation which Mr. Houghton made,
not only as a printer of singularly good taste,
but as a prompt man of business, attracted
to him other publishers than those already
named, and made his office the favorite one
of the small class of connoisseurs in printing
who wished to secure a specially choice result
in private publishing. One of the most in-
teresting connections which Riverside made,
and fruitful in the end, was with Mr. 0. W.
Wight, a scholarly gentleman, who was also
a man of means, and adopted a mode of grati-
fying his tastes, and at the same time making
his money earn interest, which I have often
wondered is not more commonly followed.
He was a lover of Montaigne, Pascal, Madame
de Stael, and Voltaire, and he edited, I believe
in part translated, writings of these authors,
and resorted to Mr. Houghton as a printer
who could make his books as beautiful in

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 75

page as he could desire. Mr. Houghton made
the stereotype plates, as he might have made
them for any author, and then Mr. Wight
farmed them out to this or that publisher,
who bore the cost of printing, binding, and
selling, and paid Mr. Wight a royalty for the
use of the plates. I do not attempt to name
all the books which Mr. Wight made in this
way, but his last, most considerable venture
was a new edition of Dickens, which long re-
mained as the best example of Mr. Houghton's
art, and no one can now come upon an early
impression of the Household Edition of Dick-
ens, as it was called, without being delighted
with the classic beauty of the page. It was
for this edition that Mr. Darley made a series
of careful India-ink drawings, the originals of
which have long hung on the walls of Mr.
Houghton's house.

In all these projects Mr. Houghton took a
most active part, lending his judgment and
skill in planning the mechanical treatment,
and advising respecting the publication. He
was studying all the while to enlarge the
circle of his connection with publishers, aware

76 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

of the risk he ran if he tied himself too closely
to any one. Moreover, his independence and
his consciousness of mastery in his own art
made him impatient of any relation which left
him only the position of agent, and he found
himself often placed, as he thought, at a disad-
vantage. Not only did his transactions with
Mr. Wight bring him into very close dealings
with publishers, and familiarize him with the
publishing side of book-making, but out of
the difficulties which arose in these transac-
tions there seemed but one way of wise escape,
and that was into the assumption himself of
the publisher's function. He needed an out-
let for his manufacturing enterprise, and he
felt increasingly the disadvantage of stopping
short with the production of a book. The
publication of the Dickens was in itself a
serious affair in those days, for it was com-
prised in a long series of volumes.

It was under these circumstances, when his
mind was gravitating toward publishing, that
his business brought him into frequent inter-
course with Mr. Melancthon M. Hurd, then
a partner in the house of Sheldon & Com-

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 77

pany. The business of this house was mainly
in school books, and Mr. Kurd's taste and
interest were in the direction of literature.
The friendship of the two men, and their
common tastes in the matter of books, easily
led to the proposal of a partnership under
the firm name of Hurd & Houghton.1 They
reasoned that New York was fast becoming
the great centre for the sale and distribution
of books, as of other merchandise, and that
not only was Biverside already well equipped
for the printing of books, but that Cambridge
must long be a natural meeting-ground for
authors and editors. There were long con-
ferences in those days before and after the
inception of the new firm, and Mr. Houghton
was full of ardor in this enlargement of scope.
As, in the case of printing, he did not regard
his business merely as a support and means
of enrichment, so now his mind was given to
a forecast of the great field which lay before
him in the business of publishing. He meant
emphatically to make good books, to spare no
effort to make them pleasant to the eye and

i The " notice " of the partnership is dated March 1, 1864.

78 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

the touch, — that he was sure he could do, —
and to be sure that they were wholesome and
worth making beautiful. The new firm meant
to cultivate new authors, but the list of books
with which they began, books which for the
most part had grown out of Mr. Houghton's
connection with Mr. Wight, — Bacon, Cooper,
Dickens, Montaigne, Macaulay, and others, —
naturally opened the way for that attention
to standard literature which always since has
characterized the house. A year after the firm
was established, it was announcing a portly
library of old divines, to be edited by the
former University of Vermont scholar, Pro-
fessor W. G. T. Shedd, and five volumes of
South' s sermons was the result. Mr. Hough-
ton also, from his great familiarity with the
making of law books and his knowledge of
the profitable nature of the business as then
conducted, determined to make the publica-
tion of law books a specialty. He was more
encouraged to this by the acquaintance he had
formed with law writers, and by his intimate
relations with Judge Bennett. He had, more-
over, a natural proclivity toward the science

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 79

of law. It appealed strongly to his robust,
argumentative mind.

I do not know the exact order of events,
but very close to this important step in Mr.
Houghton's career was the business engage-
ment he made with the house of Messrs. G. & C.
Merriam of Springfield, the publishers of Web-
ster's Dictionary, who were, I think, at this
time ready to begin the production of a new
edition of that work. Mr. Houghton knew
very well that, however carefully he might
keep the firm of H. 0. Houghton & Com-
pany, printers, distinct from that of Hurd &
Houghton, publishers, he was running the risk
of losing engagements with other publishers
by entering their domain himself ; and he was
too far-sighted to think that he could at once
build up a publishing house which would
exhaust the capacity of his printing establish-
ment, so that he looked upon this alliance with
G. & C. Merriam not only as good in itself,
but as giving great stability to his manufac-
turing enterprise. He was aware of the fluc-
tuations which attended the fortunes of mis-
cellaneous publishing, and of the speculative

80 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

element which inevitably attached to this busi-
ness, and he valued highly this very important
connection. The men on both sides were ad-
mirably joined. They were upright, honor-
able men, and they were also exceedingly able
business men, unflagging in their attention to
details, fair in dealing, but as keen in their
bargains as they were faithful to their engage-
ments. A life-long friendship grew up among
them, which found many opportunities of ex-
pression outside of immediate business engage-
ments. Several years later Mr. 0. M. Baker
became connected with the Springfield house,
and much of the detail fell upon him. At
the time of Mr. Houghton's death he wrote
these words, which bear witness to the strong
human relations which sometimes are formed
within the shell of business : —

"During the whole eighteen years of my
acquaintance with Mr. Houghton he has al-
ways impressed me as being my friend, even
in the discussion of vexed questions where
our interests were quite at variance, and I
never had an interview with him that did not
leave me with a feeling of the most profound

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 81

respect for his manliness. It has been a
source of much pleasure and satisfaction to
me that I have seemed to merit his confidence
and friendship ; but I could be as nothing to
him in comparison with what he has always
been to me, and there is no one left, outside
of the members of our firm, that I can go to
with the same familiarity and confidence that
I have so many times gone to him."

The formation of the new firm, and the
demands created by the large contract with
the Messrs. Merriam, called for an increase of
facilities at Eiverside, especially in the matter
of a bindery, and in the spring of 1864 Mr.
Houghton made his first journey to Europe.
His errand chiefly was to secure master bind-
ers, and to open the way for securing the best
material both in binding and in types. Neces-
sarily he made himself acquainted at once
with the wages paid to workmen in his own
craft, and, since he was not only a practical
printer but a man of education, he took a very
strong interest in the economic and political
questions which a comparison of the condi-
tions in England and in the United States

82 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

suggested to him. He had, as a Henry Clay
Whig, accepted the doctrine of protection
when he was a student in college, and had
never seen any reason to change his mind.
His experience in London did much to con-
firm him in this economic belief, and he used
often to speak of the profound impression
made upon him by the evidence which he
saw of the almost hopeless prospect of the
English workman as compared with that of
his American fellow. A few years later, when
the question of Protection vs. Free Trade was
stoutly debated by Hon. W. D. Kelley, the
veteran champion of protection in Congress,
one of the workmen whom Mr. Houghton
secured at this time wrote the following letter
to Mr. Kelley : —

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., May 10, 1872.

HON. W.D. KELLEY,—

Dear Sir, — A fellow-workman having lent
me a pamphlet containing a speech deliv-
ered by you, March 16, 1872, against free
trade, I take the liberty of addressing you, as
I am interested in that subject. Sir, let us

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 83

look at the blessings of free trade where it
works so well. I cannot do better than take
my own case. When in England I always
had a great desire to come to this country,
not that I expected to get rich, but wanted
to be able to save something for my mainte-
nance in my old age. In 1857 we began to
save. In 1864 Mr. H. 0. Houghton was in
England, trying to engage some compositors,
printers, and book-binders. I am a book-
binder, and applied to him to see if he would
pay our passage, — myself, wife, and two
children. He came to Derby and I told
him what I could do. He agreed to advance
our passage money. We had been saving
nearly seven years ; had twenty-four shillings
per week, which was the best wages given. I
had saved only £12 10s.

What is the difference between my life
there and that which I enjoy here? Mr.
Houghton lent me money to buy furniture,
and with the passage money I was in debt for
$270. I received $15 per week first; have
been advanced several times ; now I have $22
per week. I paid the debt, have my life in-

84 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

sured and $615 in the bank. This has been
done in less than eight years. You men-
tion Hon. H. 0. Houghton speaking of the
compositors of England not being able to pay
their passage ; there were about twenty in the
same shop with me, and not one married man
better off than myself. . . .

Eespectfully yours,

JAMES WILSON.

The new firm of Hurd & Houghton be-
gan at once to use the term " Riverside " in
characterizing a series of books they pro-
jected, the Riverside Classics, and the custom
grew of giving the title to editions in which
special care had been taken to secure beauty
and dignity of form, but always with a re-
serve in its use. Mr. Houghton, with the
traditions of older printers before him, ob-
tained from Miss Whittingham, in London,
a monogram in which the two H's of the
firm name were linked together, and used it
on the title-pages of books. He had found
a crest of the Houghton family, but he did
not like the motto, which was somewhat tru-

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 85

culent, and supplanted it with another, Tout
bien ou rien, and used this phrase on his book
plate, with satisfaction in its concise statement
of his business creed; it was not till about
1880 that the motto began to be used delib-
erately by the publishing firm.

VI

MY own acquaintance with Mr. Houghton
— though I had seen him once, a few years
before, when I consulted him about the
printing of a college magazine, of which I
was an editor — began in the year 1864,
upon occasion of the printing of a life of
an older brother, which I had written. It
chanced that the plates of the book were
made just before Mr. Houghton made his
connection with Mr. Hurd, and, as I intended
publishing the book at my own risk, I placed
it naturally with the new firm. I had pre-
viously appeared as the author of two books
for the young, and was intending to occupy
myself with literature. The acquaintance,
begun during the composition of the memoir
of my brother, which took me frequently to
Riverside, quickly ripened into friendship ;
and when the new firm of Hurd & Houghton
was established I was asked to be the reader

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 87

of the manuscripts submitted for publication,
and the critic of such English books as they
might arrange to republish. As my home
was in Boston, I was more frequently in Mr.
Houghton's company than in Mr. Kurd's,
though my reports were sent to the New
York office. To be in with the formation
of a new publishing house, when it already
enjoyed the prestige of the foremost printing
house in the country, as regards mechanical
work, offered a pleasurable excitement to a
young litterateur, and I took frequent occa-
sion to walk out to Cambridge at the end of
the day and visit the Press. Mr. Houghton
then, as long afterward, found his greatest
recreation in riding or driving, and it was
not long before we fell into the habit of tak-
ing long drives together in the late afternoon,
supplemented by a weekly dinner with the
young family on Saturday. As my connec-
tion with the house became more intimate,
the intercourse with the head of the house
increased. Sometimes we rode together,
sometimes we drove ; and, as years went on,
the son, who has now succeeded his father,

88 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

was stowed away in a little seat in the buggy,
until one day his father suddenly woke to
the fact that the boy was growing up, and
stopped our conversation to enjoin upon him
the necessity of not repeating anything he
heard us saying. The rides and drives after
a while diminished, as Mr. Houghton's own
family came to be his friendly companions
and I had my separate family interests ; but
the peregrinatory conferences were resumed
in recent years, when we were both living
in Cambridge and having the same office
hours in Boston. We looked forward to the
spring, and to the fall after the summer diver-
sions, when we could again walk out over the
West Boston Bridge ; and when the Harvard
Bridge was built we found a new delight in
the sunsets, which interrupted our talk as the
western sky was brilliant above the noble
sweep of the Charles River. Mr. Houghton,
at the beginning of our connection, was fif-
teen years my senior, but the thirty years
which slipped away found this breach clos-
ing, for we had established so many common
causes that he came to ignore the difference

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 89

in age more even than I : that is one of the
privileges of the senior in such associations.

One of the first subjects which we dis-
cussed was the natural one of an organ of the
new publishing house. The fact that such
slight experience as I had enjoyed in litera-
ture was mainly in the direction of writing
for the young had something to do, no doubt,
with his resolution to undertake a magazine
for young people, but he was incited to it
also by the opportunity which it afforded the
Press. He was ambitious of doing superfine
work. It was an era when book illustration
was making very rapid advances. The Uni-
versity Press had achieved some notable suc-
cesses, and Ticknor & Fields, then the most
prominent publishing house in Boston, had
made a mark with Our Young Folks, an
illustrated magazine. Mr. Houghton thought
he saw in the publication of a similar maga-
zine an opportunity to show what he could do
in good printing, and he was besides genu-
inely interested in the organization of sound
literature for the young. He saw how largely
English juvenile books filled the bookstores,

90 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

and he had a hearty and honest ambition to
supersede them with books instinct with
American life. He may have overstated the
case, for he was impatient of nice distinctions
when he had a point like this to make, but
he was sincere in his adherence to protective
principles, not only on the ground of self-
interest, but on the more substantial moral
ground of securing the greatest possible inde-
pendence for America, and of fortifying the
social institutions of the country. He used
to repeat with great earnestness a criticism
which Agassiz once made to him of a chil-
dren's book in some department of natural
history, in which every illustration was drawn
from some object not native to America, and
he denounced the ordinary English juvenile
books as assuming the unalterable relation of
classes as they exist in England. Such books,
he declared, were unwholesome reading for
American children; and he was for driving
them out, partly by a tariff which discrimi-
nated against them, and partly by the produc-
tion of native books which should supplant
them as objects of merchandise.

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 91

A magazine seemed to offer the most fa-
miliar mode of exploiting juvenile literature,
and so he planned a monthly which should
be generous in proportions and wholesome in
its character. There was much discussion
over the name to be given it, and, after many
proposals had been made and rejected, we
fell back on the most obvious one of The
Riverside Magazine for Young People. I
say most obvious, and yet the term had not
then been applied much further than to the
Press itself, except in the case already men-
tioned of the Eiverside Classics; but Mr.
Houghton had at once a pride in the name,
and a jealous regard for its fame. He had,
when the magazine was started, a little shyness
about its use ; but he had already perceived its
value as a trade-mark, and he found it a grate-
ful substitute for the use of his own name,
which he did not care to see used superfluously
in the conduct of business. Indeed, the im-
personal character of the word " Eiverside '""
was its great value in his eyes. It stood for
something objective, gathering his ideals, his
aims, his honorable ambition, so that he could

92 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

enjoy and glory in it without any shame-
facedness. " Riverside/' he once said to me,
" is like a diamond which I can hold up be-
fore my eye, and turn it this way and that,
and let the light fall on it, and see it sparkle."
In this saying he unconsciously disclosed the
secret of his power. He grew prosperous in
the conduct of his business, but the prosperity
fell to him because he was seeking something
higher. He was building an institution ; he
was creating something which should have an
organic life of its own, and the whole stream
of his energy passed into this external crea-
tion. He projected himself into it, and never
withdrew his hand, but he thought of it as an
artist thinks of the picture he paints, the poet
of the poem he writes.

As I have intimated, the secret of Mr.
Houghton's power in business lay in the re-
lation which he bore to his work : he was not
thinking of himself and his own aggrandize-
ment, — he was thinking of the institution he
was creating, and by a paradox, though he
threw himself heart and soul into the en-
terprise, he effaced himself to a remarkable

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 93

degree. It was impossible that so positive, so
vigorous a personality should not be conspicu-
ous in the business, and yet he shaped his
industry with distinct reference to the growth
of an organism. He was by nature and tem-
perament a leader, and was impatient of any-
thing like divided authority, but he was
equally aware of the need of an order with
clearly defined responsibility. In arranging
his business, therefore, even when it was small
and he carried all the details in his head, he
insisted upon such a system of reports as
should almost imitate the methods of an army.
" If I tell a boy to hang up my overcoat, I
expect him to come back and tell me he has
done it," he would say, and his memory for
details was extraordinary. An error, espe-
cially one arising from carelessness, committed
by one of his young men, might have been
forgotten in the course of time by the one
who committed it, but Mr. Houghton never
forgot it, and never allowed the young man
to forget it. Abstractly considered, there was
something comically terrible in this supervis-
ing memory, but in reality many a one, though

94 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

withdrawing as far as he could into some
recess of exculpatory consciousness when he
saw the f amiliar reminiscence making for him,
was rendered distinctly less capable of repeat-
ing his blunder, or making another like it.

As the range of the business increased,
Mr. Houghton continued the system by which
every operation came regularly under his eye.
At first not a letter was written or a bill made
out that did not pass before him for inspec-
tion before it was sent out, and when this
minuteness of oversight became physically
impossible, he continued to have a daily re-
port of the correspondence made to him with
a memorandum of the contents and the names
of the persons to whom the several letters
were assigned, and it was a familiar sight to
see him going from desk to desk with a strip
of yellow paper containing these memoranda,
and acquainting himself with the condition of
affairs. In the complexity of a great printing
and publishing house there are multitudinous
details, and the chance of error in some par-
ticular which shall confuse the result is very
great. It was partly the necessity of meet-

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 95

ing this condition, partly a native passion for
thoroughness, which made Mr. Houghton ex-
traordinarily alert and vigilant. " Follow it
up" was his watchword, and his persistence
in getting to the bottom of every difficulty,
in fixing the responsibility of a mistake, was
unflagging, his memory for derelictions most
tenacious. The vigor of this discipline was
very great and many chafed under it, but it
was never relaxed, and no one was more com-
pletely subject to it than Mr. Houghton him-
self. It led him to the printing-office often
early in the morning, before his men had
arrived, and late in the evening again, to see
that all was safe for the night. If he made
rules, he was strenuous in enforcing them on
himself, but he did not make many rules j
he was not a martinet in discipline : he de-
manded obedience to the great laws of order,
accuracy, thoroughness in all that was under-
taken, and he aimed at simplicity rather than
complexity of method.

Indeed, he was sometimes a little impatient
of method, he believed so much more in the
man behind the method. The most perfect

96 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

method he knew would never execute itself ;
and when an elaborate plan was outlined, he
spent little criticism on the plan, but wished
to know at once who was to carry it out.
Hence his attack, for failure in any enterprise,
was directed upon the person who had failed,
and few there were who escaped being hauled
over the coals, as the expressive phrase is.
The coals were rarely allowed to burn into
dead ashes ; they were fed by many occasions,
and the hauling was performed with an energy
which kept the hand well in practice. Mr.
Houghton sometimes lost his temper in this
exercise, but usually he drew back from the
edge, and the person who was a disinterested
bystander could often extract a vast deal of
entertainment out of the racy speech which
enlivened the reproof. Mr. Houghton's good
sense of humor was his safeguard at such times,
and his f elicitous comparisons, his shrewd epi-
thets, his remote anecdotes, all tempered the
severity of his judgments. He showed, more-
over, not infrequently, a singular faculty for
conveying his meaning by the most casual
and indirect speech, which was curiously incon-

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 97

sistent with the vigor of his direct attack. I
remember one of his associates coming out of
his room one day and saying : " Well, I have
been talking with Mr. Houghton for half an
hour, and I know just what he thinks, but
I '11 be blessed if he has said a word which
could be taken as an explicit expression of
his opinion."

It is a proper comment on this statement
of Mr. Houghton's manner toward his associ-
ates and employees that he kept by him year
after year the same persons. They were often
sorely vexed, — no chastisement for the pres-
ent seemeth joyous, but rather grievous, —
yet it was rare that one of them deliberately
withdrew from his post. There were two or
three reasons for this : the person at fault felt
the justice of reproof; there was a positive
esprit de corps; discipline, however severe,
is apt to have something of a tonic virtue
in it ; but above all, I think there was a gen-
uine recognition of the inherent justice and
generosity of Mr. Houghton's nature, and an
assurance that there was nothing personal
in the retribution which he visited upon the

98 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

delinquent. Mr. Houghton used to say, ear-
nestly, that he never discharged a clerk and
never would. I used to think, sometimes,
that there was not much to choose between an
abrupt dismissal and a slow freezing out ; but
there was this marked difference, that the
ordeal to which one was subjected might, and
sometimes did, result in a distinct induration
of the temper, so that a very effective work-
man was the result, and every one felt con-
fidence that he would not be the victim of
arbitrary action, or suffer permanently from
an impulse of his employer.

It was a characteristic saying of Mr. Hough-
ton that when the Press was crowded with
work, he busied himself most with seeking
new work. He was forearmed against the
danger of over-confidence, and he knew that
every harvest meant a time of sowing long
before. But he was, above all, unceasingly
mindful of the need of keeping the Press
occupied. As a man of business, he knew
the importance of making his machinery earn
money uninterruptedly ; as a captain of indus-
try, he never forgot the company he had mus-

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 99

tered ; that work should be slack was a mis-
fortune, but that thereby men should be
thrown out of employment was a disaster, and
he strained every nerve in dull times to find
work with which to keep his men along, even
though he had to take it at prices which
yielded him little or no profit.

This solidarity of the Press, so that Mr.
Houghton lived to see the grandchildren of
some of his first workmen employed side by
side with their grandparents, was further
illustrated by one or two measures which he
took for confirming the close relation he held
with his workmen. He pondered long the ex-
pediency of making his growing business one
of cooperation formally, and went so far at
one time as to have papers drawn up for in-
corporation, providing for a pecuniary interest
of all engaged in the business. But he was
not a theorist : he was a business man with an
idealistic tendency, and he had a stable mind
which guarded him against a too experimen-
tal habit. Moreover, he could not help seeing
that his own temperament would make it dif-
ficult for him to enter into engagements which

100 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

might abridge his instinctive governing power;
and finally, when the matter assumed a tenta-
tive shape, he did what a wise man will under
such circumstances, — he heeded the voice of
his wife, who threw the whole weight of her
judgment in the opposite scale. But, though
he did not change a partnership into a cor-
poration, he could not rest content until he
had devised some means by which he could
bring every one in the Press into possible in-
terest in the business, and the shape which his
plan took was that of a savings department,
by the terms of which any person employed
could deposit savings and receive a good rate
of interest, and, upon every even hundred dol-
lars deposited, there might be at the end of
the year a dividend if the business prospered,
but a limit was set to the amount of this divi-
dend. It was not cooperation in the technical
sense of the term ; it was not profit-sharing as
a basis of business management ; but it was an
experiment in the direction of a closer interde-
pendence of employer and employed, a rough-
and-ready device for getting over some of
the disadvantages of the wage-system without

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 101

loosening the control of the business by those
who organized it, and had to bear the re-
sponsibility of successful conduct and the risk
of adversity.

One of the few men now employed at River-
side, of the group that came over in 1864, is
Mr. James Wilson, of the bindery, whose let-
ter to Mr. Kelley has already been printed.
I have asked him to jot down some of his
recollections and impressions, and he writes
in part as follows : —

" One of the things I noticed about Mr.
Houghton was his attention to business: he
was at the place early in the morning very
often before we were, and often after we left
at night. One Saturday night I was gilding
some books that were wanted ; it was eleven
o'clock, and I was alone. He came into the
old back room and said : < Well, Mr. Wilson,
I am sorry to see you at work, as I do like a
man to have his Saturday night to himself.'
I was the more struck with it because he had
been working in the counting-room himself
alone, and only seemed to think of me.

"There was one trait in Mr. Houghton's

102 HENKY OSCAR HOUGHTON

character which will always stand out in the
memory of his early employees ; that is the
way he had of going to the men while they
were at work, and saying a few encouraging
words to each one. This caused a mutual
feeling of goodwill to exist between the em-
ployer and employees, so that all felt a per-
sonal interest in the welfare of the place.
This acknowledgment of the employees was
not confined to the Kiverside Press, but he
would always have a kind word wherever he
met you.

" There was another good trait about Mr.
Houghton : if any of the workpeople were
away sick, he would soon miss them, and he
would make it his business to inquire about
them, and frequently go to see them. By
such acts as these he wound himself into the
hearts of the workpeople in a way that few
men have the power of doing."

Mr. Wilson speaks also, in his notes, of a
scheme which Mr. Houghton had at one time
of building houses in the immediate vicinity
of the Press for the use of the workpeople.
He carried out his design to a slight extent

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 103

by taking occasion, when enlarging the build-
ing, to remove some wooden houses which
stood in the way, making a court, to which he
gave the name of Daye Court, from the first
printer in Cambridge; but he never carried
the design very far, partly, I think, because
he required at that time all his capital for his
business, partly because he had strong convic-
tions of the unwisdom of segregating the
people. He visited with interest such estab-
lishments as that of Mame at Tours, and
spoke appreciatively of the villages which had
grown up about great printing-offices; but
he was emphatic in belief that in our Ameri-
can life every family should have its own vol-
untary place in the general community, and
take part in church, school, and politics quite
independently of industrial relations.

For one illustration of Mr. Houghton's in-
terest in workingmen in connection with social
order I am indebted to Hon. Carroll D. Wright.
The time referred to was long subsequent to
that of which I have been writing, but the
incident has its value in this place. " About
1882," says Colonel Wright, " Mr. Houghton

104 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

submitted to me a proposition which I have
always felt more clearly disclosed the breadth
of the man's mind than would his regular
business operations. He informed me that he
had for some years had in mind the advisa-
bility of publishing a periodical weekly for the
benefit of wage-earners. He wished to have
the periodical first-class in every respect, — as
well gotten up, as thoroughly arranged, and
as well printed, as the best illustrated papers.
He wished it to be of the size of Harper's
Weekly, and to contain interesting matter for
the employees of New England especially, —
all industrial facts, put in an attractive way ;
the treatment of current questions on a broad
and non-partisan basis ; the discussion of ques-
tions that would interest organized and un-
organized labor ; information as to inventions,
— everything, in fact, that could interest and
enlighten the men and women who are em-
ployed in great manufacturing works. He
wished to have the journal illustrated in the
best way. His idea was to furnish persons,
at their address, by mail, copies of the pub-
lication, first asking the proprietors of works

HENRY OSCAK HOUGHTON 105

to submit a reasonable list of persons to whom
it should be sent free for a while, or on sub-
scription lists furnished by employers, who
would be asked in the first instance to pay
the subscription for the sake of distributing
healthy labor literature among their people.
Mr. Houghton confidently expected that the
quality of the publication would soon result in
actual cash subscriptions to a sufficient extent
to pay all expenses. He knew, of course, that
such an undertaking would involve a large
expenditure of money, and that it would be
some time — two or three years perhaps — be-
fore any return could be expected in the way
of income for expenses. It was not in his plan
to make any money out of the enterprise, but
simply to establish a high-toned journal work-
ing in industrial interests. To accomplish his
purpose he proposed to raise a guaranty of
$100,000, the parties subscribing to the fund
pledging themselves to pay in at times such
sums as might be necessary for the support
of the scheme, and until it was on a paying
basis, that is, paying expenses ; and in this,
after his own pledge of $10,000, he secured

106 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

other pledges, so that the total amounted to
$30,000. But Mr. Houghton was too good a
business man to enter practically upon his
plan until the whole $100,000, which he
deemed to be necessary, should be pledged.
It was impossible to secure more than the
$30,000.

" Mr. Houghton very kindly proposed that
I take the editorial and business management
of the periodical, — a proposition which at
once enlisted not only my sympathy, but my
cordial cooperation. I should have been glad
to join in any such plan, for I believe that,
if it could have been carried out, very great
good could have been done to all involved,
both employer and employee.

" In considering the plan which I have out-
lined, I was, of course, thrown very much with
Mr. Houghton, and I was greatly gratified to
see how thoroughly interested he was in the
elevation of those who work for wages. He
had the right idea, that is, that the truest ele-
vation can come only from a broad enlighten-
ment, — from instruction, from knowledge of
conditions; for it was in the plan to bring

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 107

out not only conditions as they exist, but in
comparison with other times and countries, —
everything, in fact, that would give the work-
ingman a true picture of industrial conditions
and the conditions of production. I believe
now that, could a sufficient number of em-
ployers be induced to become interested in
such a plan as that suggested by Mr. Hough-
ton, more practical good could be done than
in any other way. Of course, the publication
of official documents furnishes a certain kind
of information, but not in the way to attract
men who are not students of economic condi-
tions. A popular, high-toned, illustrated labor
paper, with capital enough behind it to assure
its success regardless of the subscription list,
would be an undertaking of the greatest value
and importance. Mr. Houghton was far ahead
of his time."

Mr. Wright's letter illustrates the imagina-
tive side of Mr. Houghton's nature. He liked
to project a scheme of this kind, connected
with his business, but reaching much beyond
the scope of a merely commercial enterprise,
and the process of persuading himself of its

108 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

practicability was often accompanied by the
exercise of his persuasive power on others.
He was given to thinking aloud, as he would
say, and his active mind grasped certain desir-
able results, and then busied itself in work-
ing out the means to reach the end. Thus at
another time he imagined a great clearing-
house for publishers which should be under
their own management and bring certain im-
portant functions of distribution into the con-
trol of the houses engaged in it, thus minim-
izing the employment of jobbers. Again, he
pondered long the intricate questions involved
in trade discounts and net prices. He was not
one to allow his theories too far to govern
his business action ; he drew back often when
the time came for putting his theories to an
explicit test. But when he was committed to
any plan, especially if it was one he had care-
fully worked out, he had a tremendous resolu-
tion in carrying it into execution, and in those
cases he inspired others with great confidence
in him. Much of his remarkable success was
due to a faith in himself, which confirmed the
faith of others.

VII

THIS is a sketch of Mr. Houghton, and not
of the house of which he was so long the
head ; but in order to give the reader a con-
venient chronological survey of the develop-
ment of the business, I will set down in a
paragraph the successive changes in the style
and personal constituency.

The firm of Hurd & Houghton existed
under the same name until 1878, but from
time to time changes occurred in its person-
nel. In 1866 Mr. Houghton' s brother, Mr.
Albert G. Houghton, who had formerly been
a merchant in Alabama, was admitted, occu-
pying himself mainly with the interests in
New York. Not long after the establishment
of the Siverside Magazine, Mr. George H.
Mifflin, a recent graduate of Harvard College,
came into the service of the house. In 1872
both he and I became members of the firm.
I retired after three years, preferring to give

110 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

my time more exclusively to literary pursuits,
but have ever since been identified with the
editorial department of the business. Mr.
Mifflin is just completing a quarter century
of membership, and is the head of the house.
Failing health led to the retirement of Mr.
Albert G. Houghton in 1878 from active en-
gagement ; and Mr. Hurd, who for a similar
cause had previously withdrawn from close
attention to details of business, also retired.
At the same time the house formed a com-
bination with James K. Osgood & Company,
the successors to Ticknor & Fields and Fields,
Osgood & Company. Mr. Osgood represented
this house in the new firm, and the style be-
came Houghton, Osgood & Company. This
consolidation greatly increased the list of pub-
lications of the house through the accession
of the names of the great leaders of American
literature. The premises in Boston formerly
occupied by James R. Osgood & Company
became the headquarters of the publishing
department, and the books now bore the im-
print of Boston and New York instead of
New York and Cambridge. The firm as thus

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 111

constituted continued for two years, when Mr.
Osgood retired, and the style of the firm
became, in 1880, Houghton, Mifflin & Com-
pany ; and, shortly after, the publishing head-
quarters in Boston were removed to 4 Park
Street, and in New York to 11 East Seven-
teenth Street. Mr. Lawson Valentine became
a partner, and continued thus till his death in
1889. In 1884 Mr. James D. Kurd, a son of
Mr. Houghton's former partner, was admitted
to the firm, but he died in December, 1887.
On the 1st of April, 1888, three new partners
were admitted, — Mr. James Murray Kay,
who was born in Glasgow, Scotland, but sub-
sequently had large business interests in New
Brunswick ; Mr. Thurlow Weed Barnes ; and
Mr. Henry 0. Houghton, Jr. Since that date,
Mr. Barnes has left the business, and Mr.
Oscar K. Houghton and Mr. Albert F. Hough-
ton, sons of the late Albert G. Houghton, have
been admitted to the firm, and have their resi-
dence in New York.

In all these various changes Mr. Houghton
was the controlling force. After the business
was concentrated in Cambridge and Boston,

112 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

he gave up with great reluctance the special
oversight of the Press and made his head-
quarters in Boston. For a long time, how-
ever, he made it his practice to visit the Press
daily, and it was there that his real affection
in his work lay. I was walking home with
him one day, the spring before his fatal ill-
ness, when he was contemplating his address
on Early Printing in America, and he fell
on some reminiscence of his own occupation.
He half whimsically and yet with real seri-
ousness was disposed to regret that he had
allowed himself to be drawn from the simpli-
city of a printer's business into the complexity
of publishing. He sketched his career as it
might have been, — the perfection of all the
processes of making books; the enlargement
of his premises to meet the demands of his
business, and yet the centralization of the
business and its restriction to one great func-
tion. It was in a way the passing mood of
a somewhat tired man; but I realized how
strong was his passion for his early vocation,
and also how his mind fastened on a large,
concrete expression of his ideals. He used

HENRY OSCAK HOUGHTON 113

in the vigor of his days to speculate on an
old age spent in the country with a toy print-
ing-office to play with. He never relinquished
a close scrutiny of the style of his books ; he
labored with type founders and paper makers
to secure the results he wanted, and one of
his most satisfactory achievements was a par-
ticular font of type, which goes in the Press
by the matter of fact name of Number Thir-
teen, but is coming to be recognized as the
"Houghton" type.1

Nevertheless, it is not likely that he would,
if hard pressed, have refused to admit that, in
giving his mind more exclusively to publish-
ing, he was following a course clearly marked
out for him in the expansion of his energies ;
and, as the publishing side of his business
came to absorb more and more the product of
the Press, he identified the two interests and
treated them as a whole. It had always been
a marked element in the success of the Press
that books there were treated, not piecemeal,
but with careful study of the interrelation of
the several parts; and it was only a more

1 This book is printed from Number Thirteen.

114 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

comprehensive application of the same prin-
ciple when he perfected the organism of a
manufacturing publishing house.

He often expressed the opinion that the
function which discriminated the publisher
from the manufacturer and the seller of
books was that of making books known, and,
as he found it necessary to concentrate his
attention upon the general conduct of the
business, and to give over the details of man-
ufacturing to others, he made much of what
may comprehensively be termed " advertis-
ing." The details of this he intrusted to
others, and indeed the system followed was
scarcely in any sense his scheme ; but certain
general principles he insisted on with great
earnestness, and, in two or three instances,
worked out plans which illustrated his con-
ception of the most effective advertising.
Newspaper advertising he termed dress pa-
rade, and he did not greatly rely on it, for
he thought the real work was done when
knowledge of a book was brought imme-
diately to the attention of the person who
might naturally be interested in this particu-

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 115

lar book; and he was constantly pressing,
therefore, the intelligent collection of lists of
names of probable book-buyers, to be classified
for use in the forwarding of special circulars
and bulletins. He devised, also, the system
by which an author should be advertised,
especially when a new book was to appear,
by means of a circular containing a woodcut
portrait, and a well-arranged statement of the
author's writings. Out of this grew the Por-
trait Catalogue, which received the flattery of
imitation in different quarters. He believed,
also, in phalanxes of books, and, recognizing
the great accumulation of titles in the firm's
catalogue, he planned a series of special cata-
logues by subjects, which developed finally
into a carefully classified list of publications,
perhaps the latest important piece of work
organized by him in his business.

It is a further demonstration of this atti-
tude toward his work, what may be called the
egotistic as contrasted with the selfish, that
he was singularly indifferent to the element
of competition. He had of course, in his
business enterprises, to measure strength with

116 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

his neighbors, but he was not greatly in-
fluenced by what they did. For example, he
did not study closely the work of rival presses,
nor scrutinize the lists of other publishers,
and, above all, he had a very lofty sense of
comity between publishers. He never would
solicit an author who had formed connections
with another house. "If he chooses to ap-
proach us," he would say, " well and good.
We are at liberty then to treat with him.
But we will not stir a finger to get him away
from the publisher who already issues his
books." And he carried this scrupulosity to
its utmost limits, though he was aware that
efforts were constantly made to draw away
from him the writers whose reputation he
had stimulated. He carried his favorite ad-
vice to authors, to keep their books together,
so far that more than once he discouraged
a writer who was dissatisfied with existing
arrangements from coming to him. He was
wont to use a pretty strong term, " loyalty,"
of those who held by him in spite of temp-
tations to go after other publishers ; but he
recognized quite as strongly the reciprocal

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 117

relations involved, and, once an author was
" on the list," he would strain a point before
he would suffer a new book from the same
hand to go elsewhere, even though it might
fall below the standard previously set. And
here I venture the assertion that in nothing
did Mr. Houghton show more sincerely the
friendly interest he took in the authors who
intrusted their books to him than in the pa-
tience and candor he showed while the books
were yet in manuscript. He knew well the
business principle involved in the requirement
that the manuscript should be ready for the
printer, and that it was no function of a pub-
lishing house to edit for authors the books
it issued ; but in many an instance, when the
manuscript offered was not thoroughly accept-
able, he would deal with it as a possible book,
and, by advice, encouragement, and criticism,
get the work finally into proper shape. It
was this temper, over and beyond the com-
mercial spirit, which made him a representa-
tive of the best class of publishers. He was
not in the technical sense a literary critic, and
he was perhaps disposed to underestimate the

118 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

art of literature, but he had a strong sense
of what was enduring, and a very direct way
of appraising books. Especially, whatever
appealed to the broad, common interest of
men, and was helpful in its character, com-
mended itself to his judgment.

It was in keeping with the largeness of his
ideals in business and his far-sightedness that
he did not require the demonstration of imme-
diate success. If an enterprise commended
itself to him as sound, he was willing to wait
for returns. There was, indeed, something
very attractive to him in projects which were
based on broad, fundamental principles, and
would take time for their execution, and these
projects were all the more acceptable if they
took the shape of modest beginnings. He
felt his way with experiments, but he was con-
stantly seeing the probable development. He
had the courage which comes from a large
•business imagination. At the same time no
one could be more resolute in a demand for
the cold facts in the history of undertakings.
He perfected a system of records by which
he could ascertain the exact history of every

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 119

one of his ventures, and carried about in his
pocket for frequent reference what he called
his Bankrupt List — a merciless showing of
the books that were not paying. Great was
the satisfaction when one book or another
would slowly emerge from the list and take
its place among those which had paid for
themselves.

Perhaps the most significant illustration of
Mr. Houghton's treatment of his business as
an institution is to be found in a step which
he took not long after the formation of the
firm of Houghton, Mifflin & Company. He
established a weekly council, to which he
gave the name, half in jest, half to conceal
its importance, of "The Powwow." To it he
invited his partners, and those persons who
were heads of departments in the business, or
charged with special functions. He made out
a formal order of business and appointed a
secretary, who kept the records, which were
read at each session. At the meetings the
various enterprises of the house were dis-
cussed, especially the new books which were
recommended for publication, and action was

120 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

taken which was held to constitute the policy
of the house. Such councils are no doubt
common enough in large firms and corpora-
tions; but I think it is an unusual course for a
house to invite subordinates, who have no di-
rect pecuniary interest in the concern, into an
equal share in deliberations and votes which
definitely affect the conduct of the business.
Naturally this recognition of the interest of
subordinates in the welfare of the house led
to a caution on their part in asserting them-
selves. There was a mutual concession with-
out any loss of independence ; and, though
friction might now and then arise, the weekly
conference, year after year, of the same men,
engaged in the same general work, effected
just what Mr. Houghton designed, — a soli-
darity of mind. He saw that each member
of "The Powwow" was likely to look at
every project not only from his personal point
of view, but with the consideration suggested
by the function he performed in the business,
so that there would be diversity of judgment,
and every plan would be subjected to a variety
of tests. He saw also that the discussion

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 121

would inform all the members of what was
going on, and lead to greater union of action,
a matter of great importance when the ten-
dency of each was to become engrossed in his
own part of the business. In the early years
of " The Powwow " he not infrequently ex-
pressed to me his doubt whether on the whole
it was worth while ; he was more than once
piqued by our criticism of measures, or ren-
dered impatient by the expenditure of time
over plans when he knew what was wanted
and only wished to get it done. But, as time
wore on, these expressions of doubt grew less
frequent, and he threw more weight into the
decisions of " The Powwow." As in other
cases, he struck out in a course, upon which he
had deliberated, with decision but with modera-
tion, feeling his way, and perhaps only partly
aware of how much the step meant. But it
is clear enough now that he builded well, and
that the power of organization which he showed
at the beginning of his career, when he was
captain and a large part of the crew, always
looked toward the creation of an institution
so perfected in its parts, and so self-perpetu-

122 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

ating, that his final withdrawal in the full-
ness of time should not appear to disturb a
normal action. Mr. Houghton died on Sun-
day. The Tuesday following was a holiday
in the city ; on the Tuesday after that " The
Powwow" met as usual, and proceeded at once
with the business of the week.

VIII

IT was a cardinal principle with Mr.
Houghton to put all his eggs in one basket,
and carry the basket himself. He had a
clause in his early partnership papers, pro-
hibiting himself and his partners from enga-
ging in any other business enterprise, and for
his part he asked no other pleasure or interest
than that which grew out of the varied and
constantly changing forms of his occupation.
He loved travel, indeed, and most of all to
take his carriage and horses and drive with
his family for days into the country, visiting
the regions dear to him from early associa-
tions, and it was a privation to him when he
was finally forced to give up his horseback-
riding. He made occasional trips to Europe,
and he crossed the country twice to Califor-
nia. Often he would come home from one of
his pleasure trips with great glee at having
picked up on the way a printing job.

124 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

Yet, with his large ways of looking at his
business, it was quite impossible that he should
not concern himself with public affairs when
they bore very direct relation to the printing
and publishing interest. He took a very
vigorous hand in the discussions which went
on whenever a tariff bill was before Congress,
and in 1870 especially, in conjunction with
Dr. Henry Charles Lea, was conspicuous in
the struggle which went on over the proposed
admission of books free. He maintained with
great earnestness that such a policy would be
fatal to the publishing interest. His influ-
ence in this direction was great. His frequent
visits to Washington, and his warm friendship
with Senator Morrill, brought him into the
very heart of the fight. But perhaps his most
notable service in public matters was in con-
nection with the movement for international
copyright.

This movement was pushed energetically
by the authors of the country, but the most
effective work was done when the publishers
and manufacturers of books cooperated with
the authors. Congress shared in the custom-

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 125

ary slighting regard bestowed by practical
people on the literary class, and was more
disposed to pay attention to the men who
represented large industrial interests. Of the
authors, Dr. Edward Eggleston was the most
influential advocate of the measure; and of
the members of Congress, the most steadfast
was Senator Chace of Rhode Island, who, how-
ever, was obliged by illness to retire from
active participation before the final action.
Mr. Houghton was early interested in the
movement and was unremitting in his earnest
attention to the interests of the bill. He vis-
ited Washington repeatedly, conferring with
senators and representatives, and taking coun-
sel with his associates in the enterprise. No
one who has not been engaged personally in
an effort to press through Congress a meas-
ure which appeals chiefly to a sense of honor,
and yet involves all manner of private and
industrial interests, can appreciate the need
at such a time, not only of resolution and per-
sistency, but of patience, of tact, of individual
handling of men, of removal of prejudice and
even of counteracting the indiscreet zeal of

126 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

associates. Moreover, there was not always
entire agreement among the advocates of the
bill as to the policy to be pursued when
amendments were offered, and the whole pe-
riod, from the presentation of the bill to its
final passage, was one of great anxiety and
alternate disappointment and hope. It was a
hand-to-hand conflict, most of the work being
done in and about Congress in personal in-
terviews.

Mr. "W. W. Appleton, who was himself ac-
tively engaged in the contest, wrote to
Houghton, Mifflin & Company for his firm
after Mr. Houghton's death : " The writer has
the most pleasant recollections of many inter-
views during the long and at times seemingly
hopeless contest for international copyright,
and found Mr. Houghton ready and eager
to aid the good work in any way. His judg-
ment, experience, and personal effort did much
to bring about the success attained." " Mr.
Houghton," says Dr. Edward Eggleston, "was
one of the very foremost of all that engaged
in that struggle, whether we consider his ac-
tivity, or his prudence, or his influence. I

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 127

differed from him strongly at the outset in
regard to certain questions about the struc-
ture of the bill, but he was always frank, and
an opponent knew where to find him." And
Senator Chace, writing to Mr. Houghton in

the spring of 1891, says : " gave me

quite a full account of what transpired in
New York and Washington just before the
final vote, and, after hearing his account, I
should feel very remiss did I not say to thee
that it is clear to my mind that the country is
most largely indebted to thee for thy prompt
and vigorous action.

..." I am writing to thee in great free-
dom and in confidence, for thee is one of
those whom I have found all the way through
to be, not only clear-headed, but faithful to
all interests. Now that the victory is achieved,
I feel like giving thee full credit for thy
great service to the cause."

Mr. Houghton was, in truth, the main de-
pendence of the advocates of the bill, as re-
gards New England especially. His cordial
relation with the printing craft was of great
service. At first he was opposed to what is

128 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

known as the manufacturing clause, or at
least was not strongly in favor of it. He
soon saw, however, that the clause would
give to the bill the strong support of the
printers, and, with his own sincere belief in
the principle of protection, he came to recog-
nize the desirability of the clause. Later,
when he had the opportunity to observe the
reception of the act in England, he wrote
home : " I am inclined to think, in the light
of subsequent events, that it was a wise thing
to do; and I have not hesitated to say to
those interested here that, if they undertake
to get that part of the law repealed, it will
jeopardize the bill." He was present at the
Authors' Dinner in London, held after the
passage of the act, and, after commenting on
the speeches there made, he adds : " I think
we have made a great step in advance, and
American authors are to reap largely the ben-
efit of it ; and this is as it ought to be. The
era of cheap books should come in now, and
American readers as much as authors should
reap the benefit."

He had a very just appreciation of Senator

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 129

Chace's labors in behalf of the act, and was
indignant at the apparent lack of recognition
of his services after the passage of the bill.
" When I consider," he wrote, " how much
he has done ; that, having nothing, not even
the remotest connection with the publishing
business or authorship, he gave so much time
and so much intelligent effort without any
possible motive of personal advantage to him-
self or political advancement, the fact that he
is so thoroughly ignored has been, I confess,
a source of great annoyance to me." When,
therefore, an address to Mr. Chace, signed by
publishers and authors, was proposed, he took
the most active interest in forwarding the
plan, — giving, indeed, great personal atten-
tion to securing signatures on the eve of his
journey to Europe. He wrote as follows to
Dr. Eggleston, June 20, 1891 : —

DEAR DR. EGGLESTON, — We shall transmit
to Mr. Harper in a day or two the paper
which you indited, with a good number of
signatures, and signatures of a character with
which, I think, you will be pleased. We are

130 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

only waiting now for Mr. Whittier's, which
we hope to get by Monday ; and we trust the
paper will go over early in the week. I want
to repeat what Mr. Harper has suggested, —
that it is important that you should head the
letter ; and I have already taken the liberty
to say to Senator Chace that you have written
it, and that we are going to insist that you
shall sign it first. Since the death of my wife
I have taken scarcely any interest in any-
thing, but there has been no duty so grateful
to me as to help in securing these names.
The cordiality which has been expressed and
the interest which has been manifested have
been extremely gratifying, and I trust it will
be gratifying to Mr. Chace himself. I have
felt ever since the passage of the act, and
before, that Mr. Chace's interest and labor
in this cause have been practically ignored.
This will enable us to remove any such im-
pression, I trust, from Mr. Chace's mind.

I have said that he had not long been a
resident of Cambridge before he was asked to
serve on the school committee, and afterward

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 131

took his place in the common council and
the board of aldermen. He had in these
offices shown such qualities, and his expand-
ing business had made him so much of a
figure in the city, that he was elected to the
office of mayor for the year 1872. He en-
tered upon his duties with resolution, and with
a determination to give the city a prudent
and economical administration ; but he also
took a large view of municipal life. It was
a source of sincere pride with him that, under
the impetus which he gave, the beautiful
Fresh Pond was made a fine water-park, and
the survey which he gave of the city's needs
in his inaugural address was both broad and
sagacious.

Mr. Houghton was not reflected to the
office, although he was a candidate for a sec-
ond term. His successful opponent was one
of the city officers, whose discharge for insub-
ordination he had forced. It would be idle
to rehearse a quarrel which most people have
forgotten ; but it is not out of place to say
that the very conscientiousness and energy
which Mr. Houghton displayed stood in the

132 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

way of his popularity as a chief magistrate.
He abhorred slackness and indifference, and
anything approaching a shirk, and, with his
self-contained independence and sense of au-
thority, he pushed through such obstacles as
met him by the exercise of an uncompromis-
ing will. Such men do not make themselves
favorites in government, but the bracing effect
of this strong leadership was not soon lost,
and the patient care with which the mayor
examined every least concern which came be-
fore him was gratefully recognized by those
who needed his strong aid.

Mr. Houghton did not confine himself to
official service in the city. He was on more
than one commission, indeed, and he inter-
ested himself repeatedly in movements which
looked to the betterment of Cambridge. His
business reputation brought him also into
positions of trust, both as an officer of a bank
and in the care of private estates. It also
made him of service to the religious denomi-
nation to which he belonged. President War-
ren, of Boston University, has spoken of the
long connection which Mr. Houghton had

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 133

with that institution, and with the Theologi-
cal Seminary which antedated it. " It was in
1866," he says, "that our Theological Sem-
inary was removed from New Hampshire to
Boston. Mr. Houghton favored its establish-
ment in Cambridge. I well remember his
taking me in his carriage to inspect certain
building lots and tracts of land then for sale
in this city, on one or another of which he
recommended our trustees to build. Some
of these I often pass, and never, I think, with-
out remembering our visit in 1866. Our
trustees, however, found all these suggested
lots too small for their generous plans, and
hence purchased thirty odd acres in Brook-
line. Later their plans were further modified
by the founding of Boston University, and
the adoption of the Theological School as
one of a group of metropolitan professional
schools clustering about a vigorous academic
department. Mr. Houghton was not dis-
pleased that his original suggestion had not
been acted upon, and when, in 1872, the pro-
jected School of Law required for its safe
launching a ' guaranty fund' of $5000, he

134 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

was one of the five men who pledged and
ultimately gave $1000 apiece for this pur-
pose. He was one of the earliest Trustees of
the University, and for quarter of a century
was faithful in his attendance upon its al-
most monthly meetings. As Chairman of the
Standing Committee on the School of Law,
he rendered a highly valued service. His
personal knowledge of the leading lawyers of
Boston and vicinity was uncommonly exten-
sive and accurate. His judgment, moreover,
was so sound and unbiased that I never had
occasion to regret an appointment to that
Faculty when he had previously recommended
it. His intimate relation to the Dean of the
School, Judge Bennett, as an early and life-
long friend, was also in many ways beneficial.
To find for a successor in the chairmanship
of this committee a man of equal qualifica-
tions will be a problem of no small difficulty."
One further form of Mr. Houghton's pub-
lic spirit may be mentioned in the active part
which he took in the organization and practi-
cal working of the Indian Eights Association.
His friendly relation with Senator Dawes

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 135

made him especially ready to cooperate with
him, and he looked forward in the latter part
of his lif e with genuine pleasure to the yearly
conferences at Lake Mohonk. But the most
moving cause of his interest was the ardor of
Mrs. Houghton.

IX

MRS. HOUGHTON answered well the fine old
name of helpmeet ; for not only did she enter
heartily into her husband's life in all their
common domestic interests, she fortified it by
her own independent but not foreign enter-
prises. As she became more released from
close supervision of her household in the ma-
turing of her children, she entered with the
enthusiasm and irrepressible cheerfulness of
her nature into philanthropic and semi-public
concerns. She was an ardent friend of the
movement for bettering the condition of the
Indian, and she was a very strenuous opponent
of the suffrage for women. Mr. Houghton, as
I have said, entered with her into the former
work, and he was in sympathy with her prin-
ciples of anti-woman-suffrage; but a large
part of the pleasure he took was in the inti-
mate companionship with one so unselfish, so

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 137

full of life and devotion, who filled to the full
his own conception of a generous activity.

When Mrs. Houghton died, on the 13th of
April, 1891, there were those who with affec-
tionate chiding were wont to say that, if she
had spared herself more, she might not have
been so summarily and swiftly carried away
by the attack of pneumonia which seized her ;
but Mr. Houghton, while conceding the pos-
sibility of this, took the nobler view. " She
went in all over," he said, " in the matters
she was interested in. She did not spare her-
self. Perhaps if she had taken care of herself
she would have lived longer, but her life was
full ; she was happy in her many occupations.
It is better so." He was led to speak of the
mistaken kindness which succeeded in empty-
ing the old of occupation and responsibility,
and recounted the experience of his own fa-
ther, who had wasted away, he believed, from
sheer inanity, because those about him were
affectionately anxious to shield him from care
and labor.

He had himself, before his wife's death,
begun to be shaken a little in his firm health ;

138 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

but, though he professed a desire to get some
relief from a confinement to business, habit
was strong with him, and, despite the share
of work he surrendered to his associates, he
found it hard to relinquish his hold upon the
lever. But his wife's death made a profound
impression upon him. The loyalty he always
felt for his friends was a sacred feeling as
regarded his wife, and the nearly forty years'
companionship had made her indeed bone of
his bone and flesh of his flesh, so that, when
she passed out of his life, strong as he was,
he felt almost a bewilderment. The physical
weariness, of which he had been little aware
in the strength of his will, now became known
even to him. He set out with his daughters
on a nine months' journey abroad, and wrote
back from England that he had not been
aware how worn out he was until he got away
from home.

The party traveled leisurely, spending much
of their time on the yacht Victoria, which
took them not only into northern waters, so
that they visited Norway and Sweden and
Russia, but later brought them from the Medi-

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 139

terranean to the West Indies on their way
home. Part of the winter of 1892 was spent
in Egypt. Mr. Houghton by no means relin-
quished his concern for the business in his
absence. He kept up a busy correspondence
with the house, and gave a great deal of at-
tention to projects which called for coopera-
tion with foreign houses.

Upon his return to America in April, 1892,
Mr. Houghton resumed his customary place
in the business, and, though he succeeded
in absenting himself a little more than for-
merly in the summer time, there was no very
appreciable diminution of activity until the
winter of 1894-95. He spent his summer,
as for several years before, at Little Boar's
Head, New Hampshire, and made occasional
excursions to Vermont, especially when he
was constrained by the good-natured com-
pulsion of his friend, Mr. Norman Williams, of
Chicago, himself an ardent Vermonter and a
summer neighbor of Mr. Houghton. A Ver-
mont Association had been organized in Bos-
ton in 1886, and Mr. Houghton was president

140 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

until 1894, when he insisted on retiring. The
chief function of the president was to preside
at the annual dinner of the Association, and
Mr. Houghton carried his thoroughness into
his social as into his business duties, and
strongly attached to him those who had the
execution of the plans of the Association.
One of these, Captain S. E. Howard, secretary
of the Association, wrote to Mr. Houghton
to congratulate him on reaching his seven-
tieth birthday, and received this reply : —

BOSTON, May 18, 1893.

DEAR CAPTAIN HOWARD, — I have some-
times thought that if I were a military man
and your superior officer, with power of life
and death in my hands, I should order you
to be shot. I feel a good deal like the boy
I used to know in Vermont, who said he
could bear anything except being "twitted
of facts;" and to find one's self being congrat-
ulated upon being threescore and ten leads a
man to be a little rebellious. However, I will
forgive you for reminding me of it, and also
will commute the old grudge which I had

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 141

against you for allowing me to be contin-
ued as President of the Vermont Association.
There is one advantage of being an " old
fellow/7 and that is that one's friends can
say how much they think of him while he is
alive and kicking. One of the pleasantest
things connected with my membership in the
Vermont Association has been the pleasant
friends I have made, and among them all
there are none that I esteem more highly
than you and our mutual friend. Colonel Car-
penter, my co-workers. Wishing that you
may live to be fourscore and ten or more,
I am

Yours very truly,

H. 0. HOUGHTON.

A complimentary dinner was given Mr.
Houghton by the Association after he retired
from the presidency, but at his request there
were no reporters present, and what was said
on that occasion was not preserved.

This recurrence to early memories was ac-
companied by a lively interest in family his-
tory, and in one or two letters written to a

142 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

friend at this time, Mr. Houghton gives a
glimpse of the manner in which he was using
some of his enforced leisure. He was partic-
ularly interested in the alliance which he was
shown to have with early printers.

CAMBRIDGE, December 28, 1893.

... I am much pleased that you are inter-
ested in my genealogical researches. Many
years ago, before my marriage, I fell in with a
man who had been to England to make special
researches about the Houghton family; and
from him I obtained the family tree, the coat-
of-arms, seal, etc., and, in looking over some
old papers recently, I discovered a copy of a
letter from John Burke, the author of Burke's
Peerage, addressed to Sir Henry Bold Hough-
ton, an English baronet, informing him that
his family were descended from the Planta-
genet kings. The motto, I am sorry to say,
was a fighting one, " Malgre le Tort," and
I changed it many years ago, retaining the
crest. At this Christmas, Miss Leach, of Phil-
adelphia, — who with her father has been
helping me to formulate my ancestors, so that

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 143

I could join the Sons of the Revolution, as
well as the Society of the Old Colony Wars,
— has sent to me our family coat-of-arms,
which she has carefully and I believe accu-
rately marked out and painted and had
framed. For the Old Colony Wars I have
six or eight ancestors from whom I can
claim the right. And for the Sons of the
Revolution my son has one claim more than
I, as his great-grandfather on his mother's
side was chaplain in the Revolution.

January 11, 1894.

... Some years ago I was asked to speak
about printing at a dinner of the Harvard
Club in New York, and then and since I took
a great deal of pains to investigate the subject.
The principal authority is Thomas's History of
Printing, but the information was meagre and
confused ; but I got no hint from any source
of my relationship to the president [i. e. Pres-
ident Dunster of Harvard]. This was discov-
ered by my friend, Mr. Leach, of Philadelphia,
who has made genealogy a study for many
years. The result of my investigations was,

144 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

that President Dunster was the first printer,
and not Stephen Daye. A clergyman by the
name of Glover, for the purpose of converting
the Indians, set sail from England in 1678
with his family, Stephen Daye (supposed to
have been a blacksmith), and the printing ma-
terials. Mr. Glover died on the passage. The
press was set up in President Dunster' s house.
He subsequently married the widow of Mr.
Glover, and years afterwards his children sued
Mr. Dunster for an accounting, and Major
Willard was called in to settle the matter be-
tween the children and the president. Ste-
phen Daye was discharged about the time of
Mrs. Glover's marriage, and a Samuel Green,
a native of the town, took the place of Daye,
and kept it for fifty years, while Daye turned
land speculator. Meantime President Dun-
ster had a law passed by the colonial legisla-
ture that all printing required in the colonies
should be done in Cambridge. He also had
a censorship of the press appointed, and he
was one of the censors. Besides, when a com-
peting press was sent over, Dunster bought
it. So I infer that he was the real printer,

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 145

and rather an enterprising man besides. Now
Major Willard, having lost his English wife,
married Elizabeth Dunster, a sister of Presi-
dent Dunster, and she dying he married Mary
Dunster, supposed to have been a younger sis-
ter or niece. Mary Willard, a descendant of
this marriage, married Ensign Jacob Hough-
ton, my great-grandfather. From this union
of Willards and Dunsters came two presidents
of Harvard College, and some other fairly
respectable descendants. . . .

Although Mr. Houghton kept his place at
the head of the house and rarely missed a day
at Park Street, it was clear that he was con-
sciously relaxing the tension of his hold on
business details. There was the same quick-
ness of perception when projects were dis-
cussed, the same faculty for going straight
to the centre, but there was less disposition to
watch closely the separate movements of the
great organism he had so long been build-
ing up. With this relaxation there seemed
almost a release of that part of his nature
which in the strenuous activity of his lif e had

146 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

been held in restraint. With the sunshine
of prosperity came a mellowness in which the
warmth of his disposition showed itself in
generous converse with his friends. As he
sat in his office, he welcomed those who came
on business as friendly visitors. It had been
one of his marked characteristics that he
never hurried a caller, and would sit leisurely
chatting with him when his clerks outside
were fuming over the interruption of what
they thought important business ; now he let
his sociability have free play, and especially
delighted when some old associate, under no
greater pressure, as Dr. Holmes for example,
who was a frequent visitor, could draw his
chair beside him for a familiar chat. Always
peculiarly open to the frank friendship of the
young, as he grew older he turned instinct-
ively to them for companionship. His daugh-
ters' friends found in his mingled courtesy
and playfulness a charm which won their con-
fidence and respect. A touch of his manner
may be seen in a letter which he wrote to
a neighbor shortly before his return from his
last journey to Europe : —

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 147

TO E. W. O.

CAIRO, EGYPT, May 11, 1892.
MY DEAR EDITH, — Your kind note and
the calendar enclosed were duly received at
Christmas, and very gratefully so. The little
sweet face on the Christmas card looked as
if it was all ready to be kissed, as you were
in days long agone. I do not know how to
sufficiently compensate you for your charm-
ing remembrance unless I send you a camel.
Would you like a young one or an old one ?
They both look very picturesque. I saw Al-
berta mount one for the first time on Satur-
day. He groaned and made a great fuss, but
after a big effort he raised himself on his fore-
legs, and she swayed back and forth in true
Oriental style. After she had succeeded,
Elizabeth and Justine mounted their respec-
tive camels, and I a donkey ! Their camels
got up easier, but I had hard work to mount
the donkey ; the stirrups were too short and
the saddle too high. You will see us all
doubtless, in time, reproduced in photograph
on our various mounts.

148 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

Please thank Miss B for her kind re-
membrance also. I do not quite know what
to bring her in return. I had thought of the
Sphinx, but that would not do, as she is a
woman and would not be appreciated; besides,
she has got a battered nose, which indicates
she may have been on a drunken spree in her
early life. How would a young buffalo do ?
They are frisky and seem sociable, and have
a way of depressing their horns on their necks
so that they look very docile. . . .

We have taken passage to-morrow on Ka-
meses the Great for the first cataract on the
Nile. After that we expect to set our faces
homeward. We trust a good Providence
will give us favoring winds and speed us on
our way, so that we may soon be able to
greet all our dear friends. Please give my

kindest regards to Miss B and C ,

if he is not so inveterate a mugwump as not
to care for them, and with love for yourself
from your still

Young friend,

H. 0. HOUGHTON.

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 149

To the large circle of his nieces and neph-
ews and their children, Mr. Houghton was
increasingly bound by the interchange of
friendly intercourse and by the frequent acts
of kindness which he was able to show, and
it is not strange that he was peculiarly drawn
to his one living grandchild. He welcomed
her advent with a quiet, happy pleasure which
was good to see, and it was one of his great
resources, as his life contracted in other ways,
to visit her and watch her life expanding.
When he was absent from her, he wanted
news of her, and something of his eagerness
to share life with her may be seen in this
letter, written when she was an infant only,
and he was back in the neighborhood of his
own childhood : —

MONTPEIIER, VT., December 24, 1894.

MY DEAR GRANDDAUGHTER EOSAMOND, —
I received your sweet letter to-day, the first
I ever received from a granddaughter, and I
suppose the first you ever wrote. I must say
that the penmanship, as well as the expres-
sion of your ideas, did you great credit. If

150 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

you keep on improving until you are thirty
you are likely to be the most famous female
member of the Houghton family. Perhaps
you may be allowed to vote on account of
your great learning. To prevent you from
being a " blue stocking/' I think I was none
too early in suggesting that we would have
" high jinks " together as soon as you get big
enough. I think this is important, as I do
not want you to be too literary, nor do I think
your grandmother, if she were living, would
like to have you vote, but would much pre-
fer you should be a sweet, healthy, rollicking
little girl than a prudish, pale pedant, so
please kick and jump just as hard as you can,
so you can be in good training for us to have
a lot of frolics together. Perhaps you will
come up to Vermont with me some time, where
there is in winter usually plenty of ice and
snow. There is but little snow here to-day,
but Aunt Alberta and Cousin James have just
gone out to ride in a wagon, although the
thermometer this morning was about down to
zero. I was sorry not to see you before we
came away, because you were asleep, but when

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTOET 151

you get older we will try and regulate these
matters to suit ourselves. With love to your
mamma and papa, and with ever so much to
your dear self, I am

Your affectionate

GRANDPA.

P. S. Your photograph in your papa's
arms is right before me, in which you appear
to excellent advantage.

In the autumn of 1894 Mr. Houghton was
affected by a difficulty of breathing, which
greatly impeded the freedom of his move-
ments, and kept him from time to time housed
at home ; so that, when the winter came, it
was thought wise for him to go South, in
hopes that a less stringent climate would give
him relief. His eldest daughter went with
him, and his family physician, also, as far as
Asheville. He was restless and moved farther
South, trying one place after another, only to
return in the spring with the kind of new
hope and courage which come to one who
has done with travels for health, and is once
more in his own home. A letter written when

152 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

he was making his way northward gives a
hint of his winter : —

TO CAPTAIN S. B. HOWARD.

LAKEWOOD, NEW JERSEY, April 2, 1895.

MY DEAR CAPTAIN HOWARD, — There is
something very good about you ; whether it
is innate, or comes from your association with
Vermonters, I cannot say. It seems to be there
just the same, as evidenced by your thinking
of a poor fellow suffering from the grippe and
wandering about seeking for sleep and rest.
We first went to Asheville, North Carolina,
where for a few days everything seemed to
go well, when there came a succession of
rainy and cold days, when breathing was dif-
ficult, and sleep seemed impossible except by
stealth. The local doctor told me I must
get out, and, as it seemed against his inter-
est to have me do so, I did it. He sent me
to Columbia, South Carolina, where I did im-
prove in the sleeping and the weather was
milder, but the "fodder" was dreadful, — the
old Virginia style. I stood it as long as I could,
and then we struck out for this place. Here

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 153

we have comfortable quarters, high prices,
palatable food, and a tendency to sleep added.
I purpose to try this awhile, unless something
drives me away from here. At any rate, I
trust to be home about the middle of April.

Not long after Mr. Houghton returned to
Cambridge, in the spring of 1895, there was
a festival held by the Eiverside Press, on
the occasion of Mr. Mifflin's fiftieth birth-
day. The celebration was happily conceived
and carried out by a committee chosen by
the large body of some six hundred men and
women who now made up the establishment.
Mr. Mifflin himself knew only so much of the
affair beforehand as it was necessary to con-
fide to him. Mr. Houghton was apprised of
the event and took a deep interest in it, but
necessarily could have nothing to do with
the management. When the day came, his
family, ever watchful of him in his declining
strength, debated whether he would be able
to attend the festival, which was to be held in
the evening. He listened without much com-
ment, but in the course of the discussion he

154 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

quietly slipped out and went down to the
Press, where he held a consultation with some
of the committee; he had resolved that the
affair should be more significant than appeared
on its face.

It was agreed in his home that he might
safely venture to the hall for a part of the
exercises, and his carriage could wait to bring
him away if at any time his strength or his
interest flagged. Several times during the
earlier part of the evening, when speeches and
song and other entertainment were going on,
one of his daughters whispered to him a sug-
gestion that he might easily escape, but he
smiled and thought he would stay through.
In fact, he had his own plans, which he had
no intention of subjecting to debate. A sup-
per was to follow, in the lower hall, and Mr.
Houghton quietly took his place at the head
of the procession. His daughters, surprised
at his endurance of an excitement to which
he had not seemed equal for several months,
were now overtaken with dismay and appre-
hension when he was called upon for a speech.
They did not know then that he had specially

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 155

asked the committee to call upon him; they
feared only that his weakness would distress
him and the audience if he attempted, with
his wavering voice and struggling breath, to
make even the simplest remarks.

Mr. Houghton rose to his feet with all the
strength of his prime, and in a voice which
was never firmer or clearer, with a manner
direct and coherent, he told at length the
story of Mr. Mifflin's association with him
from the beginning, — giving him the hearty
praise of one who had long tried him and
had come, strong man as he was, even to lean
on him. Many of the younger workers at the
Press had never before seen Mr. Houghton ;
none of them ever saw him in his capacity
of leader again. It was an open, frank, and
loyal transfer of his mantle to the younger
shoulders, — a plea that his successor might
have the respect and support and fidelity of
the men which had heretofore been given to
himself. It was a fitting climax to a great
career.

When the summer of 1895 came, Mr.

156 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

Houghton was advised not to expose himself
to the climate of the seacoast, and he availed
himself of the courtesy of Mr. Mifflin, who
placed at his partner's disposal his country-
seat at North Andover. There, in a quiet
rural district, Mr. Houghton could have not
only the seclusion of his own home, but the
pleasure of exploring the beautiful country
about the place. He took daily drives when
he was at home, but, with the unconquerable
energy of his nature, he persisted in frequent
journeys to the office in Boston. There was
something very pathetic, something also very
noble, in the resolution with which he clung
to his work. He had never known when
he was beaten ; he did not know it now, but
kept up the attack week after week. His
daughters shielded him in every possible way;
his friends visited him ; and the humor which
had so often turned the warm side of life
toward him did not fail him now.

There was, now and then, an acute form
taken by his disease which alarmed not only
those about him, but Mr. Houghton himself ;
and, though he was not much given to pre-

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 157

sages, it was clear that he saw his end draw-
ing near. Without referring to this directly,
he made it somewhat evident by the seri-
ousness with which he collected himself in
occasional talks over important concerns. I
remember one such, which made a strong
impression upon me. It was the last day of
July, when he arranged to have me see him
by himself. There was a matter in which we
were both greatly concerned that had come
to the point of decision. He began, in his
characteristic manner, at a long distance from
the matter in hand. His words came with
difficulty, his attitude showed discomfort. He
rehearsed many situations and relations with
which we were both familiar, and came nearer
and nearer to the heart of the subject. His
manner deepened in earnestness, his voice be-
came stronger, and he spoke with emphasis,
— with eloquence, indeed. In this matter he
could make no personal inquisition, as he had
been wont to do; he must leave it to the
decision of his partners. Yet the principles
which underlay the whole were insisted upon,
and he felt deeply the interest involved. He

158 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

was not thinking of his personal estate : he was
thinking of the institution he had founded ;
that republic must suffer no hurt.

His strength failed him steadily, but he
made an almost superhuman effort on Fri-
day, the 23d of August, to be present at the
celebration of his grandchild's first birthday
anniversary in Winchester. It was as if he
gathered his strength for this final demon-
stration of his love and his indomitable will.
He returned the same day to North Andover,
and on Sunday, the 25th, he died.

After his death there were public expres-
sions of appreciation of his worth and his
services. Resolutions of respect were passed
by the book trade, the bank in which he was
director, the University which he had so long
served, humane societies to which he had be-
longed, and the city of Cambridge. A me-
morial service was held at the Harvard Street
Methodist Episcopal Church, at which the
Riverside Press was represented by one of its
oldest members. Yet, when even a strong
man has died, one turns presently from these

HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 159

public expressions, sincere as they are, for
there begin to come to light the secret ways
of the man's goodness. It was in the nature
of Mr. Houghton's care for others that it was
confidential. But a man's testament cannot
be kept private, and it was quickly known that
Mr. Houghton had established a generous
fund to be administered by his daughters
for the worthy poor of Cambridge. This act
was not the tardy charity of him who can no
longer use his wealth. He had been doing
this kind of good for years, sometimes in
direct relations, sometimes through almoners.
He aided students struggling for an educa-
tion ; he gave liberally to his poorer kin ; and
there were certain discreet persons who re-
ceived from him regularly sums of money for
distribution. He was especially glad to do
this through his church. " I cannot better
put you in possession of what I have learned
of his genuinely benevolent heart," said his
pastor, Rev. George Skene, at the memorial
service, "than by reading you a letter which I
received from him a short time before he left
us. He had from time to time placed in my

160 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON

hands sums of money to be used in charity
as I found occasion. Appreciating the fact
that he was a business man, and systematic in
his methods of doing business, I was careful
to keep an accurate account of all disburse-
ments, and report to him in detail the dispo-
sition of his gifts. After my last report I
received this letter from him : —

" MY DEAR PASTOR, — I have your ac-
count of your stewardship, and find it very
satisfactory. I enclose herewith another
check, if it will not trouble you too much,
to use in the same way. When this is used
up, will you kindly let me know and call for
more ? Thanking you for your kind interest
in distributing my little benefaction,
" I am sincerely yours,

"H. 0. HOUGHTON."

The last connection which Mr. Houghton
had with the office where he had so long
transacted the business of his life was to make
inquiry into the well-being of one of his ben-
eficiaries.

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