opy and liberality of the late Mr.
Samuel Downer, are within the limits of Hingham.

There is one hotel in the settled part of the town, the Cushing House.

The town is abundantly supplied with water of the purest quality for
domestic and fire purposes, from Accord Pond, situated on the southern
boundary line of the town, and there is an excellent fire department.

There is a weekly paper (_The Hingham Journal_), a national bank, a
savings-bank, and a fire insurance company, which, with numerous stores
in almost every department of domestic supplies, largely make up the
business of the town.

The Hingham Agricultural and Horticultural Society holds monthly
meetings and an annual exhibition in its spacious hall and grounds.

The views from several of the hills in Hingham are very beautiful, and
its woods and fields afford a large and varied study for the botanist.

Of a high average of intelligence, attentive to education, encouraging
morality, obedient to the laws, the people of Hingham have always stood
high in the scale of social enjoyment and prosperity. Its town meetings
are models of democratic government, and there are few places in which
this purely American institution is preserved with so much respect and
true regard for the public welfare.

It is with justifiable pride that the native of Hingham looks back
through the two and one-half centuries of her history.

"Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam,
His first, best country ever is at home."

* * * * *

THE HOUSE OF TICKNOR.

WITH A GLIMPSE OF THE OLD CORNER BOOKSTORE.

By Barry Lyndon.

The great Boston fire of 1872 had a forerunner in the same city. In 1711
a most sweeping conflagration occurred, which burned down all the houses
on both sides of Cornhill, from School street to Dock square, besides
the First Church, the Town House, all the upper part of King street, and
the greater part of Pudding Lane, between Water street and Spring Lane.
Nearly one hundred houses were destroyed, of which the _debris_ was
used to fill up Long Wharf. The fire "broke out," says an account in the
Boston _News-Letter_, "in an old tenement within a backyard in
Cornhill, near the First Meeting-house, occasioned by the carelessness
of a poor Scottish woman by using fire near a parcel of ocum, chips, and
other combustible rubbish."

The houses which were rebuilt along Cornhill, soon after the fire, were
"of b