642 AUGUSTUS LOWELL. 



One dragoon fell on the spot, a second turned like a flash and leaped his 

 horse over an embankment twenty feet to a road below, while the third 

 wheeled in his tracks and came galloping wildly down the street again. 

 All which served to relieve the watering place dulness. 



By the autumn of 1866 Mrs. Lowell was so far recovered that Mr. 

 Lowell was able to return with her to the United States. It was many 

 years before he left it again. 



He now took an oflice next his father's, and became gradually con- 

 nected, on the one hand, with the manufacturing interests which hia 

 father controlled, and on the other with the many trusts his father 

 managed. During Mr. John Amory Lowell's subsequent absences in 

 Europe the care of these things devolved upon his son, and with the 

 former's increasing years the care became more and more permanent. 

 In 1875 he was chosen treasurer of the Boott Cotton Mills. This office 

 he held for eleven years. About the same time he was elected to suc- 

 ceed his father on the board of the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insur- 

 ance Company,- — -familiarly known as the Life Office, State Street's oldest, 

 staidest, and most famous institution, whose real business has but a bowing 

 acquaintance with its name, — and later was put upon its executive com- 

 mittee. Of the corporation of the Provident Institution for Savings, 



— another financial landmark, not so deceptively named to the uninitiated, 



— he was likewise made a member, and eventually became its president, 

 succeeding the Mr. Lee of epistolary fame. At this date too he began 

 his long career upon the board of the Boston Gas Light Company, then 

 so ably managed by Mr. Greenough, a career which ended more than 

 twenty years later in the negotiations he conducted as its president when 

 it became necessary to sell the property, which he did for two and a 

 quarter times all it had ever cost. In addition to holding the offices above 

 mentioned he was treasurer of the Merrimack Manufacturing Company, 

 June 20-October 29, 1877 ; president of the Massachusetts Cotton 

 Mills ; of the Massachusetts Mills in Georgia ; of the Pacific Mills ; of 

 the Merrimac Manufacturing Company, 1887-8, 1892 to death; of the 

 Boott Cotton Mills ; of the Lowell Bleachery : of the Lowell Machine 

 Shop ; of the Glendon Iron Company ; and a director of the Everett 

 Mills ; of the Middlesex Company ; of the Lawrence Mills ; of the 

 Lowell Manufacturing Company ; of the Suffi^lk National Bank ; of the 

 Cranberry Iron Company ; of the Plymouth Cordage Company ; besides 

 being a trustee of the Union Trust Company of New York. This long 

 list means even more than it usually would ; for Mr. Lowell was a director 

 who did direct. In every concern into which he entered he very soon took 



