842 JOHN BARTLETT. 



Brewster, and whose grandson Samuel married a granddaughter of John 

 Alden. His maternal ancestor was Antony Thacher, who arrived in 

 Ipswich in 1636, and after whom is named the island off Cape Ann. 

 Fifth in descent from him was James Thacher, Mr. Bartlett's grand- 

 father, " Surgeon in the Revolutionary War, and its historian ; he also 

 wrote the History of Plymouth, American Medical Biography, and sev- 

 eral professional books. In his treatise on Hydrophobia he anticipated 

 Pasteur by eighty years or more." * 



What formal education Mr. Bartlett had, he obtained in the public 

 schools of Plymouth, but he was in the main his own teacher through 

 his reading and his reflections upon his reading. The former was carried 

 on from childhood until past his eightieth year, and the latter ceased only 

 with his death. " My mother told me [he writes] that at the age of three 

 I read to her a verse from the Bible ; at the age of nine I had read that 

 book from Alpha to Omega. . . . Before the age of twelve I had read 

 most of the juvenile literature of that period, as well as Pilgrim's Pro- 

 gress, Josephus, Arabian Nights, Opie on Lying, Coelebs in Search of a 

 Wife, Scottish Chiefs, Thaddeus of Warsaw, Cruise of the Midge, Tom 

 Cringle's Log, Paul and Virginia, Telemachus; Cooper's Spy, Pilot, 

 Pioneers, Last of tbe Mohicans, and Red Rover ; Scott's Ivanhoe, 

 Talisman, and Pirate ; Gulliver's Travels, and Munchausen." 



This list seems worth noting and preserving in this memoir because it 

 shows us the books to which an intelligent American boy was attracted 

 in the years 1820-1832. "Opie on Lying" is probably now the least 

 known of them, but I am told that in its day it made even the " white 

 lie " a perfect terror to children. 



In 1836, at the age of sixteen, Mr. Bartlett's business life began. He 

 came to Cambridge aud entered the employment of John Owen, who kept 

 the University Bookstore and also did not a little publishing for promi- 

 nent New England writers of the day. At first engaged in the book- 

 bindery department, he passed to a clerkship in the store, and was so 

 successful that thirteen years later, in 1849, he became the owner of the 

 establishment. In those days the University Bookstore was connected 

 with the University itself; the payments of the bills of students for 

 books were guaranteed by the Corporation, and the relations between the 

 proprietor of the bookstore and the authorities were close. At the back 



* These details about Mr. Bartlett's family and some other quotations which 

 will follow are taken from a MS. book which he gave to Harvard College Library 

 in 1900. 



