Henry Curtis, who sailed for New England from the port of London on May 6, 1635, was the founder of the Curtis family in America. His grandson, John Curtis of Worcester, was ‘a sturdy and open loyalist’ of Revolutionary times whose personal character was as heartily esteemed as his political principles were detested. George Curtis, a great-grandson of John, married Mary Elizabeth Burrill, daughter of James Burrill, Jr., Chief-justice of Rhode Island. Of their two sons George William Curtis was the younger. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on February 24, 1824. With his brother James Burrill, his closest friend and almost inseparable companion, he was sent to C. W. Greene’s school at Jamaica Plain, near Boston, and remained there five years. He was afterwards at school in Providence for four years. In New York, whither his father had removed (in 1839) to become connected with the Bank of Commerce, Curtis studied under private tutors and had some experience of practical life in the counting-room of a German importing house. The education given the Curtis boys had also an irregular though very agreeable side. They spent much of the time from 1842 to 1844 as students at Brook Farm. The greater part of the two following years they were at Concord, their object being to combine study and out-of-door life, and above all to be near Emerson. Taking up residence with one or other of several farmers whose local fame almost equalled that of the Concord men of letters, they spent half of each day in farm work and the other half in study or studious idleness. They were to be found regularly at the Club which met on Monday evenings in Emerson’s library and which numbered among its members Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Alcott. In August, 1846, provided by his father with a sum of money sufficient to give him what he called ‘a generous background,’ Curtis went abroad. He planned to be gone two years, but the background was more than generous and he did not return until 1850. He travelled leisurely through France, Germany, Italy, and the East, made notes of what he saw and used them partly in the form of letters to the New York ‘Courier and Enquirer’ and partly in the famous ‘Howadji’ books. His literary plans were ambitious, including as they did a life of Mehemet Ali, on which he worked for some years only to abandon it at last. On his return to New York he began writing regularly for the ‘Tribune,’ and was associated with C. F. Briggs and Parke Godwin in the editorship of ‘Putnam’s Magazine.’ When the magazine passed into the hands of Dix, Edwards, and Company, Curtis put money into the firm. By their failure he not only lost everything he had, but he also assumed a debt for which he could not have been legally held and devoted the proceeds of his lectures to paying it. He was eighteen years in ridding himself of the burden.