Of a high average of intelligence, attentive to education, encouraging morality, obedient to the laws, the people of Hingham have always stood high in the scale of social enjoyment and prosperity. Its town meetings are models of democratic government, and there are few places in which this purely American institution is preserved with so much respect and true regard for the public welfare. It is with justifiable pride that the native of Hingham looks back through the two and one-half centuries of her history. "Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam, His first, best country ever is at home." * * * * * THE HOUSE OF TICKNOR. WITH A GLIMPSE OF THE OLD CORNER BOOKSTORE. By Barry Lyndon. The great Boston fire of 1872 had a forerunner in the same city. In 1711 a most sweeping conflagration occurred, which burned down all the houses on both sides of Cornhill, from School street to Dock square, besides the First Church, the Town House, all the upper part of King street, and the greater part of Pudding Lane, between Water street and Spring Lane. Nearly one hundred houses were destroyed, of which the _debris_ was used to fill up Long Wharf. The fire "broke out," says an account in the Boston _News-Letter_, "in an old tenement within a backyard in Cornhill, near the First Meeting-house, occasioned by the carelessness of a poor Scottish woman by using fire near a parcel of ocum, chips, and other combustible rubbish." The houses which were rebuilt along Cornhill, soon after the fire, were "of brick, three stories high, with a garret, a flat roof, and balustrade." Several of these houses were still standing in 1825; in 1855 only a very few remained; while only one, so far as we know, has come down to us to-day and is yet even well-preserved, namely, the Old Corner Bookstore, on the corner of the present Washington and School streets. This old house teems with historical associations, past and present. Under its roof Mrs. Anne Hutchinson was wont to hold her Antinomian _seances_, under the very nose of Governor John Winthrop, when "over against the site of the Old Corner Store dwelt the notables of the town,--the governor, the elder of the church, the captain of the artillery company, and the most needful of the craftsmen and artificers of the humble plantation; and at a short distance from it were the meeting-house, the market-house, the town-house, the school-house, and the ever-flowing spring of pure water." The Old Corner Store is supposed to have been built directly after the fire of 1711. It is an example of what is known as the colonial style of architecture, and is thought to be the oldest brick building now standing in Boston. Upon a tablet on its western gable appears the supposed date of its construction, 1712. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF W.D. TICKNOR.]