Hooper

exhibitions, concerts, and fashions, as well as
with occasional stories, and contributed to Ap-
pletons' Journal weekly letters dealing with the
social and literary life of Paris. She undertook
regular correspondence with Philadelphia, Balti-
more, and St. Louis papers, establishing a re-
markable record for almost twenty years of unin-
terrupted service with the Philadelphia Evening
Telegraph. While carrying on her literary labors
she led an active social life in Paris. She dis-
pensed hospitality to the American colony and
delighted in bringing together literary and ar-
tistic groups. Her interest in the life and the ac-
complishment around her enabled her to write
enthusiastically of the music, the painting, and
the drama of the day and to find material for her
journalistic work in the streets and shops of the
city. She died in Paris two days after dictating
her last letter to the Philadelphia Evening Tele-
graph, and, in accordance with her request, her
body was cremated at Pere-Lachaise Cemetery.
Her published works include The Nabob (1878),
from the French of Alphonse Daudet; Her
Living Image (1886), a play written in collabo-
ration with the French dramatist Laurencin;
Under the Tricolor; or The American Colony in
Paris (1880), a novel; The Tsar's Window
(1881), a novel; and Helen's Inheritance, a play
in which her daughter was cast for the leading
part when it was first produced in America.

[J. T. Scharf and Thompson Westcott, Hist, of PUla.
(1884), vol. H; A Woman of the Century (1893), ed.
by Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore; Ap~
pletons' Ann. Cyc.t 1893; Evening Tslegraph (Phila.),
Aug. 31, Sept. 12, 1893.] B.M.S.

HOOPER, SAMUEL (Feb. 3, i8o8-Feb. 14,
1875), merchant, legislator, was born in Marble-
head, Mass. His parents, John and Eunice
(Hooper) Hooper, were both descended from
Robert Hooper who settled in Marblehead some
time before 1663. Several generations of the
Hooper family had engaged in trade and ship-
ping, and Samuel's father, a man of energy and
shrewdness, achieved wealth and influence as a
merchant He built the mansion in Marblehead
known as the Hooper (not the King-Hooper)
house, in which Samuel was born, owned ships
on which the boy voyaged to various European
ports, and was president of the Marblehead Bank
in the counting room of which he taught his son
his first lessons in finance. After an ordinary
education in the Marblehead schools, Samuel
went to Boston. In 1832 he married Anne Stur-
gis, the daughter of William Sturgis, and be-
came a junior partner in the shipping firm of his
father-in-law, that of Bryant, Sturgis & Com-
pany. Gradually his business interests expand-
ed. In 1843 he joined the importing firm of Wil-

Hooper

liam Appleton & Company, which remained his
major concern, and in 1862 it became Samuel
Hooper & Company. He was also one of the di-
rectors of the Merchants' Bank of Boston and of
the Eastern Railroad Company; he owned con-
siderable property in various forms of the iron
industry, and he held investments in western
railroad properties. His wealth, originally large
through inheritance and marriage, increased
greatly until he was reputed to be one of Boston's
wealthiest citizens. Having gained a knowledge
of foreign trade and finance which impressed his
contemporaries as authoritative, he set down his
views on currency in two well-received pam-
phlets: Currency or Money (Boston, 1855), and
An Examination of the Theory and the Effect of
Laws Regulating the Amount of Specie in Banks
(Boston, 1860). In both he discussed the evils
of excessive and unregulated circulation of bank
paper as currency and strongly advocated the use
of specie, insisting that if a substitute be per-
mitted it should be rigorously controlled. These
views were to mature later in his espousal of
measures insuring a uniform national currency.
Meanwhile he was called into public life. His
three years (1851-54) in the Massachusetts
House of Representatives and one year (1858)
in the state Senate were unimportant—tentative
ventures outside the realm of business which still
demanded his best efforts. But after 1861 he
ceased being the man of business and became
whole-heartedly a man of public affairs. In that
year his partner William Appleton resigned his
seat in Congress and Hooper was chosen to fill
out the unexpired term. Reflected six times, he
sat in the House of Representatives as a Repub-
lican from 1861 until his death in 1875, doing
significant work on the committees of ways and
means, banking and currency, and coinage,
weights and measures. He was most useful in
the Civil War years. In the full vigor of his life,
possessed of a robust frame and sturdy health,
authoritatively informed on financial and com-
mercial topics, he assumed a heavy burden of
continuous labor and became an invaluable ally
of the secretary of the treasury, Chase. In gen-
eral he supported the administration's financial
program. In particular he advocated the issue
oŁ legal-tender notes and the establishment of a
national banking system. On both of these meas-
ures his work was significant enough to war-
rant a claim of leadership along with Stevens
and Spaulding. In the deliberations of Congress
he spoke rarely, and then only briefly. The
greater part of his work was in the committee
room. But chiefly, perhaps, his influence was
felt through social channels. Wealth and refine-

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