avoided the whirlpools in which so many have been ingulfed, and secured for stockholders and depositors regular and satisfactory dividends. While thus adding to the fortunes of others, he has not been unmindful of his own, and is one of the wealthy men of the state, able to command whatever money will buy, and to give liberally to any cause that commends itself to his judgment. But while it has been the business of Mr. Currier to manage vast moneyed concerns, the demands of his calling have not been permitted to choke out his love of books and study. The literary tastes, and habits of close and tireless application, which inspired the boy to struggle for and obtain a liberal education, survive in the man, and have made him a persistent student until he is one of the most accomplished scholars in the state. While a teacher at Concord, he edited a literary journal in that city, and after coming to Manchester published and edited, for several years, a weekly newspaper. Since he became a banker he has spent much of his leisure in his well filled library, finding his recreation in adding to his knowledge of the classics, mastering the problems of exact science, and exploring the fields of _belles-lettres_. He has written, for his own amusement, many poems of much merit, a volume of which was published for circulation among his friends in 1879, and he is a master of the art of expression in terse and polished prose. His scholarly attainments were recognized by Bates College in 1880, which conferred upon him the degree of LL.D. As a citizen, Mr. Currier occupies a high place in the city with whose material growth he has been so largely identified. He is an earnest advocate of whatever tends to her advancement, a judicious counselor, and a liberal giver. He was one of the founders of her city library, to which he has made large donations, that, with one of her public fountains, attest alike his generosity and his judgment; and there have been few projects for her improvement which have not found in him a strong and ready helper. Prior to 1852 he acted with the Democratic party, which elected him clerk of the state senate in 1843, 1844, but the agitation of the slavery question enlisted him in the ranks of the Free-soil forces, and from the organization of the Republican party he has been one of its most earnest and effective supporters. In 1856 and 1857 he was a member of the senate, being its president the latter year; and in 1860 and 1861, was a member of the governor's council, and chairman of the committee for raising and equipping the troops necessary to fill the state's quota in the war of the rebellion. In this position his business ability and methods were of great service, and to him, at least as much as to any other one man, is due the creditable reputation which the state won in that trying period.