56 ANNUAL MEETING. 



attracted to the store of Mr. John M. Ives, and he never 

 entered it without falling into conversation with some legal 

 or illegal brother interested in letters, and he never left it 

 without leaving in the memory of those who listened some 

 one of the golden sentences which dropped as naturally 

 from his mouth as pearls from the lips of the fabled fairy. 

 There was a circulating library connected with Mr. Ives' 

 bookstore, and I have a vivid remembrance, when as a 

 boy I was prowling among the books on the shelves sus- 

 pending my decision as to taking out a novel of Richard- 

 son, or Fielding, or Miss Porter or Scott, of listening with 

 a certain guilty delight at the chaffing going on among 

 my elders and betters in the front store. I remember per- 

 fectly how I was impressed and fascinated by the appear- 

 ance of Mr. Choate. He was not a Thaddeus of Warsaw, 

 nor a hero of the type which Mrs. Eaclclifte had stamped in 

 my imagination, but there was something strange, some- 

 thing 'oriental' in him, which suggested the Arabian 

 Nights. In after years, I wondered, as I wondered then, 

 that such a remarkable creature should have dropped down, 

 as it were, into Essex County. There seemed to be no 

 connection between the man and his environment. He 

 flashed his meaning in pointed phrase while his interlocu- 

 tors were arranging parts and preparing arguments, and 

 darted out of the store with a ringing laugh." E. P. 

 Whipple's Recollections of Eminent Men, page 2. 



Mr. Benjamin H. Ives, a younger brother of the pro- 

 prietor and associated with him in his business, was a 

 student of nature especially in botany and entomology. 

 At his suggestion the subject of organizing a natural history 

 society was frequently discussed and a paper received some 

 fifteen or twenty signatures for membership. Mr. Ives 

 had also called the attention of the public to this move- 

 ment by occasional articles in the newspapers. These 



