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Letters and Journals 
 
 of 
 
 Thomas Wentworth Higginson 
 
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON AT SEVENTY-SEVEN 
 ( From a painting by Augustus V. Tack ) 
 
Letters and Journals 
 
 of 
 Thomas Wentworth Higginson 
 
 1846— 1906 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 MARY THACHER HIGGINSON 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW TOHK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 1921 
 

 COPYRIGHT, igai, BY MARY THACHER HIGGINSON 
 ALL BIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 
 
 hll^^\ 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Newport, Rhode Island 
 December 30, 1864 
 
 ... It is a bewildering and fascinating thing to read 
 old letters; they are so full of vitality , . . that one can 
 scarcely bear it. I feel this strangely in turning over 
 my army papers; they seem to belong to some one 
 twin-born with me, but who led a wholly different life 
 from me, with whom I have now no communion save 
 in the dim throbbing of the same nerves which that 
 touches. 
 
 "The disease of Past and Present," as Milnes calls 
 it, puzzles the mind; and it is hard to link ourselves to 
 this something which was ourselves, but is no longer, 
 and never will be again. 
 
 (Prom the manuscript of T. W. H.) 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. Cambbidgh and Newbtjbtpobt 1 
 
 II. The Worcester Period 44 
 
 III. Journeys 117 
 
 IV. Army Life and Camp Drill 154 
 V. Newport 224 
 
 VI. Foreign Travels 275 
 
 VII. Cambridge in Later Life 321 
 
Letters and Journals of 
 Thomas Wentworth Higginson 
 
 ■ • 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPOKT 
 
 To Miss Nancy Storrow: 
 
 May 17. 1844 
 
 Dear Aunty: 
 
 It was strange to me to reappear in Cambridge society 
 after four years' absence. Of course one half the people 
 were the same under whose shadow or by whose side I 
 grew up, and the other half entirely new arrivals. Es- 
 pecially the youthful beaux were mysteries to me. 
 Whence had they arisen, all decked in white cravats, 
 too? . . . Yet I seemed to recognize in each smooth 
 face lineaments not unfamiliar, and I grant the sound- 
 ness of the system revealed to me by Maria Fay.* 
 There is no difficulty in the case, she says; by living in 
 Cambridge a few years you get the run of the families 
 and then recognize each new set of youths by their 
 resemblance to their elder brothers I With regard to the 
 little ambling Palfreys. I have reason to think the 
 public misled. I myself have set down Miss Sarah's 
 age (in bonnet and cloak) at threescore and ten, but 
 
 ' Miss Maria Fay was one of the Cambridge belles in Higginson's youth 
 and lived in the fine old mansion now occupied by Radcliffe College and 
 known as Fay House. 
 
2 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 she glides back into youth in a ballroom; and as for 
 Anna, she is like the youngest Miss Pecksniff — sC 
 regular " gushing thing." Railroads are feeble images 
 to describe their conversational powers, but their 
 styles are different. Sarah languishes onward with the 
 tremulous impetus of a forty-car freight train; Anna 
 spins ahead like a lively young locomotive racing 
 homeward, upsetting countless urchins (in white 
 cravats) without mercy; and finally, after sundry 
 jolts, bringing up breathlessly, with a smiling bump, 
 against some impassable barrier, and starting thence 
 again with scarce a respite. I could talk to Sarah; she 
 fixed her (rather pretty) dark eyes on me and we 
 meandered over past years, but with Anna I could only 
 let her talk on, lean against the wall, and chuckle in- 
 wardly. But she is pretty, fresh, rosy, bright-eyed, and 
 walks a queen among her admirers. 
 
 This, of course, prepared the way for the Palfrey 
 gala. To return thither. When I say that Mr. Sibley 
 [the college Librarian] went, you will perceive at once 
 that we " mixed some." But there were all the aristo- 
 cratic Boston cousins of Mrs. Dean P., whose car- 
 riages rumble daily past my windows; there was 
 Miss Everett waltzing with Montgomery Ritchie, old 
 Mr. Otis's handsome grandson; and there was Miss 
 Loring, the musical young lady who went mad after 
 Ole Bull; and there were the distinguished Miss Carys, 
 one of whom hath smiled on Mr. Felton; and there 
 was Jane Norton [sister of Professor Norton] in all her 
 loveliness, gazed at by freshmen with an ardor that 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT 3 
 
 might have troubled her gentle Edmund. And there 
 was the supper table — ah I the lobster salad, the 
 Charlotte Russe, the champagne! How the portly pro- 
 fessors flocked into the room ! I followed after with 
 Sarah Hale [sister of Edward Everett Hale], whose 
 eyes grow brighter yearly, I believe. . . . But to 
 cross the room among the aldermen and instructors 
 was no slight task. . . . 
 
 To conclude statistically, 225 people were invited, 
 about 100 went and stayed from nine to twelve. Here 
 endeth the legend. 
 
 The description of the Palfrey sisters recalls the fact 
 that Miss Sarah, at the age of seventy-five, took 
 morning spins around Fresh Pond on her tricycle. 
 
 Fifteen years later, in April, 1861, Mr. Higginson 
 wrote his mother of the Misses Palfrey's father, who 
 was then postmaster of Boston: 
 
 Why have Dr. Palfrey's previous pursuits especially 
 prepared him to be a postmaster? Because he has 
 always been a Man of Letters; — Mr. Haven, the 
 Antiquarian Librarian, who said this, says that Dr. 
 Palfrey complains much of poverty, and that his 
 history, which he hoped to make profitable, had not 
 paid its expenses. But he was always rajther querulous, 
 I believe. 
 
 This Cambridge is a pretty pleasant place to live in, 
 after all. I continue to be a sort of pariah, an outcast 
 of the world; but then I bear it patiently and humbly, 
 and when I meet a freshman with his black coat on, I 
 look up respectfully, as much as to say, " I know it. 
 
4 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 my dear sir, I know it; I have not so good a right as 
 you to walk about and look as if I were a member of 
 society — but I pray you to let me pass — I am very 
 harmless," and they generally comply. 
 
 From Divinity Hall Wentworth wrote his mother 
 about the graduation exercises: 
 
 July 19. 1845 
 
 . . . The Exercises in the morning were . . . good; 
 almost every fellow did better than I expected. . . . 
 Elderly ministers sniffed at radical sentiments, young 
 ones smiled at conservative ditto, and Theodore 
 Parker sneered (at least so imagined) at a severe 
 criticism on Strauss. Affianced damsels looked down 
 blushingly when their several betrotheds came up, and 
 looked up smilingly when the same gentlemen went 
 down. There were at least half a dozen of these inter- 
 esting damsels, from the queenly Anna Shaw down to 
 Henry Bond's little Woburn rustic; each had reason 
 to be gratified and doubtless each had no doubt which 
 young hero won most laurels. This is the latest form 
 of chivalry — intellect and beauty reciprocally ad- 
 miring and admired. I fear it will be several years ere 
 those halls witness such another display pf either. It 
 is really a superior class, yet, my hopes from it are, for 
 one reason and another, not large. I had the pleasure 
 of introducing myself to my beloved Sunday-School 
 teacher, Samuel May, who really seemed gratified 
 thereat. Then there was a dinner in Harvard Hall, a 
 procession to which was marshalled by Dr. Pierce. We 
 heard, " Brethren, attention," shouted as if by a super- 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT 6 
 
 human hippopotamus or other aerial loud-voiced 
 beast floating above us, and behold, it was the white- 
 haired old Doctor whose voice had raised the echoes. 
 He is great to see on these occasions, rejoicing as a 
 strong man to run a race — few of the graduating 
 class have a step so elastic or a voice so strong. The 
 dinner was like Commons dinners usually; there is a 
 beautiful equality about these things — the most 
 superb sumptuous collegiate festivals and the everyday 
 " prog " of the cheap table meet on the common 
 ground of two-pronged forks and dark brown geologi- 
 cal plum-puddings. However, Dr. Dewey was not 
 there and country ministers have good digestions. . . . 
 I sat with Edward Hale, Sam Longfellow, and [James] 
 Richardson, perhaps the three pleasantest persons in 
 the room. The latter I am going to send you to preach 
 Sunday, July 27. . . . If he does n't astonish you I 'm 
 mistaken; he's a man of decided genius and great re- 
 finement, but has a crack somewhere in his caput; his 
 preaching has been liked by the vulgar. I have never 
 heard it — you must n't settle him. He looks like a 
 Banished Lord. 
 
 In 1847 Higginson made sundry visits at Newbury- 
 port preparatory to settling there as pastor of the 
 Unitarian Church. In letters to his mother he intro- 
 duces some of his future parishioners. 
 
 March 5, 1847 
 
 My second visit to Newburyport was singularly 
 analogous to the first. Then the state of matters over- 
 
6 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 head made going to church impossible — this time 
 ditto ditto underfoot. . . • 
 
 The week had been radiantly beautiful. Saturday 
 was a snow softening into rain — pleasant prospect. 
 Sunday the sun rose triumphant, however, but what 
 was my horror on finding a state of slosh compared to 
 which the direst experiences of Boston, Cambridge, 
 or Brattleboro' are peace and pavement! A few un- 
 daunted females were seen picking their way hen-like 
 along, sadly drabbled as to skirts, while anxious men 
 were seen in all directions jumping across puddles and 
 plumping into the middle of deeper ones. I was start- 
 ing with anxious boots myself when a sleigh floated 
 down the street and Mr. Noyes requested me to wait 
 for his return trip. Of course the audience was not 
 mtich , . . greater than the Sunday before, and great 
 were the lamentations, of course, of the saddened 
 parish committee. . . . 
 
 . . . George C. came for me before tea. It was 
 bright and beautiful, and I saw more of the place than 
 I had before. We rode up the fine long street joining 
 Newbury and Newburyport, past Lord Timothy's 
 house with the statues in front, etc., etc.; and by and 
 by got to the [Artichoke] Mills. I had heard of the 
 place before, but had no conception of its beauty even 
 in winter. What must the ravine and grove be in 
 summer! — the superb elm, and the delightful old- 
 looking buildings — so refreshing to see anything old. 
 Mrs. C[urson] and the two damsels received me most 
 cordially and I felt quite at home. One of the happiest 
 families I ever saw. ... It was a glorious moon and 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT 7 
 
 yet mild, and we went outside the door a little. Oh, 
 so lovely with the fields of snow and the dark shadows 
 and two white rivers! I have seldom been so enchanted 
 with any place at first sight, and I agreed with EUery's 
 [Channing] remark on the same: "Still, if you should 
 walk there you would go there again." Instantly 
 Newburyport stock rose fifty per cent in my mind. 
 
 One of the first families visited was named Tracy. 
 
 We talked away after tea — about Whittier, who 
 lives five miles off and whom they admire much. The 
 story of his first introduction to them is good; some 
 time after Mr. Tracy's insane book of " Miniature 
 Romances " was published, a man knocked at the door 
 one morning. Mr. Tracy opened it and was saluted 
 with " Friend, how does thee do — my name 's John 
 Whittier. I have read thy book and wanted to see 
 thee." So he came in and made a very pleasant visit. 
 
 ... It was pleasing to see these old people living so 
 peaceably on, existing principally in books and seem- 
 ing so happy. 
 
 About his neighbor, Whittier, he wrote again in the 
 same year: 
 
 You will be interested to hear of a visit I made 
 Whittier the other day. . . . He had taken up the 
 vague notion of annexing all Mexico and seemed to 
 Lord it in a very loose way too; even said more war 
 would be better than making peace and getting slave 
 territory, though I could n't make out how that was to 
 help the matter. He was n't great on that tack, any- 
 
8 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 way — on literary matters better. . . . He had plenty 
 of humor and talks very freely, making us feel very 
 easy; gave a rich account of a come-outer who came in 
 to their " First Day Meeting." 
 
 And later in 1849: 
 
 The Whittiers were very cordial to us, and I feel 
 sure we shall know more of them. He is, perhaps, the 
 most attractive poet I have known. Mr. Longfellow's 
 polished gentlemanliness can be spared; and though 
 he has not James Lowell's easy brilliancy, he yet makes 
 himself very agreeable, and has the cordiality and 
 affectionateness which J. R. L. wants. The difficulty 
 with the latter is that, however kind and familiar, he 
 never appears the least dependent on any one, or to 
 care to hear the opinion or feeling of another — never 
 to go beyond the sphere of his own thoughts and those 
 of his wife — to hold the world off at arm's length 
 as it were; which, however agreeable to himself, is 
 no way pleasant to others. Now Whittier is willing to 
 put others on a leveil with himself and make himself 
 very entertaining too — a lovable person decidedly, I 
 should think. 
 
 These notes are taken from a journal of the same 
 date: 
 
 Talk with Whittier. , . . Among other talk was 
 mentioned Wright's attack on Garrison in the " Chro- 
 notype." ... " It is essentially true what he says of 
 Garrison," said he. " I know him thoroughly, and 
 know that he is a despot. . . . Garrison identifies the 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT 9 
 
 movement absolutely with himself. He is a Robes- 
 pierre with the same perfect seK-consecration and the 
 same absolute incapacity of tolerating those who 
 difiFer from himself; his course has been from the be- 
 ginning that of Robespierre, stopping short of blood- 
 shed." 
 
 " It may be partially so," said I; " but he has been 
 placed in a trying position. At the beginning he stood 
 with remarkable prominence as undisputed sole head 
 of the movement, and he has retained up to this time 
 precisely that position." . . . 
 
 " He has been so," said he, " because he would be 
 so. 
 
 " Not wholly that," replied I, " for the place has 
 been conceded to him by persons in all external ad- 
 vantages his superior — Wendell Phillips, Mrs. Chap- 
 man, E. Quincy." 
 
 " From Phillips," said Whittier, " that deference is 
 something, but not from Mrs. Chapman. She has been 
 Garrison's evil genius and acted through him her own 
 plans." 
 
 I protested against this and spoke strongly of her 
 power, her magnetic influence, her appearance, etc. 
 
 " Ah," said he, very earnestly, and sighing also, 
 " she once had that power over me, but she lost it for- 
 ever long since. She has great power, no doubt of that. 
 But I have seen that face of hers look as I never saw 
 another woman look, and such that I never wish to see 
 it again. It was in those trying times, and she had just 
 written me a letter, expressing the strongest regard 
 and confidence in me — stronger than there was any 
 
10 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGmSON 
 
 need of expressing. We afterwards met and conversed, 
 and after she had spoken in the strongest terms of de- 
 nunciation of others . . . sparing no term of oppro- 
 brium, — liars and thieves, for instance, — •! turned 
 upon her and said, * Thee has heaped all this reproach 
 upon my friends — how do I know that thee will not 
 go to some one else and use the same language of me? 
 Thee has written me a letter expressing more confi- 
 dence than I ask for, and thee treats me accordingly 
 now; — when I have just seen a letter from thee to 
 
 (W. did not say the name) in which thee says 
 
 of me, " As to Whittier, he is either a fool or a knave," 
 And thee cannot deny it!' I never saw a face," said 
 Whittier, " that looked as hers did then; the beauty 
 had all vanished, and she looked more like a demon 
 than a woman. And I have never wished to see her 
 face again. 
 
 " And all," said he, " because I would not join them 
 in a crusade against those men. I could not do it. . . . 
 I never could or would be a member of any clique. 
 
 " Ah," said he, after a pause, " I have long ceased 
 to expect that because men are reformers, they will 
 therefore be better than other people. They are just 
 the same." 
 
 I have written this conversation down as nearly as 
 possible as it passed, from my perfect confidence in 
 Whittier. . . . I am sorry to hear it, but it may not be 
 necessarily inconsistent with the grand qualities which 
 I have admired in Mrs. Chapman. 
 
 He afterwards added, " I told her also that to make 
 use of private letters, as she did, in public controversy. 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT H 
 
 was something I would never be guilty of in any 
 cause." 
 
 I remember [hearing] long ago that Mrs. Chapman 
 and Whittier were not on speaking terms; but I never 
 heard him mention her before. 
 
 Long afterward I adverted to this subject with 
 Wendell Phillips (December, 1851). He said: "We 
 never accused Whittier of any dishonorable conduct — 
 he showed only timidity. He was identified with us 
 and had much weight; he knew the whole case, knew 
 that right was on one side and wrong on the other; 
 he agreed with Mr. Garrison in the opiaions for which 
 he was cast ofiF, he had no right to stand aloof and call 
 it neutrality." 
 
 Higginson alluded to these dissensions in his life of 
 Whittier and said, " It is needless to explore these 
 Uttle divergences of the saints." 
 
 An early letter speaks of the newly married Lowells. 
 
 October, 1845 
 
 I am sorry you are not going to hear Ole Bull. I 
 came very near seeing him in private last Thursday 
 evening at James Lowell's where a select circle was 
 invited to see him. Mrs. Putnam was there . . . Mr. 
 Longfellow, Mr. Weiss, Mr. Owen (not of Lanark, but 
 " our publisher "), and one or two others scraped 
 extempermently together. The Lion from the North 
 was to have walked out of Boston at 6 p.m. with John 
 Hopper (Mrs. Child's and Levi's friend), but he ap- 
 peared not, being lost in Cambridgeport lanes, we 
 supposed. I was sorry, for J. R. L. says he is a charm- 
 
12 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 ing person to know, so simple and natural and fresh. 
 . . . Nevertheless it was a pleasant evening. I wanted 
 to become acquainted with Mrs. Putnam, but Mr. 
 Longfellow stood in the way — between two such 
 linguists one yet imperfect in his Swedish has no 
 chance. Maria Lowell is not less lovely than Maria 
 White, however, and I so seldom emerge from my cell 
 that it was agreeable; there are so seldom gatherings 
 of intellectual people here, too, in this Athens of 
 America. We are in a forlorn state hereabouts, I think, 
 in more ways than one. 
 
 The nes± reference to the Lowells was made in 1846: 
 
 Ere long Maria came up and glided gently in at the 
 door. James looked round with his face so radiant, 
 put his arms around her and seated her in the big chair 
 he had been in. Then sat down close to her and gazed 
 in her lovely face, and as we talked put his hand gently 
 on hers and called her " dearest " and " darling," and 
 seemed perfectly to idealize her, and I felt that their 
 relation in poetry was cold and barren compared to 
 that in their daily life and I was happy to be with such 
 lovely beings. But alas! Maria has a sad cough. Oh, 
 what a misfortune it would be for the world if she were 
 to pass away. . . . 
 
 Maria talked more than I ever heard her before and 
 I should never wish her to stop. She apologized for the 
 aspect of James's room, but said it was much worse 
 before he was married, at any rate. Whereupon James 
 averred that she was like Admiral Van Tromp who 
 carried a broom at his masthead. 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT 13 
 
 November 18, 1853 
 
 ... It is remarkable that James Lowell was . . . 
 entirely unprepared for Maria L.'s death mitil a few 
 days previous; she had been so frail so long, and 
 he was so unable to entertain the thought of her de- 
 parture. He was entirely overwhelmed by it and saw 
 no one for several days, I believe; but he is of an 
 elastic nature, and who could mourn long for one like 
 her in heaven? 
 
 May, 1854 
 
 ■ . . . He [Lowell] told some pleasant things which he 
 might have put into his " Fireside Tales " but for the 
 feehngs of some now liAring — as of Dr. Waterhouse 
 living in same house with his father-in-law, they hating 
 each other mortally. The latter was bedridden and 
 never knew that Dr. W. lived in the house, for Dr. W. 
 used to walk in daily after breakfast, with hat, coat, 
 and cane, inquire after the old gentleman's health and 
 walk out again, into his own part of the house, there to 
 disrobe himself. J. R. L. thinks that out of all the ex- 
 ministers in Cambridge, a new crop of oddities is 
 ripening. . . . Finally, he said, to my great regret, that 
 
 M R is very intemperate, driven to it, he 
 
 thinks, by his wife (that "poor httle ting"); but he 
 says he is never so elegant in his manners as when 
 inebriated. 
 
 I saw Charles Dana [later editor of the New York 
 " Sun "] at Redding's and had some talk. He looks 
 finely and was gay as usual, but I never feel entirely at 
 ease with him — his corners are too clearly defined. 
 
14 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 He is going to leave Brook Farm, but was indignant 
 at the notion of having relaxed his hold on the asso- 
 ciative principles and spoke with great emphasis on 
 that — he is not going into business. . . . He may be 
 going to take Miss [Margaret] Fuller's place in the 
 " Tribune "; he has certainly been wonderfully suc- 
 cessful as an editor. 
 
 Sundry letters to an old friend of the Divinity School 
 days, Sam Johnson, were written from Newburyport. 
 
 June, 1847 
 
 Deae Sam: 
 
 . . . I feel much troubled about the Irish emigrants. 
 A strong popular feeling is rising about them here, I 
 fear, and destined to rise higher: the native Americans 
 did all they could to provoke them the other night, 
 and finally broke the windows of the Cathedral at 
 Charlestown. This feeling is natural and unavoidable, 
 and I see no remedy but an extended system of emi- 
 gration. 
 
 January, 1848 
 Deab Sam: 
 
 . . . Can you suggest any plan for selling some of 
 my sermons in Salem? Mr. Whipple, the publisher, 
 wants to do so, but doesn't know how. It's hardly 
 worth offering to a bookseller who is not a Free-Soiler, 
 and is there any Free-Soil Reading-Room now extant? 
 The price is six cents single, five dollars per hundred, 
 or five cents wholesale. Perhaps some people would 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT " 15 
 
 like it for self and friends. All I ask of you is to 
 
 advise. 
 
 March, 1848 
 
 ... I should like to see you, Sam, to talk over 
 sundry matters of interest. The last two months' 
 experience, perfectly prosperous as it has been, has 
 yet fanned brighter a good many of my doubts as to 
 the existing old bottles into which we are pouring new 
 wine. The more cleariy I see, the more fervently I 
 surrender myself to, the new impulse that is come on 
 the world, the new dawning Age of Faith, the more I 
 am penetrated with the inspiration of this great period 
 of commencing Reconstruction; — the more I find 
 everywhere ground of discontent in all our existing 
 religious and ecclesiastical forms. Say what you please, 
 they are of the past; they are not, to be sure, cum- 
 brous, veiy bad; they are to some extent plastic to 
 new Life; but the new impulse demands a fresh organ- 
 ization to vivify. . . . For myself I have tried as hard 
 to make all the forms of my position pliable, service- 
 able even, as could any one. I have simplified them as 
 much as possible; but had I known beforehand what 
 they would be and how irksome, oftentimes, I think I 
 should never have been permanently settled. 
 
 June, 1848 
 
 Deab Sam: 
 
 ... I wanted particularly to have your sympathy 
 in Boston when I was led so imexpectedly (as you may 
 have heard) into taking a somewhat presumptuous 
 
16 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 position which you would have appreciated more than 
 any one who was there. I refer to what you may 
 probably have heard of, my remarks at the Ministerial 
 Conference on Thursday. 
 
 I wanted you there, for I felt that I was pleading our 
 cause. There had been much discussion, with this 
 question at the bottom of all — are we to be a sect or 
 take a step toward Catholicism? Channing and Parker 
 had spoken for their contemporaries. I told them I 
 rose to speak for the young, and showed how ill they 
 had done their duty to us; how little they had done 
 for us; how they had estranged us and made us feel 
 alone. I showed that they had shown us nothing 
 positive; not a creed,?|not a practical position, — not 
 a catholicity in both respects. Certainly not the last, 
 for I said there was not a young man in the body who 
 had been encouraged by his elders to think freely and 
 speak freely! Nay, we could not even choose oiu* own 
 Class Preacher at Cambridge! (This made a sensation 
 — indeed, it was all listened to and there were a great 
 many there.) I told them the one thing that interested 
 us in them was the capacity we saw in them of being 
 better than they were — the vanguard of the noble 
 cathoHc, reconstructive movement. But that they 
 could never be so long as they rallied round a single 
 theological negation, and held conventions with in- 
 vitations rigidly limited to those of " our denomina- 
 tion," etc. — In short, Sam, I spoke what I knew to 
 be deep in your heart and mine, and more or less in 
 that of others; I know I spoke strongly, and Fred 
 Knapp, a good witness, said I spoke none too much. 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT 17 
 
 Business was waiting to come up afterwards and it was 
 almost the end of the (adjourned) meetiag, so there 
 was no public comment on what I had said, and I had 
 to come away and rush to the cars soon after; but I 
 know I must have done good; and at all events showed 
 them how the current was setting. 
 
 To his mother, the young minister wrote weekly 
 chronicles of his experiences. 
 
 Newbtjetpobt, Sunday, December 28 
 
 Dearest Mother: 
 
 My days, this month, are so busy that it is hard to 
 describe a thing two days old, but you wiU want to 
 hear about the Christmas tree, which grew, glittered, 
 and disappeared in great prosperity. 
 
 . . . For two or three dollars I had bought toys 
 enough at a wholesale store in Boston to supply all the 
 children that good King Herod slew; and the Andrews 
 maidens . . . had collected basket on basket of more 
 substantial presents; the piano was populous with 
 little blue and gray legs and radiant with red and 
 yellow speckled hands with no perceptible fingers. 
 For, as you must know, all statistics fail in the presence 
 of Irish children; and there was no guessing, up to the 
 day and hoiu* itself, how many presents would be 
 wanted. The only plan which seemed rational was to 
 write a list of children to be invited and then double 
 the number; so we began with thirty-five and expected 
 seventy. . • . Then there were children to be invited 
 and elder sisters to be excluded, and other children to 
 
18 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 be got out of the mill, and solar lamps to be borrowed; 
 and Jane and Caroline [Andrews] only half through 
 special mittens for special pets, thought of at the last 
 moment and gaping for thumbs. . . . 
 
 The children were invited at thbee; that the major- 
 ity came soon after one, it is needless to say. . . . Oh, 
 how shall I tell the next event? I was beneath the 
 tree arranging the light behind it — one shriek burst 
 from a dozen hps. I looked up . . . the tree swept 
 away from above my head and fell upon its face with 
 all its wealth of glory, and this at 3 p.m. ! Will you be- 
 lieve that absolutely nothing was injured save a dozen 
 eggs out of fifty, and one toy? Fortunately no lamps 
 were lighted and no children were there.. 
 
 By half-past five they were all dispersed, and then 
 came in a few aristocratic infants, . . . whom Greta 
 briefly designated as " the whooping-cough children," 
 before excluded for fear of that disorder. . . , That 
 closed the pageant — the poor Christmas tree resigned 
 its glories, with nothing to look forward to but the 
 doom touchingly recorded by Hans Andersen in the 
 story of the " Fir Tree " (ours was a pine) ; . . . Jane ^ 
 and Caroline went with me to the evening school and 
 taught with their wonted energy; Mrs. Andrews 
 doubtless sat up till after midnight, as usual, sewing 
 for her own children or somebody's else, while Mr. 
 Andrews read the " Newburyport Herald " or talked 
 
 > The eldest of this remarkable group of sisters was Miss Jane Andrews, 
 author of a juvenile book called Seven Little Sisters, which was translated 
 into Chinese and Japanese. 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT 19 
 
 on in a low, monotonous undertone, or locked doors 
 and windows twice over and then retired. 
 
 Mr. Higginson's outspoken views on slavery finally 
 led to his resignation. 
 
 Newbtjetport, September, 1849 
 
 This letter opens very much like any other letter, 
 but it has some novel things to say — things which 
 affect Mary's and my own coming days, which are 
 cloud and sunshine as one chooses to see them. We 
 think them sunshine, and so we hope and trust will 
 you, when you hear the whole. 
 
 . . . The discontents in the parish, created last 
 winter, slumbering through the summer, but not, as I 
 hoped, dead, have been blown into flames again by the 
 necessity I was under of speaking my mind on Fast 
 Day, and the consequences are a crisis which we were 
 — most happily — ignorant of and have only gradu- 
 ally learned, and leave but one course open for us. 
 
 Several of the leading and richest men, who talked of 
 leaving last winter, are resolved upon it now; minor 
 ones propose to follow; and even my friends feel grave 
 when they look forward and fancy a gradual procession 
 of staunch members retiring one by one, leaving at 
 last a dozen come-outers in the gallery and one more in 
 the pulpit. My (masculine) supporters are in a nu- 
 merical minority and a woeful pecuniary minority, and 
 there is a general opinion that " Mr. Higginson ought 
 to know the state of affairs." No one was, however, 
 willing to take that office . . . but kind old Mr. Wood 
 
20 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 (with a heart divided between General Taylor and me) 
 came at last voluntarily and told the whole storj-; 
 which, indeed, had been previously bursting upon us 
 for a day or two. 
 
 It was evident to me at once, on cross-examining 
 him, that the case was hopeless; that the other storm 
 had blown over, but this would not. . . . 
 
 Well — the end of it is that instead of waiting longer 
 to give my six-months notice, we have resolved to give 
 it *on the anniversary, a week from next Sunday - . . 
 bid adieu to Essex Street, pack our bulky goods in a 
 loft till wanted again, and — now comes the sugar! 
 
 Take lodgings at the Mills! 
 
 This martyrdom in the nineteenth century, dearest 
 Mother, is a singular thing; and if you had Uved in a 
 narrow street for two years, and just come back withal 
 from as many weeks at the Mills, ^ you would know how 
 singular. I have no doubt, if you could look into our 
 hearts at this moment, that you would be indignant at 
 us (even you) for not sympathizing suflSciently in our 
 own misfortunes. But sincerely, if you knew how I 
 especially have longed for this release from a life 
 which did not content me; and how unworthy it has 
 seemed of rational beings to continue Uving in Essex 
 Street when they could live at the Mills; and other 
 such things which are very familiar to us, you would 
 willingly consent to our being, not noble martyrs, but 
 (the much more commonplace character) contented 
 and merry human beings! 
 
 ' The Higginsons repaired to the refuge at Artichoke Mills, where they 
 lived tor two years before going to the next parish at Worcester. 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT 21 
 
 For the year to come, at all events, we feel secure. 
 . . • We two can float lightly on the stream; and we 
 are sure of as much money as many laboring families 
 live on, even without doing anything. 
 
 Of course I regret the change for the people, for I 
 know how many will feel it. . . . But whatever in- 
 fluence I have had over the young people will be a 
 pennanent thing, and I shall be able to renew it 
 hereafter. 
 
 . . . After all, what is all I have been telling you 
 but one of the sudden changes of weather to which our 
 climate is liable, and which it requires but a small 
 development of spiritual health to disregard? Mary 
 and I never notice the east wind; why should we notice 
 this? We are safe on the moral side, safe on the mate- 
 rial, and why not be contented and happy? We are. 
 
 September 18, 1849 
 
 Well, Sunday I offered my resignation in due form. 
 Most expected something of the sort, though some old 
 ladies did go home in tears declaring that " they did n't 
 expect this" and " somebody ought to have told 
 them." I tried to soften all and not exasperate, and 
 succeeded; ... It produced a very favorable effect 
 all round, and some have taken occasion to declare 
 themselves my friends of whom I did not expect it, 
 especially Mr. Morss, the editor and thinker-general 
 for Newburyport, who has always fought my views 
 vigorously, though cherishing a " sneaking kindness " 
 for me personally. Indeed, now that it is settled, there 
 are symptoms of a sort of reaction, and the murmur of 
 
22 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 previous discontent is drowned by the chorus of female 
 wailing. . . . 
 
 The state of sentiment among the ladies of the 
 Pleasant Street Society, wedded and single, is peculiar, 
 imanimous, and need not be dwelt upon. Let Anna 
 [his sister] imagine herself in their situation — what 
 would you say or do to the men, my dear? Husbands 
 and fathers have to hold their tongues at home, I 
 fancy, and go and let it out at the Reading-Room. 
 
 Aetichokb Mills, October, 1849 
 
 . . . You ought to have the earliest news of our 
 escape from the perils of fatigue, falling furniture, and 
 others incident to moving and final happy transfer to 
 this golden valley of Indian-summer leaves and sun- 
 light. . . . There is the most wonderful cascade of 
 yellow leaves along the drooping boughs of the lovely 
 elm that veils our south window, and a yellow grove 
 glistens against the blue water of the Merrimack on the 
 western side; while far away some red oaks set off the 
 faint outline of hill and sky. Inside we have foimd 
 abimdant room . . . and all the class of words, of 
 which " cosy " is the type, rise naturally to the lips on 
 entering it. . . • As for Essex Street the last " relic or 
 deed " has been removed and the key surrendered to 
 Mr. Frawth-num [Frothingham] (this is the accurate 
 Newburyport pronunciation). . . . 
 
 Up here we are quite bewildered by the calm that 
 succeeds the storm. It is pleasant to go or stay with a 
 sense of secure possession and not have to husband 
 every moment quite so avariciously; to float among 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT 23 
 
 the floating garden of gorgeous leaves which in little 
 clusters overspread the little river, and after trying to 
 count the infinite variety of shapes that are scattered 
 together, feel that one can come back and count more 
 to-morrow; pleasant to realize that the sun will not 
 set to-night only over those quiet hills of West New- 
 bury, and that the frosty dew will glisten every morn- 
 ing. We feel no hurry but that of Nature, who is 
 slowly and surely harvesting every leaf, so that for her 
 gold as for the poorer of California one must look soon 
 or it will be gone. In presence of these things, however, 
 town life seems the merest dream, and it appears a 
 conventionalism only in us when we recognize any 
 world beyond this valley. 
 
 The following spring he wrote, still in love with " the 
 MUIs": 
 
 . . . That subterranean fire in Nature of which 
 Thoreau speaks seems very near the surface; the buds 
 and catkins are unusually large; we bring in alder 
 blooms, in their winter dress, stiff and black, nearly an 
 inch long, and the water soon brings them out, till 
 they droop to long yellow tresses and then let fall their 
 powdery seeds. We have tried the birch catkins also, 
 but their time is later and they have not yet come out. 
 Meanwhile even outdoors the little muddy lichen-cups 
 rise under the snow, and overhead the oaks and beeches 
 have still a perpetual summer in their withered leaves. 
 There are no pines very near us, but the groves on the 
 point across the river show now in their native green- 
 ness, now white with snow, now green with mist. 
 
24 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 About his friend, Levi Thaxter, Higginson wrote his 
 mother: 
 
 Levi popped in, on his way to the Shoals. He and 
 Mr. Leighton have bought the most beautiful of the 
 islands; are going to bring it under cultivation, have 
 a boarding-house for invalids and aesthetic visitors, and 
 do something to civilize the inhabitants of the other 
 islands. It is really quite the " Locksley Hall " idea 
 " to burst all links of habit," etc. He is in high spirits 
 with the plan. 
 
 Again he wrote in 1849: 
 
 We had last week a visit from Levi: ... he lives in 
 a house by himself with his man John, a native, in- 
 separable from him — like Robinson Crusoe precisely 
 and very happy. You should have heard his accounts 
 of his cooking and other experiences and our shouts of 
 laughter. He had been down to Watertown to help 
 fit out Jonas [Thaxter] for California! What a nice 
 place for disposing of aU odd sticks that is I — all 
 except Levi, perhaps. 
 
 Later the Higginsons spent several days at the 
 Shoals, where Unitarian clergymen were congregating 
 and where the Reverend John Weiss and his host were 
 making things lively. 
 
 Meantime little Weiss is uttering all sorts of male- 
 dictions; he declares Sam [Longfellow] and I depressed 
 him merely because we preached on Sunday; but I 
 wonder what you would think of his depression. Never 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT 25 
 
 a schoolboy in vacation was so full of glee, and his 
 wild pranks with Levi are perpetually startling us, day 
 and night. At night they have fireworks and get up at 
 midnight blazing explosions on the staircase, with a 
 mock alarm of fire, extinguished by themselves, with 
 immense shouting and triumph, " with real water." 
 By day, the sudden shrieking of a child is heard from 
 Weiss's room. We are astounded, while Levi rushing 
 up reappears with the little man in his arms, his 
 wonderful face contorted into an entirely infantile 
 wretchedness. And so they go on. Weiss has the most 
 beautifully expressive face I have ever seen; in fact his 
 whole body is so small that the expression crowded 
 into every part is more intense than any common 
 person's utmost power; his shoulders say more than 
 most people's mouths, and his glee and drollery are 
 infinite; he takes the most enthusiastic delight in 
 Maria Fay's and Mr. Angler's nightly singings, and 
 his magnificent face is as good a part as any. I think I 
 never knew anybody who made such an impression of 
 genius; and this intense fun and diablerie, which is 
 somewhat repressed among parishioners, works itself 
 all out with Levi of whom he is very fond. We stay at 
 Levi's. ... At the hotel are other clerical gentlemen. 
 . . . Celia Leighton looks twenty, though barely 
 fifteen; she has entirely lost her affectation and her 
 beauty and become a plain modest girl : she is thought 
 highly of by her schoolmistress and others, but shows 
 no positive traits. 
 
26 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Artichoke Mili^, August. 1850 
 
 Dearest Mother: 
 
 We left . . . Appledore last Thursday; having got 
 through one storm, but with the prospect of another. 
 It creates a singular feeling to know for twenty-four 
 hours that you cannot get away from a place; it is an 
 experience I have very rarely had, having commonly 
 the command of my own feet if all else fails. But there 
 was one day when we really could not leave the Shoals; 
 the regular boat remaining in Portsmouth, and there 
 being no other large enough to dare the surging sea. 
 We had, however, no accident calling for succor from 
 Terra Firma, and it needed more than this to depress 
 the spirits of Mr. Weiss, James Lowell, and Levi. We 
 had one day of glorious sea, and we were almost the 
 whole time watching it upon the rocks. 
 
 I believe I did not tell you of our expedition to Duck 
 Island, the largest and most solitary uninhabited 
 island of the group: I had often watched the surf 
 breaking over it to the northeast before reaching us, 
 and wished to set foot on it, which can, however, only 
 be done in calm weather. We had a day of such, and 
 two boats of us went. It seemed a strange daring as we 
 approached it; the long seaweed floated around the 
 gray rocks, and the waves broke louder as we ap- 
 proached, more desolately and more forbidding. Sea- 
 birds sat in rows on the rocks gazing at the invaders, or 
 soared and screamed above our heads. It was like 
 landing on one of the Orkneys. The island is . . . all 
 rock with marshy places, full of reeds and flowers. 
 Among the rocks the gulls make their nests of a little 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT 27 
 
 scattered grass, or drop their eggs in the fissures at 
 random. We found here and there an egg or a callow 
 gray nestling, with little web feet. At last I found one 
 half grown which had squeezed itself into a cleft of the 
 rock and kept so still that I stepped over it as a frag- 
 ment of rock, being precisely the same colors; on 
 looking farther I found two more. Taking them up 
 and putting them down again, they would run away 
 till they found a cleft and then squeeze their heads in 
 and remain perfectly still. Such were the hospitalities 
 of the island. 
 
 A little more than a year later, Higginson wrote to 
 his mother of Levi Thaxter's marriage to Celia Leigh- 
 ton, in 1851. 
 
 . . . You do not fully appreciate this strange and 
 impracticable, but chivalrous and noble person whose 
 immediate future it is hard and even sad to predict; 
 whose past has been wayward and perhaps useless, but 
 aspiring and stainless. . . . Levi writes a funny ac- 
 count of the quiet little Kittery Point minister. Rev- 
 erend Seth Somebody, his survival of the voyage more 
 easily than of Jonas's witticisms, Jonas [Thaxter] the 
 joker, on whose every wink and word the Reverend 
 Seth hung in ecstasy; then his palpitations at the 
 explosion of champagne corks and the feats of his 
 moustached colleague (little Weiss). There were pres- 
 ent all the Appledore Islanders, including Captain 
 Fabius Becker from Smutty Nose; all the Weisses (the 
 baby's cradle being kept in the room adjoining), and 
 Jonas and Lucy Thaxter. " We had a merry time," 
 
28 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 closes Levi in his letter. " and then I took my dear wife 
 home in the beautiful night, bright and clear with stars 
 and a growing moon." 
 
 A letter about the Thaxters was written much later 
 to Mrs. J. T. Fields: 
 
 Cambbidge, January, 1898 
 
 Deab Mrs. Fields: 
 
 I have been reading your paper on Celia Thaxter 
 with such pleasure that I wish to express it, and also to 
 make one or two minor criticisms. I do not see what 
 you mean by saying that Levi Thaxter " went as a 
 missionary to the wild fisher folk at Star." He was 
 at that time my ' most intimate friend and we corre- 
 sponded constantly. He and Weiss went, not to Star, 
 but to the lighthouse to board with the Leightons, 
 and were so delighted that Levi and Leighton bought 
 Appledore (not then so named) and built the hotel — a 
 foolish enterprise for him, it was generally thought. I 
 don't remember his ever living at Star, and to call any 
 interest he had in the fishermen a " missionary " 
 feeling seems to me quite an error. He had a great 
 fancy for them and had a special pet named John, after 
 whom he named " John's Cove " and then his second 
 boy, but the word " missionary," seems to me quite 
 out of place and to give a wrong picture of him. Should 
 you reprint the paper I wish you would consider this. 
 
 I think that on the whole you handle the difficult 
 subject of the relation between the two with great 
 delicacy and substantial truthi, . . . The more she 
 plunged with eagerness into the novelty of social 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT 29 
 
 attention, the more he shrank from it; and, moreover, 
 devoted himself to a motherly care of the eldest boy. 
 . . , But in youth he was a master of the revels, full 
 of fun and frolic; and his great desire was to be an 
 actor and he spent a year in New York studyiug, to his 
 father's great dismay. You speak of his deep attach- 
 ment to his parents; it may have been so to his mother, 
 but certainly not to his father, a rather grim country 
 lawyer whose only desire was to make Levi the same, 
 and who clucked after him like a hen who has hatched 
 ducks. 
 
 I dare say you got your impression partly from Celia, 
 who, with all her vehement and delightful straight- 
 forwardness, had a tinge of the melodramatic in her 
 descriptions, as when she always speaks of the hotel as 
 " The Great House." . . . 
 
 I observe that you do not speak of her strong inter- 
 est in spirituahsm, but you probably include it in your 
 " everywhere and patiently." 
 
 Another friend of that period was William Henry 
 Hurlbut, a fellow student at the Divinity School. In 
 letters to his mother, Mr. Higginsou reported some of 
 Hurlbut's experiences abroad: 
 
 He not only was blessed by the Pope, but by the 
 society of the Countess Ossoli [Margaret Fuller] whom 
 he admires very much. Why she wedded her " un- 
 developed and uninteresting Italian " does not appear; 
 Hurlbut says, however, " she probably married him 
 as a representative of an imagined possibility in the 
 Italian character which I have not yet been able to 
 
30 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 believe in." He [Count OssoH] is very handsome, of 
 Spanish rather than Itahan aspect. He speaks no 
 English, sits at home in the evening in a military frock, 
 and when her visitors come in, goes to a cafe. He will 
 no doubt be thoroughly miserable in America, whither 
 they go in a few months. . . . But above all he de- 
 scribes a visit to the Brownings, to whom Madame 
 Ossoli introduced him. They live in the most charm- 
 ing way, in a largw old palace with a great parlor in 
 which they sit in the evening; on the one side a large 
 fireplace with an open fire, close to which sits Mrs. 
 Browning, almost lost in a large armchair; on the 
 opposite side sits her husband, and between them is a 
 third chair for a guest, as they rarely have more than 
 one at a time. On the opposite side of the room are 
 ranged her bookshelves full of well-thumbed books 
 including many Greek ones in rare editions, which H. 
 describes with gusto. The ends of the room are filled 
 with pictures, quaint furniture, statuettes, and all 
 kinds of things picked up by Browning in his all- 
 observant rambles. For he is perfectly what Landor 
 describes him in a sonnet which I had written in the 
 begiuning of H.'s Browning: 
 
 "Since Chaucer was alive and hale 
 No man hath walked along our roads with step 
 So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue 
 So varied in discourse." 
 
 H. describes meeting him walking in the street, looking 
 so firm, condensed, and animated, with bright eyes 
 peering about in every direction: and this seems to be 
 his impression of him everywhere — perfect health and 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT SI 
 
 freshness, with no fine frenzy, but universal animation 
 and activity. Such, I fancy, Shakespeare might have 
 been, and I quite like to fancy Browning such. She 
 seems frail, but well, for her, " the bold one " having 
 won fire to transform her to health. I should have 
 added that this great hall they live in is hung with its 
 fine old antique tapestry and they wave round the 
 little lady till she looks as shadowy as any of the 
 knights and ladies there portrayed. 
 
 After Hurlbut's return, the chronicle was thus 
 continued: 
 
 Hurlbut . . . was as agreeable as only he can be. 
 . . . Mary considered him occasionally nonsensical, 
 but he entertained me excessively, gave me more in- 
 formation on all subjects than anybody else has (if I 
 could only remember it), and told inimitable stories, 
 which may do for future occasions to repeat to my 
 mama. . . , Hurlbut, moreover, declares a year at 
 Rome in the very gayest society to be far less perilous 
 to a young damsel's or youth's sobriety and humility 
 than a week in Philadelphia society or a day in Wash- 
 iogton — so let fears be laid aside. 
 
 [He] told us, as usual, many interesting things. He 
 saw a good deal of the Hunt family, of Brattleboro' — 
 Mrs. H. described to him her house-painting experi- 
 ences. He thought highly of William Hunt [the artist] 
 and told us something worth repeating. W. H. came to 
 Florence in wretched health, dispirited, indolent and 
 self-indulgent, in danger of sinking into a mere dilet- 
 tante, though in Paris he had been something more. 
 
32 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Hurlbut had an interleaved copy of Jameson's 
 "Italian Painters," with notes by Margaret Fuller. 
 ... In this volume there was an account of Correggio, 
 describing his earnestness of purpose in becoming not 
 merely a self-indulgent dabbler in art, but a regener- 
 ator of it, and the author added a complaint of the 
 rarity of such characters, opposite which M. F. had 
 written a note — " And yet all might he such." This 
 book Hurlbut lent to Hunt. Shortly after a new life 
 seemed to spring up in him and he was wholly trans- 
 formed; he became earnest, laborious, and invigor- 
 ated, nor did Hurlbut understand the change till, long 
 afterwards. Hunt referred to this book and said that 
 slight note of M. F.'s struck a chord in him that made 
 the moment ain era in his life. This is one of the many 
 fruits of her chance seeds. 
 
 He told us about Tennyson's marriage which you 
 will like to hear. It seems that twenty years ago, at 
 the time of his early volumes of poems, he wooed and 
 won a fair maiden; won her heart, but not her head or 
 conscience, for she was very strait in her theology and 
 he very lax in comparison, and with all her efforts she 
 could not bring herself to link their destinies, and so, 
 alas, they parted. Yet she was true to him, and re- 
 fused other fine offers; and so ten years passed away. 
 Then the poet wrote to her again to ask if any change 
 had come in their fates, and still the stern lady wrote 
 back No. So passed ten years more, and both remained 
 true, in their absence and silence. Then came " In 
 Memoriam " with its inspiration and its faith, and in 
 one week after its appearance there arrived a letter 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT 33 
 
 from the lady, avowing her conscience set at rest at 
 last by that wonderful book, and hinting that all 
 barriers were now thrown down! A month more saw 
 them united, and their first pilgrimage was to Arthui 
 Henry Hallam's tomb. 
 
 Truly it will be a romantic story which writes the 
 records of this generation of English poets; and this 
 graver wooing of Tennyson's goes well by the graceful 
 talf of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning! 
 
 Hurlbut is quite sure that he saw Tennyson, though 
 not knowing it at the time. That is, he saw at Chelten- 
 ham a very remarkable looking man walking with a 
 lady, whose expression seemed entirely unlike any- 
 thing he had seen in England, in its ideality and in- 
 tensity, and whose whole aspect corresponded entirely 
 to the account he afterwards heard of Alfred, who also, 
 it appeared, was at Cheltenham at that precise time! 
 
 This note to Emerson explains itself: 
 
 Aetichoke Mills, July, 1850 
 During your absence I made a visit to your study 
 which I would gladly have had a visit to yourself 
 likewise. I saw several things which I coveted, and 
 this first edition of Tennyson was especially tempting; 
 I had pleasant memories of it and had long wished 
 to meet it again. Emboldened perhaps, by Ellery'a 
 [Channing] daring spirit, I borrowed it, promising 
 myself to return it in a week. Alas, that the conscience 
 should be so hardened by time, but I have kept it six 
 weeks, and do not feel so guilty as when I first pocketed 
 
34 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 it. Perhaps the same influence may have softened your 
 surprise at such gipsy habits, and you may accept my 
 thanks as some equivalent. 
 
 Very respectfully yours. 
 
 In 1850 Mr. Higginson wrote from Artichoke Mills 
 to his mother: 
 
 Don't let me forget to say that at South Hingham 
 ... I did see one of the Betseys, and not only see but 
 stay with, and not only a Betsey but a Betsey Gushing 
 — but only a Mrs. B. C. I will candidly confess, not 
 the renowned Missis. " No, ma'am," said I, as I 
 warmed my feet in a leisurely way at the air-tight. " I 
 have never been in Hingham, but my mother lived 
 here for a time." " Why, mercy's sake, who was your 
 mother? " was the reply. " Louisa Storrow, ma'am," 
 said her son with dignity. " Wha-a-t " exclaimed the 
 excellent lady promptly, pausing halfway out of the 
 closet with a sugar-bowl in her hand. " Why, be you 
 Louisa Storer's son?" "Undoubtedly, ma'am," said I 
 modestly; "did you know her ? " " Know her I " said 
 she. " Why, she married General Lincoln's son! " Trans- 
 fixed with horror, you may conceive how I disclaimed 
 the imputation that my mother had ever demeaned 
 herself so unutterably, though I never heard of 
 General Lincoln except as the steamboat in which we 
 went to Hull. I mentally paralyzed the good lady and 
 perplexed her so utterly that she could only emerge 
 from the closet at last where she had still grasped the 
 sugar-bowl, and setting it down she at last amicably 
 observed, " Well, guess I 'd better get your supper first 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT 35 
 
 and then we'll see about it." Again and again during 
 my visit did she renew the charge, and at last, wearied 
 out, abandoned the theory, but only to hurt it with a 
 final suggestion as we sat at breakfast Monday morn- 
 ing — " Well, it must have been tour Grandma." 
 This she regarded as a compromise which she could 
 admit, and I left her leaning on that. But she con- 
 sented to refer the matter to some mysterious aunt of 
 her husband's, who has ere now settled the matter and 
 explained the difference between Storer and Storrow, 
 In other respects the Widow Gushing was a lively 
 elderly lady with an intelligent come-outer nephew. 
 
 A letter dated February, 1850, describes the im- 
 pression made on the writer by Mrs. Kemble: 
 
 I had never even seen her before, and the tones of 
 that imequalled voice . • . and the myriad expressions 
 of that unequalled face — perhaps I should rather say 
 those myriad voices and faces condensed into one — ■ 
 were all new to me. 
 
 . . . The play was the " Midsummer Night's 
 Dream." . . . 
 
 How shall I describe the immense animal spirits, the 
 utter transformation of voice, face, and gesture, with 
 which this extraordinary woman threw herself into the 
 comedy. ..." Here, Peter Quince," from a throat 
 whose pinched meagreness the most starved day of 
 Ohver Twist's life never could have equalled — and 
 this on as portly a form as the country can produce, a 
 woman whose arm could floor Mr. TUden. And the 
 voice matched the throat — from starvation up to the 
 
36 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 most burly and deep-chested tone, nothing escaped 
 her. 
 
 . . . Shut your eyes, and you would wonder what 
 theatre could command such a variety of talent, down 
 to the least performers; open them, and the illusion 
 was not destroyed, for her face became a different face 
 for every person and the stage might have been covered 
 with men and women and yet added nothing. A stout 
 gentleman sat before me, wiping his forehead and then 
 looking up in the gallery to find Lysander, to whom 
 Hermia so passionately called; I smiled at him, but 
 doubtless did the same thing. . . . My pen fails, as I 
 think of Bottom and Titania. The first interview 
 summed it all up — nothing more could carry farther 
 the delicious absurdity — absurdity? No, the wonder 
 and the genius. The great oaf will not show that he is 
 frightened, so walks up and down (you see the illusion 
 in my using this phrase) singing his hoarse, silly song, 
 to show that he is not afraid. Not a ray of anything 
 but a heavy conceit in his round, staring face, not a 
 tinge of a tune in his dull voice, he sings in a sort of 
 hand-organ way about 
 
 " The ouzel-locks, so black of hue " — 
 
 when — Titania wakes and "with a sweet, bewildered, 
 enraptured face, upturned to heayen with all the soul 
 in it, and a voice of accordant tenderness — 
 " What angel wakes me from my flowery bed? " 
 
 How shall I convey any impression of it ? Earth and 
 sky are not farther apart than these two parts as 
 she gave them, and yet throughout, her delicate tact. 
 
CAMBRIDGE AM) NEWBURYPORT 37 
 
 like the atmosphere, softly and gracefully united the 
 two. 
 
 Perhaps the glory of the play lay mainly in this part 
 of the plot. I cannot believe that it was ever given 
 befbpe — ■ for on the stage the palpable grotesqueness of 
 the asses' ears, nay, of the fairy form even, would spoil 
 it all — 't is too airy for anything but the voice and her 
 voice. So perfect was it from beginning to end that 
 though I laughed to tears I have a different sensation 
 now. As Lamb says of one of his great actors in Mal- 
 volio, there was an element of pathos in it withal, 
 which comes up to the memory. It is folly and mad- 
 ness, to be sure, when we think of Bottom's sensations, 
 but who would not be foolish or mad in the love 
 of such a creature as Titania. . . . Convulsed with 
 laughter as those moments were, I yet look back upon 
 them as if I had heard a requiem; and henceforth 
 Bottom is to my mind as much a creature of pathos as 
 Ophelia. 
 
 A letter written in May, 1850, was from Brattleboro', 
 Vermont, where a water-cure once flourished. 
 
 This sheet ... is written in the pride of a half-hour 
 before breakfast, by which you are not to infer that 
 it is possible for breakfast to be late, but for me to be 
 early; in my mother's household nothing is irregular 
 but the sons. . . . 
 
 I am looking out between my words upon a view 
 darker blue than my Merrimack one ever is; but the 
 mist hangs over the top of the mountain and takes off 
 half its natural height; this is wrong; it should come 
 
38 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 down and disperse below to give us good weather; but 
 the only rule of this rainy month is that the sun always 
 comes out when you don't expect it, and the rain when 
 you expect the sun; so my fingers at this moment cast 
 a shadow on the paper. . . . Under these circum- 
 stances we thought it best to take all the moisture to- 
 gether and so we had a party of Hydropaths. Some 
 came in tubs, others paddled in punts, and the most 
 desperate invalids came in douches through the ceiling. 
 We had large pails of water for supper. There was Miss 
 Gibbs and Mrs. Greene and the very Reverend Mr. 
 Berteau with a sharp nose, and Lieutenant Greene, of 
 the navy, and Lieutenant Ehninger (think of that!) of 
 the army, who was in the Mexican War (think of 
 that!!) and was wounded and left on the field for dead 
 and afterwards made Lieutenant instead (think of 
 that!!!), and is a commonplace and uninteresting mor- 
 tal, after all. . . . Hydropaths keep early hours, 
 and even this broke up soon after ten. Thus we find 
 resources indoors and sometimes run out between the 
 drops. In the evening Louisa plays us songs without 
 words and spirit waltzes and Erlkings and other things 
 tender and terrible. 
 
 December 19, 1851 
 
 Wednesday night I lectured at Milford, Massachu- 
 setts. On the way up from Framingham ... I ob- 
 served an excitement among railroad oflicials about the 
 lecture — conductor asked passengers if they were 
 going, and brakemen asked each other if they were. 
 As I moralized on the good effects of Lyceums among 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NT^WBURYPORT 39 
 
 the people, the conductor came along; I asked some 
 questions which revealed me as the lecturer; then the 
 mystery came out. " Su-," said he, " do you know that 
 the President of the Lyceum is absent, and the Vice- 
 President, who will introduce you, is the engineer of 
 this very train! " Hence the excitement among the 
 brakemen; but the engineer turned out quite a char- 
 acter; he went home with me after lecture and was 
 very agreeable, and our acquaintance ended in my 
 riding down with him on the locomotive the next 
 morning; as novel and exciting a steed as a man can 
 well bestride, I assure you. In the cold frosty morning 
 to skim over those glistening rails at the rate of twenty 
 miles an hour with a dozen cars behind and nothing 
 but a steam-pipe in front gives one a sense of helpless- 
 ness, I assure you, though my literary friend, Mr. 
 Jackman, reined in the monster as if it had been an 
 enfeebled sheep. 
 
 The name of Jenny Lind, the " Swedish nightin- 
 gale," is httle known to the present generation. But 
 she had a world-wide reputation, and was perhaps the 
 most popular public singer of her day. During her 
 two-year American tour, she was married in Boston to 
 Otto Goldschmidt, who was then conducting the Bach 
 Choir. Mr. Higginson, in a letter dated February, 
 1852, tells his mother something about the wedding: 
 
 Mrs. Ward had known all about Jenny's betrothal 
 for a long time (as had Mrs. John Dwight and hardly 
 anybody else), and Jenny had always said she should 
 drive up there some time unexpectedly and be married. 
 
40 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 and so it was. She was dressed in Swedish style, at 
 the wedding, in white muslin and veil, with a myrtle 
 crown and small wreath of orange buds. It appears 
 that O. G. has been attached to her for years, but she 
 has resisted; that he came to this country at her rec- 
 ommendation, and he is a very agreeable and culti- 
 vated person, and Mrs. Ward liked him extremely. 
 He is also a remarkable business man, Sam Ward 
 thought, and had managed her concerts for some time. 
 She is a perfectly deUghtful guest; goes singing up and 
 down stairs, and sings every evening. She gave Mrs. 
 Ward a diamond pin with diamond pendants. Her 
 bridesmaid was little Lily Ward (the child who wanted 
 to die so as to have a little conversation with Daniel 
 and ask him how he really felt when in the lions' den!). 
 The Wards have had a letter from them at North- 
 ampton in which she signs herself " Jenny Gold- 
 schmidt — do'esn't it look prettier? " — while he dates 
 the letter as so many days " from the beginning of his 
 life " — all which is very satisfactory; and they are 
 to stay at Northampton till June and then sail for 
 Europe. Also she is said not to be so rich as has been 
 supposed, and she always expects to sing in public 
 more or less because she would not think it right not 
 to use her power. 
 
 March, 1851 
 
 I don't Icnow if I have mentioned my principal crony 
 this winter — Professor Crosby, formerly of Dart- 
 mouth. You know, perhaps, his history; how he wrote 
 a most admirable and pungent letter to the American 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT 41 
 
 Tract Society against endless punishment, and lost his 
 professorship thereby. He is a man of great variety of 
 knowledge and thought, clear, pertinacious, hard- 
 headed, amiable, mild, but without much sentiment; 
 and I have enjoyed him, though Mary compares him 
 to sawdust and all kinds of dry and gritty particles. 
 . . . He has a taste for heretics and comes to see me 
 constantly. 
 
 These jottings.are from the journal of 1852 and refer 
 to Mr. Higginson's interest in the temperance move- 
 ment. Marshal Tukey was a picturesque figure in 
 those days, being a dashing, audacious, and most eflS- 
 cient police oflScial, a terror to offenders. 
 
 In Boston, January 15. I went to see Marshal 
 Tukey wishing to make arrangements for a meeting 
 between him and Mr. Neal Dow at the Temperance 
 Convention. 
 
 He received me very cordially, remembered my 
 face and smiled when I referred to the Sims case. 
 
 " I suppose you think," said he, " that after working 
 so hard in a bad cause, I ought to be ready to work in a 
 good one. 
 
 " I would not for $25,000 " (he said) " have ac- 
 cepted an office requiring me to catch fugitive slaves — ■ 
 but after I had taken the office I could not draw back 
 from any of its duties. It is so with the Maine Law — 
 I will execute it, if required, but I would not have 
 accepted the office with that understanding. . . . 
 
 " If I am required by the Government to execute it. 
 
42 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 I shall do so. A few weeks ago I thought they did not 
 mean to execute it and wished accordingly to get rid 
 of me, but I do not think so now. It can be executed, 
 but it is no slight thing. Forty millions of capital to 
 contend with " (he probably included distillers). 
 
 July 18. Marshal Tukey told our Temperance men 
 that in the course of that interview he went out and 
 into the Mayor's [Quincy] room and mentioned to him 
 that I was there. " Let him go to the Devil — don't 
 have anything to do with him," was the answer. 
 
 Also from the journal: 
 
 Fehruary 29 (1852), Ellery said: 
 
 " There was no electricity in that lecture of Emer- 
 son's on Economy — it was dull. No weather in it, no 
 outdoors. 
 
 " Emerson has no love of beauty or knowledge of it 
 — he gave it all up after he wrote ' Nature ' — he is all 
 humanitarianism — he is every shrewd Yankee mer- 
 chant — that 's what he is. He saw early that he must 
 have a system if he wanted to make any impression — 
 everybody was unsettled and he must be fixed. 
 
 " In fact " (he went on, sitting on the footstool, pipe 
 in mouth, by the stove, staring in), " nobody has any 
 knowledge of beauty; it's the rarest thing. People all 
 go along, just like dogs, without seeing anything in 
 nature. It separates you directly from men, if you care 
 anything about it; you are unsocial and puzzle them. 
 Beauty is just as hard as Emerson is on his side, 
 but his is the popular side — all this humanitarianism 
 business. There is Thoreau, he knows about it — give 
 
CAMBRIDGE AND NEWBURYPORT 4S 
 
 him sunshine and a handful of nuts, and he has 
 enough.". . . 
 
 Walking in the Joppa street . .' . he said, "Do you 
 feel as if these New England people were your country- 
 men? I do not — the Irish and English seem to be so; 
 they settle down at once as if they had lived here all 
 their lives; but every New Englander looks as if he 
 were just stopping here a minute on his way to parts 
 unknown. A Yankeei s something between a piece of 
 tobacco and a squash -pie — he's always spitting, that's 
 the tobacco; and his complexion, that 's the pie," — so 
 he went on. 
 
 This talk is just like Keats's letters. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE WORCESTER PERIOD 
 
 Mr. Higginson lived and preached in Worcester for 
 about ten years before the Civil War called him away. 
 Extracts from journals and letters of this period are apt 
 to be undated and fragmentary and are often arranged 
 according to subject rather than date. They are not 
 chronicles of Worcester life, but rather a record of 
 absences. 
 
 To an old parishioner: 
 
 WoHCESTEH, June 
 
 . . . We are kept sound asleep all the time by the 
 heavy scent of roses and pinks and syringas. Add to 
 this " Sir Charles Grandison " in seven small volumes, 
 and you will understand what Lotos-Eaters we have 
 become. 
 
 Did you ever read " Sir Charles" ? It is a new ex- 
 perience to me and surpasses my best hopes. The hero- 
 ines write as many letters every day as you write 
 Sundays. Sir Charles, I find, to be a human being, 
 whose grandeurs and graces fill me with reverence. 
 And Lady G. you would find a piece of wickedness to 
 whom you would instantly swear eternal friendship. 
 Her matrimonial squabbles are as fresh and modern as 
 David's and Dora's, though of a more piquant char- 
 acter. I cannot conceive of your not reading it every 
 summer. . . . 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 45 
 
 Sir Charles has such beautiful ways; he goes to a 
 house where single young ladies reside and a lover for 
 each always happens in; then he immediately gives 
 them five thousand pounds and they are married im- 
 mediately. All those, however, who were married pre- 
 viously are found quarrelling; these he reconciles and 
 gives them three thousand pounds. 
 
 These comments on American girls would hardly 
 have been made in our changed days: 
 
 Just now we are staying a few days with my newly 
 married niece. The gossip of her young lady acquaint- 
 ances fills me with renewed dismay at the contempla- 
 tion of young ladies' lives, especially those who have 
 had what are called " advantages." Girls talk folly 
 enough to young men, but nothing to what they talk to 
 each other. 
 
 Joyfully I turn to Harriet Hosmer the sculptor. 
 
 Mr. Higginson often got a good deal of entertain- 
 ment as well as discomfort out of his lecture or preach- 
 ing trips. 
 
 Bhookltn, N.Y., November, 1852 
 
 . . . We reached Norwich at nine and took the 
 steamer; and here, better stUl, appeared Henry Ward 
 Beecher. I sat by him and read " Bleak House " in the 
 cabin, and at last, when he moved to go to bed, I 
 introduced or recalled myself to him. " Oh, yes," said 
 he heartily, " bless your soul, I remember you"; and 
 so we talked until twelve o'clock: chiefly about 
 Wasson and churches generally. He defended pews (to 
 
46 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 be rented, not owned) and said some very sensible 
 things in their defence, of which I had never thought 
 before. He was very cordial — wished me to know 
 Reverend Mr. Storrs of Brooklyn, his associate in the 
 " Independent," and said I must come to tea with him 
 on Monday and Mr. S. should come also. . . . 
 
 [Charles] Dana was at his office, much changed from 
 his former brown and robust self, pale, thin, and 
 bearded; but seemed very content, though rather 
 tired; said he could endure much more labor in that 
 way than any other. He had a good deal of his old 
 dogmatism. . . . Mr. Ripley was there, fat and un- 
 interesting. 
 
 George Curtis pleased me far better. He seemed 
 very cordial and not at all foppish. His voice and 
 manner are extremely like Mr. Bowen (Reverend 
 C. J.). . . . The likeness kept recurring to me as I sat 
 in his pretty study, full of books and engravings. . . . 
 He has written two perfectly charming essays on 
 Emerson and Hawthorne for the lovely illustrated 
 "Homes of American Authors"; a most racy and 
 charming picture of Concord and its peculiar life. I 
 read these at the bookstore afterward with great 
 delight. 
 
 ... I learned one good fact; that the arms of the 
 Wentworths are three cats' heads, which explains my 
 tendencies [fondness for milk]. 
 
 This evening I have been to H. W. Beecher's church. 
 It is wonderful — an immense church and every seat 
 crowded — far beyond Theodore Parker's. Double 
 rows of chairs in the aisles and such attention. He 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 47 
 
 preached almost entirely extempore and it was like 
 his lectures; no eloquence of thought, or httle, br 
 much eloquence of feeling; intense, simple earnest- 
 ness; no grace, no condensation; no moderation or 
 taste in delivery; and very little to remember. I do 
 not think I should go to hear him often, or it would be 
 more for the magnetism of the congregation than any- 
 thing else. I think him far less impressive intellectu- 
 ally than Mr. Parker, with whom one naturally com- 
 pares him. 
 
 During the same visit, he wrote: 
 
 . . . H. W. B. is charming at home, a sort of great, 
 happy child, and so his wife and Mr. S. treated him. 
 They were as liberal and friendly as possible, and I 
 talked all my heresies without fear. I wish you could 
 have heard them roar with laughter when I quoted Mr. 
 Emerson's remark that Evangehcal doctrines were 
 like the measles and the whooping-cough — important 
 to those who have them and interesting to those who 
 have had them; but not important or even very in- 
 telligible to those who have not! H. W. B. also told 
 me with infinite amusement of W. H. C.'s anxiously 
 warning him not to underrate certain theological 
 doctrines — a Channing warning a Beecherl 
 
 Of a later trip to Brooklyn, Higginson wrote: 
 
 I stayed with Sam Longfellow from Thursday night 
 to Monday night. The former night was stormy, and 
 I was invited to repeat the lecture, which I did to 
 quite a different audience, on Monday. Henry Ward 
 
48 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Beecher announced it from his pulpit on Sunday, very 
 cordially, and told his people he wished it could be 
 given in his church, which indeed he had previously 
 proposed to me. Besides this, I spoke twice on Sun- 
 day to large audiences, though it was quite stormy. 
 
 Sam dwells in clover with one of those elderly ladies 
 who are born to coddle young bachelor divines, Mrs. 
 Jackson. He has a large, charming study, a chaos of 
 books and works of art, with a great magnificent chest 
 of drawers, from the Palazzo d'Oro in Venice which 
 he happened upon with his usual luck; it is the hand- 
 somest piece of carved furniture I ever saw and had 
 stood out of doors a whole winter when he captured it. 
 Here dwells Sam, always nursing some little lumbago 
 or dyspepsia of his own, and interchanging visits with 
 Mrs. Jackson, similarly occupied in her parlor, while 
 a pretty httle grandchild and a pretty young lady 
 protegee, who supervises him, vibrate between the 
 apartments. The parishioners are also devoted and 
 speak as earnestly of " the importance of retaining Mr. 
 Longfellow in Brooklyn " as the Beecherites might of 
 Beecher. The new church is a little box of choice art 
 . . . stone-colored stucco ("for surface ") with a sort 
 of basement of brick, painted red (" for purposes of 
 color ")• The brick is now very dirty, or, as Sam 
 tenderly prefers to term it, " distained "; there is also 
 a distained little steeple or spire in the background. 
 . , . This structure they enjoy to the utmost, and 
 Sam now projects a Uttle evening service, of music and 
 reading Scripture, without a sermon, which he calls 
 '" vespers or even-song "; the people meekly rebel a 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 49 
 
 little, especially at the even-song, and pant for a 
 sermon, but I think he will carry it through. 
 
 ... I took tea with the Millses, some leading 
 people in Sam's parish. Then he invited Brownlee 
 Brown, who wrote the fine article in the last " Atlan- 
 tic," "The Ideal Tendency," to come down from 
 Newburg and dine with me, but he did not appear. I 
 spent part of a day with Octavius Frothingham at 
 Jersey City. Then I moused about New York a good 
 deal and saw various things I wished to see. I saw 
 nothing so good, however, as a scene Frothingham 
 reported to me, between two little street-sweeping 
 boys, whom he passed at dusk the night before, it 
 being terribly rainy and muddy. " Come, Bill," said 
 one, " ain't it about time to close up for the night? " 
 Bill consented, and F. lingered to see in what the proc- 
 ess of closing up consisted. It consisted in the two 
 little wretches deliberately hoeing back over the cross- 
 ing all the mud they had cleared off, so as to give a 
 fair chance for next day's operations! 
 
 My lecture stirred them up a good deal in Brooklyn 
 and brought special appeals and insults to Sam from 
 his flock (he being unable, because of lumbago, to 
 attend) . Some of them came home with me afterwards 
 and tormented him with proffers of gymnasiums and 
 chest expanders. One enthusiastic youth implored 
 him to become & fireman. ,^j^ , ,, 
 
 Last Thursday I went to New Haven which is the 
 most superb nursery of elms I know anywhere. • . • 
 I got there early and had a charming walk to the top 
 
50 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 of East Rock. I stayed with the Elliots. . . . They 
 Hve in the old Roger Sherman house with painted 
 tiles. My lecture took immensely with the college 
 boys. 
 
 Last week we had Rarey here . . . but the most in- 
 teresting parts — his personal simplicity and earnest- 
 ness, and the expression in the horses' faces, render it 
 perfectly fascinating. I feared he might be con- 
 ceited, might mystify and be grand, but he seemed 
 like a perfectly single-minded reformer, like Wendell 
 Phillips, and his one desire seemed to be to show at 
 each step how utterly simple and intelligible the whole 
 process was. 
 
 Yesterday I was walking and crossed a pasture, 
 where the cows all came around me attracted by some 
 boughs I had and which I had to hold out of their 
 reach; they were very gentle and timid, though 
 trustful, and I had to keep very quiet, like Rarey. 
 They seemed to wish to understand me — hcked my 
 arm to see if I were a branch and rubbed against me 
 to see if I were a stump, and I did not know how to 
 explain myself. I stood in a circle of six . . . they made 
 a halo, or cow-low about me. 
 
 1855 
 I saw Rachel in "Phedre" — one of the most 
 terrible things I ever did, yet fascinating and superb- 
 like, as Mrs. James well says. I never saw an actress 
 so far removed from the audience; even when called 
 out, she ignores them and her bow seems a part of the 
 play. The acting is more real than anything I ever 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 51 
 
 saw, and the character being detestable, she appears 
 so. The serpent-like begins with her body, which has 
 a joint in every inch of it, like a snake's; every motion 
 is a glide, and her whole form expresses more than 
 anybody's else face. - 
 
 August 16, 1862 
 Yesterday I went to Lynn, exchanging with Sam 
 Johnson. After tea I went up to a camp meeting of 
 Millerites near there, on a beautiful lake. It was a 
 strange scene, wagons, horses, dogs, rowdy young men, 
 and in the centre a great tent with rows of pale, eager 
 listeners squatting in semicircles among the trees, with 
 tears and Amens. The speakers were earnest and 
 vivid, the people less excited and less intelligent than I 
 expected, but it was the close of the meeting. I found 
 all the types of character I expected there and was glad 
 to have gone (for the first time). I peeped into one of 
 the company tents, with the walls all hung with little 
 carpetbags; and elderly women (not hanging up) pack- 
 ing up " duds " with tears streaming. 
 
 ... I, willing to join in any innocent amusement, 
 took a hand at a round game of spiritual rappings, but 
 withdrew (as usual) with small winnings. 
 
 It seemed queer to be in the midst of these two par- 
 ties of seekers after the mysteries of another sphere, 
 and both rather forgetting this world for it; and as I 
 came out of the house to the dim evening view of Na- 
 hant and the sea horizon, I was rather glad that we do 
 not learn too fast, but have tune to digest as we go 
 along. 
 
52 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Again, he wrote: 
 
 I had a nice time on Sunday at Plymouth. They 
 have a sort of come-outer society there, partially Bud- 
 dhist, you would perhaps think, who are having a series 
 of meetings on Sundays, at which different persons 
 officiate, sometimes clerical, sometimes lay. They meet 
 at Leyden Hall (a good PUgrim Association) and have 
 for their motto old John Robinson's saying to the 
 Mayflower-ites, *' More light yet is to break forth." 
 By the pubhc they are termed "Jive-cent meetings " 
 (that being the admission-fee) ; sometimes " Marston's 
 meetings," from Marston Watson, who got them up 
 and who takes care of the preachers, and who is the 
 best part of Plymouth. He . . . was classmate and 
 crony of Sam Longfellow; and is certainly the finest 
 specimen I have met of the combination of practical 
 and ideal. Ever since he left college he has been a 
 gardener, has a farm in a pretty valley about a mile 
 from the town, a picturesque cottage of Sam L.'s de- 
 signing, farm, garden, two greenhouses, a pretty little 
 bright Plymouth wife, and some charming children with 
 voices as sweet as their mother's. He raises chiefly 
 ornamental trees and flowering plants; has miniature 
 nurseries of young rose-trees in his greenhouses; im- 
 ports all the new plants from France and Belgium and 
 sends them all over the South and West. This he en- 
 joys intensely and thinks it teaches him more than all 
 the books in the world, though he finds time for these 
 too. ... I preached morning and evening; in the 
 afternoon it rained, but we walked into the woods 
 which stretch from near his house some thirteen miles 
 
' THE WORCESTER PERIOD 53 
 
 to the shore opposite Naushon island; in these woods 
 there are deer, which come and drink at the many 
 little lakes. 
 
 WoHCESTEB, December 31, 1852 
 
 Last night Theodore Parker lectured here, and we 
 tea'd with him; he is, you know, the most eloquent 
 talker living; nobody compares to him in that; some 
 are more original, perhaps, in talking; but he knows 
 everything, and pours it out in the most simple and 
 delightful way. His lecture was wonderful as a speci- 
 men of popularizing information and thought; in this 
 he has no equal in this country; he is far before 
 H. W. Beecher as a stump orator. It is a treat to see 
 how people listen to him. 
 
 Two years later he wrote again in reference to Theo- 
 dore Parker: 
 
 I stayed at Mr. Parker's nominally, he being at the 
 West, and luxuriated in his splendid library, the finest 
 in Boston, I suppose; beyond comparison. Perhaps 
 you do not know that he appropriates to this his re- 
 ceipts from lecturing, and that he is building it up for a 
 'permanent thing, to be placed after his death in some 
 public institution; for the benefit of scholars yet un- 
 born. Miss Stevenson told me many instances of his 
 kind actions, young people supported at school, and 
 such sort of things. Just now he is hand in glove with 
 Dr. Beecher, and they are trying to get an organization 
 to find places in f amihes for girls who are in danger of 
 
54 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 crime, which some persons think better than a Reform 
 School for girls. I recommended E. E. Hale as the best 
 person for their agent, and they have taken it up quite 
 eagerly. 
 
 In 1852 " Uncle Tom's Cabin" appeared in the book 
 world. 
 
 My dearest Mother: 
 
 I am sorry to say that you have quite seriously 
 offended my lady wife. . . . She has . . . brought a 
 note from you, in a state of excitement, supposing, of 
 course, it would be full of — " Uncle Tom's Cabin " — 
 and now that I have just read it to her and there is not 
 a word about our respected Ethiopian uncle . . . she 
 naturally feels slighted. . . . This being Mrs. H.'s one 
 absorbing subject at present, you must be sure and not 
 omit to mention it in your next. It certainly is an 
 extraordinary book, unequalled in American fiction 
 and would still be so if the characters were all snow- 
 white. The picture of Southern life is perfectly won- 
 derful and has made me recall the life at Farley [Vir- 
 ginia] more than I have done for a long while. 
 
 In another letter he speaks thus of Mrs. Stowe: 
 
 Will nobody stop these Beechers? Here is Mrs. 
 Stowe getting into trouble again. The " Christian 
 Watchman " has his eye on her. Jesus of Nazareth 
 was a dangerous innovator in his day, but what is he 
 to Mrs. Stowe.? He only sat at meat with publicans 
 and sinners, but she is actually announced to write 
 a novel in the same "Atlantic Monthly " which [en- 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 55 
 
 dorses] ... a man who says, "If we do our duty 
 manfully in this world, we need give ourselves no great 
 anxiety about our fate in the next one! " 
 
 The following letter refers to a Temperance Con- 
 vention: 
 
 May, 1853 
 Enough has no doubt reached you, through the New 
 York papers, of the affair in which I figured there, to 
 make you anxious to hear from me about them. . . . 
 The best account is that in the "Herald," which I 
 send, though all the leading New York papers were 
 full of it the next day (Friday). This is, of course, 
 exaggerated in parts (for instance, the majority of the 
 dozen ladies did not wear Bloomer dresses); but the 
 speeches and proceedings are more correct than in any 
 other paper. You see I was the right-hand man of 
 the Temperance meeting, and for me to take up the 
 cause of those ladies was rather a blow. They had 
 come, relying on the hall for the meeting, which was 
 for "Friends of Temperance"; still they knew there 
 would be opposition, but thought it their right to co- 
 operate, and when Lucy Stone (who came with them) 
 found I was there, she was rejoiced and appealed to 
 me in a way that called out all my chivalry, though I 
 should have done the same, at any rate. Besides, this 
 female society had really worked harder for Temper- 
 ance than any society in the State, and done much 
 more than the clerical gentlemen who attacked them in 
 the most insulting way. Rather fortunately for us, we 
 kept our tempers (as all admit) so much better than 
 
56 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 our opponents that we carried with us sympathy from 
 many who did not go with us and after we left, the dis- 
 cussion rose still higher. Our afternoon meeting was 
 at Dr. Trull's Hydropathic Establishment, which seems 
 the centre of all New York reform; it was almost as 
 large as the morning meeting, with many new persons, 
 and many of the same. These have entered with the 
 greatest spirit into the Whole World's Convention, as 
 we call it, which will be the convention; we have al- 
 ready engaged Metropolitan Hall, the largest in the 
 city, for four days and evenings (which was to have 
 been the extent of the other one) and expect to have a 
 great time. I was afraid of seeing petty and partisan 
 feelings peep out and spoil our side, but they all 
 seemed to have a more generous feeling. 
 
 This fracas did not prevent my speaking at the grand 
 evening meeting of the American Temperance Union, 
 which was quite a distinct thing from our morning 
 affair. It was in the great Metropolitan Hall, and I 
 was rather unusually successful. No allusion was made 
 to the morning's affair, though some of the same gen- 
 tlemen who had denounced women in the morning 
 were ready to flatter them in the evening. 
 
 WOBCESTEB, 1853 
 
 Last week I had a queer evening with Mr. Brown [a 
 neighbor]. I, was to lecture at the Holden Lyceum, 
 seven mUes off, and he rode over with me. Calling at 
 the house of [the Secretary, his wife timidly informed 
 me that there was to be no lecture that night, she 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 57 
 
 believed; her husband was away in Vennont; however, 
 there was to be a concert, she suggested, as if perhaps I 
 could introduce Mohammed among the fiddlers, some- 
 how; some have suspected him of drawing rather a 
 long bow. On further inquiry it appeared that my 
 letter, naming the day, was awaiting the Secretary's 
 return. What to do? Not ride back in the cold, unre- 
 freshed, so down we went to Abbott's Hotel to order 
 tea. A lumbering hostler took our horse; a great wood 
 fire was blazing in the old bar-room, hung round with 
 pictures of horses and dogs; a room like those in Por- 
 ter's old hotel at Cambridge, suggesting traditions of 
 many winters, bright with flaming flip irons [irons used 
 to warm drink]. But tea must be ordered, and nobody 
 appeared. So forth I went into a great dark hall, fire- 
 less and voiceless; seven doors opened out of it, and I 
 opened one by one — no fire, no light, no person; it 
 became a nightmare, and I thought I should go on all 
 night and forever, penetrating into remote silent rooms 
 in the great old dark house. Perhaps some dejected 
 Mariana I should find at last — or some Sleeping 
 Beauty. At last I opened the remotest door and there 
 she was — in such a room! If I had been wandering 
 about the George and Vulture, or some storied English 
 inn, and had come to such a kitchen, I should have 
 said "enough; I have found Old England; let me sit 
 down here and all Sam Weller is a reality." Such a 
 kitchen, long, immeasurably long and narrow, with raft- 
 ers in the ceiling running the whole length, so low as 
 to graze my head, and hlaxsh, polished black with time 
 and good cheer. Old tables arid chests of drawers; two 
 
58 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 great fireplaces — one altered to contain the most 
 enormous cooking stove ever beheld; the other less 
 altered, and with six great legs of bacon hanging in its 
 wide embrace. Mariana turned out an elderly and 
 kindly Irish woman, who soon evoked a mistress, the 
 tartest and most precise of Yankees, who turned an 
 ear less deaf than indignant to our urgent entreaties to 
 have our tea in the kitchen and fairly ordered us off. 
 A nice tea at last appeared, we meanwhile lingering in 
 the bar-room with the hostler, who turned out a wag, 
 and one or two queer old people who still cluster round 
 the fire and mourn for the desolation wrought by rail- 
 roads and the Maine Law. On my remarking the fit- 
 ness of the large hall for dancing purposes, the lumber- 
 ing hostess said, with a sort of sigh, " Folks don't 
 dance now," and declared their only patronage to be 
 when " once in a while a fellar comes and knocks at 
 the door and wants to know if we '11 tell him how far it 
 is to Worcester" And many other such touches of solid 
 humor. I was glad I was not to give a Temperance 
 Lecture there; her dry pathos would have left me 
 dumb. I pitied the ancient landlord, confined up- 
 stairs with gout, and dreaming of bygone glories, when 
 stages put up at the Holden Tavern and every room 
 was full. Before departing I made one more visit to 
 the antique kitchen, but failed to propitiate the guard- 
 ian Dragon. I think her surliness, however, rather en- 
 hanced our enjoyment; we ate an immense tea for the 
 good of the house and rode home in the cold with great 
 satisfaction, which has not yet passed away. 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 59 
 
 October, 1853 
 Next Saturday I am going to New York to preach. 
 They wished to know my subjects, to advertise, and I 
 gave my evening subject as "The Three Kinds of 
 Courage," which they read Three Kinds of Beverage, 
 and would have so printed had not some good angel 
 led them to consult me again. 
 
 This note written in 1855 to Emerson is interesting 
 as showing the price then paid to lecturers: 
 
 I am authorized by the Committee of the Anti- 
 Slavery Society, to ask you to name some time for the 
 actual delivery of your address. . . . 
 
 I believe that our Treasurer had no opportunity of 
 paying you the twenty dollars proposed. In view of 
 the circumstances (as we rely greatly on the sale of 
 single tickets, in our course), the Committee seem to 
 think themselves authorized in oflFering you the fuU 
 price for your first lecture (or attempt at it) and ten 
 dollars more should you come again, — making thirty 
 dollars in all. 
 
 In 1855, that gentle pioneer, Lucy Stone, was speak- 
 ing on Suffrage and Mr. Higginson wrote from Ban- 
 gor: 
 
 Lucy is Queen of us all . . . and delights the whole 
 country from Maine to Kentucky; she is a household 
 word down here on the Penobscot, after one visit a 
 year ago. You have no idea of the eloquence and 
 power which have been developed in her; she is one 
 of the great Providences of History. 
 
60 THOMAS. WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Her marriage to Mr. Blackwell had occurred re- 
 cently, and Mr. Higginson was the oflSciatmg clergy- 
 man. He 'described the event in the following letter 
 to his mother: 
 
 May 1, 1855 
 
 We went yesterday afternoon at four by cars to 
 West Brookfield, where we found rather a short, stout, 
 pleasant-looking person, with very black hair and whis- 
 kers, blue eyes, and a good forehead, who turned out 
 at last to be the Blackwell. There also got from the 
 cars a rather peculiar-looking personage, but of beauti- 
 ful soul — Charles Burleigh the lecturer; we were all 
 the company, Antoinette Brown and Elizabeth Black- 
 well (Medicine and Divinity in female forms) not hav- 
 ing appeared, though expected. 
 
 We rode three miles over a road among rocky hills 
 till we reached a high little farmhouse, round which the 
 misty sky shut closely down, revealing only rocks and 
 barns and cattle, small children at the back door, and 
 little Lucy beaming at the front door. She ushered us 
 in; the children turned out to belong to the married 
 brother, and his wife appeared also. While I was un- 
 cloaking Mary [Mrs. Higginson], Lucy disappeared and 
 came in leading a fine, hale, sturdy, stout old lady, 
 saying, with an air of love and pride, " Mr. Higginson, 
 this is my mother, my cnm mother," and the old lady 
 looked as happy as she did. 
 
 We had provided a box of greenhouse flowers, but 
 no orange blossoms, being unattainable; but we found 
 that Anna Parsons had supplied that deficiency, and 
 
vTHE WORCESTER PERIOD 61 
 
 we had everything else, mcluding cloth-of-gold roses. 
 The children flocked round to see me arrange them in 
 glasses, and Lucy was very sweet to them, her word 
 seemed to be law and love together. A handful of fallen 
 blossoms she distributed among them. . , . 
 
 It was a large, low old room with an open wood fire; 
 the children sat in little armchairs before its glow; and 
 Charles Burleigh's long hair looked like the locks of an 
 ancient bard. 
 
 We went in to tea at a great table; Lucy presided 
 and cared for everybody; Mr. Blackwell sat opposite, 
 in quite a domestic manner, the gentlemen of the 
 family not having appeared. After tea they came in 
 from the farm or elsewhere; the elderly father as 
 sturdy as the mother, with a keen face, but saying 
 little; the brother looked like Lucy, a plain likeness, 
 an ex-semi-Orthodox-minister, now farmer; he has her 
 low, sweet voice and we liked him very much. Mr. 
 Blackwell also we liked more and more; he is thor- 
 oughly true and manly, earnest, sensible, and discrimi- 
 nating; not inspired, but valuable. They seemed per- 
 fectly happy together. So the evening passed happily 
 away, and we went at last up the steep stairs, Lucy 
 piloting us, and looking to see that fire and water and 
 all were right. She took such care of everybody that I 
 felt as if some one else in the family were to be married, 
 and she was the Cinderella. 
 
 In the morning there was to be rather a struggle or 
 " match against time " Uterally, as the wedding was 
 to be before breakfast and we were to ride three miles 
 before 8.20. We gradually assembled in the parlor. 
 
62 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Mr. Burleigh and Mr. Stone talked over Mr. Black- 
 well. The latter said: " When he used to come up to 
 our place first, I never thought it would end in any- 
 thing; there had been a good many after Lucy, first 
 and last; but she had made short work of them." 
 " Yes," quoth Burleigh with a nod like that of his 
 namesake, " and some of them were such as some 
 ladies who have ridiculed Lucy would be very glad to 
 receive attentions from." " Yes, indeed," nodded the 
 brother knowingly. Meanwhile the queer old father 
 had his dry chuckle on the other side of the room: 
 " Our Lucy thought there was n't anybody in these 
 parts good enough to marry her, so she had to fetch 
 somebody from Worcester for it, hey." The quiet old 
 mother meanwhile sat silent, though she had some- 
 thing to say afterwards. 
 
 Presently in came the small lady and with her the 
 bridegroom; he in the proper white waistcoat, she in 
 a beautiful silk ashes- of -roses color. They stood up 
 together and they read their protest, which I enclose, 
 and then my usual form of service proceeded. She had 
 had some scruples about the form, but she seemed to 
 think a great deal of what her mother would wish, and 
 after all our views agreed pretty well: and so she ex- 
 pressed her purpose to " love and honor " (not obey) 
 very clearly and sweetly, and he as bridegroom should; 
 and I have to add with secret satisfaction that, after 
 this, Lucy, the heroic Lucy, cried like any village 
 bride. And I could hardly help it when, after I had 
 ended, Charles Burleigh came forward and addressed 
 them so nobly and sweetly that I have felt, since, as if 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 63 
 
 it were he and not I who united them. This over, there 
 was some little kissing; . . . and then the speedy ne- 
 cessity of breakfast effected an easy transition. For it 
 was now 7.30 a.m. and we must leave the house in 
 fifteen minutes. So in we went. Lucy soon swallowed 
 her tears and gave others tea to swallow and we 
 plunged into a hasty breakfast. And I record for 
 posterity that Lucy was presently heard to say quietly, 
 " And is n't the bride to have any breakfast?" Where- 
 upon we all discovered that though we had not senti- 
 ment enough to fast ourselves, we had enough to 
 neglect her, which was soon remedied, in moderation. 
 But soon we all jumped up and prepared to go. . . . 
 It was the most beautiful bridal I ever attended. 
 
 Apropos of Madam Higginson's changing her home, 
 her son wrote, December, 1853: 
 
 Dearest Mother: 
 
 Of course we feel very badly at your leaving Bosco- 
 bel, but must console you with my quaint friend Perry 
 Thayer's reflection, uttered to me last night. " The 
 fact is, Mr. Higginson, humanity, ploddin' over this 
 planet, meets with considerable many left-handed 
 things, and the best way is to summon up courage 
 and put right through." 
 
 I think geniuses grow in the Free Church, Perry 
 Thayer's son, now our organist, is a bom Chilean and 
 I have just picked up a boy of thirteen, son of poor 
 parents, who has the most remarkable natural gift for 
 drawing and coloring. The story of his first box of 
 
64 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 colors is as good as Sir B. West's pussy's tail. He 
 picked up scraps of wall-papers, soaked them, scraped 
 qff the colors vnth a knife, and with them painted little 
 pictures which he sold to the schoolboys for a cent 
 apiece, and with this money he bought his first real 
 paintbox! I have sent him to our School of Design 
 
 kept by , the lankest and palest of drawling 
 
 New England women, though she has studied for 
 several years in Diisseldorf and learned how to make 
 everything picturesque except herself. 
 
 February, 1854 
 
 We have just been reading a nice letter from Barbara 
 [Mrs. Higginson's sister]. . . . She is having a superb 
 time with St. Peter, Martin Van Buren, Mrs. Brown- 
 ing, and other Roman notabilities. She and Sully walk 
 on the Campagna as if it were the Cambridge Com- 
 mon; little Lizzy plays with young Brownings and 
 Crawfords; and Bab [Barbara] lends my " Woman 
 and her Wishes " to Fanny Kemble and Harriet 
 Hosmer. 
 
 May 11, 1854 
 
 Mary groans in spirit over Bab's dashing and vehe- 
 ment mode of life. She herself, like Lowell's charming 
 picture of President Kirkland, belongs to a past age of 
 quiet and finds no home here; she would enjoy the 
 repose of the native Romans, who deal with time as if 
 they were as old as their city and had as many years 
 to look forward to. But the rapidity with which 
 Yankees live at Rome makes her shudder, while it is 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 65 
 
 B.'s element, " I know how Barbara does it," Mary 
 says. " She will rush up to some man and say, ' Musi- 
 cali?' and then . . , run straight up the broad aisle 
 (if they have such things) and get inside the altar and 
 sit down on a candlestick — knitting 1 Or else he will 
 say there is n't any, and then she will rush inside and 
 pull a Pope — or somebody — and ask, Why not? 
 Rome will he fresher for her having lived in itl" 
 
 In September of the same year Higginson reports, in 
 a letter to a friend, that his sister-in-law, Barbara, has 
 returned from Italy " with an atmosphere of art and 
 wonder about her; and Brownings and Kembles are 
 familiar as household words in her speech " ; and he 
 adds: 
 
 She looks so natural and at home, that it needs all 
 the foreign labels on her trunk to convince us that she 
 has been at Verona and Pisa. 
 
 She brought home a few notes from her, i.e., E. B. B. 
 . . . Almost all of them related to her child and this 
 gives a charm to them. . . . The little Browning boy 
 is beautiful, with a broad brow and blue eyes wide 
 apart, fair curling hair and great dignity as well as 
 gaiety; five years old and a great love of drawing 
 already shown. These traits are not just like those of 
 her noble " Philip, my King!" which most have sup- 
 posed to be addressed to heir own child — have you 
 seen it? . . . Barbara seems on the whole to have 
 loved her very much and found her more attractive 
 than him; he is veiy bright and talkative, observing 
 everything and attentive to everybody; she, dark, 
 
66 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 little, quiet, and reserved, with black ringlets round 
 her face, but not becoming to her; looks older than she 
 is, and invalid-like; shows traces of her sufferings and 
 has a subdued intensity of manner. . . . She is very 
 modest and even timid when her own poems are spoken 
 of; whereas R. B. talked very coolly of his and de- 
 fended the alternatives in last edition; not that he 
 was egotistical; but perfectly childlike and free. His 
 male friends say that he seems more American than 
 English: but she is more interesting. 
 
 November 20, 1854 
 
 I 've been wondering if the United States Grand Jury 
 would find bills against any of us rioters, but suppose 
 there is now no chance of that, as they reported to-day. 
 Mr. Hallett has failed again, therefore. The other trial 
 is not yet fixed. 
 
 The trial of our Butman rioters goes on slowly and 
 will take a week or more. Probably they will all be 
 bound over, but none convicted at last. 
 
 In a letter dated, January, 1855, written from Syra- 
 cuse, New York, soon after the Anthony Burns affair, 
 Higginson speaks of a stay at Rochester, where William 
 Henry Channing was then settled: 
 
 I was a good deal at the Porters where W. H. C. 
 boarded and really a charming place; they, of course, 
 idolized him and I was so like him. . . . The two 
 sights in Rochester are Neander's Library and the 
 falls; I spent a good while in the former, which really 
 transports you into the life of a German professor. 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 67 
 
 But the falls were yet better; half as high as Niagara, 
 they fall into a curving basin formed by the high banks, 
 regular as the walks of some castle. Looking across 
 from the summit of the bank the white foamy water 
 waves away on its fall, while behind it the whole sur- 
 face of the rock is one great organ of fluted icicles. 
 ... I have seen Miss Griffiths ... a nervous little 
 energetic Englishwoman, who manages all the anti- 
 slavery in Rochester, Frederick Douglass included, 
 whose paper she partly edits. 
 
 There [Rochester] elderly ladies would peer up from 
 their knitting and gaze absorbed upon me " seeing the 
 bobbing of his heavenly wig," I suppose. 
 
 It is very pleasant to go round so to new places and 
 find a circle of friends ready to receive you in each: as 
 I do, especially since my arrest. 
 
 All my A. S. [anti-slavery] lectures were successful 
 (extempore, of course). . . . A man came up and said, 
 " Well, I should think they would have indicted youl " 
 — which I thought a great compliment. 
 
 Cataract House, Niagara 
 
 Skaneateles is a small, beautiful village, on the lake; 
 there I stayed in a fine great house with a rich English 
 family of Quakers (I always happen among Quakers). 
 The old lady, a widow, touched me to the heart by 
 constantly referring to " my dear husband " so ten- 
 derly — till I at last found that she was a regular 
 Tartar and had nearly tormented that gentleman's 
 life outl 
 
68 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 On Thanksgiving Day, 1854, this letter was written 
 from Worcester to Mrs. Chapman, a prominent aboli- 
 tionist and reformer: 
 
 You are aware that the Bums case, or its conse- 
 quences, cannot yet be regarded as over. Our trials 
 on the State process have been constantly delayed by 
 the pressure of cases under the liquor law (which by 
 statute takes precedence of all others), and as those 
 cases do not diminish, the District Attorney almost 
 despairs of ever reaching ours, and would gladly throw 
 them up if he with propriety could do so. The United 
 States processes are only just being announced, in fact 
 only two have yet been made public, and I do not yet 
 know whether I shall come in for a share of those or 
 not. We are all glad that Theodore Parker should be 
 indicted; it must result in a triumph for him in any 
 event, but it is absurd to suppose that a Massachusetts 
 jury will find him guilty. I think this is no doubt the 
 understanding of some on the Grand Jury who voted 
 to file a bill against him; they knew that no harm 
 would come to him and were unwilling that the anti- 
 slavery excitement should be kept up, in this way. 
 
 You have seen in the " Liberator " the account of 
 the Butman riot in this city; it was really a very re- 
 markable affair — as genuine a popular exhibition as 
 the mobbing of Haynau^ by the London brewers. Only 
 
 ' Haynau was an Austrian officer who took part in the Napoleonic wars 
 and who was noted for his great severity in putting down an insurrection in 
 Brescia. In 1850 he made a tour of Europe, but his reputation for cruelty 
 had preceded him, and in London he was assaulted and beaten by the em- 
 ployees of a brewery — '"for which iusuit the British Government declined 
 to give any satisfaction." 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 69 
 
 there was a sort of dramatic 'perfection about this; the 
 entire disappearance of Butman's own friends leaving 
 him to be literally and absolutely saved by abohtion- 
 ists; the fortunate presence of just the right persons — 
 Messrs. Hoar, Foster, Stowell, and myself — I mean 
 the right persons dramatically speaking; this joined 
 with the really narrow escape of the man and the 
 thorough frightening of one who had frightened so 
 many; — all these gave a tinge of romance to the whole 
 thing, such as was perhaps never surpassed. It can be 
 worked up better than was ever the Porteous ^ mob 
 by some future Scott. You cannot conceive how 
 frightened the poor wretch was. 
 
 ... If Worcester frightens ex-kidnappers thus, you 
 may imagine how it would be with those who shall 
 pursue the profession, 
 
 A Worcester newspaper of the day said : " The im- 
 mediate provoker of this Worcester riot, and the man 
 to whom Butman ought to look for the reparation of 
 his damages, is, we take it, Mr. Benjamin F. Hallet, 
 Mr. [President] Pierce's slave-catching attorney for the 
 district of Massachusetts." 
 
 From an undated letter: 
 
 I have been busy about the Butman affair, and my 
 ItaUan lecture. Arrests have been made. . . . They 
 [the accused] are to be examined next Wednesday; 
 meantime S. F. [Stephen Foster] stays in jail, on non- 
 
 1 Readers of Scott's Eearl of Midlothian will remember the wild mob 
 which seized and executed Porteous, commander of the City Guard of 
 Edinburgh. 
 
70 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 resistant principles. I visited him to-day; he seemed 
 very happy — only the sixth time he has been im- 
 prisoned for righteousness' sake. We may have an 
 anti-slaveiy meeting Sunday night and Wendell 
 Phillips and I speak. . . . 
 
 Mr, Higginson was arrested in June, 1854, and in 
 April, 1855, wrote thus about the trial of those con- 
 cerned in the attempted rescue: 
 
 Judge Curtis sits disfigured by his gown, and pre- 
 sides with great dignity and admirable skill, I have 
 no doubt he would sentence one to death, if necessary, 
 with inimitable phraseology and manners, John P, 
 Hale takes oflf his outside coat more sturdily than any 
 man Uving can do it, I presume, and looks so hearty 
 and solid that I should think a jury would come down 
 like Davy Crockett's coon, without waiting for a 
 shot. But my keen, imperturbable little Durant has 
 his greatness also; and it delights me to see him on 
 the right side. 
 
 May 4, 1860 
 
 I saw . . . also my classmate Durant [founder of 
 Wellesley College], who always interests me from his 
 remarkable abilities and his perfect aversion to the 
 profession in which he is so distinguished himself, 
 Rufus Choate's life he pronounced a perfeict waste, as 
 must be that of any man of superior abilities in the 
 law. As for Choate's having any enthusiasm for it, it 
 was nonsense; he had heard him say so a thousand 
 times: Choate really cared for nothing but literature; 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 71 
 
 there was not enough in the whole science of law to 
 occupy a mind like his for a month. It was a series of 
 fossil injustices or petty manoeuvres — like hare hunt- 
 ing in England, splendid horses and men, dogs with 
 pedigrees of centuries, and when all is done it is only a 
 rabbit. Every lawyer knows that in three cases out of 
 four, or nine out of ten, it is not of the slightest real 
 consequence which way the verdict goes, and yet here 
 are thousands of the finest minds in the nation absorb- 
 ing themselves in such trifles and led on by mere 
 habit and by the love of victory. For himself, he was 
 only working for means of retiring from it. It was 
 striking to hear the considerations, which prevented 
 my becoming a lawyer seventeen years before, now 
 urged with such enthusiasm by the most successful 
 lawyer among my compeers. It made me very grate- 
 ful that I had not so wasted my life. 
 
 To George William Curtis, whose position in regard 
 to slavery made some of his friends anxious, he wrote, 
 January 23, 1857: 
 
 Do you remember, on your last visit to Worcester, 
 that I said that there was but one thing wanting to 
 your position — that you should become an abohtion- 
 ist? I rejoiced in your brave action and fine speeches. 
 But anti-slavery has to you been a summer sea, and 
 you riding nobly on the advancing waves. What is to 
 be your future? We do not ask you to join us, till time 
 be ripe. 
 
 Make Sumner your star, till time has taught you to 
 see the greater greatness of Phillips. . . . Remember 
 
72 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 that with or without Fremont, slaves are carried from 
 Philadelphia, and to lift a finger is Treason. Colored 
 men are thrust illegally out of cars in New York, and 
 to take their part is Fanaticism. In presence of these 
 things, with your upright and unspoiled nature, the end 
 is sure, you will be more than a Republican orator, 
 and God may grant you the privilege of being an Abo. 
 
 Worcester, February, 1859 
 
 George Curtis lectured here last week. With the 
 most delicious elocution we have — except perhaps 
 Wendell Phillips's — and a fascinating rhetoric and an 
 uncorrupted moral integrity, he showed yet a want of 
 intellectual vigor and training which will always pre- 
 vent him from being a great man. Yet he perfectly 
 fascinated everybody. 
 
 March, 1859 
 
 My lectures are over [for the season]. One of the 
 last was at Dedham, and I stayed at Edmund Quincy's 
 charming, English-looking place. Did you ever hear 
 of an English traveller who, looking out of Mr. Tick- 
 nor's window, pointed out as the only two Americans 
 he had seen who looked like gentlemen, W. PhilUps and 
 Edmund Quincy? 
 
 Yet June of the same year found the writer in 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
 WoRCESTEB, June, 1859 
 
 I got home from Pennsylvania on Friday morning. 
 Whittier was in the same region a month before me and 
 he said, " God might have made a more beautiful re- 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 73 
 
 gion than Chester County — but he never did." A 
 beautiful roUing country, luxuriant as Kansas and 
 highly cultivated as Brookline; horses and cattle pas- 
 turing in rich clover fields; hedges of hawthorn; groves 
 of oak, walnut, pine, and vast columnar tulip trees 
 towering up to heaven and holding out their innumer- 
 able cups of i^ectar to the gods above the clouds; 
 picturesque great houses of brick and stone, gabled 
 and irregular, overgrown with honeysuckle and wis- 
 taria, and such a race of men and women as the 
 " Quaker settlement " in " Uncle Tom " portrays. All 
 farming country; no towns nearer the meeting-house 
 than Westchester, nine miles off, and Wilmington 
 (Delaware) twelve. Only little old taverns here and 
 there, known through all the country as " The Red 
 Lion," " The Anvil," and " The Hammer and Trowel." 
 Only three houses in sight from the meeting-house and 
 twenty-five hundred vehieles collected round it on 
 Sunday, with probably seven thousand people on the 
 ground. 
 
 Almost all the people in the region were Quakers, 
 and being dissatisfied with the conservative position 
 held by that body on slavery and other matters, they 
 have gradually come out from among them and formed 
 a Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends which retains 
 little of the externals of Quakerism and all its spirit 
 and life. The young people have abandoned the 
 Quaker dress, as indeed they have done everywhere, 
 but retain all the simplicity, kindness, and upright- 
 ness. So noble a people in body and mind, I never saw 
 before. I never was in the presence of so many healthy- 
 
74 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 looking women, or so many good faces of either sex. 
 Their mode of living is Virginian in its open-house hos- 
 pitality; they say incidentally, " we happened to have 
 thirty-five people in the house last night." ... I 
 stayed at three different houses during my four days' 
 visit and might have stayed at thirty. I passed from 
 house to house as through a series of triumphal arches 
 and yet not from any merit supposed in myseK, but 
 simply because, as Conway wrote to them in a letter, 
 " the earnest man is a king at Longwood; he finds 
 friends and sumptuous entertainment wherever he 
 turns. To say that they make one at home is nothing; 
 one fears forgetfulness of all other homes." 
 
 Do not imagine that these people are ignorant or 
 recluse; they have much intercourse with people, 
 especially with Philadelphia; the young people are 
 well educated, and all take the " Atlantic." One feels 
 in cultivated society. Aunt Nancy will like to hear 
 that Bayard Taylor originated there and is now build- 
 ing a house there; I saw his father's house; also that 
 of John Agnew, where his beautiful bride lived and 
 died. I saw John Agnew himself, a noble-looking old 
 man, erect as an arrow. I saw the lovely Mary's 
 daguerreotype, and her grave. They all speak well of 
 B. T. and praise his simplicity, modesty, and love of 
 home; I never had so pleasant an impression of him, 
 and if you will read his spirited poem of the tulip tree 
 you can imagine a Chester County for a background. 
 
 The little meeting-house was crowded — seven hun- 
 dred or so; the rest of the Sunday crowd was collected 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 75 
 
 outside and there was speaking in several places. I 
 spoke on the steps. Other days the church held them 
 all. There were morning and afternoon sessions, and 
 at noon we picnicked under the trees every day. They 
 discussed everything — Superstition, Slavery, Spiritu- 
 alism, War, Marriage, Prisons, Property, etc. — each 
 in turn, and uniting in little " testimonies " on them 
 all, which will be printed. There were some other 
 speakers from abroad beside myself, but none of much 
 note. No long speeches and great latitude of remark, 
 among the audience, commenting or rebuking in the 
 friendhest way. " Friend, will thee speak a little 
 louder? What thee says may be of no great impor- 
 tance, but we would like to judge for ourselves." Or 
 sometimes to the audience: " Have patience, friends, 
 this old man (the speaker) is very conscientious." 
 Sometimes stray people, considerably demented, would 
 stray in and speak; one erect old man, oddly dressed, 
 who began and said, "My mother was a woman": 
 and then a long pause. It seemed a safe basis for argu- 
 ment. Of course, they all knew each other and called 
 by their first names. One old oddity seemed to devote 
 himself to keeping down the other people's excesses, 
 and after two persons (strangers) had yielded to too 
 much pathos in their own remarks, he mildly suggested 
 that if the friends generally would get a good chest and 
 each speaker henceforth lock up his emotions in it and 
 lose the key, it would be a decided gain! There was 
 one scene, quite pathetic, where one of the leading 
 men announced that after great struggles he had given 
 up tobacco — they rejoiced over him as a brand from 
 
 ,/ 
 J 
 
76 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 the burning; it was most touching, the heartfelt grati- 
 tude which his wife expressed. 
 
 There was one park not far from the meeting-house 
 which I have never seen equalled; the most English- 
 looking place I ever saw — two avenues of superb 
 pines and larches, leading down to a lake with other 
 colonnades of deciduous trees at right angles. The 
 house to which it belonged was buried in shrubs and 
 bushes and surrounded by quaint outbuildings. At 
 Hannah Cox's house, the most picturesque at which I 
 stayed, there was a large wax plant in a pot, trained 
 over much of the side of the house: this is seven years 
 old and is taken in every fall and trained over the side 
 of the room; and the thick leaves serve as registers of 
 visitors' names, which have been scratched on them 
 with a pin; some were dated 1851; I marked mine on 
 two, lest one should fall. . . . Every time it is changed 
 it takes five persons three hours to train it. 
 
 I took tea one evening at the house of some singular 
 Quaker saints . . . with a capacity for sudden out- 
 pourings of the Spirit in pubUc meetings. ... In the 
 old square house General Washington had been quar- 
 tered and the neat old Quaker mother well remem- 
 bered when the Hessian prisoners were marched 
 through the city. The two sisters always talked to- 
 gether, as is usual in such cases, and when I walked 
 them to the evening meeting, one on each arm, the 
 eldest was telling a long story of her persecutions 
 among the Orthodox Friends, and whenever the sister 
 interrupted, the eldest would unhook her own arm 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 77 
 
 from mine, for the purpose (as I at last discovered) of 
 poking her sister's elbow and thus admonishing to 
 silence. It was done so promptly and invariably that 
 I was satisfied that it was the established habit of 
 the family. 
 
 Believing that the election of Buchanan would mean 
 another four years of pro-slavery government, several 
 aboUtionists, led by T. W. Higginson, sent out a caU 
 for a convention to be held in Worcester, in January, 
 1857, to consider a separation between the Free and 
 the Slave States. 
 
 . . . The Disunion Convention was very successful 
 and commanded general respect, whatever the news- 
 papers may say. I am sorry, dearest mother, you 
 differ from me about it, but I never was more sure of 
 being right. It is written in the laws of nature that 
 two antagonistic nations cannot remain together; 
 every year is dividing us more and more, and the 
 sooner we see it, the better we can prepare for a peace- 
 ful and dignified policy. 
 
 A few years later the writer of the above was fight- 
 ing to preserve the Union! 
 
 This was written after the brutal attack on Sumner 
 in the Senate I 
 
 ' WoBCESTEB, January 9, 1857 
 
 I had various Kansas and other experiences, saw 
 " old Captain Brown," but not Governor Robinson. 
 Captain B. expects quiet till spring, and then another 
 invasion, and is trying for means to repel it. 
 
78 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 The best thing I did, you will think, was to see Mr. 
 Sumner at the Athenaeum Library. He seemed at first 
 very well, looked as usual, while seated, and spoke as 
 easily and in as firm a voice as ever. But finally I pro- 
 posed to him to go up and see Page's Venus in the 
 upper haU, of which I had the key, and when he rose I 
 saw the change. He rose slowly, . . . holding both 
 hands upon his back, and walked with a cane and quite 
 feebly, instead of his peculiarly vigorous stride. He 
 thinks of going to Washington this month, but I sus- 
 pect he will be persuaded not to do it till the end of 
 the session, if at all. He is obviously unfit to deliver 
 his future speech, which, he says, will be to his last 
 one " what first proof brandy is to molasses-and- 
 water." " I think I shall probably be shot," he 
 added; " I don't see what else they can do." Perhaps 
 it is so, though he had better not say it, still it was 
 simply uttered, and I never saw him appear nobler or 
 abler. But I do not think he will ever be, physically 
 speaking, what he was. 
 
 Worcester, January 27, 1857 
 
 I send you my speech at our Convention. You asked 
 if I was led into it. It was entirely my doing, from be- 
 ginning to end; nobody else would have dared to do 
 it, because I knew of nobody at first who would take 
 part with me, except the Garrisonians who were Dis- 
 unionists before, but I found several rather influential 
 persons, and the whole thing has succeeded better 
 than we expected. 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 79 
 
 A nice pamphlet report will soon appear. I am sur- 
 prised that you should not see the weakness of Theo- 
 dore Parker's idea of preserving the Union for the 
 slaves, when everybody admits that but for the Union, 
 ten would escape where one now does, and slavery be 
 soon abolished in the Northern Slave States. Last 
 week Colonel Benton was here, and when he said 
 these things as arguments against Disunion, every- 
 body applauded, much to his surprise. They say his 
 speech did more than our Convention. 
 
 I had a note from Mr. Sumner the other day, who 
 thinks that Virginia will secede, first or last, and take 
 all the States except perhaps Maryland, which can 
 only be held by force. If it were not for the necessity 
 of keeping Washington and the Mississippi, it would 
 be well to have it so, but since those must be kept, it 
 is hard to predict the end. I think however that you 
 need feel no anxiety in Brattleboro'; I don't think the 
 battering-rams (of which the old lady in the Revolu- 
 tionary times, according to Rose Terry, was so afraid, 
 her only ideas of warfare being based on the Old Testa- 
 ment and Josephus) will get so far. And I think there 
 is more danger of compromise than war, at any rate. 
 
 I don't know whether you are aware of an impres- 
 sion which exists in many minds, but which I cannot 
 attach any weight to, as yet, that the seceding States 
 will prefer to abolish slavery, under the direction of 
 England and France, rather than come under Yankee 
 domination again. Wendell Phillips thinks this and 
 
80 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 says the Fremonts are very confident of it. If they 
 made such a bargain, I think it would end the war and 
 separate us and I don't think it would be so formidable 
 a result, certainly. Even as a matter of Union, it 
 would lead to ultimate reconstruction, for nothing but 
 slavery can ever keep us permanently apart. And the 
 slaves may be better off if emancipated by their mas- 
 ters than by us. Still I don't believe there is any 
 chance of it. 
 
 Nothing could have happened better fitted to create 
 enthusiasm than to begin the war by such a distinct 
 overt act from the Southern Confederacy — and by a 
 great disappointment. When you consider that such a 
 man as Mr. Ripley firmly expected to see fighting in 
 the streets of New York with the friends of the South 
 there, and that the New York Mayor advocated an- 
 nexation to the Southern Confederacy, the unanimous 
 enthusiasm there is astonishing, compelling Bennett 
 [of the " New York Herald "] to turn his editorials to 
 the Northern side, for personal safety. Nothing else 
 has been so remarkable as this. 
 
 January, 1859 
 
 Barnum has been lecturing here, and sent me a copy 
 of his life with a very good, manly letter. He has 
 heard of some criticisms of mine he thought unjust. 
 ... I had met him at the W. W. Temperance Con- 
 vention in New York. I have written him an equally 
 frank reply, telHng him that I admire some of his 
 qualities and respect his pecuniary honesty and fidelity 
 to engagements, and that I wish while priding himself 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 81 
 
 on this, he could treat the public to a little truth also 
 occasionally — that being, in my opinion, his one 
 enormous sin. 
 
 ... As for the result of my trial [Anthony Bums 
 riot], I expect a disagreement of the jury. But I don't 
 care much; I shouldn't regret the imprisonment for a 
 few months except for Mary; it would be a good ex- 
 perience, help my influence, and give me a chance to 
 write some things I should be glad to say. But I ex- 
 pect no such thing. 
 
 WoHCEBTEB, June 17, 1859 
 Deakest Mother: 
 
 We have had the greatest heroine of the age here, 
 Harriet Tubman, a black woman, and a fugitive slave, 
 who has been back eight times secretly and brought out 
 in all sixty slaves with her, including all her own 
 family, besides aiding many more in other ways to 
 escape. Her tales of adventure are beyond anything 
 in fiction and her ingenuity and generalship are extra- 
 ordinary. I have known her for some time and men- 
 tioned her in speeches once or twice — the slaves call 
 her Moses. She has had a reward of twelve thousand 
 dollars offered for her in Maryland and will probably 
 be burned alive whenever she is caught, which she 
 probably will be, first or last, as she is going again. 
 She has been in the habit of working in hotels all sum- 
 mer and laying up money for this crusade in the winter. 
 She is jet black and cannot read or write, only talk, 
 besides acting. 
 
82 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 This " modem Moses," however, managed to escape 
 capture and made nineteen perilous expeditions, lead- 
 ing to freedom more than three hundred slaves. A 
 reward of forty thousand dollars was oflfered by the 
 South for her capture. During the Civil War one of 
 her services was acting as a spy for the Government. 
 She finally died a peaceful death a few years ago. 
 
 In the diary is an allusion to an " anti-slavery con- 
 vention " held in Boston, January, 1870, at which 
 Colonel Higginson gave some reminiscences of the 
 fugitive-slave era. 
 
 Spoke in answer to Phillips and Powell. 
 
 Mrs. Child and others at dinner. 
 
 Mrs. Child describes her collaring and pulling away 
 a man who was shaking his fist in Mr. PhilUps's face 
 at Music Hall mob — and her surprise when he 
 tumbled down. When Jonas H. French said, " This is 
 no place for women," she answered, " They are needed 
 here to teach civilization to men." 
 
 Many years later. Colonel Higginson wrote of Wen- 
 dell Phillips: "That which really attracted him was 
 public life and not the bar, and nothing attracted him 
 more. His dream would have been a life in the United 
 States Senate, as he himself told me." 
 
 March 22, 1861 
 
 Dearest Mothek: 
 
 Did you ever hear of George Smalley [the news- 
 paper correspondent], a young lawyer who once Uved 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 83 
 
 here and was at one time engaged to our pretty Susan 
 Gray? He is now in Boston; never heard Wendell 
 Phillips speak till the time of Richard S. Fay's row, 
 then fell desperately in love with him and in all the 
 dangers since was his bodyguard, never leaving him 
 and watching many nights in his house. This he en- 
 joyed thoroughly, being a trained athlete and a natu- 
 ral soldier. When I saw him at Wendell's planning 
 with us to mount guard, and then turning to pretty 
 Phoebe to arrange little plans to keep every- 
 body still and spare Mrs. P.'s nerves, I thought to 
 myself that the adopted daughter might prove the 
 next attraction, and now it turns out they are engaged. 
 He is tall, erect, strong, blond, Saxon, and she a 
 brunette with lovely eyes and a Welsh smile — ^you 
 know her mother was Welsh; they will be a picturesque 
 couple, and it is quite a chivalrous little affair. 
 
 August, 1852 
 
 Deaeest Mother: 
 
 The difference between Perry , of Worcester 
 
 , . . and his brother . . . Elijah is that Elijah not 
 only is insane, but is thought so. Perry is round and 
 rosy; Elijah is tall, straight, with a fine face, and a 
 taste for walking the streets with his hat off, declaiming 
 loudly. He has travelled a great deal and can take ex- 
 cellent care of himseK and property. His last visit was 
 to Rome to convert the Pope; he is himself a devout 
 Catholic, but has some peculiar views on penances and 
 the like. Failing in this, he comes to my meetings, 
 where he gently reclines on a bench, as the Isles-of- 
 
84 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Shoalers used to do when the missionaries first went 
 there. But everybody knows him and takes it quietly. 
 He has a gift at extemporaneous prayer which he in- 
 dulges freely from 10 to 11 P.M., his room being next 
 to mine with a thin partition. 
 
 Perry talks faster than any man I ever met, 
 
 but he is quite shrewd and well informed, reads a good 
 deal, and is the man who pronounced Vergniaud Vir- 
 ginnyord. He says: " My wife's great-grandf oiks wuz 
 the fust white folks that settled up Paxton way: and 
 the Injins wuz gittin' considerable sarcy before the 
 war, and one day two on 'em came on old Elnathan 
 Dodge, two to wunst, right thru the door: wal, he just 
 took and chucked one on 'em eaout, right over the 
 horse trough, and chucked the other after him, right 
 on eend, and they run, and that night Elnathan wp 
 dvds and cleared " — which last is as vivid as veni, 
 
 vidi, vici. The children are named Eugene, La 
 
 Roy Delavan, and Freewalder Ckanning. Freewalder, 
 he informed me, was a German hydropathic estab- 
 lishment. 
 
 The last Worcester letters were written while John 
 Brown's trial was pending and speak of Higginson's 
 fruitless attempt to escort Mrs. Brown to her im- 
 prisoned husband. 
 
 To a friend : 
 
 Of course we are all deep in Browns, and you can 
 imagine how stirred up is Worcester generally, espe- 
 cially since the rumored arrests of people in Boston 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 85 
 
 as witnesses — I mean proposed arrests; but I don't 
 think it will come to anything. 
 
 WoHCESTEB, October 27, 1859 
 Dearest Mother: ' 
 
 While you are dreaming of me in this alarming 
 manner, I am placidly laying out a new bed of cro- 
 cuses and tulips for the spring, and buying at auction 
 a second-hand tapestry Brussels, quite handsome, for 
 seventy cents a yard, to put in the study. This after- 
 noon an African brother visits us, not for insurrec- 
 tionary purposes, but to aid in putting down the same 
 on the study floor. 
 
 Of course I think enough about Brown, though I 
 don't feel sure that his acquittal or rescue would do 
 half as much good as his being executed; so strong is 
 the personal sjniipathy with him. We have done what 
 we could for him by sending counsel and in other ways 
 that must be nameless. By we I mean Dr. Howe, 
 W. Phillips, J. A. Andrew, and myself. If the trial 
 lasts into next week, it is possible to make some further 
 arrangements for his legal protection. But beyond this 
 no way seems open for anything; there is (as far as 
 one can say such a thing) no chance for forcible assist- 
 ance, and next to none for stratagem. Never was there 
 a case which seemed more perfectly impracticable: 
 and so far as any service on the spot is concerned, 
 there are others who could perform it better than I. 
 Had I been a lawyer, however, I should probably have 
 gone on at once, to act at least temporarily as his 
 Counsel. A young man from Boston named Hoyt has 
 
86 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 gone on for this, and probably Montgomery Blair, of 
 Washington, will be there to-day, to conduct the case. 
 
 Of Frank Sanborn, one of the active participants in 
 the Brown conspiracy, Mr. Higginson had written in 
 1855: 
 
 We had a pleasant visit last week from the most 
 interesting young man of the day, Frank Sanborn, a 
 Senior at Cambridge, and editor of the " Harvard 
 Magazine." He is three inches above my head and 
 very handsome, a person of great talent and noble 
 character; and did you never hear of his romantic en- 
 gagement, marriage, and bereavement? He is only 
 twenty-three now. 
 
 WoECESTEB, November 5, 1859 
 
 Deabest Motheb: 
 
 . . . Four days I spent in going to the Adirondacks 
 for Mrs. Brown and then another in Boston about her 
 aflfairs. 
 
 It was a pleasant reward to be taken through that 
 wonderful Notch, far finer than any road through the 
 White Mountains — the excitement of the black gate- 
 way enhanced by the snow and ice, and by the fact 
 that for three miles I pursued my runaway horse and 
 wagon, with the constant expectation of finding them 
 smashed on some projecting rock or over a precipice. 
 . . . These mountains were a fitting shrine for the 
 family of Browns and Thompsons. . . . 
 
 When I came out through the Notch again, I felt as 
 if that corner of the world would tip dmim, as if there 
 were not virtue enough here to balance it. . . . 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 87 
 
 Dear Mrs. Brown — tall, erect, stately, simple, 
 kindly, slow, sensible creature — won my heart pretty 
 thoroughly before we got to Boston, and many people's 
 there, for many visited her during the morning she was 
 there, bringing money, shoes, gloves, handkerchiefs, 
 kisses, and counsel. Amos Lawrence had a large photo- 
 graph taken of her and now she has gone on to see her 
 husband. 
 
 I got safe home, recited to my wondering family the 
 deeds of the invalids and the annals of Marion, and 
 settled down to daily life again. . . . Mary has n't 
 exaggerated my interest in Harper's Ferry accounts; 
 it is the most formidable slave insurrection that has 
 ever occurred, and it is evident, through the confused 
 and exaggerated accounts, that there are leaders of 
 great capacity and skill behind it. If they have such 
 leaders, they can hold their own for a long time against 
 all the force likely to be brought against them, and 
 can at last retreat to the mountains and establish a 
 Maroon colony there, like those in Jamaica and Guiana. 
 Meantime the effect will be to frighten and weaken the 
 slave power everywhere and discourage the slave trade. 
 Nothing has so strengthened slavery as the timid sub- 
 mission of the slaves thus far; but their constant com- 
 munication with Canada has been teaching them self- 
 confidence and resistance. In Missouri especially this 
 siogle alarm will shorten slavery by ten years. 
 
 November 23, 1859 
 
 I send you two sweet letters from Mrs. Brown and 
 her married daughter, Mrs. Thompson. Money seems 
 
88 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 to be flowing for them from all directions, and that is 
 something, because, besides their severe bereavements, 
 they greatly need money: though not so totally desti- 
 tute as many seem to think. I have had some queer 
 letters about them, one from a man in Winchendon 
 offering to adopt one of the daughters and teach her 
 telegraphy. 
 
 The whole thing is haviag a tremendous influence on 
 public sentiment. 
 
 In 1857 Mr. Higgrason made a visit to his old 
 " Prex." 
 
 Deaeebt Mother: 
 
 I thought, when waiting for admission to President 
 Quincy's study, that there was really nobody living, 
 except the veteran Humboldt, before whom I should 
 feel so much awe, as in the presence of this ancient 
 Doge. But when finally admitted, the impression of 
 old college times was so strong that I felt an immediate 
 expectation of an English oration or a little good ad- 
 vice. The latter came ia the form of his views on Dis- 
 union, which he had evidently thought over pretty 
 thoroughly, and stated with the utmost heartiness and 
 even vehemence. He spoke just as he used to do, with 
 occasional pauses for a word, though not often; and 
 with singidar vigor and emphasis. 
 
 He expressed no sort of fear of Disunion; he was 
 " perfectly wilhng to look over into this dark chasm 
 which yawns in the midst of the Republic "; and as for 
 fear of saying what he thought, " old age had made him 
 courageous " (an unusual effect of old age, I thought). 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 89 
 
 . . . He thinks that the Union may be dissolved; but 
 that this is more likely to occur from the mere size and 
 weight of our future nation, than from the hostilities 
 arising from slavery, though, he says, this last " would 
 no doubt be by far the most glorious cause of a separa- 
 tion." He said some very weighty things about the 
 general position and character of the nation, the neces- 
 sity of discussing first principles, and the wrong done 
 by any distrust of agitation. " Our fathers built our 
 nest upon the waves, and we must not shudder at its 
 rocking motion " ; and then he quoted Fisher Ames, 
 that our nation was not a " ship of state," but a raft; 
 safer, indeed, but one's feet were always in the water. 
 . . . He described his position very quietly, without 
 egotism; said he felt no sensation of old age, except 
 sometimes in walking; could work in his study from 
 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. without fatigue. " I am a miracle to 
 myself," he said. Then he told me of the memoir of 
 J. Q. Adams on which he is now engaged and which 
 will be out in a few weeks. " Then," said he, with a 
 sort of roguish pause, " I am going to school." I smiled 
 interrogatively, and his face lit up with a perfectly 
 boyish smile of triumph. " Yes," said he, " to school — 
 all existence is a school, and I hope to keep on learning 
 here, till I pass to a higher one." I said, to draw him 
 out, that after this I supposed he had no new literary 
 plans. "Ah, I won't say that!" he quickly answered 
 with the same gleeful smile, and afterwards quietly 
 said that he had " one or two " projects of that kind, 
 which would require a great deal of preliminary prepa- 
 ration and on that he was about to enterl Thus tranquilly 
 
90 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON' 
 
 does this man of eighty-six plan his life from month to 
 month. 
 
 That year Dr. Kane and Dr. Hayes, the Arctic ex- 
 plorers, claimed public attention. 
 
 February, 1857 
 
 . . . "Health is the first object," as the worthy 
 Doctor used to say, so I take naps and gymnasium 
 and read the fascinating Dr. Kane. 
 
 I do believe Robinson Crusoe will have to give place 
 hereafter, and that boys will keep some small edition 
 of Dr. Kane instead of Baron Trench in their school 
 desks. I seldom read of anything which I do not fancy 
 I could have done myself, such is the weakness of our 
 common nature; but here I confess myself distanced, 
 even in fancy. 
 
 On the other hand, what a dull and unprofitable 
 book is the " Letters of Daniel Webster " ; no genius 
 or power in it, or charm of any kind except the letters 
 to his farmers, which are quite delightful. Perhaps his 
 letters about and to his children, especially to the star- 
 eyed Julia, show more domestic feeling than I sup- 
 posed; there is one quite beautiful burst of fatherly 
 pride where he describes her to somebody as being 
 " beautiful as Juno." But he shov;^s beyond all ques- 
 tion that shallowness of knowledge which Theodore 
 Parker attributed to him, and everything in the shape 
 of thought is amazingly commonplace. . . . 
 
 Mary . . . has been reflecting to-day that there's 
 no telling what might have been; for instance, she 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 91 
 
 might have been the wife of Dr. Kane; and what would 
 he have done with her in the Arctic regions? That 's 
 the present anxiety. 
 
 I am giving Sunday evening lectures on the " Seven 
 Deadly Sins," or, as Mary irreverently terms them, 
 " the Deadhes." The congregations are crowded as 
 much as ever, though half the original ones are gone 
 West. 
 
 ■Worcester, February, 1857 
 You will like to hear something of Dr. Hayes and 
 his lecture. There was a large audience, who of course 
 expected plenty of beard and bearskin, and applauded 
 rather faintly when a spare young man in black stepped 
 out on the platform. He is thin, nervous, spirited, with 
 quite a lively manner. . . . Much of the lecture was 
 familiar to us; but the descriptions were very simple 
 and quite graphic. He always said we and referred but 
 once to Dr. Kane, speaking of " the brave heart of our 
 commander." 
 
 The most novel and least pleasing part of it was his 
 description of their separation from Dr. Kane. This he 
 did not speak of as a thing requiring apology, but he 
 did not give the explanation given by Dr. Kane, or 
 rather added it, as part of their plan, to remain at the 
 Esquimaux settlements and supply the rest of the party 
 with food. But how were they to get the food.? They 
 were not hunters, and their few knives and treasures 
 soon lost their power over the natives, so that they 
 would not sell them even provisions enough for them- 
 
92 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON' 
 
 selves, as might have been anticipated. Dr. K. softens 
 down their sufferings, perhaps in charity for their blun- 
 der; he says they had lived on seal and walrus for two 
 months, but Hayes says that they lived for the last 
 three weeks on hchens from the rocks, and had only 
 fuel enough to cook coffee twice a day. 
 
 Another thing Dr. H. told with great openness 
 which Dr. K. omits entirely: that the party of the 
 former had not only appropriated some . . . furs — • 
 but much worse. For they drugged with laudanum 
 some natives who visited them, took their sledges and 
 dogs, and made off. Being poor drivers, however, the 
 owners soon overtook them, and were compiled by 
 (empty) rifles to drive them to the brig; thus they es- 
 caped . . . and it seems rather hard, after such an 
 example, to reproach the poor Esquimaux with theft. 
 To be sure, the party were reduced to extremities, but 
 the Esquimaux were in extremities all the time. 
 
 Otherwise, I liked the Doctor and walked along with 
 him afterwards to his hotel. His great desire now is to 
 go in a small screw steamer to explore that open sea; 
 I begged him not to mention it, lest I should go too. 
 . . . He wore finally a bearskin coat, one of the skins, 
 and says his sensations of cold here are not the least 
 affected by his Arctic experiences. (N. B. The mer- 
 cury fell to zero as soon as he entered the city.) 
 
 About the same time Higginson reports lecturing at 
 Nantucket: 
 
 I had a nice two days at Nantucket, which is a mere 
 scion of Cape Cod and sister of Plum Island; sandhills 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 93 
 
 and marshes and sea; but I enjoyed it. The people 
 are all cousins. A few years ago the CoflSn School went 
 into operation and they looked round for the " Coffin 
 family " to whom it was limited, and found them to 
 include the whole island, so they made no distinction 
 but of age. They are hospitable and sociable, as such 
 isolated people always are; talk of " the main land " 
 and " the continent " and " foreigners." I stayed at 
 the hotel, but had plenty of hospitality, and a drive 
 with two horses seven miles out to Siasconset, their 
 watering place, a shower of little cottages, covered with 
 honeysuckle, on a high bluff. At Siasconset they have 
 fish-carts made like wheelbarrows, only with a whole 
 cask for a wheel; and in Nantucket you see ladies 
 riding in two-wheeled carts, standing up, holding by a 
 rope to steady themselves. My lectures were very well 
 received, only the people who had been to the Azores 
 were astonished that I could make so much out of 
 them! 
 
 These notes on distinguished contemporaries were 
 written when Mr. Higginson was thirty-four years old : 
 
 Mr. Emerson is bounteous and gracious, but thin, 
 dry, angular, in intercourse as in person. Garrison is 
 the only solid moral reality I have ever seen incarnate, 
 the only man who would do to tie to, as they say out 
 West; and he is fresher and firmer every day, but 
 wanting in intellectual culture and variety. Wendell 
 Phillips is always graceful and gay, but inwardly sad, 
 under that bright surface. Whittier is the simplest and 
 truest of men, beautiful at home, but without fluency 
 
94 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 of expression, and with rather an excess of restraint. 
 Thoreau is pure and wonderfully learned in nature's 
 things and deeply wise, and yet tedious in his mono- 
 logues and cross-questionings. Theodore Parker is as 
 wonderfully learned in books, and as much given to 
 monologue, though very agreeable and various it is, 
 still egotistical, dogmatic, bitter often, and showing 
 marked intellectual limitations. Mr. Alcott is an inno- 
 cent charlatan, full of inspired absurdities and deep 
 strokes, maunders about nature, and when outdoors 
 has neither eyes, ears, nor Hmbs. Lowell is infinitely 
 entertaining, but childishly egotistical and monopo- 
 lizing. 
 
 Lecturing sometimes took the writer as far afield as 
 Canada. 
 
 MoxTBEAL, November, 1857 
 
 . . . We crossed the long bridge to Rouse's Point 
 in a wild wind, and the hotel, which is built far out into 
 the lake, rocked all night with the wind and waves. I 
 had a large room with two doors and no fastening, but 
 the landlord said if I was " timid " I could put a table 
 against the door. This morning I hurried breathless to 
 the cars at seven; got there just in time, but was the 
 first passenger. The ticket-seller said seven was the 
 hour and they should leave " as soon as they could get 
 ready " — which was not till a quarter to eight by his 
 clock. Most of the passengers evidently understood 
 and got there about seven-thirty. Three quarters of 
 the talk in the cars was French, and all the peasants 
 are French. 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 95 
 
 WoECESTER, December 3, 1857 
 
 [In] Montreal ... I saw many delightfully whole- 
 some-looking people, English and French. Among 
 other excitements I went to a steeplechase, which is 
 one of the most enlivening things I ever saw — riders 
 galloping over a mile and half circle of farming country, • 
 taking hedges, ditches, and walls at full speed, the 
 horses leaping like kittens, of course always at some 
 risk of failure or delay. This multiplies the points of 
 interest, and made it infinitely more exciting than any 
 mere trial of speed on a level track. Then the people, 
 those staid John Bulls, were as wild with exuberant 
 emotions as a Yankee caucus. Everything indicated 
 an athletic race. One thing especially delighted me; 
 when I went in to ask the price of snowshoes, they 
 asked me if I wished gentlemen's or ladies' size; and I 
 found that ladies there wear them a good deal. 
 
 From Hamilton, Canada, the record continues: 
 
 What's the use of going to England and using up 
 excitement, all at once, when one can come to Canada 
 and get enough here? I am as distinctly a foreigner 
 here as in Sebastopol, and circumstances have enabled 
 me to enjoy the experience more fully than I ex- 
 pected. . . . 
 
 Behold me, then, domesticated at the City Hotel. 
 Not a Yankee in it but myself — all straight, solid 
 Englishmen, with deep, clear voices emerging from 
 their fur-covered chests. Everybody's made hand- 
 some by a fur cap without a vizor, the most picturesque 
 
96 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 thing possible. The rooms of the hotel are dark, solidly 
 furnished, and hung with colored prints of horses, 
 races, and mail-coaches. The long dining-hall has a 
 large painting of the Queen at one end, of the British 
 arms at the side, with many others of various merit. 
 At dinner each guest is offered a tall, narrow glass of 
 foaming ale. No other gustatory novelty save maca- 
 roni 'pudding. I wish to chronicle, however, that I 
 never saw guests eat faster in America — I mean the 
 United States. Also I never had a scantier supply of 
 water and towels — far inferior to Niagara, though, to 
 be sure, water is what people come there for. 
 
 I am now writing in the Institute News Boom and 
 Library. Little bluff Canadian boys in fur caps are 
 coming in for books to my kind and busy friend Mr. 
 Milne (pronounced Mellen) . . . and a group of 
 sturdy seniors are debating the £1000 which the city 
 has just voted toward the fund for relieving the wives 
 and children of those killed in the Russian War, 
 
 Hamilton is a city nearly as large as Worcester and 
 growing rapidly, but with nothing in the least resem- 
 bling its apparent life, A set of English and Scotch 
 merchants, old and young, congregate in this Reading- 
 Room, which has a sort of provincial or Little Pedling- 
 ton air. For instance there are six little tables, with 
 chessboards on top; — conceive of persons with time 
 to play chess in New England! 
 
 I had a fine afternoon walk up the mountain west 
 of the city. ... At the top I passed a toUgate and 
 stopped to read the inscriptions; the tolls were very 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 97 
 
 complicated — distinction made between private and 
 hired teams, and between the width of tire of different 
 wheels. Below, in large letters, " Clergymen and Fu- 
 nerals gratis." I preferred to pass, however, neither as 
 a clergyman nor as a fmieral, but as a foot-passenger. 
 
 Wednesday afternoon. Chess is perpetual in this 
 " Institute." A handsome youth, in beard and vizor- 
 less cap, plays every afternoon. All last evening there 
 was a game with five lookers-on. 
 
 To-day is brighter, and brings more people into the 
 street. I think I never saw so many black-haired, 
 black-eyed, and black-clothed women, which surprises 
 me. I have just met a beautiful child of eight, in deep 
 mourning above her knees, and all below in full white 
 pantalets and snowy long stockings drawn over her 
 shoes. A girl a few years older had the same rig, but 
 no mourning veil and a bright checked skirt. But the 
 oddest little butterfly was a girl of six or seven coming 
 home from school this morning: a scarlet cloak and 
 hood, over a dark blue dress; then scarlet flannel 
 drawers, loose and short; then black stockings sur- 
 mounted by gray socks, covering the shoes. On the 
 head, finally, a large round fur cap, with ears and no 
 vizor. A sort of servant attended her. I saw some 
 pretty fair-haired boys with large vizorless fur caps 
 and loose gray wrappers, gathered by a belt of the 
 same. The men are far handsomer than the women. 
 All wear fur caps and gloves (which I did not see in 
 Maine), and none the buffalo coats and red leggins 
 which were common there. 
 
98 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 This morning I went to the markets — wood, meat, 
 and grass markets — all in open air. ... I saw 
 women sitting for hours in the freezing cold. There is 
 a queer mixture in the currency. In the hotel placards 
 they state $2 per day as their price, and " York shill- 
 ings " seem as familiar as any other currency. In the 
 same shop you see one thing labelled as 7/6 (English) 
 and another as $6.00. 
 
 In fact, the American infusion is larger than I sup- 
 posed. Mr. Smith, a Worcester man, . . . called on 
 me. . . . He was eager for Worcester gossip, . . . 
 He said there were many Yankees here and they pros- 
 pered, as he had. , . . 
 
 I am amused to find that other American things 
 creep in here also. My devoted little friend, Mr. 
 Milne, is about to lose his place because of what the 
 Directors called " an act of insubordination," in invit- 
 ing Lucy Stone here to lecture, on his own account, 
 after they voted her " not a proper person for the 
 Institute to countenance! "... But the spunky Sec- 
 retary is resolved to have her here, in some other hall 
 than the Institute's and I have promised {sub rosd) 
 to write the opinion of an American clergyman upon 
 her, to be inserted in the paper, when she comes. 
 
 I noticed English-looking hotels with pictures of the 
 Crown and Anchor, the Fox and Hounds, etc. I saw 
 but few colored people, but they looked, without ex- 
 ception, well clothed and comfortable. 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 99 
 
 Detkoit, Thursday evening, January 25 
 At one this morning we were driven down to the 
 [Hamilton] station. It was filled with large EngUsh or 
 Irishmen reposing on benches. Presently a freight 
 train came thundering in, and up jumped all the Irish- 
 men. Going out I found that there was an emigrant 
 car attached, and then out came bundling a multitude 
 of women and children, and also numerous great neat 
 corded boxes. Poor creatures, I supposed them new- 
 comers, and wondered what would become of them. I 
 saw that all seemed to get off very quickly, and the 
 great boxes were wheeled away with miraculous ac- 
 tivity, while the elders seemed quite at home. At last 
 I discovered that these were the vnves of the men on 
 the benches, fresh from the old country, every soul of 
 them, nine women and fifteen children, five children 
 having died on the voyage, which explained the tears 
 that streamed down the cheeks of one wild dark 
 woman, as she convulsively grasped her husband's hand. 
 When this was once understood, it became a scene 
 worth watching. All, without exception, were comfor- 
 tably clothed and looked pictures of health — such 
 round little rosy children, clustering round the fire, 
 winking and blinking, the older ones asking, " Mother, 
 is it morning? " and the smallest always decided on 
 that point — "Oh, yes, iss morning!" Most were 
 English; the few Irish were more talkative and demon- 
 strative, telling all their experiences; the English were 
 quicker, but all seemed really happy, and the men 
 shouldered about the babies, and did n't believe little 
 Jimmy was the same boy, which all the Jimmies re- 
 
100 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 sented. The women looked handsome and respectable, 
 but seemed coarse; they swore a little and the hus- 
 bands a great deal; then one man treated all the 
 others with hot wine and water and whiskey and water, 
 and all the women drank in a circle, very quietly, and 
 let the children taste, even an urchin two years old. 
 It was like a scene out of Dickens. Of course I began 
 distributing candy, and plump little girls dropped old- 
 fashioned curtsies. Then our train came up and I 
 whirled away, and left them still talking and laughing 
 and crying behind; on this the first night of their New 
 World. 
 
 (On the train.) . . . We had several Irish families; 
 it was pleasant to see that nothing could disturb Irish 
 good-nature or make Irish peasants — even the rug- 
 gedest men — any less devoted to their sturdy little 
 children. Was wood wanting in the stove, the Irish 
 laughed, the English grumbled briefly and sat still, the 
 Yankees grumbled nervously and then set out, hunted 
 up wood, and revived the fire. ... I saw no Germans 
 or Swedes, but to my surprise found the " notice to 
 passengers " translated into hath those languages — 
 a thing which speaks volumes. . . . 
 
 I felt a childish pleasure in the thought that I was 
 really getting into the West. Our track ran through 
 scores of nailes of woods, broken only by log huts, and 
 one could see our straight path, looking back, far as 
 eye could reach. Some log huts held Irish aDparently, 
 and some negroes; others of the latter were driving 
 wood-sleds, or sawing at the stations. All looked hale 
 and well dressed. 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 101 
 
 My heart bounded when we came out of the trees on 
 a vast level plain, with the withered grass appearing 
 through the snow, and a snow-storm driving across it 
 — reminding me of Sarah Clarke's brown etchings. 
 They tell me since that it was not a prairie, but it was 
 as good as one to me. 
 
 At last we got to Windsor, where the ferry-boat was 
 slowly toiling through the ice, and I preferred, with 
 many others, to walk across, carpetbag in hand, and 
 thus I reached Detroit at 3 p.m. 
 
 January, 1860 
 
 Deasest Mother: 
 
 I have not written very punctually, but it is from 
 wandering up and down the world lecturing. . . . 
 
 I enjoyed Hartford. . . . There I saw Rose Terry. 
 She lives in a sort of moated grange a mile out of town, 
 an old house with an air of decay, once lovely among 
 its fields and shrubbery, now more lonely with the city 
 grown up to it. There she has lived for sixteen years 
 with an old gray father and a sister more finely or- 
 ganized and invalid than herself, and the healthy tone 
 of the majority of her stories seemed more surprising 
 than the weirdness of the minority. She seems seven 
 and twenty, tall and sallow, with fine eyes, the lower 
 part of her face the smallest and narrowest I ever saw, 
 with a slender, slight voice scarcely audible. She is full 
 of talent, feeling, and delicate humor, very lovable, I 
 should think, but impulsive and vehement, and with a 
 satire as fine as the edge of a lancet. Her sister is 
 married now, and she hves alone with her flowers and 
 her father. 
 
102 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 March 22. 1861 
 
 In Boston I was much interested in looking over 
 Leigh Hunt's library which J. T. Fields bought and 
 had for sale. It carried one nearer to a past era in 
 English literature than anything else could do, to see 
 his name and notes, all written in ink, in a delicate 
 Italian hand and very abundant. 
 
 November, 1861 
 
 . . . Lecturing in Chelsea last night, I spent the 
 night at their [the Fields] house in Boston for the first 
 time. . . . Nothing could be pleasanter, more hos- 
 pitable, and more entertaining than the bibliopole him- 
 self. Such treasures as that house is crammed with. 
 Most of the books there described I saw and some not 
 mentioned; as, for instance, a Greek book, marked 
 in the title-page " Percy Shelley and Leigh Hunt," in 
 the latter's hand, but the blank leaves full of Shel- 
 ley's notes in pencil-writing, delicate as himself. The 
 Wordsworth volumes were captivating, with his own 
 later alterations put in with ink in the neatest way, 
 and showing the delicacy of his literary work. They 
 have the original engravings from Sir George Beau- 
 mont, giving the actual scenes of " Lucy Gray," 
 " Peter Bell," and other poems. Fields described 
 Wordsworth's reading of his own poems in old age, 
 quite grandly, and his reading Tennyson aloud also 
 with equal impressiveness; and turning on a silly lady 
 too profuse in her praise of passages, with " You ad- 
 mire it? But do you understand it?" 
 
 A long parlor, in a house on Charles Street like 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 103 
 
 Louise's, looking on the beautiful river at full tide, and 
 crowded from end to end with books and pictures. 
 Beautiful engravings of great men, framed with an 
 autograph below — Addison with a note to a friend 
 to meet him at the Fountain Tavern; Pope, with 
 a receipt for a subscription to the Iliad; Dickens, 
 Tennyson, Scott, Washington, etc., each with an 
 original note or manuscript below. An original draw- 
 ing of Keats by Severn, his artist friend, in whose 
 arms he died; given to Fields by Severn, as was also a 
 lovely little oil painting of Ariel on the bat's back. 
 Two superb photographs, of a wild, grand face, more 
 like Professor Peirce than any one, with high, powerful 
 brow, long face, masses of tangled hair, and full black 
 beard; they might be a gipsy or a wandering painter or 
 Paganini, or anything weird — and they are Tennyson. 
 
 The next letter refers to a rising young author in 
 whom Mr. Higginson took great interest: 
 
 Do you remember a Newburyport girl named 
 Harriet Prescott [Mrs. Spofford] who writes me im- 
 mense letters and whom I think a wonderful genius? 
 She has Just sent to the " Atlantic " a story, under an 
 assumed name, which is so brilliant and shows such an 
 extraordinary intimacy with European life that the 
 editors seriously suspected it of being a translation 
 from some first-class Frenchman, as Balzac or Dumas, 
 and I had to be called in to satisfy them that a demure 
 little Yankee girl could have written it : which, as you 
 may imagine, has delighted me much. It is called " In 
 a Cellar " and will appear in December. 
 
104 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 A few months later he wrote: 
 
 We had a nice time in Newburyport. I enjoyed 
 seeing the little authoress more than anything; it 
 seemed just like Fanny Bumey of whom we had been 
 reading. She was very modest and humble about it, 
 and only felt as if it were a sort of cheat to take $105 
 for a story. She said she never thought about its 
 attracting aay attention, or she should have been more 
 anxious about details; she supposed, if it got in, that it 
 would pass quietly and nothing more be said about it. 
 Her young friends got her to a meeting of their Beading 
 Club, and read it aloud in her presence. When they 
 got to that wonderful description of the old shop in 
 Paris, her next neighbor murmured, astounded at its 
 local details, "Why, Harriet, where did you get all 
 that? " — " Made it all up, every word of it" was the 
 rapid reply of the young authoress, over her crochet- 
 needle. After the reading, the folding doors were 
 opened and there was an elegant Uttle collation. 
 Stately old Squire Porter conducted Miss Prescott to 
 the seat of honor, and proposed her health in wine, 
 with a little speech, to which she replied; and at the 
 close all the girls escorted her home; quite a pretty 
 little ovation for Newburyport. . . . One of the first 
 things she did with the price of the story was to get a 
 bouquet of flowers for Mary [Mrs. Higginson], which 
 was a pleasant thing. She is always full of gratitude to 
 me, for the little I have done for her. 
 
 Mrs. Spoflford kindly brought the editor some letters 
 which Mr. Higginson had written to her at various 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 105 
 
 times after leaving Newburyport. Here are a few hints 
 to his young friend about the books she should read: 
 
 We see how few people live in Nature by the rarity 
 of any real glimpse of it in their books; almost all is ' 
 second-hand and vague. . . . The only thoroughly 
 outdoor book 1 have ever seen is Thoreau's " Week on 
 the Concord and Merrimack Rivers," which is fasci- 
 nating beyond compare to any one who knows Nature, 
 though the religion and philosophy are of the wildest. 
 He has led a strange Indian life, the author, and his 
 errors and extremes are on the opposite from most 
 people's. . . . 
 
 Thoreau has sent me his book [" Walden "], which 
 I have enjoyed as much, I think, as the other; it is 
 calmer and more whale, crammed with fine observation 
 and thought, and rising into sublimity at the last. 
 
 . . . The two authors, whom I am chiefly anxious 
 that you should read earnestly and appreciatively, are 
 (as you perhaps anticipate) Shakespeare and Emerson; 
 though when you read either is a secondary thing. 
 Prom Einerson, I differ, ... in temperament, atti- 
 tude, and many conclusions; but in spite of this I 
 know of no author whose writings seem to me so 
 densely crowded with absolute truth, and so graceful 
 in beauty; though there is never any artistic wholeness 
 in his Essays; they are a series of exquisite sentences; 
 and yet more than this I value for you that noble 
 calmness, gentleness, courage, and freedom; and that 
 pure air and unflinching moral heroism which make 
 him the very strongest teacher for the moral nature 
 
106 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 that this generation has given, I know this by its 
 fruits, in myseK and my contemporaries. . . . 
 
 You said you had never read Bettina [von Amim] : I 
 hope you will get the book; for it needs, perhaps, 
 to be read early; I have enjoyed it more and get 
 more out of her than I ever did from Goethe, and I am 
 never tired of her books, though it is painful to think 
 of her, because her life seemed exhausted in that 
 early flowering. It is touching to see how small she 
 thought herself beside the great man, and yet she is as 
 much a part of the universe as he and could be as 
 little replaced by another. 
 
 July 10, 1859 
 
 Deabest Mother: 
 
 Emerson says, " To-day is a king in disguise "; and 
 it is sometimes odd to think that these men and women 
 of the " Atlantic Monthly," mere mortals to me, will 
 one day be regarded as demi-gods, perhaps, and that it 
 would seem as strange to another generation for me to 
 have sat at the same table with Longfellow or Emer- 
 son, as it now seems that men should have sat at table 
 with Wordsworth or with Milton. So I may as well 
 tell you all about my inducting Uttle Harriet Prescott 
 into that high company. 
 
 She met me at twelve in Boston at Ticknor's and we 
 spent a few hours seeing pictures and the aquaria! 
 gardens; the most prominent of the pictures being a 
 sort of luncheon before our dinner; viz., Holmes and 
 Longfellow in haK length and very admirable, by 
 Buchanan Read (I don't think any previous king in 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 107 
 
 disguise ever had his portrait so well painted as this 
 one, at any rate) ; also, by the same, a delicious paint- 
 ing of three Longfellow children — girls with their 
 mother's eyes and Mary Greenleaf 's coloring, at least 
 three different modifications of it. . . . 
 
 In the course of these divertisements we stopped at 
 Phillips's and Sampson's, where we encountered dear, 
 dark, slender, simple, sensitive Whittier, trying to 
 decide whether to " drink delight of battle with his 
 peers " at the dinner-table, or slide shyly back to 
 Amesbuiy in the nejct train. To introduce him to 
 Harriet was like bringing a girl and a gazelle ac- 
 quainted; each visibly wished to run away from the 
 other; to Whittier a woman is a woman, and he was as 
 bashful before the small authoress as if she were the 
 greatest. Cheery John Wyman was persuading him to 
 stay to dinner, and on my iatroducing him to my com- 
 panion turned the battery of his good-nature upon her, 
 pronouncing her story the most popular which had 
 appeared in the magazine — " Oh, sir," she whispered 
 to me afterwards, " he spoke to me about my story — 
 do you suppose anybody else will? I hope not." 
 
 Duly at three we appeared at the Revere House. 
 You are to understand that this was a special festival 
 — prior to Mrs. Stowe's trip to Europe — and the 
 admission of ladies was a new thing. Harriet was 
 whirled away into some unknown dressing-room, and 
 I found in another parlor Holmes, Lowell, Longfellow, 
 Whipple, Edmund Quincy, Professor Stowe, Stillman 
 the artist, Whittier (after all). Woodman, John Wy- 
 man, and Underwood. When dinner was confiden- 
 
108 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 tially announced, I saw a desire among the founders of 
 the feast to do the thing handsomely toward the fair 
 guests, and found, to my great amusement, that Mrs. 
 Stowe and Harriet Prescott were the only ones! Noth- 
 ing would have tempted my little damsel into such a 
 position, I knew; but now she was in for it; to be 
 handed in to dinner by the Autocrat himself, while 
 Lowell took Mrs. Stowe I Miss Terry was at Saratoga 
 and Mrs. Julia Howe suddenly detained; so these were 
 alone. But how to get them downstairs — send up a 
 servant or go ourselves? — that is, were they in a bed- 
 room or a parlor; an obsequious attendant suddenly 
 suggested the latter, so Lowell and I went up. In a 
 small but superb room the authoress of " Uncle Tom " 
 stood smoothing her ample plumage, while the junior 
 lady hovered timidly behind. . . . Mrs. Stowe was 
 quietly dressed in a Quakerish silk, but with a peculiar 
 sort of artificial grape-leaf garland round her head 
 which I could not examine more minutely; she looked 
 very well, but I thought Harriet looked better; she 
 had smoothed down her brown curls, the only pretty 
 thing about her, except a ladylike httle figure, robed in 
 the plainest imaginable black silk. . . . 
 
 Down we went: Dr. Holmes met us in the entry; 
 each bowed lower than the other, and we all marched 
 in together. Underwood had wished to place Edmund 
 Quincy by Harriet, at his request, she being on Dr. 
 Holmes's right ^ — the Autocrat's right, think of the 
 ordeal for a humble maiden at her first dinner party! 
 but I told him the only chance for her to breathe was 
 to place me there, which he did. On Dr. Holmes's left 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 109 
 
 was Whittier, next. Professor Stowe, opposite me, 
 while Mrs. S. was on Lowell's right at the other end. 
 
 By this lady's special stipulation the dinner was 
 teetotal, which compulsory virtue caused some wry 
 faces among the gentlemen, not used to such absti- 
 nence at "Atlantic" dinners; it was amusing to see 
 how they nipped at the water and among the bon mots 
 privately circulated thereupon, the best was Long- 
 fellow's proposition that Miss Prescott should send 
 down into her Cellar for some wine, since Mrs. Stowe 
 would not allow any abovestairsl This joke was 
 broached early and carefully prevented from reaching 
 the ears of either of its subjects, but I thought it 
 capital, for you remember her racy description of wine, 
 of which she knows about as much as she does of 
 French novels, which I find most people suppose her 
 to have lived upon — she having once perused 
 "Consuelo"! 
 
 Little Dr. Holmes came down upon her instantly 
 with her laurels. " I suppose you meet your story 
 wherever you go," said he, " like Madam d'Arblay " 
 (and indeed the whole thing reminded me of her first 
 introductions into literary society). ... I seized the 
 first opportunity to ask whether she and Mrs. Stowe 
 had any conversation upstairs. "Yes," said she 
 meekly; " Mrs. Stowe asked me what time it was and 
 I told her I did n't know," There 's intellectual inter- 
 course for a young beginner! . . . 
 
 When the wife of Andrew Jackson Davis, the seer, 
 was once asked if her husband, who was then staying 
 at Fitzhenry Homer's, was not embarrassed by being 
 
110 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 in society superior to that in which he was trained, she 
 replied indignantly that her husband, who was con- 
 stantly in the society of the highest angels, was not 
 likely to be overcome by Mrs. Fitzhenry Homer. And 
 when I reflected on the entertainments which were 
 described in " In a Cellar," I felt no fear of Harriet's 
 committing any solecism in manners at an " Atlantic " 
 dinner, which she certainly did not, though a little 
 frightened, occasionally, I could see, at the obsequious- 
 ness of the waiters and the absurd multiplicity of 
 courses. . . . 
 
 I don't care so very much for " Atlantic " dinners — 
 Professor Felton says they are more brilliant than 
 London ones, but I think that Mary and I get up quite 
 as good ones in Worcester — but Dr. Holmes is always 
 effervescent and funny, and John Wyman is the best 
 story-teller the world ever saw, and indeed everybody 
 contributed something. The best thing Holmes said 
 was in discoursing on his favorite theory of races and 
 families. " Some families," he said, " are constitution- 
 ally incapable of doing anything wrong; they try it as 
 boys, but they relapse into virtue; as individuals, they 
 attempt to do wrong, but the race is too strong for 
 them and they end in pulpits. Look at the Wares, for 
 instance; / don't believe that the Wares jell in Adam! " 
 
 In a letter to Harriet Prescott, I find this allusion to 
 the Stowe dinner: 
 
 Dr. Holmes — whom you evidently did not fancy, 
 though you describe his talk so well — is really supe- 
 rior, at every point I can think of, to Lowell, whom you 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 111 
 
 liked so much; I should except personal appearances, 
 for Lowell's brow and eyes are Apollo-like, while all 
 Holmes's face is small in outline and expression, though 
 mobile and vivacious. . . . 
 
 Maria Lowell was a living poem. She was his in- 
 spiration and his moral tonic beside, and he has been 
 living on her memory ever since, in both respects. . . . 
 
 The chief editor [Lowell of the " Atlantic "] reads 
 every article without knowing the author's name, so as 
 to be perfectly impartial. 
 
 Apropos of the "Atlantic," Higginson wrote his 
 mother in July, 1861 : 
 
 You ask about the " Atlantic " — Fields will edit it, 
 which is a great thing for the magazine; he having the 
 promptness and business qualities which Lowell sig- 
 nally wanted; for instance, my piece about Theodore 
 Parker lay nearly two months under a pile of anony- 
 mous manuscripts in his study while he was wondering 
 that it did not arrive. Fields's taste is very good and 
 far less crotchety than Lowell's, who strained at gnats 
 and swallowed camels, and Fields is always casting 
 about for good things, while Lowell is rather disposed 
 to sit still and let them come. It was a torment to deal 
 with Lowell and it is a real pleasure with Fields. For 
 instance, the other day Antoinette Brown Blackwell 
 sent me a very pleasing paper on the proper treatment 
 of old age — called "A Plea for the Afternoon." I 
 sent it to Fields by express and it reached him after 
 twelve one noon (I don't know how many hours after). 
 At seven that night I received it again by express, with 
 
112 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 approval and excellent suggestions as to some modifi- 
 cations. . , . Such promptness never was known in a 
 magazine; it would have been weeks or months before 
 L. would have got to it. 
 
 This letter refers to an earlier " Atlantic " dinner: 
 
 Perhaps you expect a full account of last Saturday's 
 " Atlantic " dinner; but really it was hardly worth it, 
 except for Holmes, who was really very agreeable and 
 even delightful, far more so than James Lowell, the 
 other principal interlocutor, who was bright and witty 
 as always, but dogmatic and impatient of contradic- 
 tion more than he used to be, though he always had 
 that tendency; whereas Holmes was very genial and 
 sweet and allowed Lowell to be almost rude to him. 
 The other guests were Edmund Quincy, Dr. J. W. 
 Palmer (author of your favorite Miss Wimple), Charles 
 W. Storey (a lazy, witty lawyer), Charles Norton, 
 Underwood, John Wyman, formerly of Worcester, and 
 myself. . . . Most of the serious talk turned on the- 
 ology (which Underwood said they often fell upon). 
 Holmes taking the radical side and Lowell rather the 
 conservative. Hohnes said some things that were as 
 eloquent as anything in the " Autocrat " about the 
 absurdity of studying doctrines in books and supposing 
 that we got much from that source, when each person is 
 the net result of a myriad influences from all natm-e and 
 society which mould him from his birth and before it. 
 
 This critical letter to Mr. Fields was written in 
 January, 1862: 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 113 
 
 Dbah Friend: 
 
 I send the " Letter to a Young Contributor," which 
 will cover nine or ten pages. 
 
 I am sorry to say that this household unites in the 
 opinion that February is a decidedly poor number. 
 Mrs. Howe is tedious. " To-day " grim and disagree- 
 able, though not without power; " Love and Skates " 
 [Theodore Winthrop] trashy and second-rate; and 
 Bayard Taylor below plummet-sounding of decent 
 criticism. His mediocre piece had a certain simplicity 
 and earnestness, but this seems to me only fit for the 
 " Ledger " in its decline. I could only raise one smile 
 over the " Biglow " (" rod, perch, or pole "), but I 
 suppose that will be liked. Whittier's poem is daring, 
 but successful; Agassiz has covered the same ground 
 often. Whipple uses " considerable " atrociously at 
 beginning of last critical notice, and " Snow " has a 
 direful misprint on page 195 (end ofj paragraph) — 
 South for Earth. I liked " Ease in Work," " Fremont 
 and Artists " in Italy. 
 
 The thing that troubled me most, though, was the 
 absence of a strong article on the war, especially as 
 January had none. I see men buying the " Continen- 
 tal " for its strong emancipatory pieces, and they are 
 amazed that the " Atlantic " should not have got 
 beyond Lowell's timid " Self-Possession." For the 
 " Atlantic " to speak only once in three months, and 
 then against an emancipatory poHcy, is humiliating. 
 Perhaps I ought to have written and offered one, but I 
 could not write when busy about regiments and com- 
 panies, and after that I supposed you had a press of 
 
114 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 war matter on hand, as no doubt you did some months 
 ago; but public sentiment is moving fast if events are 
 not, and it is a shame that life should come from the 
 "Knickerbocker" and not from the "Atlantic." You 
 always get frank criticisms from me, at least, you 
 know. 
 
 P.S. I see the papers treat the number well — but 
 so they always do. At the lowest point ever reached 
 by the magazine, just before your return from Eng- 
 land, the newspaper praises kept regularly on. 
 
 January 29, 186S 
 
 ..." Snow " [an essay of Higginson's in the 
 " Atlantic "] seems quite popular and Thoreau likes it, 
 the only critic whom I should regard as really formid- 
 able on such a subject. By the way, he is fatally ill 
 with hereditary consumption and may not Uve to an- 
 other summer. It is probably aggravated by neglect 
 and exposure. 
 
 February 6, 1862 
 
 . . . Always after writing anything I immediately 
 come upon something which ought to have gone into it. 
 Last Sunday I came in with a bird's nest all full of 
 ice and snow and showed it to Charlotte Hawes, who 
 was here, saying something about its having the wrong 
 thing in it. " Oh," said she quickly, " snow is eggs, you 
 know — in cookery." . . . Then she also told me of a 
 little girl who said snow was popped rain, which I think 
 inimitable. 
 
THE WORCESTER PERIOD 115 
 
 April, 1862 
 Since that " Letter to a Young Contributor " I have 
 more wonderful effusions than ever sent me to read 
 with request for advice, which is hard to give. . . . 
 One begins: 
 
 Summer is come 
 Winter is gone 
 On! the brier 
 And prickly thorn 
 
 and ends: 
 
 My little home 
 Is safe and sound 
 And I 'm a til- 
 ler of the ground 
 
 WoRCBSTEH, October, 1860 
 
 ... It SO happens that we have just had a visit 
 from Edwin Morton, Gerrit Smith's private tutor, who 
 went to Europe at the time of John Brown. " The 
 wicked flea, whom no man pursueth," Judge Russell 
 satirically termed him : but he is a very cultivated and 
 refined person and had that career among English 
 literati which seems to be cheaply open to all young 
 Yankees. 
 
 A letter without date describes Colonel Higginson's 
 first meeting with Anne Whitney, the poet and 
 sculptor: 
 
 Here I am in a farmhouse in the loveUest, greenest 
 region of Watertown, on a by-road, next house but one 
 above Mr. Cushing's and next to Miss Anne Whitney's. 
 . . . After my nap this afternoon, as I was beginning 
 to write to you ... up came a message that Miss 
 
116 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 A. W. was below, so down I went. White dress and 
 cape bonnet; face between Elizabeth Whittier and 
 Susan Higginson: looking older than I expected. Her 
 brother was with her, which made it less remarkable 
 for her to call on me. She and I agreed on a walk, 
 which we later took — a lovely walk through green 
 lanes fringed with barberries to a beautiful great elm 
 tree and some superb oaks. I really never saw such 
 groups of trees. It was an elm tree with the vigor of 
 an oak — a little marring its peculiar grace. A. W. is 
 like her poems, in a less degree — spirited and decided 
 and a little abrupt and odd, sometimes saying very 
 condensed and graphic things, but with no grace, 
 herein being unlike her poems. I don't know how she 
 liked me; she said I was entirely unlike her expecta- 
 tions which I believe is jmcommon for people to say, 
 is n't it? She did not repel me, neither did she charm 
 me. ... I took tea there afterwards and rode to a 
 meeting and back with them this evening. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 JOURNEYS 
 
 In 1855 the Worcester pastor with a few friends took a 
 trip to Mount Katahdin. This jaunt he described in a 
 current number of " Putnam's Magazine." These bits 
 of description are taken from his letters home: 
 
 Mattawaumkeag, Maine 
 Stopping to tea 
 
 September 5, 1855 
 
 We see Katahdin gloriously all day — pale blue, 
 finer than Monadnock, with vast scars of slides down 
 the sides. All say we can go to the mountain easily and 
 partway up, at least. 
 
 Lake Camp (Camp No. 2) 
 
 Outlet Wissatacook Laks 
 
 September 8, 1855 
 
 Dearest Mother: 
 
 The dotted line [in a sketch] is a lake about half a 
 mile broad; beyond this are woods stretching up to the 
 bare magnificent top of Katahdin — some four miles 
 from us in an air line, but ten by our pathway. Yester- 
 day we walked about nine miles, seven harder ones 
 to-day; seven more to-morrow bring us to our highest 
 camp halfway up at the foot of a slide. . . . Thence 
 we ascend on Monday morning, thus making an easy 
 day's work, these two days. We left our first camp at 
 7 A.M. and reached here at 2, and have had a delicious 
 rest this afternoon. 
 
118 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 I cannot say how glorious this mountain is — the 
 most personal mountain I ever knew, more so than 
 Monadnock. It stands out magnificent and lonely, in 
 a sea of woods, the chief peak like a broad crater, and 
 on the right stretches out another, with an awful semi- 
 circular basin into which we can look and see its bare 
 precipices, five hundred feet high, without a spyglass. 
 Over the whole moimtain grows each moment a soft 
 film, and it retires farther and farther. A few soft 
 clouds, reddish brown and golden, linger along its 
 solemn outline and make us feel as if Pomola were right 
 in forbidding its ascent, as Indians fable. 
 
 The lake is a little ruffled by the evening wind. 
 Three figures stand catching fish rapidly (we have 
 about a hundred trout and chubs this afternoon); a 
 few are sitting on a stone to watch them. Three are 
 writing; Mr. Battles [a Universahst minister from 
 Bangor] is dressing fish, and Martha and Mr. Brown 
 are helping our guides in picking hemlock boughs and 
 piling oiu" soft broad couches in tents. We have all had 
 such a happy afternoon; the freedom of the woods 
 descends deeper and deeper into us; all obstacles have 
 vanished, and everything is easier than we expected. 
 
 AU of us are better and stronger than when we 
 started, although we have had for twenty-four hours 
 only very hard crackers, either dry or fried pork, salt 
 pork, and milkless tea, all which I have learned to hke. 
 To-night we have enough for several days and may 
 have moose or deer hereafter. I never slept more de- 
 lightfully than in our tent last night, a booth open on 
 one side to the great fire and only too warm for us all. 
 
JOURNEYS 119 
 
 We all found it impossible to realize our blessings, and 
 yet all thought the fact better than all previous fancies. 
 I never was with so happy a party. One of our guides 
 calls it " the pleasantest gang he ever came up with " 
 — he being a young lumberer. The chief guide, a noble 
 youth of twenty-three, an Indian in figure, strength, 
 and quietness, a natural gentleman, " head of a gang 
 of lumberers " who never used tobacco or drank a glass 
 of spirits in his life, gave me his opinion thus, " There 's 
 no better grit to be scared up anywhere than them 
 women have," and truly they deserve it. All wished 
 to go farther to-day, but it was more convenient here. 
 It only seems absurd that strong and active women 
 should go anywhere else. Nothing equals this; we 
 have all enjoyed every step of the way. Now, good- 
 night, light is gone, and the fish almost ready. 
 
 Sunday. Up at five. It had rained in the night, and 
 I feared a rainy day, but found it only cold and raw. 
 Sent off the ladies to bathe in the brook below the dam, 
 while we went to the lake, some to fish, some to bathe. 
 Had a delicious swim, while fish flapped rapidly on our 
 lines. This was a work of necessity; so I learned 
 afterwards to dress the fish. 
 
 The mountain this morning was a new wonder. 
 Instead of the radiant outline of filmy brightness, 
 there was a vast tower of chill cloud, with dark 
 towers of precipice showing here and there between. 
 It was no longer our summer friend, but the dark and 
 awful home of the Indian's Pomola. I remembered 
 what Thoreau said, that perhaps it was an insult to the 
 Gods to climb their mountains, and shuddered to think 
 
120 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 that our night's camp would be within that skirt of 
 white, soft, impenetrable material. Should we dare it? 
 But moment by moment clouds went and came, and 
 always more went than came, and at last the sunlight 
 came and shone brightly on the wood-fringed lakes; 
 and meanwhile we bathed and fished and dressed our 
 fish and went up to breakfast. 
 
 An ad venture I . . Last night we heard mysterious 
 steps round our camp, and the men watched for moose, 
 but none came. Just before breakfast came two rifle 
 shots in quick succession, while our one rifle lay quiet 
 against a tree! 
 
 Who might it be? Some said " Demons." All rushed 
 in different directions — I to the waterside, where 
 stood a dripping and soiled man with eyes like blue 
 fire, haggard and torn. He looked drunk or insane, but 
 turned out at last a wandering hunter who had come 
 from Hunt's since 2 p.m. yesterday, on our track, lost 
 himself in a swamp, and was sleepless, tired, and 
 hungry, and just washing himself. He was a Lowell 
 man, but seemed to have been all around the world. 
 Our woodsmen received him to their hearts at once and 
 we to share our delicious fish and he in return had 
 partridges for us. So he has accompanied us to-day on 
 our four-mile waUc to our noon camp on Roaring Brook 
 at the foot of the mountain. I write now on a tree 
 which M'Lane has felled for our bridge. 
 
 Another mountain excursion involved a visit to the 
 Adirondack camp of sundry Worcester friends: 
 
JOURNEYS 121 
 
 Worcester, September 11. 1859 
 Dearest Mother: 
 
 Last night brought me back from my pleasant nine 
 days' trip to the Adirondack. It was somewhat 
 hurried, but the region is fascinating and it was per- 
 fectly dehghtful to me to be in the woods again. I 
 cannot compare it with my trip to Katahdin very well, 
 that being entirely a pedestrian affair and this almost 
 entirely boating. On the whole the Katahdin region is 
 wilder, though both have been " lumbered " over too 
 much for thorough wilderness. Still, there we were 
 beyond houses for five days, while there is hardly any 
 one of the lovely Adirondack lakes without one or 
 more clearings somewhere upon it, where supplies or 
 shelter can be got in case of need. There we shouldered 
 our packs and were reduced to a minimum of comforts 
 for that reason; here we had boats for carrying every- 
 thing and lived in comparative luxury; the party hav- 
 ing, for instance, got milk every day, thus obviating 
 Mr. Emerson's grand objection to the wilderness, that 
 the cows were not driven in. On the other hand, the 
 style of camping was not so agreeable as in Maine, 
 closed tents being used and the fires not kept up all 
 night. Indeed, I personally only camped out one night, 
 the others being more or less under shelter. ... As 
 to scenery there was no one mountain comparable in 
 lonely glory to Katahdin, nor did I ascend any, but 
 there was a far greater variety of mountain back- 
 ground. . . . After all this comparison with Katahdin, 
 remains the perpetual boating, a thing ever fascinat- 
 ing to those who enjoy it all, gliding on from lake 
 
122 THOMAS W'ENTWORTH HIGGINSON" 
 
 to lake, like Evangeline, beneath cliffs and wooded 
 islands, under overhanging boughs just tinged with 
 autumn, and through dawning and dying days; large 
 lakes with rippling waves (" chibogles," as the boat- 
 men say) breaking their darkness into blue; Httle 
 fairylike ponds with outlets inscrutable; creeks losing 
 themselves in bushes; the fascinating Raquette River, 
 soft and shaded as the Artichoke, down which for 
 many miles we travelled; with tall pine trees left by 
 the lumberers, cedars himg with long white moss, and 
 mounds of trailing grapevines. The immediate banks 
 are seldom so high as one expects, but the backgrounds 
 are always beautiful. 
 
 I left Worcester on Friday, reached Keesville that 
 night, rode forty-six miles on Saturday through a dark 
 and dusty iron region to Martin's on the Lower Sar- 
 anac, the end of civilization; there took boat and guide 
 on Sunday afternoon, the morning being too windy, 
 and went in pursuit of my party. Fifteen miles that 
 night brought me to a log house, Steve Martin's; the 
 next day we partly spent off the right track in going 
 up FoUansbee brook and pond in pursuit of them, but 
 we saw that pretty pond, where "the philosophers" 
 went last year, but a party of ladies and gentlemen 
 from New Haven were camping and deer-hunting that 
 morning ; then back to the Raquette River again and 
 down to Stetson's, the most picturesque of log houses, 
 where a handsome and intelligent household charmed 
 us; here we had something to eat for the first time 
 since morning and found that our party were still ten 
 miles farther after rowing and paddling twenty-five; 
 
JOURNEYS 123 
 
 on we pushed under the moonlight, and at nine stole 
 upon them at their camp-fire and were enthusiasti- 
 cally received — that is, I and my guide and his dog. 
 . . . They had quite given me up, but had had a jovial 
 time in spite of much rain; indeed, everything is 
 jovial and successful which Tom Earle leads. They 
 were camped in the most charming place on Tupper's 
 Lake, opposite the Bog River Falls, which flow into 
 the head of the lake, lovely as Trenton. The next day 
 we stayed only for another unsuccessful deer hunt and 
 then turned homeward and had two delightful days of 
 boating back to Martin's, reaching there Wednesday 
 night, and they leaving Thursday morning, while 
 Edward Spring and I stayed another day to penetrate 
 to the new Philosophers' Camp at Amperzand Pond 
 and see Stillman, the artist, who had invited us all. 
 You who have not seen Eddy Spring, son of Marcus, 
 do not know how sweet and chivalrous and handsome 
 and charming a young man of twenty-two can be, but 
 I found him the most delightful of companions. 
 Amperzand Pond is a region of romance; you go seven 
 miles by water up a secret brook, then four miles' hard 
 climbing through wild and beautiful woods; suddenly 
 the path ends, between great trees, in the loveliest of 
 lakes with no sign of human life. In despair you dis- 
 charge your rifle, and suddenly a boat comes out from 
 a wooded point, and receives you as guests in fairyland. 
 Stillman is the presiding spirit; he stays there all 
 summer and paints while the other artists and savants 
 who make up the Adirondack Club (or Amperzanders 
 as the boatmen call them) come and go. This summer 
 
124 THOMAS WENTWORTH HEGGINSON 
 
 there have been James Lowell, Estes Howe, Judge 
 Hoar, Horace Gray; and Emerson and Longfellow and 
 others are now coming. John Holmes came, carried in 
 an armchair through the forest by four men; they said 
 it was hard, but he was so funny. They are just buying 
 the pond and its whole surroundings, to keep them 
 sacred from lumbering and injury, and have taken this 
 out-of-the-way place to avoid company and disturb- 
 ance; besides, it is by far the most beautiful lake we 
 saw, the mountains coming closer and steeper round it 
 than in any other place we saw, and they are laying out 
 rude paths to aU the points of interest in the neighbor- 
 ing wilderness, while their camps and dining-room and 
 kitchen of logs and bark are perfectly picturesque 
 and show exquisite taste of arrangement. Stillman was 
 hospitable, though not quite satisfactory, and dined us 
 on venison boiled and broiled, cranberries and guava 
 jeUy, and by and by we came away and let the wilder- 
 ness close around the lonely artist. 
 
 Comilig back we stopped to see the finest of all the 
 fine arts, most graceful of all things ever done by man 
 — fly-fishing as practised by a great master, Henry K. 
 Brown, the sculptor, Larkin Mead's teacher, of whom 
 he will like to hear. . . . The next morning we left 
 Martin's, got to Burlington that night, and home the 
 next (Saturday); and now the lakes and mountains 
 are fading into dreams. 
 
 In 1855 the Higginsons sailed for Fayal for the 
 benefit of Mrs. Higginson's health. 
 
JOURNEYS 125 
 
 WORCESTEB, July 
 
 . . . For companions on the voyage we may have 
 Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dabney . . . very pleasant 
 people. There seem plenty of entertainments there — 
 oranges, music, whaleships. Catholic priests, and a 
 steep mountain. " Pico " half as high again as Mount 
 Washington. 
 
 Babqtte Azor., 650 miles from home 
 October 30 
 
 " What 's the name of the place? " asks Mary of 
 Captain Burke. "Atlantic Ocean," he promptly 
 answers. . . . 
 
 ... In the middle of the first night (having been 
 implored by Barbara not to worry me or anybody 
 about any conceivable noise she might hear), she de- 
 spairingly remarked, " Four men have just fallen flat 
 on the deck above my head "; and then plaintively, 
 " But you told me not to mind such things! " at which 
 we both roared and then went to sleep. The third 
 night was perfectly tremendous; the ship rolled enor- 
 mously, all the lamps fell down or went out, aU doors 
 flapped open and shut violently, tin cans and plates 
 rolled in all directions over the cabin floor, the rain 
 came in through cracks in the cabin skylight, all 
 manner of roarings and creakings came from the deck, 
 and in the morning all we could do was to stagger and 
 stick where fate permitted. 
 
 November S 
 
 . . . Our days have settled into a routine. In the 
 morning I ... go on deck in a light and graceful 
 
126 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 deshabille, to be soused with two or three pails of Gulf 
 Stream water by a grinning sailor, to the great glee 
 of the Portuguese steerage passengers. . . . Twelve 
 sometimes brings a lunch of pears and grapes and 
 apples. ... It is the most lotus-eating life. I do not see 
 how a person can be fit for anything after six weeks of 
 it; what, then, must an imprisonment be? — a thought 
 which comes naturally to my mind, since I have been 
 reading the sheets of Mr. Parker's " Defence," which 
 he gave me, and which have recalled the times when I 
 used to build visions occasionally of the inside of a jail. 
 
 . . . We have had no calms or storms, and few 
 wonders, though many beauties. One night dolphins 
 sent lances of fire beneath our bows; yesterday we saw 
 a shoal of great leathery blackfish rolling their broad 
 bulk half out of water, and to-day a little shower of 
 white foam-flakes across the distant trough of a wave 
 was pronounced to be flying fish. 
 
 ... I have been reading Edward Hale's mono- 
 graph, and Mrs. Dabney has been giving informa- 
 tion respecting Fayal, delighting Mary's fancy with 
 thoughts of nuns' delicacies, such as kitten's paws, 
 angel's crops, royal eggs, and golden straws, and terrify- 
 ing her, on the other hand, with fears of boys, dogs, 
 and crazy donkeys. She avers that she never dreamed 
 of finding her sweet enemy, boys, in Payal, and has 
 thoughts of returning in the vessel forthwith. 
 
 Fatal, Friday, November 9 
 
 O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful, and 
 again past all whooping! Nobody ever told us, nobody 
 
JOURNEYS 127 
 
 ever prepared us, we knew nothing of it! They told us 
 of the views and the mountains and the ocean, but 
 that we should step suddenly into all the South of 
 Europe at once, set our feet in Lisbon and Madrid and 
 Naples all in one, a place where not a person looks as 
 any person ever looked in America, not a sound but is 
 new! . . . We have had the day that comes but once 
 in a life — the first day in a foreign country. At 
 Singapore or Batavia we should feel no farther from 
 home. It has been a day of absolute intoxication. I 
 have seen no beauty in Nature, I have scarcely looked 
 at the lovely Pico across the bay, in the wonder of this 
 new human existence. From that moment when I 
 stumbled on deck at five and saw the dim ghostly 
 island round which we were gliding, through all the 
 gradual approach and the dawning of light, bringing 
 out the great bluffs and the bare high hills, all patched 
 in squares of vegetation, hedged with cane plants, down 
 to the lofty precipice of rock, and while we rounded into 
 the bay and saw the Dabney flags run up here and there 
 and the red and yellow flag from a Spanish steamer, 
 and the long semi-circle of bare square white stone 
 houses and churches, up to the time when we were 
 hoisted over the vessel's side and landed with difficulty 
 at the old stone steps among such figures as we never 
 dreamed of in Italy — we were drawn gradually into 
 a bev/ildered spell, under which we are now prostrate. 
 
 Saturday, November 10 
 Fayal is more digestible on the second day. What I 
 wrote last night relieved my mind a little and to-day I 
 
128 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 am a little less bewildered. ... I have only looked 
 and walked up and down the mam street as yet, for 
 this little narrow stony lane seems to be the main 
 street. . . . Gibraltar may be more varied in its 
 picturesqueness and more brilliant in costume, but this 
 is as much so as we can take in at once. It realizes all 
 and more than aU my dreams of southern Europe — 
 everywhere the same picturesqueness of dress or un- 
 dress, reminding one of " Anzoleto " and " Consuelo " 
 and all sorts of books. . . . Scarcely any men wear 
 coats, hats, or caps, but httle round or pointed caps 
 half covering their black hair, vests of different colors 
 or jackets, and trousers often rolled up; some women 
 wear broad straw hats, some handkerchiefs, but nearly 
 half of each sex have something on their heads, baskets 
 of fruits, vegetables, and poultry, jars or high pails of 
 water — loads of all kinds; for instance, each article of 
 our baggage or freight (hundreds in all) went from the 
 landing to the customhouse, a mile nearly, on some- 
 body's head, and this wild procession came and went 
 along the middle of the street. My heaviest trunk was 
 carried by a boy of fourteen, on his head, for this 
 whole distance. Next to the human passers-by in 
 importance rank the donkeys, almost as constant a 
 procession, sometimes with one high pile or box or 
 basket, sometimes with two panniers. ... Or they 
 go back empty, with men, boys, and girls riding. Once 
 in a great while pass two oxen yoked to an uncouth 
 cart, made of basketwork on a sohd frame, supported 
 by an axle which turns vnih the wheels, creaking so 
 that the whole street resounds. Once only we have 
 
JOURNEYS 129 
 
 seen a two-horse carriage, of the most ancient and 
 astonishing structure; I have not seen another horse 
 in town. Ladies use donkeys and sedan chairs, and 
 to-day the Dabneys sent a pretty palankeen with two 
 bearers for Mary. ... It is excitement enough to 
 stand at the window here — every moment some figure 
 passes so picturesque and strange. The children are 
 picturesquely naked, barelegged at least, and with 
 little caps and handkerchiefs on their heads; they and 
 the young men are sometimes beautiful, and fine eyes 
 are very abundant. I went this morning to a little 
 beach worthy of Naples — the strange, handsome 
 figures in the boats, groups of women and children 
 basking in the sun, or talking with eager gestures; 
 radiant fishes heaped in baskets in gorgeous combi- 
 nation of red and blue and yellow. I see that pictur- 
 esqueness consists in a proper mingling of nudity and 
 dirt; introduce comfort and the art of printing, and it 
 vanishes. I am thankful to see these things, but only 
 too grateful that I was born in New England. Yet 
 the beggars, though as dreadful in their appearance as 
 I expected, are not quite so importimate. 
 
 HoRTA, Fatal, December 29 
 
 Our chamber window looks down upon the white 
 surf which lashes the sea-wall on the other side of the 
 narrow street; the black curving beach lies to the left, 
 the old fort projects over the rocks to the right; be- 
 fore us is the sheltered bay with its six or eight brigs 
 and schooners lying oflf in the deep water; and behind 
 these, five miles away, but not looking half a mile, rises 
 
130 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 the glorious background of Pico, the great, graceful, 
 conical, extinct volcano, girded with its belt of vine- 
 yards and villages below and its seldom-failing garment 
 of clouds. Yet if these clouds are not too dense, at my 
 first glance in the morning a glory of approaching 
 sunrise strikes through them, and at the same time 
 there glides across the foreground a bulky lateen-sailed 
 boat, light-winged and heavy-bodied, like all the sea- 
 birds; it is crammed so densely with men and women 
 that one wonders at their rashness in this rough sea; 
 but another and yet another follows, and if I were to 
 follow them, as they disappear past the fort, I should 
 witness the tumultuous landing. ... I should see 
 them linger, in a picturesque crowd, till not merely the 
 persons, but the live stock and freight are landed from 
 that comprehensive boat, baskets of fruit and vege- 
 tables, cows and pigs, bundles of evergreen for firing, 
 and finally a load of wood is thrown upon the water, to 
 reach the steps or the beach as it can. And out of all 
 those picturesque women (strong and erect), dressed in 
 blue or white skirt and blue man's jacket, barefooted 
 while their husbands wear hairy cowskin shoes, there 
 is not one who over her dark face and great black eyes 
 and profuse hair and nice white kerchief — not one 
 who does not wear a broad straw hat with a red and 
 white cord, precisely hke yours, Mary, and yours, 
 Margie, which are awaiting next summer, behind the 
 front door or in the front entry closet. 
 
 Fatal, December 31, 1855 
 . . . Have I told you that the one delicious fruit I 
 
JOURNEYS 131 
 
 have tasted is the custard apple, or cheivamoia; it has 
 more positive flavor than the other fruits; though 
 Mary compares it to poor baked apples, flavored with 
 cologne. 
 
 January, 1856 
 
 To crown all, a bright little English girl of ten 
 (Calcutta-born, however) said she thought American 
 people were all black I I have often heard of such igno- 
 rance before. 
 
 There were terrible winter storms at Fayal and many 
 disabled ships were seen. An extract from the journal 
 describes some of these wrecks. 
 
 January 16, 1856 
 
 During our enjoyment of the storm ... we knew 
 that it must end in disaster. 
 
 ... A man came across the island to tell Mr. 
 Dabney that two distressed vessels were in sight. He 
 at once ordered out the Hortense, a schooner of his 
 which happened to be in port, and while they were 
 fitting her out with provisions, spare sails, spars, etc., 
 another messenger came from the north signal station, 
 announcing that the vessels were a brig and a schooner, 
 both American. In an hour they both came slowly 
 in by the north passage, as predicted, only that the 
 schooner turned out a barque, partially dismantled. 
 
 The brig came to anchor before dark, and as her 
 stern swung round we read with the glass the familiar 
 name of Newburyport, the vessel being the venerable 
 Keying, one of old Captain Cushing's great brigs. . . . 
 
132 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 In Captain Cook, who came ashore the next day, I 
 recognized a familiar face, and I could safely congratu- 
 late my former townsman for his success in weathering 
 the storm with only the loss of a bowsprit and topmast 
 and some damage to the rudder. He was also favored 
 above all the succeeding vessels by being admitted to 
 quarantine. . . . 
 
 The poor barque was less fortunate, and when I 
 went alongside of her in the customhouse boat on 
 Saturday, she was certainly a sad spectacle. She was 
 the Warren of Thomaston, Maine, Captain Condry, 
 from Philadelphia, with flour and grain; and as we 
 approached her she seemed like one of Herman Mel- 
 ville's ghostly ships. She lay deep in the water, her 
 starboard bulwarks almost wholly broken away, no 
 vestige left of bowsprit and foremast, only the lower 
 mainmast and mizzenmast standing. . . . Two women 
 and a baby were on the quarterdeck; and to crown 
 all the sufferings, she had no bill of health and was 
 refused quarantine. 
 
 All this I learned from the captain, questioning him 
 in behalf of the customhouse officers. I shall never 
 forget the quiet, rather dogged calmness with which 
 the poor fellow told his losses, one by one, too inured 
 to despair even to court sympathy. "Did you do 
 anything to lighten ship? " " Threw overboard five 
 hundred barrels of flour." " Any water in hold? " 
 " Four feet. Pumps choked." " Cargo damaged? " 
 " All of it." "How many in your crew? " " Six left " 
 (with a glance round), " three lost in the gale." So we 
 left him, at last, with an inward thrill of sympathy 
 
JOURNEYS 133 
 
 and of detestation at the inhuman strictness of the 
 quarantine laws which kept that sympathy from being 
 actively exhibited. Five days are passed, and she is 
 not yet admitted. 
 
 . . . During Monday the vessels pitched fearfully, 
 and communication between them and the shore was 
 almost wholly suspended. It grew dim and dark and 
 misty, and as the wind howled round our windows in 
 the night, we thought of that poor mother and baby. 
 
 All this time, however, a sadder tragedy was prepar- 
 ing. During the gloom and the gale of Monday, there 
 swept slowly in at the southern entrance, seen dimly 
 through the mist, the half spectral figure of a great 
 American ship, with topgallantmasts and bowsprit 
 lost. . . . Slowly, slowly she passed by, now clearly 
 visible at some three miles distance, now half con- 
 cealed; and my fancy is still haunted by her weary and 
 helpless look, as she disappeared behind the northern 
 headland and drifted out to sea. Nothing could be 
 done for her. Mr. Dabney in vain attempted to induce 
 the captain of an English schooner to go out to her to 
 supply spars and sails and to stay by her. An Ameri- 
 can captain, he said, would have gone, but this more 
 cautious individual refused to weigh anchor. And the 
 night closed wearily round us, thinking of the doomed 
 and wandering ship. 
 
 On Tuesday morning the wind had changed. What 
 was that which stood out against the horizon, six miles 
 off, at the northern edge of the rocky Pico? A glass 
 revealed it; the ship had been blown back again and 
 
134 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 gone ashore in the night. . . . She had struck at the 
 very worst points on the shore, inaccessible for boats, 
 and far from any village. The surf was not unusually 
 high, and only very rarely seemed to break over her. 
 There she lay, and whether the crew were saved, no 
 one could judge; though it seemed, on the whole, 
 probable. The prospect of saving her cargo seemed 
 small, indeed. 
 
 Those acquainted with the reputation of the Dabney 
 family will not be surprised to hear that in two hours 
 after the vessel was seen, two of the gentlemen of the 
 family had set sail in a boat, furnished with provisions 
 and clothing for a fortnight. ... I felt greatly dis- 
 appointed at being absolutely prevented, by circum- 
 stances, from joining this expedition. 
 
 . . . During [the same] morning an American 
 barque rounded the southern point, which proved to 
 be the Sumter, Captain Humphrey, which had left 
 Charleston soon after the Keying and was now leaking 
 badly with the pumps choked. She was soon followed 
 by a French barque of the same size and in similar 
 condition; making the sixth distressed vessel. But the 
 wind was directly ahead for them, and it was pathetic 
 to watch hour after hour and see the great wounded 
 creatures spreading their wings in vain and toiling 
 with the harbor full in sight unable to gain it. It is 
 singular how one personifies a vessel; my sympathies 
 seem to be much more with her, individually, than 
 with any person on board. It shows how live a thing a 
 ship is, thus to condense into itself all the anxieties and 
 sorrows she bears. 
 
JOURNEYS 135 
 
 January 17 
 A boat from Pico brought the news, indirectly, that 
 the party had reached the vessel, which proved to be 
 an American, laden with silks and brandies. The crew 
 had got on shore, with the loss of one boy only, but 
 the Captain was on board. 
 
 January 22 
 
 . . . The great waves came rushing in, sometimes 
 five feet deep, each with condensed rainbows in its 
 bosom, and Niagaras of foam blowing from its crest; 
 seen from the beach they were a wall against the 
 horizon, over which only the topmasts of the tossing 
 vessels could sometimes be seen. The scene around us 
 was peculiarly wild, from the presence of some fifty 
 men and women, who were anxiously searching in the 
 sand, after each receding wave, for silver coins long 
 since sunk in the wreck of a whaling vessel near by, and 
 still washed on shore in storms. Eighteen Spanish 
 dollars were found that morning. In other places the 
 surf plunged furiously against the sea-wall which 
 protects the town, rising sometimes a hundred feet in 
 snowy foam, and deluging the fronts of the houses 
 exposed to the sea. The wind blew violently; hau- 
 stones alternated with gleams of sunshine; and in the 
 midst of the uproar a noonday salute (for it was a 
 saint's day) from the guns of another fort mingled their 
 flash and smoke and boom with the glitter and spray 
 and roar of the ocean. All this on the lee side of the 
 island I — while on the western side, as we heard 
 afterwards, the spray went to the top of Castello 
 Branco, a promontory eight himdred feet highl 
 
136 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 January 29, 1856 
 
 I am now able to add some particulars of the wreck. 
 She turns out to be the ship Ravenswood, from Havre 
 to New York, with a cargo of dry goods, wines and 
 liquors, a cargo said to be insured for $200,000. It is a 
 terrible business. . . . The mates state that they saw 
 the land distinctly, and attribute their wreck to the 
 grossest misconduct on the part of the captain. ... I 
 regret to say that the condition in which the captain 
 was found in his own cabin by the Messrs. Dabney 
 confirms this story. . . • What a warning against the 
 careless selection of captains, others may say! What a 
 warning against cargoes of champagne and brandy, 
 say I! 
 
 But what a tremendous labor the Messrs. Dabney 
 have had with that cargo! It was really like the case of 
 the man who drew the elephant in the lottery. A cargo 
 worth $200,000 in the midst of bare, sharp rocks, on 
 a bare island, six miles from any village on that island, 
 with no roads, no vehicles, no storerooms, and not a 
 man in their employ whose honesty could be trusted. 
 ... A population of paupers, where the few men of 
 property are less honest than the beggarsl Goods pro- 
 tected by guards who are no better than those they 
 keep off! It cost one hundred dollars to get a hole cut 
 in the vessel's side with their clumsy hatchets, and 
 every step since has been costly. But the cost is noth- 
 ing to the fatigue and annoyance, day and night; 
 toiling almost without food, and sleeping on the ground 
 in a hovel. . . . When I say, under these circum- 
 stances, these two gentlemen have saved $100,000 
 
JOURNEYS 137 
 
 worth of property, I attribute to them what very few 
 men could have done. The difficulty is that this 
 property Ues outdoors still, or in insecure and unpro- 
 tected storehouses, and to preserve it requires as much 
 effort as to obtain it. A road has first to be made to 
 convey the articles to Magdalena, a seaside village, 
 and it may take months to transport them across the 
 rough sea to Fayal. Yet here alone can they be in 
 safety, as you will perceive when I tell you that one of 
 the principal men in Magdalena has already headed a 
 gang of organized pilferers. There is also a set of 
 marauders from this island who flocked to Pico like 
 vultures. 
 
 So long as the Messrs. Dabney are on guard, the 
 property is comparatively safe, but they cannot sacrifice 
 themselves much longer. . . , They hope, however, to 
 remain until the goods reach Magdalena. 
 
 After his return from Fayal, Mr. Higginson was 
 plunged into the Kansas troubles. The following 
 letters to his mother explain themselves: 
 
 WoHCESTEB, June 26, 1856 
 
 I have a momentary lull, having yesterday sent off 
 my second party to Kansas. . . . The first had forty- 
 seven and our Committee will send no more, leaving it 
 for the State Committee, which was appointed yester- 
 day, chiefly on my urging. . . . 
 
 At Chicago they show an energy which disgraces us; 
 have arrangements and men already and need only 
 money. The night I came from Brattleboro', Friday, 
 
138 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 we had letters from Chicago, and our Finance Com- 
 mittee voted them fifteen hundred dollars and voted 
 to add three thousand dollars more, unless I could 
 raise this second party by Wednesday, which I did. 
 Saturday, the day after, I was sent to Boston, with the 
 same letters, to urge the Boston Committee to send 
 money to Chicago. With great difficulty I got five 
 minutes each from Pat Jackson and several other 
 merchants, and at two they came together for ten 
 minutes and voted to send two thousand dollars, 
 Ingersoll Bowditch being happily absent, who had just 
 told me he should come and oppose it entirely. I saw 
 the telegraphic despatch written and came back. 
 
 That very night we got a telegraphic despatch from 
 Chicago, imploring us to send that precise sum, for the 
 relief of a large party of emigrants, detained at Iowa 
 City for want of means. The two despatches crossed on 
 the way. 
 
 This two thousand dollars, with our remittance, and 
 our two parties of emigrants (which would not have 
 gone till by this time if I had not gone to work on it 
 the first night I came) are absolutely all that has yet 
 been done by New England for Kansas, in this time of 
 imminent need. This I say to show you how ill-pre- 
 pared we are for such emergencies. The busy give no 
 time and the leisurely no energy, and there is no organi- 
 zation. I should except the Committee here, which 
 has done admirably, and that in Concord, Massachu- 
 setts, and Dr. Howe, Sam Cabot, Charles Higginson, 
 and a few others in Boston. 
 
 There is talk now of sending Dr. Howe to Kansas 
 
JOURNEYS. 139 
 
 with a large sum of money, and this will be the best 
 thing possible, but it should have been done a fort- 
 night ago. 
 
 lugust 29 
 
 We have excellent news from Kansas. . . . Our men 
 are nicely settled in the northern part of Kansas, which 
 is more peaceful. Colonel Topliff, who has just come 
 from Lawrence, speaks quite encouragingly and thinks 
 they can resist invasion. 
 
 Meanwhile it will be probably necessary for me to go 
 out West again for several weeks [he had previously 
 been sent to Chicago and St. Louis to aid emigrants] 
 to the Nebraska border, and perhaps some way inside. 
 But my mission will not be a ve^y warlike one, and I 
 have only the same general sense of possible danger 
 that one has in setting foot in a ship or in the cars, or 
 in running fast downstairs, or (if feminine) in meeting a 
 drove of cows. . . . Frank Sanborn is to stop here 
 to-morrow, safe back from the same groimd I am going 
 over. 
 
 August 31 
 
 Some good news and some bad — the good being 
 that our private advices state that things really are 
 much better than is represented, in Kansas; the lead- 
 ing Missourians are making great efforts to raise men 
 to invade, but find great reluctance to follow. They 
 are considerably intimidated, in fact. 
 
 The bad news (for you) is that I leave for Chicago 
 to-morrow, shall go to Nebraska City and probably 
 
140 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 into the Territory. ... I allow six weeks, but it may 
 be only a month, and hope to write a good deal to you 
 and Mary and the " Tribune," though letters may be 
 intercepted. Letters for me to be directed to 
 James L. Armstrong 
 Topeka 
 
 Kansas 
 Mary taxed her wits to invent this name and intends 
 to write in the character of an affectionate grand- 
 mother 1 
 
 I shall take out a nice supply of boots and clothing 
 for our Worcester men and a plum cake and some other 
 dainties, and long to see their delight at my appear- 
 ance. Good-bye, darliug mama. 
 
 Chicago, September 3 
 
 Arrived here in safety. I find to my regret that I 
 shall be employed more out of Kansas than in Kansas. 
 They are very glad to have me here, and are in need of 
 efficient agents. 
 
 To a friend: 
 
 Nebraska Cmr, September 16, 1856 
 
 I know you will particularly like a word from the 
 Border. . . . Various camping grounds are scattered 
 along from twenty-five miles north to the same dis- 
 tance south, of various parties, and in a day or two 
 more it will be " Boot, saddle, to horse, and away," as 
 Browning has it. Only just at this moment things look 
 discouragingly safe, and the men are beginning to fear 
 
JOURNEYS 141 
 
 marching in without a decent excuse for firing anything 
 at anybody. But we shall take in arms and ammuni- 
 tion and flour and groceries and specie, and shall be 
 welcomed even if we go through safe. As one ap- 
 proaches Kansas, it becomes more and more the ab- 
 sorbing topic and every one here talks it all day, while 
 waiting for real estate to rise. Then comes a cloud of 
 dust on the western road and two or three horsemen 
 come riding wearily in, bearded and booted and 
 spurred and red-shirted, sword and pistol by their side 
 — only the sword is a bowie-knife — wild, manly- 
 looking riders, and they are the latest from Kansas 
 and we get them quickly into a private room to hear 
 the news — how the road is peaceful just now, and 
 they need flour and lead woefully at Lawrence, and 
 how four hundred men chased seven hundred. 
 
 . . . The wells are nearly dry, though I can't con- 
 ceive that enough has ever been drawn from them to 
 produce the eflEect, and the dirtiest thing in the land- 
 scape is the river. . . . The most discouraging thing I 
 have heard for liberty in Kansas is that the Kansas 
 River is just like the Missouri. 
 
 ToPEKA, September 24, 1856 
 
 People joke here as readily as anywhere, though all 
 pronounce it the darkest time Kansas has ever seen. 
 . . . Geary is conquering them at last and the leaders 
 are flying from arrest. Just as they had thoroughly 
 expelled the Missourians, the United States Govern- 
 ment steps in, and arrests their best and bravest. 
 Geary's intention is to give them peace and bread, at 
 
142 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 the price of obedience to the laws of the false legisla- 
 ture. He is making a clear path, therefore, for a con- 
 test between the inhabitants and the United States 
 troops, first or last. 
 
 Governor Geary aimed to take a neutral stand be- 
 tween conflicting elements, his orders being to " stop 
 the fighting in Kansas." His course did not commend 
 itself to the radical abolitionists, but his later career as 
 an officer in the Union forces of the Civil War led Mr. 
 Higginson, at least, to change his estimate of Geary's 
 character. 
 
 This letter was written to one of the Dabney family 
 with whom he had been in close relations in Fayal: 
 
 Steamboat Cataract 
 
 aground on a bank in the Missouri River 
 
 October 9. 1856 
 
 I know you would enjoy going to Kansas, for it is as 
 genuine a sensation as we expect it to be; things and 
 people are very real there. It is precisely like waking 
 up some morning and stepping out on the Battle of 
 Bunker Hill; one learns in a single day more about 
 Greeks and Romans and English Puritans and Scotch 
 Jacobites, and Hungarians and all heroic peoples, than 
 any course of history can teach. The same process 
 is producing the same results before your eyes, and 
 what is most striking the same persons whom you 
 saw a year ago in Boston, indolent and timid, are here 
 transformed to heroes. Perhaps this brings down the 
 dignity of our courage a httle, showing it to be the child 
 
JOURNEYS 143 
 
 of circumstances, but still one sees great differences of 
 temperament in Kansas as elsewhere. What struck me 
 most was the unconscious buoyancy of the people. 
 Living in the midst of danger, they recognize it as the 
 nprmal condition of existence, and talk of it in the sort 
 of way that sailors do. In the intervals of dinner (if 
 dinner there be), they talk over the last fight as if it 
 were a picnic. In fact it was plain that the excitement 
 had become a necessary stimulus to them, and during 
 the partial peace which existed while I was there, they 
 confessed that they missed something. Women com- 
 plained that there was n't much to talk about. At 
 Lawrence, when the evening drum beat to call out the 
 guard (of United States troops, placed there by Gov- 
 ernor Geary, for protection) somebody would always 
 exclaim, "That sounds good!" And the patience is 
 about as remarkable as the courage. People would 
 describe their way of living, sick wife and children 
 perhaps . . . and always end, " But we shall live or die 
 in Kansas." Of cotirse there are exceptions; but the 
 more men sacrifice there, the more they seem to love 
 the country. The difficulty is, that there is not much 
 left to sacrifice; everybody has grown poor, I hope 
 nothing from Governor Geary; he means well and has 
 energy of vnll, but no energy of character; he can take 
 efficient single steps, but not carry out any systematic 
 plan of action. ... I have less hope that Kansas will 
 be a free State than before I came here. Before this 
 last interference of Governor Geary, the Kansas men 
 under General Lane (who is a very remarkable man) 
 had driven out the Missourians in all directions; but 
 
144 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 it is their policy not to resist the United States Govern- 
 ment, and the Missourians are always ready to take 
 the slightest advantage which that affords them. After 
 the Presidential election the invaders will make a 
 desperate effort; their success is certain if Buchanan 
 is elected, and probably if Fremont is. 
 
 . . . On board I have thus far met no annoyance, 
 though there is a company of young Virginians and 
 Carolinians returning to their homes; they are of the 
 race of " poor white folks," commonly. My copy of 
 " Dred " occasions some remarks. I trust your father 
 will feel a becoming reverence when I say that I am a 
 General in the £ansas Army, having been immediately 
 presented with a commission to that effect by the 
 redoubtable " Jim Lane " himself, the " Marion " of 
 the age. I keep it as a valuable autograph, or to be 
 used on my next visit to Kansas. 
 
 The Worcester summers were varied by occasional 
 sojourns at Princeton, Massachusetts, and at Pigeon 
 Cove, near Gloucester. 
 
 Pbhtceton, June, 1853 
 Dearest Mother: 
 
 We do not see Wachusett — we are halfway up the 
 ascent — but we look east and west over great valleys 
 which need only more water to be radiantly beautiful. 
 . . . The little hamlet sleeps in profound repose — a 
 two-horse wagon, or even a pedlar with a pack, are 
 events for a day. We look between the two little 
 white churches up a lane which leads to Wachusett; 
 
JOURNEYS 145 
 
 last night we followed this up to its first summit — a 
 little height before the real Wachusett begins; there 
 was the skeleton of an old church, the strong frame 
 uninjured, though raspberry bushes flaunt through 
 the floor, and elders look in at windows; near it an old 
 burial ground, Wordsworth's " Churchyard among the 
 Mountains." . . . The strawberries were ripening aU 
 over the lonely hill-top, and five children with cows 
 and tin kettles and the baby in a wagon — in the 
 waning June sunset; five little sisters there were, with 
 all bleached but their blue eyes. 
 
 WoHCBSTBB, June, 1862 
 
 Mrs. Howell, of Philadelphia, a most attractive 
 woman whom I met last year, is there [Princeton] 
 already. She wrote Milton's verses on his blindness 
 which were included in a London edition of his works, 
 and there is a mild, chronic, Quakerly flirtation be- 
 tween her and Whittier, who wrote in the April 
 " Atlantic " a charming poem about a ride with her at 
 Princeton last year. She is a fine-looking woman of 
 forty-five, but the hotel scandal of last year was that 
 she wears what are called 'plumpers in her cheeks to 
 preserve the roundness of early years, and though I 
 hold this a libel, still the overwhelming majority of last 
 year's Princetonians believe it. Miss Betsey Sturgis, 
 that arbiter of fashion, says plumpers are very common 
 in Philadelphia and she does n't doubt Mrs. H. wears 
 them. Nature has plumped the cheerful B. S., but 
 there is no telling what other beautifying appliances 
 may not be purchased with Mrs. Cushin^'s bequest. 
 
146 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Peinceton, July, 1862 
 
 Here we are at this most placid of places, just now 
 stirred to its Sunday excitement, the greatest it ever 
 knows. Country wagons with people in their best 
 bonnets go quietly by, or stop to call at our door be- 
 cause we are the Post-Ofl5ce. During the week scarcely 
 a person passes by day — only an occasional hay- 
 maker; the shop opposite with a large pign is a scene of 
 profound repose, and you would only know it to be 
 " business hours " by the door's being open. At halt- 
 past six, however, the mail arrives and the current of 
 life sets in, and from that time till eight we and the 
 shop are in fashion — all manner of vehicles, from boys 
 with wheelbarrows to Mr. Charles Appleton in his 
 barouche; old farmers for the newspaper and young 
 girls for letters from brothers or lovers at the war; and 
 it is quite entertaining. The road is very narrow and 
 turning round very difficult, so that Mary perceives 
 why they have a doctor for postmaster, to provide for 
 the broken bones. , 
 
 The following letters were written from Pigeon 
 Cove, the dates ranging from 1853 to 1864. The first 
 paragraph is from the note-book: 
 
 It is a severe test of the mental health of a busy man 
 to stay a few weeks by the seasihbre, without regular 
 work. I have sometimes found it almost impossible to 
 endure it. 
 
 Deae Mother: _ 
 
 Pigeon Cove is a bit of seashore, meant originally for 
 the Isles of Shoals, but finally tacked on to mainland 
 
JOURNEYS 147 
 
 and thus brouglit near a railroad and some woods, with 
 plenty of granite quarries thrown in. . . . 
 
 The rocks are precisely like Appledore and so would 
 be the surf if there were any, but there never is any on 
 our coast, except in storms. I always distrust that part 
 of " Thalatta," when I am on the spot. The secret of 
 the ocean is in the horizon hne; the actual height of 
 the waves is always absurdly small. 
 
 Here we have, for lions, artists instead of authors, 
 though Whipple is here whom you saw at dinner and 
 who is thought very brilliant, though he seems to me 
 only dry and keen and critical. At a house below are 
 
 some H and C of Cambridge showy, dressy 
 
 women who are or have been belles; one of them 
 is just engaged to Darley, the artist, who is here 
 also. Yesterday I went on a long walk in the woods 
 with Darley and Kensett — Kensett it was who il- 
 lustrated Curtis's " Lotus-Eating " and drew one curl 
 of a wave at the bottom of a page which has haunted 
 me ever since. Kensett is about my age, short, stout, 
 and heavy with a pleasant, genial face, dark eyes and 
 hair and beard; Darley is larger, of English frame 
 and substance, with sandy hair and moustache; face 
 pockmarked and rather coarsely colored; cool, semi- 
 military air. It was pleasant to be seated in the woods 
 and have Darley 's sketches passed about: some fine 
 figures of guides and Indians at Moosehead. . . . 
 Kensett came for a day with Tom Appleton, the re- 
 nowned, Mrs. Longfellow's brother; Curtis, " Mot Na- 
 telpha," a famous wit and connoisseur; he it was who 
 said, " Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris." 
 
148 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 August, 1860 
 
 The [boarding] house was further enlivened last 
 night by the presence of Mr. Longfellow's son and 
 heir . . . who with a companion sailed round from 
 Nahant, Late in the evening — that is, probably so 
 near the small hours as half -past nine — he was heard 
 in the entry, rousing the echoes with the unwonted cry 
 of Landlord! and when at last Mary Moody or some 
 similar infant appeared, it appeared that they desired 
 pen, ink, paper, and postage stamps. Mary thinks 
 they had run away from their nurses and wished to 
 send word home. 
 
 We have decided that Americans think their own 
 race so beautiful, something must be done to disguise 
 it; and bathing is taken as the occasion, certainly with 
 great success. Mary was especially impressed with one 
 man in scanty raiment, exhibiting an amount of bald 
 head which Mary declared to be positively indelicate. 
 
 Also a tall, §lim, red, unpleasing Californian with a 
 perpetual pipe and a capacity for steady flirtation so 
 long as his wife can be kept at a safe distance. 
 
 . . . To-day (Sunday) we thought would be hot, but 
 there is a cool breeze and Miss Susanna's supposed 
 lover is patiently stirring or revolving water-ice for din- 
 ner. Little " Parkie " Haven just called to him from the 
 window, " Is it did yet? " — he responding, " No." , 
 
 I had a characteristic letter from Charles H. [a 
 cousin] yesterday, closing with a hint that there was 
 often trouble in the army about delay of pay, etc., and 
 begging me to draw on him up to five hundred dollars 
 
JOURNEYS 149 
 
 at any time, if needed. I have a great mind to take it 
 and then turn miser and strike out a new path for 
 Higginsons. 
 
 This is Sunday, the B visiting day, and their 
 
 loud voices pervade the promontory — Miss Susanna 
 perhaps does not extend into the afternoon her im- 
 pressive attire of this morning, which consisted of three 
 vast curtains of white cotton (shall I say dimity?), the 
 first draping her head, the second reaching to her waist, 
 the third touching the ground, and the whole filling the 
 horizon and making a shade in smmy places. She and 
 Isa and brother David can protect this place from sun- 
 stroke, never fear. The present delight of visitors is 
 the calf, to inspect which all are invited by the mighty 
 voice of Mr. George Swett, resident ambassador from 
 the court of Cupid near the headquarters of Susanna. 
 " George " is the Gloucester widower of whom we used 
 to hear, and who is now admitted to a nearer proba- 
 tion, and has been so indispensable in the family for 
 two years that if he struck for higher wages I certainly 
 think Miss B. would, with the family eye for the main 
 chance, give him herself instead. Many are the anxious 
 observations made with the sleepless microscopic eyes 
 of childhood by Florence and Annie, who think nothing 
 of popping out of bed for this purpose by moonlight, 
 and who have composed a poem thereon, which ends, 
 perhaps ingloriously, with 
 
 Another rhyme I wish to make 
 That his name is Mr. Swett, — 
 
 which may remind you of some of Pet Marjorie's 
 poetical difficulties. 
 
150 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 It is a singular compensation of human skill that 
 while all other B voices are so vast and resound- 
 ing, that their copperness of head must go down to the 
 lungs, at least; one youth of eighteen next door was 
 born with a squeak. Yet by one stroke he has out- 
 witted Fate, and by dint of a piano fortissimo and 
 twelve hours' daily and nightly practice he has 
 attained skill to drown any of his relations, voice and 
 all, and is now performing " The Maiden's Prayer " in 
 tones to silence the Mighty Deep. 
 
 . . . Looking about for some literature suited for 
 " a lonely and athletic student " temporarily on half 
 rations, I have selected Miss Austen, the only author 
 except Dr. Bartol whose complete works the house 
 possesses, and one whose perfect execution cheers, 
 while her mild excitements do not inebriate the mind 
 of man. 
 
 . . . There is a Mrs. D of Cambridge, with 
 
 a gentle dyspeptic daughter, whom (the mother) I 
 should define as a Cambridge wailer — a perpetual tone 
 of motherly despair, with the personal grandeur pe- 
 culiar to that classic town, when represented by its 
 
 citizens abroad. She was nSe W , and there is a 
 
 suppressed-Quincy sacredness in her every gesture. 
 Her husband is the noted antiquarian, I beheve; 
 but nothing unbends her but perch, of which she has 
 caught more than anybody; thus linking her to 
 humanity through the indirect tie of a fishline. 
 
 Twenty-five years later, the writer again saw^ his old 
 seaport town, and wrote thus to his sister: 
 
JOURNEYS 161 
 
 Deakest Anna: 
 
 I did wish so much that you could have gone with us 
 in our lovely drive round the Cape. . . . What I 
 enjoyed most was seeing Pigeon Cove again after 
 twenty-five years and finding it so much less altered 
 than I expected — the same queer little fish-houses 
 and dories, a few men mending nets or putting on 
 fishhooks, the same breakwater, only increased, and 
 the same green street. On the piazza at "Miss 
 Susanna's," where we boarded, sat her widower 
 
 , now proprietor, the house still carried on as a 
 
 boarding-house. ... I inquired about the one whose 
 early bereavement touched you so, Susanna, called 
 " Pink," the fine-looking girl whose lover was lost at 
 sea and to whom you sent Peabody's " Consolations." 
 " Oh, yes. Pink was married sometime after that to 
 Mr. Smith, over in Rockport, and had three children; 
 then her husband died and she afterwards married a 
 cousin of his, another Mr. Smith, and she lives in 
 Rockport now." Thus pass the dreams of romance — 
 Pink had always dwelt in my memory, a " Hannah at 
 the window binding shoes "; and meanwhile she had 
 gone placidly through two Smith bridals and probably 
 been happy as life goes. 
 
 This description of a remarkable old woman, un- 
 known except to local fame, was found among Colonel 
 Higginson's miscellaneous papers : 
 
 " Aunt Hannah " dwells in a house in the outskirts 
 of W , solitary and alone, aged ninety-seven, tak- 
 ing the entire care of herself and keeping her house 
 
152 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 as nice as possible. Sometimes in the winter she is 
 snowed up for weeks together, so that nobody sees her, 
 and she is perfectly happy in this solitude, preparing 
 for it by getting in her stores, like a squirrel. Her 
 health is perfect and she can take great hberties in the 
 digestive line, as eating rich cakes just before going to 
 bed, and other feats formidable to her juniors. Her 
 sight, hearing, and teeth are perfect; and she has worn 
 for many years a wig of curling hair, which hides any 
 ravages of time on that head (so to speak). She is 
 
 very pretty. . . • M calls her one of the most 
 
 gracefxd persons she ever saw. She dresses neatly and 
 rather fashionably, having on, when M. was there, 
 a dress with gored skirt, in the latest style; these 
 things she makes herself, out of dresses and materials 
 given to her. 
 
 She is perfectly poor, but has relations who are well 
 off, in Boston, and who give and send her many things. 
 She has great ingenuity about her furniture and house- 
 hold arrangements, manufacturing for herself cushions, 
 ottomans, etc., of the most approved style, out of next 
 to nothing. In youth she was a beauty and a belle, and 
 her father was wealthy, but became a Tory in the 
 .Revolution and lost all. Her manners are elegant and 
 stately; she dislikes greatly to be visited as a curiosity, 
 and all new acquaintances are expected to have a 
 genteel introduction; she being rather exclusive. . . . 
 Children she is not fond of. . . . She talks very 
 agreeably and is eagerly interested about the [Civil] 
 war, saying she felt just so in the time of the 
 Revolution. 
 
JOURNEYS 153 
 
 Her house is quite in decay — the house she was 
 born in. Sometimes she has a relation to stay; one 
 male cousin of fifty from Boston made her a visit and 
 was far more infirm than she, so that she waited on 
 him. 
 
 She reads but little, though she was well educated 
 and her eyes are perfect. But she is always busy and 
 says the days are always too short for her. 
 
 . . . She very seldom shakes hands with anybody, 
 and when M. went forward to do this, she made a 
 curtsy instead. 
 
 A sort of little fairy of grandeur, Mary calls her. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 AEMY LITE AND CAMP DRILL 
 
 Vert little is known as to the training of the regi- 
 ments which took part in the Civil War. From 
 Wentworth Higginson's letters one gets an inkling of 
 how the Massachusetts youth went to work to learn 
 the drill. He was then living in Worcester, and on 
 January 24, 1861, wrote: 
 
 I do not propose that the regiment which I am plan- 
 ning should be called anti-slavery in special, or have a 
 platform or a poUcy; if others attribute these things, 
 it is their own affair. I expect men to join me from 
 personal sympathy with me; if they ask for pledges, 
 of coiu-se none will be given them. 
 
 . . . The only way for anti-slavery men to share in 
 the control is to share in the sacrifices. . . . All I ask, 
 now, is an opportunity to i5ght, under orders, carrying 
 with me such men as I can raise. I will risk the rest; 
 having faith in the laws of gravitation. 
 
 Our two military companies were both ordered; one 
 has gone to Boston, and not a person in town seemed 
 to think of anything but seeing them off. Margaret [a 
 niece] reports not a boy at the High School; then the 
 male teachers vanished; then the girls. 
 
 April 5 
 
 There was an exhibition of our military school last 
 week, which created such an enthusiasm that there is 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 155 
 
 a class of thirty gentlemen formed for learning the 
 drill, of whom I am one, as I always wanted to learn 
 it. I never expect, like my respected cousin George 
 [Higginson] in Boston, to trot through town in a blue 
 jacket and little red cap: but it is very popular so far. 
 
 The Worcester Highland Military Academy, men- 
 tioned above, was founded in 1856 as a means of pre- 
 serving health and discipline among the boys. 
 
 The Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Militia was the 
 famous regiment attacked April 19, 1861, in Baltimore 
 on its way to defend the national capital. Four sol- 
 diers were killed in this fray. The next letter describes 
 the regiment's return march through Worcester. They 
 had remained in Washington after their time (three 
 months) had expired, owing to the Bull Run disaster. 
 
 August 4, 1861 
 
 Two days this week have been made exciting by the 
 return of troops; the look of Colonel Jones's Sixth 
 Regiment was peculiarly wild, every man wearing a 
 little red skull cap more or less faded, with or without 
 a tassel, surmounting the worn and faded gray uniform. 
 I do not think that Zouaves, just from Africa, could 
 have been a wilder spectacle than those thousand 
 scarecrows tramping in order through our streets with 
 a bouquet on every bayonet. Dr. Martin, whom you 
 know, has lost thirty pounds of flesh and come back 
 the very handsomest man who ever wore a uniform. 
 
 VHien the daughter of the regiment — a little Jones 
 
156 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 girl — was being placed on her horse, a black man here 
 carried her a bouquet, saying that it was an acknowl- 
 edgment for her father's " hospiicdiiy " in going to the 
 defence of Washington. 
 Several of the men had kittens on their knapsacks. 
 
 August 13 
 . . . The Bull Run affair . . . did not seem to me 
 at all discouraging; our men appeared so well when 
 matched in fair field. And I am sure that but for this 
 reverse we never should have the law of Congress 
 emancipating slaves used in rebellion and the conse- 
 quent instructions of Cameron to Butler — the great- 
 est step in advance taken by our Government since its 
 formation, and aU the more valuable for being forced 
 upon us by military necessity so that all will heartily 
 concur in it. Now for the first time it is a war of 
 emancipation. In this view I am thankful for the 
 defeat. 
 
 Charles Devens left here with his regiment last week. 
 ... I think W. Phillips too severe upon him; this is 
 a new era and we must forgive the past, and everybody 
 knows that his part in the rendition of Sims has clouded 
 all his life. 
 
 He would gladly have given me a commission in this 
 regiment, if I could have gone. 
 
 Cameron, Lincoln's first Secretary of War, directed 
 General Butler to employ fugitive slaves in any way 
 that seemed desirable. It was perhaps in consequence 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 15'! 
 
 of these orders that Butler, while in command at For- 
 tress Monroe, adroitly applied the term " contraband- 
 of-war " to captured slaves. 
 
 Devens was United States Marshal at the time of 
 the Sims case, and although his sympathies were with 
 the fugitive slave, he felt obliged to obey the law. But 
 he afterwards made a great effort financially and other- 
 wise to procure freedom for Sims, and his brave 
 career in the Civil War has been fitly reco^zed by 
 naming for him the recent great soldiers' training camp 
 at Ayer. 
 
 August 23 
 Dkaeest Mother: 
 
 We take things more quietly here. The war has 
 never cost us a minute's sleep, which Dr. Holmes 
 thinks enviable at such a time. You and Anna croon 
 over your " Springfield Republican " till you get al- 
 together too anxious. 
 
 Our people are too excitable and felt the Manassas 
 repulse far more than was needful. So far as the mili- 
 tary aspects of the matter are concerned, everything 
 looks much better to me, since that, than before, both 
 by land and sea. As for foreign countries, it is galling 
 that they should say such things of us, but they will 
 unsay them when disproved. I do not think there is 
 any danger that England or France will be anything 
 but neutral, and that being the case, though what the 
 newspapers say may be annoying, it is not important. 
 
 I am satisfied that we are gravitating towards a 
 bolder anti-slavery policy, and it was foreseen that 
 
158 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGlNSON 
 
 several defeats would be needed to bring us to that. 
 The desideratum is to approach a policy of emancipa- 
 tion by stages so clear and irresistible as to retain for 
 that end an united public sentiment. With the aid of 
 favoring circumstances I think this possible, and 
 events seem to me fortunate or otherwise in proportion 
 as they tend this way. 
 
 September 6 
 
 Yesterday General Butler made a speech here unex- 
 pectedly on his way to Lowell; I did not hear it, but 
 it was said to be very bold and radical; saying espe- 
 cially that wherever our armies went they must carry 
 Freedom with them, since it was absurd to fight to 
 give the benefit of our institutions to those who do not 
 desire them (the masters) and not to those who do 
 (the slaves). How wonderfully the Hatteras affair has 
 set that man up again — and indeed the nation. 
 
 t 
 November 1, 1861 
 
 You will never take a hopeful view of anything, I 
 see, till you give up that unfortunate "Springfield 
 Republican." In every war there must be ups and 
 downs, mistakes committed, valuable lives lost (as we 
 foolishly call it), defeats sustained. But these very 
 defeats often produce good in the end. The defeat at 
 Manassas was just what we needed, and it may yet 
 prove so with this. It is of immense importance to 
 know, as we now do, that our raw troops may be as 
 cool even in retreat as veterans, for this is the point 
 where veterans usually have all the advantage. The 
 
ABMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 159 
 
 recollection of this will be an immense strength in the 
 next decisive battle, when it comes. Charles Devens 
 smoked a cigar quietly, perhaps to reassure his men, 
 during the whole time, and his men moved as quietly 
 as if on parade. How sublime is such quiet courage — ■ 
 worth how many sacrifices! Yet that was by no means 
 a superior regiment in material or in ofl3cers. Devens 
 was much depressed about it when he went away. . . . 
 Think, too, of this remarkable fact, that while of the 
 British army in the Crimea the majority died within a 
 year or two from want of proper sanitary arrange- 
 ments, here the health is better among every regiment 
 than at home. It is a singular fact that the war is said 
 not to have raised the price of gunpowder, because the 
 amount used does not exceed the amount ordinarily 
 expended in field sports. And so against the losses in 
 battle we must set the lives saved from home diseases 
 and dangers. Usually the camp is far more dangerous 
 than the field. 
 
 For some time I have been making up my mind 
 that anti-slavery men were leaving the war altogether 
 too much in the hands of Democrats and Irishmen, and 
 that if we expect to control its conduct or settlement, 
 we must take part in it ourselves. No prominent anti- 
 slavery man has yet taken a marked share in the war, 
 and I am satisfied that there are a great many in this 
 and other States who would like to go if I do. I have 
 made up my mind to take part in the affair, hoping to 
 aid in settling it the quicker. 
 
160 THOMAS WENTWORTH ffiGGINSON 
 
 Mary has, of course, taken this with her usual 
 courage, seeing it not to be a fever of the blood, but a 
 conviction of duty. I hope the same will be the case 
 with you also, dearest; for what is the use of having 
 children who are good for anything unless you are 
 willing to have them used? My habitual impression of 
 the uncertainty of human life is so strong that Mary 
 declares I regard crossing our Main Street among the 
 carriage wheels as being far more perilous than a 
 battle, — and I certainly do regard it as very danger- 
 ous, — but I have always had a remarkable faculty of 
 falling on my feet, and having got through Kansases 
 and court-houses unharmed, have the most entire 
 faith in my having the same faculty here. I observe 
 that the men whom bullets hit are usually men who 
 have forewarnings beforehand. 
 
 E. P. Whipple, just from Washington, says that one 
 of Fremont's friends came on to smooth things over 
 with the Government, and talked to the President till 
 he turned on him at last — " Sir," said Old Abe, "I 
 believe General Fremont to be a thoroughly honest 
 man, but he has unfortimately siurounded himself 
 with some of the greatest scoundrels on this continent; 
 you are one of them and the worst of them." 
 
 WoECESTBE, February 22 
 
 Let me congratulate you on the birthday of Wash- 
 ington and the reception of Old Abe. . . . After keep- 
 ing silence so long, he may make as many speeches as 
 he pleases now: and he really says very good things. 
 I hope he won't be betrayed into any such excesses of 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 161 
 
 enthusiasm as dear Brother Andrew was when he 
 kissed the Revolutionary musket and dropped a tear 
 on it, which has been occasionally smiled at, I grieve to 
 hear, by the young and vicious. 
 
 November 24 
 
 I have been waiting to know my prospects a little 
 more clearly, but if I wish for that I must wait longer 
 still. I suppose Governor Andrew returned from Wash- 
 ington yesterday or to-day. . . . What new views may 
 be in his mind, it is impossible to say, or even whether 
 he will return desiring to hurry or postpone the organi- 
 zation of new regiments. I confidently expect to go in 
 some way, but whether in the arrangement I originally 
 planned, or not, I cannot now say. ... I have got my 
 ten companies planned out, but whether he will think 
 they promise sufficiently I do not know, for he judges 
 everything for himself, and sometimes impulsively. 
 
 Harry Lee says, " Of course the Governor ought to 
 be governed by his aides, but he is not and they have 
 to yield to his decisions. He is not a man of practical 
 judgment, nor does he understand men; my judg- 
 ment " (with a droll grimace) " is a great deal better 
 than his; it ought to be, for I am older than he." 
 Nevertheless the Governor has his own way and his 
 aristocratic aides are very deferential to him. 
 
 Certainly he has done better than Banks would have 
 done, for he works much more straightforwardly and 
 commands confidence far more entirely. Banks, 
 though honest himself, was always unfortunate, like 
 Fremont, in having those about him who were not. 
 
162 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 To Dr. James Freeman Clarke: 
 
 WoBCESTiSB, November 5, 1861 
 
 Deae Sir: 
 
 My proposed regiment seems to be mider very fair 
 headway, and I wished to ask whether you could be 
 induced to go with us as chaplain. 
 
 ... I think that the army is becoming a power so 
 formidable that [it] is essential to the safety of the na- 
 tion that a high tone of character should prevail in it. 
 This consideration has almost as much weight as the 
 anti-slavery one in inducing me to take part in the war. 
 
 The election of chaplain is made by the staff officers 
 and captains of companies, so that I shall have no 
 power to offer it, as from myself. 
 
 The answer to this letter has not been preserved, but 
 soon after the above was written, orders came from 
 General Andrew to stop all recruiting and the proposed 
 regiment was given up. 
 
 These items are from the diary dated January 25, 
 1862: 
 
 My last drill club disbanded last night, and so ends 
 perhaps my special military training. 
 
 First club formed under Captain Goodhue April 1 
 and lasted through April, till he left with Rifle Bat- 
 talion. 
 
 Then came our Rifle Club of which I was President, 
 drilled by Wood in Lincoln House Block. This merged 
 in the 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 163 
 
 Old City Guard, so called (May 20), and began at 
 beginning again. . . . We got some escort duty and 
 outdoor drill and learned all tte company movements 
 and part of the manual. Read Hardee (vol. 1) slightly, 
 with the actual exercises, and found all far easier than 
 I expected. . . . 
 
 No more drill through summer. September 21 to 
 October 15, went to work on Hardee and got it up 
 thoroughly, and renewed manual exercise and learned 
 bayonet drill, a little way. October 10, formed plan of 
 regiment and then gave much time and thought to the 
 whole matter till December 10. Got authority about 
 October 30, and the Bay State DriU Club was formed 
 about that time with me as President. Through 
 October was much at camp with Twenty-Fifth Regi- 
 ment; had studied battalion drill but httle with 
 previous regiments, but found it just as simple as the 
 other. 
 
 About November 20 I had opportunity to drill a 
 smaller squad say six times, and afterwards the larger 
 club six or eight times and taught all the company 
 movements. The very first experience in giving orders 
 I found confusing, but after that it was nothing. I 
 took for a time a certain enjoyment in it, but after I 
 had thoroughly learned it, found it exceedingly tire- 
 some, which was surprising to me, as I never grew 
 tired of cricket or the gymnasium. All the magic it 
 had beforehand vanished and I was thankful to have 
 learned it, to discover how Httle all this militia train- 
 ing amounts to. ... I can hardly conceive now of 
 caring to join the militia and feel a certain satisfaction 
 
164 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 in having escaped a monotonous winter's drill at the 
 seat of peace — the Potomac. 
 
 Therefore, although two months ago it seemed to 
 me exceedingly delightful — and indeed quite magical 
 — to drill a company; yet it is now a positive relief 
 to think that my last drill club is disbanded and (un- 
 less some occasion should still turn up for actual 
 service) I shall have no more of it. 
 
 More letters to his mother follow, dated 1862: 
 
 I was invited and urged to speak in Washington and 
 a day was appointed; but so many were going that it 
 did not seem important. ... It was no disappoint- 
 ment to me, for the mere sensation of Civil War I got 
 thoroughly in Kansas. , . . 
 
 I cannot feel as badly as you do about the war; I 
 think that either they or we will emancipate the slaves 
 in some form and so remove prospectively the only 
 real obstacle to peace and prosperity, and then the 
 bequest of debt and hate will be surmounted in a 
 generation or two. 
 
 January S9 
 
 . . . Mrs. Richardson, of this' city (Maria Lowell's 
 sister), has just been there [Washington]. She says 
 Generals are dog-cheap; President L. looks like his 
 pictures; Mrs. Lincoln at the levee was well and quite 
 expensively dressed; that is, her laces were fine, worth 
 two thousand dollars, and she told a lady she hardly 
 felt it right, to wear them in these times, although 
 they were a present. They were dehghted with Mrs. 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 163 
 
 McClellan; heard Charles Sumner's speech which was 
 read and not exciting; and said the Senate Chamber 
 looked quite pathetic with half the seats vacant. . . . 
 In Baltimore they stayed with the Bowens; he is 
 Unitarian minister there and married Annie GUman, of 
 Charleston; they are very strong Union; she hung out 
 the Stars and Stripes when no one else in the city did, 
 and sent her little boy of five through the streets with a 
 Union cockade, last April, and this, though her family 
 are secesh. But their parish has almost vanished, all 
 the gentility of Baltimore being as strong in the wrong 
 direction as possible still, and the mob also — only 
 the middle class loyal. 
 
 February 21 
 
 You and Anna must be quite stirred up by the ex- 
 citing news [fall of Fort Donelson], after all the 
 sorrows which you and the " Springfield Republican " 
 have interchanged. Does that vicarious journal admit 
 the brighter side of the question? I don't believe that 
 in the history of the world a more sudden change ever 
 came over the spirits of any people than has happened 
 among us in the last three weeks — the whole change 
 from gloom to glory. Do you remember your dis- 
 approving view of Mrs. Lincoln's party? And now 
 everybody is spending gunpowder and bell metal and 
 calling for illuminations. 
 
 I never cared much for the Western campaign till 
 that trip up the Tennessee River, but when one looks at 
 the map and sees that Florence is really in Alabama, 
 and then thinks of the enthusiasm that hailed our 
 
166 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 troops, it is certainly very striking and does more to 
 make me believe in a Union sentiment at the South 
 than all else put together. If that exists, the war will 
 not last long; but if that exists, it will have to be 
 propitiated; there is the difficulty, and the timidity 
 about slavery will continue. The less success on our 
 part, the more likelihood of an emancipatory policy — 
 and so the other way. Still, the war must greatly 
 weaken slavery, end as it may. 
 
 To-morrow Jefferson Davis is to be inaugurated for 
 six years — pleasant prospect for him. 
 
 In the note-book for the same month is this entry, 
 alluding to the " past three weeks ": 
 
 Then there was a settled anxiety almost hopeless- 
 ness; nothing seemed to have been gained and nobody 
 could forebode whether the war would last one year or 
 ten. Now there is such a glare of victory that we only 
 count the months or perhaps weeks until Richmond 
 and New Orleans shall have submitted. All the great 
 load of anxiety seems to have been lifted in one instant 
 from the pubUc mind. The difficulty is, that with it 
 goes the sense of immediate responsibility to the slaves. 
 
 March 26 
 
 Thomas Earle, a friend of ours, with whom I went to 
 the Adirondack a few years ago, is a soldier in the 
 Twenty-Fifth Regiment and now home on furlough. He 
 was here on Sunday and gave Mary a good account of 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL ' 167 
 
 everything. On the day of the battle he put Conway's 
 book " The Rejected Stone " over his heart, another 
 book the other side, and his tin plate in the middle. 
 Some of the others laughed at him, but a rifle ball 
 struck him just over the heart, glanced from Conway's 
 book and out again without hurting him. He wears 
 the coat with the two bullet holes and showed us the 
 book scarred by the bullet. He says that when, after 
 the battle, he examined the swamp they went through, 
 he could not conceive that they could have got beyond 
 it, and could understand that the rebel officers should 
 have believed it a sufficient protection on that side. 
 He was enthusiastic about General Burnside and said 
 he received the contrabands very cordially and beauti- 
 fully. It seems that the whole success of the affair was 
 owing to a slave who told them the only landing-place 
 on the island which was undefended. 
 
 Ellen Perkins sent us a volume containing Stephen's 
 letters copied, and we enjoyed them very much; they 
 are really among the very best letters which I have 
 seen, and very graphic and full of his cool, philosophi- 
 cal observations. It is the first glimpse into his mind 
 which I have had since he was a boy, and I think he 
 must have done very well. He often gives the most 
 comical pictures of himself, as of his vacating his tent 
 in a storm to some men who had been thoroughly 
 soaked, after which he strolled into the woods and sat 
 down in a puddle, where he stayed disconsolately all 
 the morning, " like\ a damp hen." He describes a 
 certain very fat officer who took refuge behind a tree 
 in a skirmish, but " lapped over painfully." He is 
 
168 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 always piquant, and very free of his criticisms on his 
 superior officers, as might be expected. 
 
 Stephen Perkins, a cousin and pupil as a boy of Mr. 
 Higginson's, was killed at the battle of Cedar Moun- 
 tain, August 9, 1862, going into the fight when almost 
 too ill to stand. 
 
 June 20 
 
 • • • • •'• • • ■ 
 
 Charles Devens is here and I went to see him 
 yesterday — he looks well, and moves with a cane, but 
 Lieutenant Sargent says his wound has made no prog- 
 ress since it occurred, and so may take a good while; 
 the ball cannot be found by the probe, which is perhaps 
 no great matter, but the peritoneum is destroyed in 
 one place and the bone enfoliated. . . . He does not 
 suffer and it is merely vexatious, but if it had been a 
 Minie ball he would probably have lost the leg. 
 
 The regiment here fills up very slowly — or rather 
 is hardly under weigh as yet — not a hundred men. 
 People feel that it is near the end of the war and don't 
 like the prospect of garrison or police duty somewhere 
 for three years. 
 
 Parson Brownlow was here and spoke. His appear- 
 ance is not formidable nor his tones, but his sentences 
 are; he speaks frightful vengeance, but I don't know 
 that he means half of it, after all. 
 
 The "fighting parson," as Brownlow was called, 
 was editor of the " Knoxville Whig," until arrested 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 169 
 
 for his " incendiary articles " against the Confederate 
 Government. The verdict was, " He deserves death 
 and we vote to kill him "; but after a few months' 
 imprisonment he was released and conducted into the 
 Union lines. ' 
 
 After Mr. Higginson had given up his project of 
 recruiting a regiment, he wrote of a new plan to enUst 
 a company for nine months and go as captain. 
 
 August 15, 1862 
 
 I dare say this will seem hard to you, dearest 
 Mother, but I remember that you acquiesced before, 
 and I think you will again. Nine months is not a great 
 while, after all, and as for the uncertainties of human 
 life they seem hardly greater in war than in peace. 
 
 The Lieutenant-Colonel of the regiment will be 
 Dwight Foster, Attorney-General of the State, and 
 one of our best men. I suppose I might have some 
 regimental position by pushing for it, but I shall not. 
 My proposed company takes greatly here, and many 
 of our best young men are joiuing in it. It will not be 
 long probably — that is not many weeks — before the 
 regiment is full. 
 
 August 22 
 
 It is quite a relief to my mind that you are able to 
 acquiesce in my plans. ... 
 
 I have now twenty-seven recruits, very nice fellows, 
 and should have many more, but that all the other 
 towns are all paying bounties, and it will not be decided 
 whether we pay one, until Monday, so they are waiting 
 
170 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 to see. By the end of next week I hope to be full, and 
 go soon into camp. 
 
 August 29 
 
 I am going to Boston to-day with my company roll 
 full, to get authority to choose officers; and next week 
 we expect to go into barracks in a large building a 
 little out of town, I have filled up much more rapidly 
 than any other company — had sixty-one in advance 
 of the bounty, which was not voted till Wednesday 
 night. Everybody praises the material of my company 
 and their appearance on the street. I have taken them 
 out twice. 
 
 I have come from Boston and have had a street drill 
 of my company, marching them by the house, much to 
 Mary's edification. I have authority to elect company 
 officers to-morrow; and we shall go into camp when 
 the barracks are ready — perhaps by the end of next 
 week. 
 
 I had a gUmpse of the Corcoran procession and of 
 him, a quiet-looking man. They say Fremont's recep- 
 tion was magnificent and his speech reads very 
 admirably, though he is said to be no orator. Two 
 bouquets were carried from the platform to Jessie who 
 sat in an adjoining gallery; this showed her to the 
 audience and produced great enthusiasm. 
 
 September 7 
 I have my commission and we go into barracks when 
 they are ready — say Wednesday or Thursday. I 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 171 
 
 drill my company every afternoon two hours outdoors 
 and enjoy it much. They learn fast and their marching 
 is much praised. I don't think I ever did anything 
 better than I have done all this, so far. The Heutenants 
 of the company are those I planned to have from the 
 beginning; both of them have been much with me in 
 the gymnasium and they are excellent fellows. John 
 Goodell (first heutenant) is a remarkably capable, 
 strong, prompt person reliable as the North Star and 
 able to succeed in anything he attempts. He has a 
 splendid physique, though not tall; a rich brunette 
 complexion, with fine eyes. He has never been in the 
 military line, but learns very quickly. Luther Bigelow 
 (second) is a bookkeeper like the other, and was out for 
 three months with the army last year; still he is not 
 well drilled and he is almost too gentle; thoroughly 
 sweet and refined; still perhaps it is in him. My first 
 sergeant is named Dunlap, a teacher, an Amherst 
 College graduate; I have to train him also, but he 
 learns easily. Most of the privates are quite young, but 
 very nice fellows; I hardly know an exception. They 
 are a remarkably good-looking, well-bred set, every- 
 body says; and some very handsome men. 
 
 September 14 
 
 To-morrow I go into barracks and must write a httle 
 first. . . . 
 
 I have been drilHng my companies for a week or 
 two, several hours a day, and everybody is surprised 
 at their rapid progress; they will be far superior to any 
 other of the companies going into camp, so far as I can 
 
172 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 judge. The Adjutant-General, rather to my amaze- 
 ment, announces Regiment No. 51 as consisting of 
 companies raised by T. W. Higginson, Worcester, 
 though in fact I can only be said to have raised two. 
 This seems to imply that I am likely to be elected to a 
 field office, which is very possible; but we are to try 
 and get Lieutenant-Colonel Sprague of the Twenty- 
 Fifth, who is now here, for colonel. This would be 
 heaven for us all, as he is a perfect Henri Laroche- 
 jacqueKn to me, in sweetness and charm, and the 
 greatest possible favorite here — tall, fair, low-voiced, 
 graceful, a natural nobleman. He has been a year in 
 the service and can teach us everything. He and I are 
 quite friends, and it would seem too good to be true, 
 only that everything has flowed so eflfortless to me 
 thus far that any imaginable good luck seems credible. 
 He it is of whom Miss Rebecca K. remarked, sit- 
 ting among a mob of ladies sewing for the Twenty- 
 Fifth Regiment, Colonel Sprague's photograph being 
 passed round to refresh them, " Oh, let me look at my 
 
 darling Augustus." " Miss K ," remarked the lady 
 
 who sat next, " allow me to introduce you to Mrs. 
 Sprague " — that fortunate lady sitting next her on 
 the other side. 
 
 If we fail of him, we may have Mr. Scandlin, who 
 was chaplain of the Fifteenth Regiment, and figured 
 in the Battle of Ball's Bluff; an Englishman and a 
 natural soldier. 
 
 I don't expect to remain many weeks in barracks. 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 173 
 
 Camp John E. Wool 
 September 26 
 
 To-day I had to go down to Boston to help settle an 
 unfortunate division of feehng here, as to which com- 
 panies should go into the Fifty-First Regiment. It has 
 been quite annoying, as two companies have been 
 much provoked with me, in consequence; and at this 
 moment the matter is being finally settled, whether 
 they are to go with the regiment or not — probably 
 not. I hope not, as they are bad companies and poorly 
 officered. 
 
 This has given extra solicitude to me. If all the 
 regiment were like my company it would be clear 
 enjoyment. 
 
 October 4 
 
 I am much pleased with the officers of the eight 
 remaining companies; none are highly cultivated, but 
 almost all are intelligent and manly and the majority 
 are fine-looking — more so than usual. 
 
 Yesterday we marched over the hills into Auburn, 
 about three miles, to visit the homestead of one of our 
 company named Rice, a nice, rosy boy. As we de- 
 scended, I suddenly became aware of waving handker- 
 chiefs in an orchard and found that there was a small 
 outdoor entertainment for us, men, women, and 
 children, some thirty or forty, between two great apple 
 trees with an American flag hung above, a table with 
 bread and butter, doughnuts, cheese and apples; and 
 the parish minister to make a speech. So we partook 
 of these various entertainments and responded with 
 songs, which the boys do very well, and some cheers. 
 
174 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 before we left for camp. On the way we stopped and 
 similarly saluted a lady who had aided in the affair, 
 but had been prevented from going by a sickness in the 
 family. Then we marched back to camp, arriving 
 after dark. 
 
 ... I think we may be here a month. Several of 
 the new nine months' regiments are said to be now 
 under orders for Newbem, North Carolina, but there 
 is no intimation about ours — only Colonel Sprague 
 thinks he can get us into Bumside's division. 
 
 Camp Wooi., October 13 
 
 One of the richest things we have here in the bar- 
 racks is the dancing. About once a week the men have 
 a regular ball; the bunks at the middle of the building 
 are moved on one side, candles are stuck about the 
 rafters, one or two kerosene lamps suspended, two 
 fiddlers hoisted on a top bunk, with Stuart Brown, our 
 adjutant, in a red jockey cap to call the figures; and 
 all take partners to the extent of thirty or forty 
 couples. The ladies are distinguishable by a handker- 
 chief tied to the arm, and conduct themselves with 
 much propriety, and as the younger and more delicate 
 are naturally selected to act in this capacity, they 
 sometimes acquit themselves with much grace, espe- 
 cially in the rare intervals when a waltz or polka is 
 permitted. But these airy side dishes seldom come in 
 — the bulk of the entertainment consisting of country 
 dances of the very solidest description, thorough heel- 
 and-toe work, and no flinching, as you would think 
 could you hear them over my head at this moment. 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 175 
 
 I can remember nothing but the remotest of the 
 Brattleboro' public balls which can in the least rival 
 the amount of work accomplished; these, perhaps, be- 
 ing even more concentrated since they not only begin 
 at seven, but close at nine. The men not yet being 
 uniformed exhibit every variety of shirts and jackets, 
 while here and there the shoulder-straps of some lively 
 young Ueutenant flash through the struggling mass. 
 My young Lieutenant, Bigelow, after looking on for a 
 while, was swept away by the charms of the prettiest 
 of the sergeants, named Fairweather, and I last saw 
 him winding through the " Portland Fancy " with her. 
 Up aloft, on all the cross-timbers of the high roof, along 
 the upper row of bunks, are perched the spectators, all 
 mascuUne; the dim hghts glimmer on dusky figures 
 and particolored caps, while the floor rocks with the 
 perpetual surge of motion. Without the excitement of 
 love or wine, with simply the pent-up physical energy 
 of two days' inaction during a storm, they dance like 
 Maenads or Bacchanals; their whole bodies dance; in 
 the pauses between the figures they throb and tremble 
 all over, as they keep time to the music; sometimes 
 solitary, uncouth men who are not dancing begin to 
 whirl and frisk alone by themselves in corners, un- 
 noticing and unnoticed. In each set there are mingled 
 grim and war-worn faces, looking old as Waterloo, 
 with merely childish faces from school, and there is 
 such an absorption, such a passionate delight, that one 
 would say dancing must be a reminiscence of the 
 felicity of Adam before Eve appeared, never to be seen 
 in its full zest while a woman mingled in it. It is 
 
176 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 something that seems wholly contrary to all theories 
 of social enjoyment; and then to think that these New 
 Englanders are called grave and unenjoying! In all 
 the really rustic entertainments I have ever seen, from 
 Katahdin to Kansas, there has been a certain stiffness 
 which I supposed inherent and inevitable. I remember 
 a ball of lumbermen at South Moluncus, or Number 
 Three, in Maine, that was as joyless as Beacon Street; 
 and yet here in these barracks I have beheld a scene 
 where the wildest revelry absorbed every person, and 
 yet without women or drink. There is no swearing or 
 vulgarity; they are too much absorbed for that; it is 
 all perfectly real to them; they look forward to it and 
 back upon it as any other young men might look on 
 any other ball, and no one could dream, to hear them 
 speak of it, that it is all a divertisement of men alone. 
 
 Sunday, October 26 
 
 I believe I have not written regularly, but time 
 passes very rapidly and the days are a good deal alike. 
 As yet I have not had a trace of ennui, because I have 
 no leisure. There is none during the day, except when 
 it rains, and four evenings in the week are taken up 
 with meetings; that is, two for officers' school, which 
 as yet is a failure, two I give to my non-commissioned 
 officers, meeting in my room. These last are equal or 
 superior to the commissioned officers of the regiment 
 in intelligence and refinement, so it is very pleasant 
 and we have nice times. My room is quite comfortable, 
 with an airtight stove, which burns when the wind 
 blows one way and does n't burn when it blows t' other. 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 177 
 
 The commissioned oflicers are now growing well 
 acquainted and are a good set on the whole as the 
 various traits come out. The captains are the best; we 
 have no actually bad ones, though several are mediocre 
 or slaxik. As usual, the new men are the best and the 
 men of militia or actual service the poorest — make 
 most mistakes and are most neghgent; reason, because 
 they rely on their own impressions and Umited experi- 
 ence, while the new men anxiously make sure of the 
 "Regulations " or the " Tactics " or the colonel for 
 everything. The best of them discover, with me, how 
 annoying it is to be scrupulous and punctilious where 
 others take it easy. Still, the stricter officers command 
 most weight in the end. 
 
 The two captains who satisfy me are Wheeler of 
 Grafton and . . . Kimball of Oxford — ... the latter 
 a very handsome young medical student, the former 
 a noble-looking six-foot Saxon, sound and simple- 
 hearted in his manhood, one of Tom Hughes's type of 
 men; son of a rich machinist here in Worcester, himself 
 a Harvard graduate, who after travelling in Europe 
 settled down as a farmer in Grafton, with a private 
 school like MUes's; he is the man among them all 
 who will "do to tie to," as they say out West. My 
 lieutenants are the best of the lot and all is harmony 
 among us three; then there are some nice attractive 
 boys among the others, with a mixture of older men, 
 respectable country sheriflfs and such, good, though 
 not graceful, and then another set of precarious 
 morale who will go up or down according to the 
 influences. 
 
178 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Colonel Ward, who commands the post, I heartily 
 like; there is little of him beyond the military, but 
 that is excellent; he is always frank and decided and 
 just; always sustains those who wish to do right, but 
 is not so severe on wrongdoers as if it were his own 
 regiment. But after all, I shall be glad to find Colonel 
 Sprague so good a disciplinarian — that being, after 
 all, three quarters of a colonel. The captains can do 
 the parental — at least I can — to the men; but it is 
 absolutely necessary to have somebody overhead who 
 will establish a uniform standard of discipline. 
 
 We now have dress parade and battahon driQ; of 
 course in so military a place as Brattleboro' you know 
 what these mean. The first is an easy form; the last 
 is drilling as a regiment and is very interesting. After 
 what I have learned from the books, it comes very 
 easy, but as I command the right flank company I have 
 to give all the nervous energy I can spare, to keep up 
 sharply to orders often new and often inaudible; but 
 the company now marches so well that the result is 
 always satisfactory and we have made no bad mis- 
 takes. 
 
 This week we are to have two more companies; 
 one of the two which were rejected, and another more 
 desirable; this gives the ten companies and we shall 
 probably choose field ofl5cers this week. The lieuten- 
 ant-colonel will be Harkness, adjutant of the Twenty- 
 Fifth, whom Sprague desires to bring with him — a 
 splendid soldier, though with some defects. I may be 
 chosen major and may not, and don't concern myself 
 at all. We are to have a regimental ball in Mechanics 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 179 
 
 Hall to celebrate the election, and shall probably be oflE 
 for Newbern before many weeks. 
 
 It is doubtful whether my company retains per- 
 manently the right of the line; you will be surprised 
 at my speaking of this; but you have no idea of the 
 importance these trifles assume, in the little worid of 
 the camp. Wisely said Goethe, " Thought expands, 
 but lames; action animates, but narrows." 
 
 November 2 
 
 We have chosen our field oflScers, . . . Had the 
 original programme been carried out, I should prob- 
 ably have been major, but for that I care nothing. . . . 
 I think it will all go smooth; in which case we shall 
 have altogether the ablest field among the New 
 England nine-months regiments. I am senior captain, 
 at present, with the " right of the line " — that is, 
 marching first in column — and my company and 
 lieutenants were glad not to have me promoted — 
 which was pleasant. ^ 
 
 We have everything now but guns and may be 
 ordered off at any time. The steamers return this 
 month to Newbern, but I think a Springfield regiment 
 will go instead of ours and we at the next trip of the 
 vessels. 
 
 Studley [lieutenant-colonel] is a plain man of ex- 
 cellent character and a good soldier; was imprisoned 
 at Richmond after Ball's Bluff last year. Harkness 
 [major] is a nice little fellow, all steel; and Sprague 
 [colonel] a chevalier. The two latter being great favor- 
 
180 THOMAS WENTWORTH HEGGINSON 
 
 ites in the North Carolina department, our regiment 
 would doubtless stand well there. 
 
 Tuesday the whole regiment goes home to Vote, and 
 it will seem just like a holiday in college. 
 
 November 9 
 
 Our field officers have received their commissions 
 and take command to-morrow, for which I am very 
 glad. A regiment needs at least three persons to take 
 care of the officers. If I like Colonel Sprague as well as 
 Colonel Ward, I am quite satisfied; but Colonel Ward 
 is but one man, with a wooden leg and two camps to 
 look after. With three first-class officers of experience, 
 ours will be a splendid regiment, and I should far rather 
 be a captain in it than colonel of a raw regiment with 
 no one of more experience than myself to look to; 
 which is the case with most of the nine-months troops. 
 We are more sure of an honorable position and at the 
 same time likely to be carefully kept and judiciously 
 handled. In mere drill, experience is of little value, for 
 one man can learn it better in a month than another in 
 a year, and my company is admitted to be the best 
 drilled and disciplined in the regiment; but the main 
 part of the military sphere Ues beyond this, in the 
 proper care of the men, and here experience is of im- 
 mense value. 
 
 As for our destination or time of leaving, we as yet 
 know nothing, but the latter cannot be very far off. 
 If we go to Newbern we cannot go for a fortnight or 
 more; if we go with Banks we may be ordered to New 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 181 
 
 York, at least, any day. It is snowing hard again and 
 the men take it rather hard, yet they are more good- 
 natured than one would expect, on the whole. All my 
 company have bought new blue overcoats in place of , 
 the shoddies — some for cash, some for credit. 
 
 On Tuesday the lady friends of the company give us 
 a dinner at City Hall. 
 
 Camp Wool, November 12 
 
 We have marching orders (which I have seen) to go 
 to Newbern by the return steamers. Only two regi- 
 ments are to go, and we shall have a steamer to our- 
 selves, which will be far more comfortable. They 
 finally sailed on the 10th and will be ready to sail 
 again in ten days or a fortnight from that time. I 
 suppose you will prefer the Newbern destination. 
 
 All these plans were changed by General Saxton's 
 proposal that Captain Higginson should take com- 
 mand of a South Carolina regiment of freed slaves. 
 
 November 16 
 
 ... I found this [Saxton's] letter on my table. It 
 may change all my plans. I have telegraphed to 
 Governor Andrew at Washington for leave to go to 
 Beaufort and see General Saxton, there to decide on 
 accepting the post, which is, of course, in itself very 
 attractive. Nevertheless I have almost decided not to 
 sacrifice a certainty for an uncertainty, and not resign 
 my present post till I am sure of a more important one. 
 It came very unexpectedly. Yesterday I came in and 
 
182 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 told Mary. . . . Then I went to Boston and saw 
 Edward Hooper . . . and others who have been at 
 Port Royal, and their information leaves me still in 
 doubt how far it will be a desirable situation. But if I 
 can get a temporary furlough, I shall certainly go in a 
 few days to New York, there to await the steamer for 
 Port Royal, as its going is very irregular. J£ I cannot 
 get this leave of absence, I shall probably forego the 
 Saxton offer rather than resign on an uncertainty. 
 
 Our regiment will probably leave in about a week, 
 for Newbem, Colonel Sprague's rule is perfectly 
 delightful — a silken glove and a hand of iron. 
 
 A few days in South Carohna convinced Higginson 
 that no pro-Slavery influence was apt to destroy Gen- 
 eral Saxton's project and he resigned his commission 
 in the Massachusetts regiment. 
 
 After taking command of the colored regiment. 
 Colonel Higginson wrote from the South: 
 
 Speaking of Sprague recalls the thrill with which I 
 read, in . . . [a home] letter, of my old regiment formed 
 into line of battle, in the early dawn, and my perfect 
 cavalier riding along the line and telling them " in 
 the uncertain futiure that was before them, to quit 
 themselves like men." How that man always throws 
 an instinctive touch of poetry into every word and 
 act; how strange it is that a wholesale flour store in 
 Worcester should have reared the only man who ever 
 enabled me to understand what Prince Rupert might 
 have been! 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL . 183 
 
 The First South Carolina Volunteers was concerned 
 
 in various daring raids and skirmij^hes, although not 
 
 taking part in any of the big battles. The following 
 
 extracts from Colonel Higginson's letters and journals 
 
 were written, for the most part, while with his black 
 
 soldiers. 
 
 Camp Saxton, Beaupoet, S.C. 
 December 1, 1862 
 
 . . . General Saxton has lent me a horse and I had a 
 ride through the plantation to a strange old fort, of 
 which there are two here, like those in St. Augustine, 
 built by a French explorer about the time of the 
 Pilgrims, and older, therefore, than any remains in 
 New England, even the Higginson house at Guilford, 
 Connecticut. They are built of a curious combination 
 of oyster shells and cement . . . and are still hard and 
 square, save where water-worn. One is before this 
 house and a mere low redoubt; the other, two miles 
 oflf, is a high square house, bored with holes for mus- 
 ketry and the walls still firm; though a cannon-ball 
 would probably crush them. 
 
 . . . William, our attendant, speaks with contempt 
 of the cultivation of this famous plantation — " No 
 yam, sa; no white potato, no brimstone " — which is 
 the startling name given to the yellow sweet potato 
 such as we have at the North, but which is superseded 
 here by a smaller and more insipid white one. . . . 
 
 A boatload of hoUday negroes crossed the river, and 
 as the women, in gay colors with head-kerchiefs, were 
 carried ashore in the men's arms, I was reminded of 
 similar scenes in Fayal, while the continuous sing-song 
 
184 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 talk might as well have been Portuguese as English. I 
 am constantly struck with this resemblance; a peas- 
 antry is a peasantry, I suppose; black or white, slave 
 or free, it has certain characteristics. Those dirty 
 irregular negro houses and their surroundings are much 
 like the Fayalese, though there is not here that beau- 
 tiful whiteness of clothing, and the people are more 
 degraded. 
 
 The Colonel's housekeeping was in a tent " bounded 
 in a nutshell." 
 
 December 10 
 
 My little stove is burning — I call it Fever and 
 Ague, from its intermittent heats and chills. 
 
 . . . Almost all the tents have little fireplaces, 
 though they have almost nothing of which to make 
 funnels except the omnipresent preserve-cans, set one 
 upon another, and you see a little row of these sticking 
 up funnily, behind the tents, out of the ground, for 
 the fireplace is dug dovm instead of built up, except 
 where some happy man gets a haul of bricks. 
 
 . . . Pigs run about the camp and exasperate me by 
 marring the dignity of dress parade, tUl I almost re- 
 solve to let the soldiers kill them — I would it they 
 were composed of anything but pork. 
 
 January 21, 1863 
 Being so near Georgia, I have thought it best to be 
 provided with the summer costume attributed to 
 Georgians — a shirt collar and a pair of spurs; and 
 have accordingly purchased both those articles. 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 185 
 
 January 23 saw Colonel Higginson in command of 
 three vessels, bound on a foraging trip up the St. 
 Mary's River. This expedition was fully described in 
 " Army Life." After his return he wrote: 
 
 . . . Do you know at Feman,dina I tea'd with three 
 schoolmistresses and it is quite bewildering; I had 
 forgotten that there were so many women in the world. 
 . . . Here I never see a white woman, save two Irish 
 lieutenantesses. 
 
 Camp Saxton, February 24 
 Our army does not seem to me as vivacious as many 
 suppose, but slouchy and slovenly, ill-kept and ill- 
 handled. In this respect the navy is far superior to it; 
 there is a universal neatness and discipline which forms 
 a refreshing contrast. Water is a cleaner element, to 
 be sure. 
 
 February 28 
 
 I have other dialects beside the negro to study. 
 I have a drum major temporarily detailed from the 
 Ninetieth New York now at Key West. He is an old 
 Belgian who has been in a dozen armies and the state 
 of whose brass buttons is a study for all American 
 soldiers, so lustrous are they. His talk is a mixture of 
 all tongues. " Co-lo-nel, I muss haf my deescharge and 
 not return to Key West; dere is de yellow fever and 
 then pop goes de weazel mit me : I haf no fear in battel, 
 but de yellow fever is too much mit me." 
 
 February 24, shortly before a second expedition up 
 the St. John's River, which resulted in the capture 
 
186 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 of Jacksonville, the diary announces the arrival of 
 Colonel Montgomery on the scene. 
 
 . . . Colonel Montgomery arrived last night, with 
 one hundred and twenty men as the nucleus of his 
 regiment, and he will be sent with us wherever we go, 
 probably. His military experience will be of unspeak- 
 able value to me. 
 
 Three years before Higginson had written of 
 Montgomery: 
 
 Montgomery in Kansas is a noble person, bom and 
 reared in Kentucky, and whatever he does I shall 
 expect to find right when it is understood, though it 
 may take long to understand it. I was not unprepared 
 for his present course. He wrote to me long ago that 
 the Missourians were driving him and his friends so 
 hard that they expected to retaliate in self-defence, 
 though the number is greatly overestimated, as in 
 John Brown's case. 
 
 James Montgomery was one of the early Kansas 
 settlers. His house was burned by the Missourians, 
 and he organized a band of fighters which he had led 
 on retaliatory raids into Missouri. He was called the 
 " Kansas Hero " and subsequently commanded the 
 first North Carolina Colored Volunteers. 
 
 Headquahtehs, Jacksonville 
 March 16. 1863 
 
 In respect to personal courage I have learnt nothing 
 new, and adhere to the belief that war has not so much 
 
ARMY LIFi: AND CAMP DRILL 187 
 
 harder tests than peace. But the anxiety of a com- 
 mander is something for which peace affords no 
 parallel, not even in Waldo [president of a railroad 
 insurance company] rimning to the head of the stairs 
 when any one came in the evening, lest it should be 
 some messenger of accident on the railroad. This of 
 itself would be enough to keep me from any desire for 
 high military responsibility, and if it is so with one of 
 my easy temperament, what must it be to those as 
 conscientious and more excitable? I can understand 
 how Burnside felt. So far as love of adventure goes, 
 it must yield less and less enjoyment as one goes up.. 
 Were I a private, I could do many things and run many 
 risks which I ought not now to incur. I could go out 
 by night on scouts. I have power, responsibihty, rule 
 a city absolutely, adjudicate arrests of prisoners and 
 restitutions of old women's cows, plan defences, go on 
 well-escorted reconnoissances, but the propensity for 
 personal scrapes is partially corked up. 
 
 Jacesonvili<e, Fla., March S4 
 
 I remember Charles Devens saying that he never 
 had felt such unutterable relief as when Colonel Baker 
 arrived on the field at the Battle of Ball's BluflF. 
 Not that he brought very strong reenf orcements with 
 him, but simply that he lifted the load of responsibility 
 oflf Devens's shoulders; and after that he had merely 
 to fight and obey orders — not command. 
 
 Something of this feeling has been mine for twenty- 
 four hours. When the Delaware approached the 
 wharf with the Eighth Maine Regiment and Colonel 
 
188 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Rust (my superior oflScer), I had to send him the 
 message that I was very sorry I could n't receive him 
 handsomely, but the fact was we were in the midst of 
 a fight. The rebels were just then beginning to shell 
 us for the first time with a big gun they have got on a 
 locomotive; but the gunboats returned the fire and it 
 did n't last long. Then he took command . . . and 
 instantly a load fell. . . . 
 
 It is odd how used one gets to alarms, especially 
 when " relieved " by a senior officer. Last night 
 Montgomery said, "To-night the town will be 
 shelled." He is commonly so little apprehensive that 
 it meant more from him than it would from most men : 
 it was based on their known wish to destroy the town, 
 and their having shelled us during the day. I said, 
 *' They won't dare "; went to bed with my clothes on 
 and never waked from half -past nine to six. 
 
 Montgomery is splendid, but impulsive and change- 
 able; never plans far ahead, and goes oflF at a tangent. 
 The last tangent is to leave us to-morrow, go up the 
 river thirty miles on a steamer and strike directly for 
 the interior, where the slaves are leaving the rebels to 
 watch us here. What makes the project odder is that 
 in forty-eight hours or so, we — i.e., the S.C.V. — 
 hope to be under weigh to take and occupy some upper 
 point, so that by waiting he could strike off from us. 
 But off he goes to-morrow — unless he changes his 
 mind. His only anxiety is that his men will get their 
 feet so blistered; for they are all Key West men. ' That 
 island is only eight miles by two, and that is the longest 
 distance they have ever walked in their lives. 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 189 
 
 People are coming into town; shops opening few and 
 small. " Society " consists of a nest of sallow, singing, 
 semi-secesh spinsters, just behind my headquarters, 
 who are haunted day and evening by lieutenants, naval 
 and military. I received my share of blarney on the day 
 of first arrival, and have since kept clear of it. 
 
 Have I written you of my handsome secesh horse 
 Rinaldo, a strong, yet slender and graceful sorrel with 
 a white line down the face and the proverbial two 
 white feet? A cavalry horse; belonged to a rebel 
 oflScer; perfectly trained, without a trick; goes like 
 the wind and is pulled up with a touch; foster-brother 
 of my orderly; both raised by Colonel Sammis, a rich 
 old slaveholding refugee who has returned with us. 
 Colonel S. sold him to the rebel officer for $275, and 
 I have him for $125, the Government price. 
 
 The only trouble is that one's rides are so limited 
 by the narrow limits of the dominion, a good part even 
 of this being encumbered with prostrate trees to keep 
 other people from riding. 
 
 March 28 
 
 Colonel Montgomery has just returned from up- 
 river, as far as Palatka; he landed incautiously and 
 
 was fired upon. lieutenant-Colonel , who was with 
 
 him, was just climbing up the wharf, had both hands 
 up at the top of the ladder, and a buckshot went 
 simultaneously through the fleshy part of each hand 
 without touching the bone. He incautiously turned to 
 retreat and a spent bullet hit him lightly on the hip. 
 
190 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 So he brought home three slight wounds, two of which 
 clearly belong to the major and me, both of whom had 
 been exposed much more than the lieutenant-colonel. 
 . . . We try to treat him pleasantly, but we think it 
 rather grasping in him. . . . On the other hand, they 
 brought down thirteen rebel soldiers whom they sur- 
 prised asleep on picket. Montgomery took all their 
 guns, then shook one on the shoulder to wake him, 
 "What is it?" quoth the sleeper. "You are pris- 
 oners," said Montgomery. " No," said the man, ex- 
 plaining, " we belong to Westcott's company " (a 
 noted guerilla force). " Yes," said Montgomery, " but 
 we don't." So they were all taken, with their horses 
 and arms. 
 
 Later Higginson wrote of the wounded officer: 
 
 The lieutenant-colonel all but cried to go home and 
 
 show his martyred hands to the C ladies who 
 
 had previously planned a festival for him in the City 
 Hall! Heaven forgive me if I wrong him, but he is an 
 uncommon baby, for his size. . . . They crack some 
 jokes on him, the officers; some say the rebels tried 
 to crucify him; others that he knelt to pray for 
 mercy and so the shots went through the uplifted 
 hands. 
 
 On the very day of Montgomery's return, March 28, 
 a sudden order came to evacuate Jacksonville. 
 
 In the excitement of departure the disappointed 
 colonel wrote on March 30: 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL ' 191 
 
 On boahd Steamer John Adams 
 Mouth of St. John's Kiveb 
 
 The only time since I entered the service when I 
 have felt within the reach of tears was when, after the 
 men were all on board at Jacksonville, I walked back 
 among the burning buildings (set on fire by the white ' 
 soldiers, not by mine) and picked a tea-rosebud from '> 
 the garden of my headquarters. To think that this 
 was the end of our brilliant enterprise and the destruc- 
 tion of my beautiful city was a sadder thing than 
 wounds or death. , . . But this did not last long — 
 " to-morrow to fresh fields and pastures new." 
 
 I told you in my last journal that Montgomery had 
 brought in thirteen rebel prisoners (pickets) ; I did not 
 add that he also captured the lieutenant, who after- 
 wards escaped by the aid of a crowd of female friends 
 who came to take farewell. He crawled away behind 
 their skirts, then ran, and would not stop, though 
 Montgomery raised his pistol. But M. would n't shoot, 
 for he said he could n't kill him in his sister's presence 
 — a very characteristic touch. His revolver is unerr- 
 ing; the other day he shot an alligator in the eye, the 
 only part visible. . . . 
 
 We have on board a delightful old pilot seventy 
 years old, who has been on all our trips; a perfect old 
 philosopher, who knows every nook on the coast from 
 Maine to New Orleans, and who, once tapped, talks 
 forever, with the raciest personal adventures. Captain 
 Gomez he is; was of course born in Salem, in Clam 
 Shell Alley, in a part of the city called Buttonhole. 
 
192 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 His mother could not read and whipped his sisterfor 
 venturing to study grammar at school — " What 
 business have poor folk's children to learn Grammar? 
 I '11 Grammar you — it 's Billy Gray 's folks that learn 
 Grammar." He never learned to spell, and has a way 
 in writing letters of putting a word in several successive 
 spellings, to give his reader the choice, as volley, 
 voylly, etc. He formerly lived in Jacksonville among 
 other places, and was delighted to go there and get 
 back a chest of tools; he is a brave Uttle old thing, too, 
 and stayed on deck when I drove all others under; and 
 when Montgomery was surprised at Palatka and 
 
 Lieutenant-Colonel wounded, old Gomez tried to 
 
 work the gun himself. 
 
 After the Florida trip the regiment was picketed at 
 Port Royal Ferry, South Carolina. 
 
 AprU 12 
 
 ... In the misty gray of the morning, I rode out 
 to the ferry amid rose scents and the song of early 
 birds, hearing for the first time the chuck-will's 
 widow, the Southern whip-poor-will, whose peculiar 
 note I at once recognized. There all was quiet and I 
 sent the batteries home. I never gave an order to an 
 oflBcer of regulars before, and though it was only a 
 juvenile little lieutenant, fresh from West Point, who 
 had come out on the boat from New York with me, 
 and then threatened to quit the service because he 
 could not bring with him a basket of champagne, still 
 it seemed rather presumptuous. To be sure I have 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 193 
 
 habitually under my command a company of the Mas- 
 sachusetts cavalry detailed as pickets, and that too 
 seemed odd at first; but " tout arrive en France." 
 
 A corporal of cavalry with whom I was riding the 
 other day told me a story of Henry Higginson. . . . 
 Once there was an advance beyond this ferry a year 
 ago to fire a bridge, and the Massachusetts cavalry 
 went along — almost their only smelling of powder in 
 these parts — and Henry, being reproved by General 
 Stevens for exposing himself somewhere, only ex- 
 claimed, "Pooh I They won't hurt me I" a piece of 
 assured invulnerabiUty which became a byword in the 
 corps. 
 
 Advanced Picket Station 
 
 MiLNEs Plantation 
 
 AprU 17, 1863 
 
 . . . Four companies of the regiment are distributed 
 at different points, two or three m"es away; six are 
 here, encamped on a breezy fiel., the field officers 
 living in the plantation house nc tr by! a little house 
 with four rooms and the doctor's closet, and a large 
 piazza all immersed in a dense mass of waving and 
 murmuring locust blossoms. Upstairs the adjutant 
 and his wife, and opposite them the major and chap- 
 lain. Below, the kitchen and dining-room in one, where 
 William and Hetty reign [the house servants]; then 
 my office, with my bed on one side consisting of a 
 broad, wooden shelf and some blankets, and a great 
 open fireplace, with bricks for andirons, to be used on 
 chilly evenings. Then the doctor's Httle box, opening 
 on a piazza. . . . Doctor's floor carpeted with pine 
 
194 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 needles, so that the whole room is scented. Outside 
 are the negro houses and sundry rambling sheds, to 
 accommodate our many horses; though Rinaldo lives 
 in a little house close by the door, where I can go and 
 give him salt at any time, which he eats like sugar. 
 By the house are sundry tents belonging to officials, 
 dotted among the trees. Our mess is large and very 
 pleasant: I have grown quite attached to the major, 
 who is always sunny and obliging, very energetic and 
 industrious, and as daring a man as I ever met. Then 
 there is the chaplain, an eccentric genius with a good 
 deal of brilliancy and perfectly unexpected in word 
 and deed; Dr. Rogers, Dr. Minor, his assistant, and 
 Lieutenant Bingham, the quartermaster, two as true, 
 pure-hearted, and manly young fellows as the world 
 can show. Then there is Captain Rogers and the 
 adjutant and his wife; he always steady, unassuming, 
 and equal to all he undertakes, and she taking life 
 always on the sunny and sensible side. With two or 
 three more women as bright and pleasant our little 
 household would be quite a model. . . . Then I call 
 for Rinaldo and away to visit the pickets. At Seabrook 
 we keep a nice little sailboat which I brought from 
 Jacksonville. Sometimes I take that and cross to some 
 island which we do not picket and which we and the 
 enemy both approach cautiously, they especially, for 
 they have never shown daring except in hopes to find 
 us napping. 
 
 AprU 23 
 
 I hope you have not been troubled by the attack on 
 me by " Conservator " in the " Evening Post." As to 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 195 
 
 the putting on shore of furniture, etc., at Jacksonville, 
 I certainly did it; for it was a choice between furniture 
 and life. The crowding on board those boats was fear- 
 ful, and nobody suffered more by it in the end than 
 those very people whom I had partially reUeved by 
 clearing the vessel. I had my men busy removing the 
 cannon that morning, while the town was already 
 burning, and when I came to put the men on board 
 ship, I found one half the hold of my principal vessel 
 full of an immense accumulation of furniture. The 
 captain entirely refused to take on more than three 
 companies and I had six to place there; so the only 
 possible way was immediately to put on shore what- 
 ever could be got at, leaving only the trunks of the 
 people. As it was, we nearly had a pestilence on board 
 that vessel solely from overcrowding and had to put 
 all the soldiers on shore at the mouth of the river and 
 cleanse out the ship. 
 
 In case of storm all the rest of the furniture and the 
 horses must have been thrown overboard, and that 
 might have been called cruelty too. Don't you know a 
 woman will sooner lose her life than her feather bed.'' 
 . . . There was little time to discriminate, with the 
 vessels lying at the wharves of a burning town, am- 
 munition on board every vessel, and a rebel force 
 outside. . . . 
 
 Moreover, though it sounds very fine to talk about 
 " Union " citizens, the people who made most noise 
 were avowed secessionists until they thought we were 
 the strongest; and then were afraid to stay because 
 they had gone too far. One family of semi-ladies in the 
 
196 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 house behind mine, who had confessed themselves 
 secessionists to me, had five wagorv-loads of their furni- 
 ture brought by our only three wagons, when it was 
 hard to get teams to save the sick from the hospital 
 and the cannon from the forts. They had played and 
 sung and flirted with the young naval oflBcers and 
 wound them round their fingers, though entirely 
 without charm. Now they are in Beaufort, in one of 
 the best houses, and have appeared in the streets with 
 secession aprons. Montgomery's quartermaster is one 
 of their chief admirers. On the other hand, some of 
 the real Union people of Jacksonville could not get a 
 team to haul their furniture, so overwhelmed were 
 
 we with work. Not that Colonel R meant any 
 
 special harm, but he was unequal to the terribly diflS- 
 cult task of evacuating a town in a hurry and carrying 
 away the inhabitants. 
 
 As for the burning, the place was only very partially 
 burnt, but the perfect insubordination which the at- 
 tempt showed was outrageous, though not strange to 
 any one who knows our regiments. Good, brave, hardy 
 fellows, intelligent, too, but with no more discipline 
 
 than so mai\y calves. Colonel is so unpopular 
 
 that all but two of his oflScers have just resigned, and 
 some said openly that they burnt the houses because 
 they thought he did n't wish it. 
 
 Of course I shall not write any correction of that 
 report about "cruelty, etc.," because I never be- 
 heve in contradicting falsehoods; it only keeps them 
 alive. . . . 
 
 You know it is not my habit to worry, especially 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 197 
 
 about personal matters, and it is such a piece of luck 
 that the public should not charge all the burning on 
 my men, as was to be expected, that I am wUling to be 
 thought as bad as " Brute Butler " for a time, if that 
 will buy justice for them. 
 
 But I expressed the hope in Jacksonville that I 
 might be kept out of the way of " Union " people in 
 rebel communities; if you trust them, they betray you. 
 
 April 24 
 
 It is odd to read the papers. We read loud to each 
 other the narrative of our own adventures and agree 
 that no one need say that we are not kept supplied with 
 new novels I 
 
 Camp life was varied by studies of the Southern 
 flora and animal life. 
 
 Dr. Rogers [brought in] a six-foot snake round his 
 neck, not alive. . . . 
 
 The snake abovenamed was called the thunder- 
 snake by the men, of which I could get no explanation 
 save, " speck he look like streak lightnin', sal " They 
 are much more afraid of snakes than of alligators, 
 which they say seldom attack men even io the water, 
 but are afraid of them. I have seen a dead alligator 
 six feet long, but there is a live one eighteen feet long 
 in a cypress swamp not far from here, which I am 
 going to visit. 
 
 I slept at night on the floor in Dr. Minor's little 
 room; he dropped asleep like a baby while I worked 
 
198 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 and meditated of possible incursions of the enemy. 
 Soon I heard soimds which indicated them; I raised 
 my head; then they came nearer; then there came 
 something like the explosion of a small shell and a 
 thump in the comer of the room. The fire still glowed, 
 and presently I saw the largest rat I ever looked upon 
 trot placidly forth into the centre of the floor, just 
 between Minor and me, and look round to see what he 
 might devour. Luckily it was neither of us, and I 
 waked in the morning with all my features complete; 
 but should not again select that floor to spread my 
 blankets on. 
 
 May 8 
 I had some talk with General Hunter. It is hard 
 not to like him when one is with him; he seems so 
 good-natured, generous, and impulsive. He impressed 
 me as being by habit lax, indolent, vacillating, and 
 forgetful; but as capable of being on a given occasion 
 prompt, decided, and heroic. So far as principles of 
 action go, this war has nothing more to teach him; 
 his defects are more hopeless because they belong to 
 his temperament and no conversion can extricate him 
 from them. With the tonic of a strong moral influence 
 always beside him, he could be easily held up to the 
 standard of a great man; as it is, while he is asleep, 
 the Devil sows tares, and that is a large part of the 
 time. 
 
 I am afraid to quote the things the paymaster said of 
 this regiment, but Mr. Page has sent it all to the 
 "Tribune," they say. I am ashamed to be so praised; 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 199 
 
 it is such a reproach on this undisciplined, unbuttoned 
 mob we call an anny. I hope it will never be my lot 
 to write military memoirs; I should have to dip my 
 pen in stronger superlatives than I ever mixed before. 
 
 Here is the latest Beaufort anecdote. There is a 
 New York regiment here which calls itself " Les 
 Enfans Perdus," or the lost children, being composed 
 of all nations — officers chiefly French. One of these, 
 the adjutant, was criticizing some of General Hunter's 
 late movements, and some one in joke threatened him 
 with Fort La Fayette. " Vas dat you say! " he cried 
 in a rage; " ven you say La Fayette, take ofiE your 
 hS,t " (suiting the action to the word), " Ven you say 
 Vashinton, take off your hS.t " (uncovering again) . " Ven 
 you say Huntare, do as me, — ah-h-h " (gripping 
 his hat over his ears with both hands, grinding his 
 teeth, and running away in an ecstasy of despair). 
 
 You may fancy from this that there is no enthusiasm 
 felt here over the failure at Charleston and the evacua- 
 tion of Jacksonville. 
 
 In another letter Colonel Higginson says that the 
 above regiment, the One Hundredth New York, was 
 the only one which ever planted anything around its 
 tents. Almost all of these were surrounded by little 
 gardens. 
 
 Referring to a long-delayed letter, the Colonel wrote 
 his mother: 
 
 It was bsld, as one of the drummers said he should 
 feel if killed without having any defensive weapon but 
 
200 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 the professional drumsticks. " Gunnel," said he, if 
 I was to get killed, and had n't had something to de- 
 fend myself with, I should feel b&d " — which seemed 
 so just that I at once sent in a requisition for drum- 
 mers' swords. 
 
 ... I wish more people wrote to me. If they only 
 would take my note (of hand) to answer them after I 
 get home. Nothing so rare as epistolary disinterested- 
 ness; the mqst self-denying saint hints at an answer 
 in the postscript. Stephen is splendid about sending 
 me papers; in a better world somebody will send 
 him Paradisaic Journals and Saturday Evening 
 Heavenzettes. 
 
 Thanks for the maple sugar which we have for 
 dessert; also I offer it to guests instead of whiskey, 
 now that our blessed Florida syrup is getting low. 
 
 May 7 
 
 It is a funny life we lead here, even beyond the aver- 
 age fun of this oddest of planets. From the time we 
 first went to housekeeping . . . everything has been 
 upside down. I undress according to the weather; if 
 it is bright moonlight I turn in very thoroughly; if it 
 is very dark and a trifle rainy, I undress as Suvaroff [a 
 Russian field marshal] did when very lazy — take oflE 
 one spur. One wakes up in the middle of the night and 
 has a horse saddled to go and inspect pickets, or is 
 waked up with some difl5culty, to be told that some- 
 body is somewhere firing at something, which always 
 settles itself, like Napoleon's unanswered letters. 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 201 
 
 Advanced Picket Station, May 18 
 Dearest Mother: 
 
 . . . We miss grass . . . grass and female society I 
 might say. . • . General Lander's widow . . . came, 
 out hoping it was war and she was to be head-nurse. 
 She was Miss Davenport, an actress, and quite an I 
 intelligent and earnest person; English, dignified, and ' 
 rather fine-looking. Little touches of the stage are en- 
 tertaining — rising and stepping to the door to see if 
 
 Major , her lodger, had come in — " Ha! it is the 
 
 Major? " then, half turning her head, with a waving 
 of the hand to me from the doorway — " 'T is he! " 
 
 I have an impression that there are people at the 
 North who occasionally ask what they can do for such 
 as me. No matter who they are, tell them to write 
 letters, vnihout expecting answers. To that rarest and 
 loftiest test of human virtue, how few respond! 
 
 ... It is nice to get letters and carry round the 
 officers' to them — I often do it just to see how pleased 
 they look. It would amuse you, though, to see what a 
 tight rein I keep on them — sending them my compli- 
 ments (in the style of Sprague and the regular army) 
 and I should be glad to see them for a moment — 
 when I wish to mildly annihilate tJiem on arrival. 
 They say that when the Colonel " makes a little 
 suggestion," it is as formidable as a General Order — 
 and indeed it rarely has to be repeated. 
 
 Advanced Picket, May 25 
 Only think of a picnic here the other day! Mrs. 
 
202 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Lander got one up at the Barnwell place, the most 
 beautiful on the island, and I helped her a good deal. 
 It was got up for a young Mr. Hay, President Lincoln's 
 private secretary, a nice young fellow, who unfortu- 
 nately looks about seventeen and is oppressed with 
 the necessity of behaving like seventy. He wrote about 
 Ellsworth ... in the " Atlantic," and is staying with 
 General Saxton. ... It was entertaining to see the 
 ex-actress's eye for effect — a tablecloth here, a scarlet- 
 lined coat there. Miss Brown's curls in an available 
 vista, and blackberries and black sentinels in the back- 
 ground. About four came the band, the oflBcers, the 
 young ladies, General Saxton without his livelier half, 
 Mr. Hay laboring not to appear newmown. It went 
 off better than the average; the place was beautiful, 
 old trees and a view across Broad River to the rebel 
 shore, a great sailcloth laid down to dance on; General 
 S. leading out Mrs. L. in lingering widow's weeds, his 
 dancing as direct, grave, and simple as his policy, hers 
 graceful as if she were sweeping the boards, technically 
 so called. We all like her. She is so off the stage what 
 she was on it, simple, earnest, high-minded, sensibly. 
 We had blackberries and milk, and after this pastoral 
 entertainment galloped home through the wood paths 
 by the young moon. 
 
 I forgot to tell Mr. Hay for Old Abe's delectation 
 that the little drummer boys of Mrs. Dewhurst's 
 school all nodded eagerly when she asked if they knew 
 who was President of the United States. On her re- 
 questing them to name him, they burst out in an eager 
 chorus, " Uncle Sam." 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 203 
 
 The Department of the South had earlier been 
 described as a " military picnic." 
 
 About this time the chaplain of the regiment, when 
 on a scouting expedition with some of the men, was 
 captured, and imprisoned for a year. 
 
 No news of the chaplain except sometimes through 
 fugitive slaves, who report that the rebels pronounce 
 
 him "a d d saucy Yankee as they ever met," 
 
 which I can easily credit. Under the new agreement 
 about chaplains he would be released did he not belong 
 to a colored regiment — and may be as it is. Some- 
 how it is impossible for any of us to speak seriously of 
 the chaplain's being a prisoner; we always laugh be- 
 cause we all have a feeling that the rebels must have 
 the worst of it. 
 
 The following extract, which Colonel Higginson said 
 could only be appreciated by one who knew the first 
 lessons in drill, is taken from the journal of 1863 : 
 
 It is a ludicrous travesty of the passage in the 
 Tactics. . . . The very first question asked my 
 lieutenant-colonel was, " What is the position of a 
 soldier without arms? " — which] he could not answer. 
 ... So Captain Rogers asked it of one of his men and 
 wrote down the following in return: 
 
 Position of a Sojer widout no gun 
 Heels extendin' a inch apart. 
 Toes extendin' not quite a-elbow. 
 Body extendin' right plump. 
 Hands extendin' down side of pants. 
 
204 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 Little finger extendin' seam of breeches. 
 
 Head flare to the front, extendin' on de ground 
 
 fifteen paces. 
 
 Hat square on de head. 
 
 Some of these men have splendid memories. One 
 sergeant, who cannot read, calls the roll from memory. 
 One of our ablest sergeants, a carpenter, paid his 
 master $365 a year for his time for several years; think 
 of it! He used to make $2.50 a day, erected buildings 
 on contract, etc. He and six others built the town of 
 Micanopy on contract. Henry Mclntyre is his name, a 
 light mulatto. He would never learn to read, because it 
 exposes them to so much more suspicion and watching. 
 
 How could I ever tell you all the funny things I hear? 
 Yesterday a noble-looking old woman, as stately as 
 Mrs. Le Baron, came to explain gravely to me the 
 wrongs her son endured from a bad wife, which culmi- 
 nated in the following ignominious scene. " Dey got 
 a-tangling, and she took his foot and kick he out of de 
 doorl " 
 
 May 29 
 Ever since I made my ojBBcers understand that they 
 were to be kept down to a valise apiece, and no steal- 
 ing, they have delighted in inveigling me into any small 
 luxuries, a chair, a desk, etc.; and my exhibiting a 
 sheet at last produced a thrill of triumph; and now 
 that Montgomery's regiment is just ofiE (which did 
 stealing for a dozen), James Rogers has just seduced 
 me into an enchanting mosquito netting ... of whose 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 205 
 
 Jacksonville origin there can be no reasonable doubt. 
 ... I assure you that the transparent drapery, caught 
 up in the nadddle over a vista of crimson blanket, quite 
 enhances the beauty of the apartment. . . . 
 
 General Hunter's new letter to Jeflf. Davis is a very 
 unfortunate one, like many of his impulses. The 
 threat to execute his prisoners, unless J. D. revokes, 
 would only make the latter smile, for he must know 
 that it would never be carried out — because public 
 sentiment would not sustain it. But public sentiment 
 will sustain retaliatory acts and the threat of those 
 carries a weight which the more extravagant threat 
 only impairs. 
 
 ... If he [General Saxton] once did a dishonorable 
 act I should forever lose my faith in him and with it in 
 human nature, as I once heard old Samuel Hoar say of 
 Charles G. Loring. I wonder what saucy things little 
 Mrs. Tillie will say to Old Abe. Do you know she can 
 imitate perfectly her husband's handwriting? — Gen- 
 eral Hunter's, President Lincoln's, General Scott's, 
 Mr. Seward's and even the sacred Mr. Spinner's who 
 signs the greenbacks. I have seen them. 
 
 We have lost our first officer. Lieutenant Gaston; 
 who was accidentally shot by one of his own [men] in 
 a little reconnoissance across the river yesterday morn- 
 ing. . . . To-night we had funeral services here just 
 at dusk, and it was one [of] the most impressive 
 funerals I ever knew. . . . Just at the beginning up 
 rode Mrs. Lander and Mr. Page, " Tribune " cor- 
 respondent. The latter looked at it as an item; but 
 
£06 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Mrs. L. was exceedingly affected by it. I was so ab- 
 sorbed in our men that I forgot all about her widow- 
 hood. It would have affected anybody, though; there 
 is something so plaintive about the whole condition 
 
 of these grown-up children, at any time; A would 
 
 shed rivers of tears over almost anything they do, 
 whether they laugh or cry; there is a sort of mute 
 appeal about them unknown to themselves. It is very 
 hard to punish them; they seem like dumb or blind 
 babies, or maimed animals. There is infinitely less of 
 the defiant or dangerous element about them than I 
 expected; very few devils in the regiment; but the 
 same soft texture which nothing but the contact with 
 gunpowder seems to harden. 
 
 May 30, 1863 
 
 Went down in the early morning, a few of us, to take 
 Lieutenant Gaston's remains to the beautiful green 
 quiet cemetery around the old Episcopal church [Beau- 
 fort]. It is small, high- walled with stone, and filled 
 with old monuments of stately Carolinian families 
 — Middleton, Barnwell, De Saussure — all buried in 
 masses of green shade. As I sat in the empty church 
 the doves cooed into the window and the mocking-bird 
 trilled, and then the cavalry bugles rang through with 
 their shriller sound; and then I walked out again 
 among the luxurious Southern growths, and thought 
 there could not be in a strange land a sweeter resting- 
 place for a discarded body. 
 
 Montgomery was then making " some capital raids " 
 near Georgia and Colonel Higginson wrote of him; 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 207 
 
 Advanced Picket, June 5 
 
 Montgomery's raid was a most brilliant success, 
 though I don't believe in burning private houses, as he 
 does. Nearly eight hundred contrabands! 
 
 Dr. Rogers met one old Uncle Tiff, pockets, hands, 
 and mouth full of bread. " You're happy, are n't 
 you? " quoth the Doctor. " Bress you, massa," said 
 the poor old soul, " I ain't had so much to eat in nine 
 years! " 
 
 June 10 
 
 He is an unequalled guerilla, but has no system. 
 After all one must consume his share of red tape as of 
 dirt, nor have I ever tried to cut it without having to 
 tie it together again in the end. It takes a great deal of 
 machinery to keep nine hundred men in good condi- 
 tion, let alone a larger number. 
 
 June 19 
 
 Montgomery's . . . brigand practices I detest and 
 condemn. ... It is perfectly easy to restrain the 
 negroes; they are capable of heroic abstinence. I will 
 have none but civilized warfare in my regiment, but 
 the public may not discriminate. 
 
 HmroN Head, June 26 
 
 Montgomery and the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts 
 are recalled from St. Simon's Island and put here for a 
 time, or just across from here on St. Helena Island, 
 where I shall hardly see them. The officers of the 
 Fifty-Fourth have never had a glimpse of my regiment; 
 this I mention because Stephen seemed to confound 
 
208 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 their criticisms on Montgomery's guerillas with " Gun- 
 nel Higginson's reg'lars " as mine call themselves. 
 
 Last night on dress parade a white soldier said 
 
 audibly behind me, " By , to think of my living 
 
 to see a nigger regiment drill better than the One 
 Hundred and Fourth Pennsylvania! "... 
 
 My claims of superiority to the white regiments here 
 in soldierly appearance may seem extravagant, but you 
 must remember that there are no good white regiments 
 anywhere except regulars and a few others, chiefly from 
 Massachusetts, and then that my men have some great 
 advantages. All white soldiers look dirty, whether they 
 are or not, from the sunburn and the beard, whereas 
 my men's complexions are the best possible to hide it; 
 a shiny black skin always looks clean. Then the hght 
 blue pantaloons of our army have the same disad- 
 vantage over the dark blue of my regiment. I ob- 
 serve this difference in the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts. 
 Then the artistic effect of the line of white officers 
 against the sombre and steady background is very 
 good. Any artist would prefer to have his soldiers 
 black. 
 
 One of our prime favorites is dear old York, our 
 *' Uncle Tom," who takes care of Dr. Rogers, a per- 
 fect type of well-bred respectability as to the out- 
 ward, and inwardly a saint. In Sunday services, when 
 we wish to get particularly near to Heaven, we have 
 Uncle York sit upon the platform during the services, 
 or make a little prayer. Imagine our dismay when he 
 dropped some hints, the other day, that he had not 
 always been so beautiful, and had had his period of 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL ' 209 
 
 wild oats. At length the officers, probing him farther, 
 began to approach the details of these early trans- 
 gressions. The veteran shook his head over the retro- 
 spect, and confessed, " Used to dance — and t'ings." 
 What the t'ings were, which came in as milder etcetera 
 after the one great remorse of dancing, we shall never 
 know. 
 
 Have I ever said what is the favorite reading-primer 
 of our drummer boys? McClellan's Bayonet Exercises. 
 Large type, short words, subject intelligible, pictures 
 fascinating; it contains all merits. " Ac-vance, re- 
 treat, leap to de front, leap to de rear," and so on. 
 Think of the great dethroned idol, banished from all 
 other temples, still reigning in the primary schools of 
 the Ethiopians! 
 
 BBAtrroRT, S.C, July 7 
 
 . . . Montgomery has been a sore disappointment 
 to me and to General Saxton, with whom he is at 
 sword's point; I did not desire to be brigaded with 
 him, because he would chafe so much at bieing imder 
 me and I should have such hard work to coerce him 
 into my notions of civilized warfare. He had one of his 
 men shot without trial for desertion the other day, and 
 was about to shoot two others when Dr. Rogers's 
 wonderful power of influence made him change his 
 plans. Yet he is not a harsh or cruel man, but a 
 singular mixture of fanaticism, vanity, and genius. 
 
 Colonel Higginson was wounded in July, 1863, and 
 went home for a month. His friend, George WilUam 
 
210 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Curtis, noticed a changed expression in the face of the 
 returned colonel — the change so noticeable after the 
 Great War in the faces of those who fought in France. 
 Mr. Curtis wrote: " I see in your face . . . the same 
 influence which has touched all the true soldier faces 
 I have seen, and of which we who stay at home are 
 not unconscious. Fire purifies, but it tries." 
 
 The next extract describes his return to Beaufort. 
 
 Headquarters, FrasT S.C.V. 
 Beaufort, August 22 
 
 As the Arago came up to the pier on Thursday, at 
 Hilton Head, sudden movements were observed among 
 the soldiers detailed for duty on the wharf; arms were 
 raised, fingers pointed, glances interchanged, and an 
 evident mutual proclamation of " de Cunnel." No 
 cheering — they seldom cheer — but Nature, in vindi- 
 cation of the oppressed, instead of tongues gave them 
 teeth, and the end of the pier might presently have 
 been a procession of elephants, so magnificent was the 
 display which spread along the line. ... I think no 
 single flower of speech on my return impressed me so 
 much as that which dismissed my departure. " You 's 
 a mighty big rail out ob de fence, sa." 
 
 On his return the Colonel found that fllness and 
 absence had made great change in his officers. 
 
 August S6 
 . . . We have a new lieutenant: Childs, of juvenile 
 look and soft manner, and one of his company was 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 211 
 
 trying for his name this morning, " Dunno he name, 
 sa; speck he name Lieutenant Baby, sa." It seems in- 
 credible that it should be serious, but I verily beUeve 
 it was. 
 
 Headquakters, FmsT S.C.V., September 8 
 
 You don't know what an improved set of officers 
 
 I 've got. Captain I shall have court-martialed 
 
 and dismissed the service as soon as he comes from 
 
 the North, and Captain 1 have a plan to dispose 
 
 of, and then I shall feel as happy as Tom Beecher 
 when two out of his three church committee were in 
 the state prison. 
 
 September 12 
 
 I see Mariotti, the new " Times " man whom I 
 remember of old at Cambridge, being freshly arrived, 
 burst out in amazement at the buttonless condition of 
 our American army. This morning I had occasion to 
 go before a board of officers — four of them, a lieuten- 
 ant-colonel, a captain, and two beside. All should 
 have been in full dress. Not one had his coat buttoned; 
 only two had anything to designate rank, and indeed 
 one of these was absolutely out of uniform, in civil 
 costume. They were no doubt as good officers as the 
 average, but I think of Lieutenant-Colonel Maggi's 
 dismay. . . . 
 
 Apparently all American officers in white regiments 
 (except from Massachusetts and a few batteries) have 
 the proverbial souls above buttons. I 'm sure I wish 
 they had n't. 
 
212 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 The allusion to Colonel Maggi is explained by an 
 earlier letter written from the Worcester camp. 
 
 I have been amused at the feuds between the colonel 
 of our Twenty-First Regiment, a free and easy, slipshod 
 country squire, utterly incapable of military system, 
 and his lieutenant-colonel, Maggi, an European mar- 
 tinet. The latter was exasperated at entering an offi- 
 cers' meeting and finding the colonel in an old brown 
 linen sack with his feet on the window seat; and then 
 somebody came in with a red shirt and no coat at all. 
 " Colonel," said Maggi, " is this one of your vagoners?" 
 " Why, no! This is Captain Washburn, don't you 
 know him? " " Good Heaven! Colonel, when you 
 expect any discipline in the army, if captains come to 
 officers' meeting in his sleeve-shirtl " 
 
 While a patient in the Officers' Hospital, the Colonel 
 wrote, October 10, 1863: 
 
 The pleasantest person in the house is a young Dr. 
 Willard, of the navy. . . . After I had cross-questioned 
 him and fitted him with a cousinry, I told him that 
 people from Boston and that region did n't bore each 
 other worse than any other people after they had got 
 the genealogical arrangements fairly settled and foimd 
 out who was who. Up to that time they were, of course, 
 intolerable — until all the cross-questioning was ended. 
 
 " The Oaks " Plantation 
 
 St. Helena Island 
 Two mUes from Beaufort, October 24 
 
 An old Aunt Phillis, the plantation patriarch, was 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL " 213 
 
 here this morning, sighing over an impracticable little 
 boy she has the care of. " Mus' take 'um to de wood for 
 whip 'um," she averred. " Why so? " I asked. " No 
 use for whip 'um in de house, massa. Miss Laury 
 [Towne] hear de very first slap come flyin', say, ' Stopl 
 Stop! No for whip! ' So everybody take he child to de 
 wood, far place, for whip 'um! Gan't fotch up boy 
 widout whip I " 
 
 This picture of the whole maternal population of the 
 place scudding for the woods, with children under their 
 arms, to enjoy a season of undisturbed chastisement, 
 beyond reach of Miss Laury, was too much for me. 
 
 The Oaks, Sunday 
 October 25 
 
 The weather is growing cold; to-day it is quite raw 
 and uncomfortable. The family have partly gone to 
 the church where it is Communion Sunday. They have 
 it once in three months, and they say the elders pull 
 away at the wine in a style which is quite vivacious; 
 they use a dozen bottles for several hundred people, 
 and then take up a collection to pay for it. 
 
 Camp Shaw, November 13 
 . . . There is a perpetual chatter of jackdaws, a 
 black, glossy bird, intermediate between the blackbird 
 and crow in size, which congregates in immense flocks 
 at this season, soaring and alighting in great armies. 
 
 November 21 
 I believe I have a constitutional affinity for un- 
 developed races, though without any of Thoreau's 
 
 I- 
 
214 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 anti-civilization hobby. I always liked the Irish and 
 thought them brilliant. It is the fashion with philan- 
 thropists who come down here to be impressed with 
 the degradation and stupidity of these people. I often 
 have to tell them that I have not a stupid man in the 
 regiment. Stupid as a man may seem if you try to 
 make him take a thing in your way, he is cominpnly 
 sharp enough if you will have patience to take him in 
 his own. ... A figure, a symbol, they always com- 
 prehend, and sometimes, when they seem dullest, they 
 have a meaning of their own. To-day Abram Fuller — 
 certainly one of the poorest specimens of brain we 
 have had, it not the poorest — came for his discharge 
 papers, he having been discharged for physical dis- 
 ability. After I had explained to him that he was no 
 longer a soldier and told him how to get his pay by 
 these papers, he said, looking at me in a sort of unin- 
 telligent way, " I in dis army still. Gunnel." Oh, dear, 
 thought I, you certainly are hopeless, and began again 
 to convince him that he was discharged from the army, 
 and no longer responsible to me, etc., when he stopped 
 me with " I mean to say, dat I in dis army still," with 
 a kind of flourish of the hands; and I felt my own head 
 "growing thinner," as the men say when a thing 
 dawns on them, and I fathomed that he meant that in 
 the great warfare for freedom he wished still to be 
 counted on, though discharged from First S.C.V. He 
 had completely shot over my head with the fineness 
 and elevation of his ideas, and left me no resource for 
 my Caucasian intellect except to employ him as my 
 private tutor. It is not the only time I have had just 
 such a rebuke. 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 215 
 
 Bbaufobt, November 24 
 
 . . . Bear meat is delicious; it is like beef that has 
 been fed on honey; alligator steaks are a kind of racier 
 fried halibut; but I see that 'possum is one of the great 
 compensations of Nature, given to elevate and idealize 
 the lives of these unsophisticated Africans. What does 
 abolitionism, what did Mrs. Kemble know of 'possum? 
 They feel, these poor people, what it is to them, and 
 speak of it with a kind of unctuous reverence. Doubt- 
 ing whether to send a savory morsel of it to Dr. 
 Rogers, in town, we consulted Uncle York, the veteran, 
 his personal attendant, as to whether he would prob- 
 ably eat it if sent. Uncle York opened his eyes, eyes 
 that had seen generations of 'possum, and answered 
 with smiling certainty, " Eat 'um, sa? oh, yes, sa. If 
 he eber taste 'um, he eat 'um, sure" and the thing was 
 sent. 
 
 December 21 
 Another frivolity is court-martials. I find that every 
 colonel is court-martialed first or last as every child has 
 measles. Of five colonels here, one. Colonel White, 
 was court-martialed before I came here, another 
 (Colonel Rust) afterwards. I have sat upon Colonel 
 Sammons, the third and now am sitting on Colonel 
 Van Wyck, the fourth. When this is over I shall be the 
 only one left. 
 
 Hilton Head, January 8, 1864 
 
 Nothing gives a Democrat a better glimpse of 
 aristocratic privileges than to travel in a military 
 department. When men see you are a colonel, all 
 
216 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 difficulties are smoothed and all privileges accorded, 
 unless a general heaves in sight, and then you are noth- 
 ing; and it is astonishing how soon one learns to claim 
 for one's self these special privileges as if made of 
 better clay. It must be far more so with noblemen 
 born, since they have nothing else from childhood; 
 and no doubt they easily convince themselves that it is 
 in the fitness of things. It is rather despicable in this 
 military case, but sometimes very convenient. 
 
 Beaufort, S.C, January 22 
 
 . . . Just now a steamer went down the river with 
 five hundred men of the Fifty-Fifth Pennsylvania, go- 
 ing home to reenlist, in great spirits, on thirty-five 
 
 days' furlough. With them goes Colonel , the 
 
 most cultivated and congenial officer here, and quite 
 a crony of mine, though the furniture of his tent is 
 said to be four barrels of whiskey and one three- 
 legged stool. 
 
 . • , The first night in my new tent I went to bed 
 leaving the stove door open, and my great handsome 
 pussy sitting winking at the flame. After going to bed 
 I found my feet were in danger of being cold and ■ 
 thought to myself, if she would only lie on them, and 
 at the very thought up jumped she and lay there till 
 morning. Is not that a treasure? 
 
 January 30 
 They [the negroes] have some phrases as poetic as 
 the Portuguese. The reverberations of the noonday 
 gun, which are often very beautiful, they call " bush- 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 217 
 
 take-'um," meaning that the land takes up and echoes 
 the sound. In describing a particularly severe whip- 
 ping, the majof has heard them say, " Mause t'row de 
 stick till de bush take 'um." So " throw the stick " is 
 to whip, and this was done till it echoed again. The 
 phrase is pretty, though the thing is ugly. 
 
 Camp Shaw, February 11 
 
 On the 4th inst. I found the bloodroot in bloom; 
 there is a quantity of it just outside our camp lines. 
 Last year also I found it early in February; two war 
 winters rolling over its head and just the same white 
 creature here as in Massachusetts. It symbolizes 
 military life, though, whose forms and pageants are 
 all innocent enough to look at — baby watches dress 
 parade every day — till some morning unearths the 
 ensanguined root of it all. Well, if Nature has room 
 for the bloodroot, I suppose it has room for us. 
 
 I believe I never wrote about the prisoner our men 
 took in the Battle of the Bloodhounds. He was a 
 specimen of what our men call " de clean cracker," 
 or the unadulterated poor white. Thus — " Where 
 do you live? " " Oh, a piece up yonder." ," What 
 county? " " Dunno about what county; I live in 
 Picken's Deestrict." (There's Southern life for you; 
 his geography lies in the name of his Congressman.) 
 " Many men left there? " " Oh, yes, there 's right 
 smart of shavers there yet." " Have you ever been 
 mustered into the army, ever signed your name on the 
 muster roll? " It turned out, of course, that he could 
 
218 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 not write, and few of the company could. " But," he 
 added, " some of our sergeants are right sraavt scribes." 
 I believe I could say that of ours. 
 
 Advanced Picket, March 13 
 
 At this very moment the burly major is just swing- 
 ing in the hammock on the piazza and talking with a 
 squad of women whom he brought from St. Simon's 
 Island, and who stand in their clean Sunday array, 
 erect and stately as Nubians, recalling past days. 
 He is asking them how about Mrs. Kemble, whose 
 neighbors they were, and they are putting together 
 their scraps of reminiscence about her which amount to 
 only two, though they lived on the next plantation; 
 and one of these two at least would make a sensation 
 among polite readers, perhaps, if appended to the next 
 edition of her book. " Use to row-boat, sa, I seen her " 
 — "I neber seen her wid de boat, sa, but I seen her 
 wid de oars " — " Use to row-boat weli." Then was 
 extorted the last item of biography, the one trait 
 sufficiently impressive to reach the next plantation. 
 The narrator, half covering her face with her hand and 
 turning slightly away, " Used to stop and pull up she 
 stock'n's-an'-garters anywhar. Right in de 'treetl " 
 (street). 
 
 What a singular commentary on the compensations 
 of the universe, and the way in which the seeds of the 
 finer instincts are sown broadcast throughout the 
 human race, that these poor creatures, whose utter 
 abasement she has delineated for the world to read, 
 ■should have been slyly criticizing her all the while for 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 219 
 
 an inelegance which was serious enough from their 
 point of view to remain a tradition of her for twenty 
 years. 
 
 . . . All these women had husbands or sons in this 
 regiment, whom they came to visit; one is the mother 
 of Sammy Roberts, the youth who speculated on the 
 taillessness of the Yankees. 
 
 This boy, according to " Army Life in a Black 
 Regiment," was puzzled to find no proof of his master's 
 statement that the Northern soldiers had tails. 
 
 April 21 
 
 ... It is not uncommon, in riding about the planta- 
 tions, to find three or four mere babies, from three to 
 six years old, seriously " shouting " on a doorstep. I 
 have noticed, too, that the one pet song of these 
 children is almost always the most grimly melodra- 
 matic of the elder incantations. 
 
 " What make old Satan for follow me so? 
 Satan ain't got not'in' to do wid me! 
 (Chorus) Hold your light! Hold your light! 
 Hold your light on Canaan's shore." 
 
 It seems pathetic that these little innocents (straight 
 and black as so many short lead pencils) should thus 
 early appreciate the peripatetic habits of the Evil One. 
 
 April 25 
 
 Last night our attendant urchins got up a " shout " 
 around a tree just by the house, four of them stamping 
 round and round and singing with a rhythmic foot-fall. 
 
220 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 and sometimes a hollow clapping of hands, and they 
 happened upon one of the oddest chants that even 
 their taste for the religious melodramatic has produced 
 After their favorite " What make ole Satan for follow 
 me so," which is the special cradle hymn of these dusky 
 innocents, they brought out the same old offender in 
 a disguised aspect. 
 
 " I see de old man sitting! 
 Glory Hallelujah! 
 He sit in de chimley corner! 
 
 Glory Hallelujah! 
 He wash he face in ashes! 
 
 Glory Hallelujah! 
 He call he name Jesus! 
 
 Glory Hallelujah! 
 But I know he by he clump-foot! 
 Glory Hallelujah. 
 . {ChoTiu) Hold your light, brother Benjie, hold your light. 
 Hold your light on Canaan's shore." 
 
 April 25 
 ... I never yet saw a chapter in life which was not 
 good, no matter what people called it. 
 
 During the last months of Colonel Higginson's stay 
 in camp, a curious accident happened which left a 
 permanent scar on his forehead. He thus wrote about 
 the event. 
 
 March 11, 1864 
 It rained furiously night before last, and when I sat 
 down at my desk after breakfast. Dr. Minor pointed 
 out a crack in the plaster of the ceiling, where it was 
 wet, and said, " Colonel, that will come down." " Oh," 
 said I, " my head is hard; I am fitted by nature 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 221 
 
 to command a colored regiment." And in about five 
 minutes there came a crash as if the sky was falling 
 and I the lark which was caught. It partially knocked 
 me over, but did not stun me nor make me faint after- 
 wards. ... I had to keep still that day, feeling rather 
 as if I had been in a cavalry fight, which had turned 
 out better than I could have expected. 
 
 '■ Not recovering from the effects of his wound re- 
 ceived the previous year, Colonel Higginson was 
 obliged to resign from the army in April, 1864. The 
 remaining letters were written after Higginson's return 
 to the North, to his mother and sisters. 
 
 WoECESTBB, September SO, 1864 
 
 I hear good accounts from my regiment and a funny 
 description of dear old Uncle York asleep beneath a 
 tree, primer in hand, while a pet crow belonging to 
 the regiment hops stealthily up, steals the book, and 
 flies to a branch above the slumbering veteran's head, 
 where he awakes him by tearing out the leaves and 
 throwing them down to him, one by one. This scram- 
 ble for literature between two black bipeds would 
 furnish the most inimitable sketch. The major writes 
 that York's gesticulations of wrath against the unap- 
 proachable bird were infinitely funny — the more so, 
 as the soil yields no stones for missiles. 
 
 October 21 
 
 I have letters from the regiment, where all seems to 
 go well. They are at Cole's Island, opposite Folly, and 
 
222 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 deserters often come in. One floated five miles for the 
 purpose with the tide, being unable to swim, and hav- 
 ing four beef bladders tied on a cord under his arms to 
 support him. In this he emulated our regimental pig, 
 who came to the officers as a present from those of 
 the Montauk Monitor. On one occasion going up the 
 river to engage some batteries, they left piggy on an 
 island, and on their return could not find him and 
 suspected desertion, which he disproved by swimming 
 out to join the next gunboat that came up the Stono 
 River, the McDonough, from which the Montauk 
 afterwards reclaimed him. Now he inspects the regi- 
 ment daily at dress parade and afterwards marches up 
 with the line of officers to salute the commandant. 
 This Dr. Minor writes. 
 
 WoECESTEH, October 28 
 
 To-morrow I may go to Boston chiefly to see on 
 business Colonel Hartwell, of the Massachusetts Fifty- 
 Fifth, just from Folly Island, and may either go to 
 the opera or to a Republican dinner to Sumner and 
 Wilson. I hanker after opera, and indeed after all 
 the vanities of life; one returns from the seat of war 
 with a wholesome appetite for luxuries. . . . 
 
 Mary declares that in reading to her from Trow- 
 bridge's letter something about tales of rebel atrocities, 
 I stopped and groaned, as she supposed for the atroc- 
 ities, until I added, " He spells tales tails." He is 
 shady in his spelling, yet I think he ought to be 
 promoted. 
 
ARMY LIFE AND CAMP DRILL 
 
 . . . During the Board of Foreign Missions here, a 
 particularly stout Board, a perfect joist, came to stay 
 with the Firths and was taken to see the organ, then in 
 process of building. Crossing a narrow board, narrower 
 than himself, the human Board fell in and went crash- 
 ing down among the harmonies — till he reached a 
 stop, I suppose. At any rate, he was thoroughly lamed 
 and the Board limped out of town on two sticks. 
 
 Theophilus Brown's toast (Paine and Plunkett being 
 Democratic candidates for Governor and Lieutenant- 
 Governor) — " Paine, Plunkett, and Pendleton — ■ 
 three real Peas-men. May the rebels shell them." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 NEWPORT " 
 
 Colonel Higginson's first glimpse of Newport was in 
 1860, and he wrote to his mother: 
 
 Last Thursday I had a delightful day at Newport, 
 where I had never been before. ... I steamed down 
 from Providence on a steamboat so crammed that 
 there was hardly standing room. How picturesque the 
 old town looks as one glides down to it on a full tide; 
 none of our seaside towns have roofs and gables that 
 look so foreign. . . . 
 
 It was a radiant morning, and I strolled alone up a 
 street that seemed like Portsmouth, and came out on 
 great hotels that looked like Saratoga. They were 
 closing, however, and only one or two late visitors 
 moved silently about, like autumnal bees round a 
 hive. . . . 
 
 It is a pretty pastoral drive out to Miss Gibbs's — 
 six miles from town — smooth fields and singularly 
 pretty stone walls; then the mild climate ignores barns 
 and great hayricks appear everywhere. ... At last 
 we came to a pretty English — Miss Gibbs's private — 
 chapel, so to speak, and presently her great plantation 
 with an invisible house somewhere. . . . 
 
 An ancestral place, perfectly kept; an aged female 
 tending the door; an aged white dog who could not 
 stand and bark at the same time, but barked and fell 
 
NEWPORT 225 
 
 on Ills knees and stumbled up and barked and fell 
 again; a short, elderly lady in a white dress — such 
 were Miss Gibbs and her belongings. She was de- 
 lighted to see me and kept jumping up to get cake, and 
 then to get wine, and then to get singular little apples 
 such as Newport produces and sells by the quart. . . . 
 Then Miss G. showed me the dining-room and the 
 conservatory and the polished, uncarpeted floors . • . 
 and then finally she showed me Doppo. 
 
 . . . She is a high-born style of Pigeon Cove Dorcas. 
 She is rather tall, stoops a good deal, wears one very 
 tight dress with nothing under it but herself (Mrs. 
 Bartol is a balloon to her), and works in the kitchen 
 with a large straw bonnet tied tight under her chin, and 
 no trimming. She regarded me as a son-in-law. 
 
 Miscellaneous gleanings from Newport letters and 
 journals are arranged according to subject rather than 
 date. Most of the letters were written to Colonel 
 Higginson's sisters, his mother having died. 
 
 One of the interesting acquaintances he made in that 
 seaport town, where he lived for a dozen years or more, 
 was an Englishwoman, Lady Amberley, from whom he 
 drew one of his Malbone characters. He wrote in 1867 : 
 
 The pleasantest things I have done have been with 
 the Amberleys — Lord and Lady. He is the eldest son 
 of Earl Russell and she daughter of Lord Stanley. I 
 breakfasted with them . . . last Monday. ... I met 
 them also at a party that evening, and liked them so 
 much that I invited them to drive to Bishop Berkeley's 
 
226 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 house and haunts at Paradise Rocks (where they were 
 anxious to go). Sam Ward added his carriage and 
 daughter, and I drove Lady A. in Sarah Clarke's Kttle 
 phaeton. They are both very young, and he is in- 
 significant in appearance — his father was called " The 
 Widow's Mite " from his smallness and marrying two 
 widows — and nobody could get much out of him. It 
 is partly because it is often hard to uncork an English- 
 man and partly because his wife is so singularly open 
 and easy. To me she was very taking, but she has too 
 much brain for Newport on the one side and too much 
 girlishness on the other: so that she frightened the 
 beaux by asking them about schools and poorhouses. 
 
 She equally alarmed Miss D by declining a 
 
 stately drive because she and Lord A. were going down 
 to the rocks to take off shoes and stockings and paddle 
 in the water I She is twenty-four and has left a child of 
 two in England. They are great friends of Stuart Mill 
 and have letters from him. . . . She is . . . simple 
 and direct . . . very fair hair and rather pretty; 
 dresses in her own way and it is thought, rather ill. 
 . . , She sprang in and out of the phaeton on the 
 smallest provocation, like a child, and was delighted 
 with everything, and asked and answered questions 
 all the time. She is very radical; wishes women to vote 
 and to be physicians. . . . She knows all the literary 
 and scientific as well as political leaders, and gave 
 a pleasant account of Browning — though neither of 
 them likes his poems at all — and a very unpleasant 
 account of Lord Houghton (Milnes) as a toady, and of 
 Swinburne. We stopped at La Farge's and saw his 
 
NEWPORT 227 
 
 picture. They had never heard of an American painter, 
 though she knows all about the English, and paints in 
 water-colors herself, sketching the Hangiug Rocks in 
 that way. We saw beautiful things at La Farge's, 
 'especially some drawings from Browning and one to 
 illustrate his "Protus" ("Men and Women") which 
 is very remarkable. La Farge went with us to the 
 Hanging Rocks. . . . They had not been a week here, 
 having come at once to Newport, but are going to John 
 Forbes at Naushon, and by and by to Boston and 
 Cambridge. I shall be curious to see what is thought 
 of the juvenile Viscount and Viscountess there; but 
 certainly she is one of the livest people I have seen for a 
 great while. During the war their house was divided, 
 she being on our side with one of her brothers, while 
 another brother and the sisters were vehement seces- 
 sionists. She knows my double. Colonel G. Higginson, 
 of the Guards. 
 
 Last Thursday I went up to Boston to a special 
 conversation-meeting of radicals for the benefit of Lord 
 and LadyAmberley. . . . It was at Dr. Bartol's. Mr, 
 Alcott sat at the end of two long parlors, before a 
 mirror, with the two foreign juveniles in armchairs, one 
 on each side; impressive spectacle to the eye, but dis- 
 maying to the imagination. However, it was a remark- 
 ably good affair; Weiss read an essay; and Alcott, 
 Emerson, Lucretia Mott, Bartol, Dr. Hedge, Wasson, 
 Sam Longfellow, and I talked about religion and 
 science. The young strangers listened. Lord Amberley 
 looking rather more frightened than usual, and Lady 
 A. hearty and interested as usual, but neither dared a 
 word. 
 
228 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 A leader in many of the social and literary happen- 
 ings in Newport was Mrs, Julia Ward Howe. The fol- 
 lowing brief letters either refer to her or were written 
 to that lady. Mr. Brooks, the Unitarian clergyman 
 alluded to below, was noted for his translations from 
 the German. 
 
 September, 1865 
 
 Last week we had a reading by Mrs. Howe of an 
 essay and poem for Mr. Brooks's benefit (there is a 
 fund raising to send him to Europe). It was unex- 
 pectedly pleasing, as she reads very quietly and with 
 beautiful enunciation, and the essay was neither ab- 
 struse nor brilliant. There were about siscty persons 
 in Richard Hunt's studio. It was not advertised and 
 they were mostly acquaintances, with dollar tickets. 
 At the end, by Mr. Bancroft's request, she recited her 
 " Battle Hymn of the Republic," and it seemed quite 
 a Marseillaise. 
 
 September, 1868 
 
 We have had a remarkably pleasant household here 
 this summer — three demi-authoresses, as my sister 
 called them, Mrs. L. C. Calhoun, whom I always liked; 
 Mrs. Dodge, who wrote " Hans Brinker," a fine, 
 generous creature, a widow with a fine boy of thirteen; 
 and Mrs. Louise C. Moulton, of Boston, who writes in 
 " Harper's " a good deal, a person of fine qualities, 
 but rather sad experiences. Then Kate Field and her 
 mother are next door, and they linger, though the rest 
 have gone. Mrs. Calhoun is to marry Mr. Runkle, a 
 young New York lawyer. 
 
NEWPORT 229 
 
 . . . To-day there is a grand reception at Fort 
 Adams for Blaque Bey, the Turkish Minister, and I am 
 going. He is said to be a very agreeable man with a 
 Greek Catholic wife, and lives next house but two to 
 us. . . . If they stay late fancy us exchanging calls 
 with a Blaque Bey! If there is a small family there, it 
 will raise the question propounded by Mrs. Howe in 
 her (very how) book of travels, viz., " Can a baby a 
 Bey be?" 
 
 August 30, 1870 
 
 I met here two young Englishmen, Dicey, nephew 
 of Sir James Stephen, brother of the Member of 
 Parliament and author of that name, and Bryce, 
 Lecturer on Civil Law at Oxford. They . . . are very 
 cordial, intelligent, and good, very radical and eagerly 
 interested in everything American. I met them at 
 Charles Perkins's, and this morning drove out with 
 them to see Mrs. Howe, but found only the Doctor and 
 Laura. They live at a new little house now, nearer 
 town than Lawton Valley, with a pretty brook and 
 cascade, and found they had a picnic there when I was 
 away; if she were bounded in a nutshell she would 
 have a picnic. 
 
 February, 1871 
 
 ... I saw some fine . . . portraits by young Porter, 
 a rising artist; he has done so many that Mrs. Howe 
 said to him, " Given age and sex, could you construct a 
 Cabot? " Mary thinks it could be done without. 
 
 . . . There are so many [Cabots] in the younger 
 generation that I suggested naming one boy Sebastian 
 
230 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 and sending him to find a new continent where the rest 
 can colonize. 
 
 August 24 
 
 Afternoon. " Commencement " of Town and Coun- 
 try Club; Mrs. Howe at her greatest brilliancy, and 
 she it was who carried the whole through. 
 
 August, 1874 
 
 . . . The revived " Town and Country Club " is 
 beginning well. We met on the Powels' beautiful 
 lawn, on Saturday, and he discoursed on jelly-fishes 
 and polyps. On another occasion Maria Mitchell will 
 speak on Jupiter. Thus we range from starfishes to 
 stars, and Mrs. Howe is happy. 
 
 The Town and Country Club had a very pleasant 
 picnic at Paradise Rocks on Thursday with ar Kttle 
 botanical lecture. . . . Mrs. Howe was very gay and 
 sung her saucy song of "01 So-ci-e-ty," which is so 
 irreverent to Beacon Street that I wondered how the 
 A.'s could remain in the field. 
 
 August, 1875 
 
 The Town and Country Club is now getting on well, 
 and Mrs. Howe manages to get in for it, though Dr. 
 Howe is poorly and nervous and requires immense 
 quantities of whist-playing, day and night. 
 
 The Town and Country had yesterday a picnic at 
 Castle Hill on the shore. Alexander Agassiz gave some 
 natural history talks; we then had picnic tea on the 
 piazza of an unoccupied house, which was lent to us, 
 
NEWPORT 231 
 
 in the face of a beautiful sunset across the bay. Mrs. 
 Howe read some little verses on " Satan and Science " 
 — quite funny, and there were speeches by Mark 
 Twain and Ex-Vice-President Colfax, who were there 
 as guests. It was very easy and pleasant. 
 
 January 8, 1876 
 Dr. Howe is evidently dying; I don't know how 
 it will affect Mrs. H.'s life. . . . Generally she feels 
 about her editorials as if she were a pair of tongs that 
 could not quite reach the fire. This she said to me and 
 it well describes them. 
 
 February, 1876 
 
 Deak Mrs. Howe: 
 
 I wish to tell you how much gratified I was at your 
 liking what I said about your husband. It was pre- 
 pared, with a good deal of care, and from the heart. . . , 
 
 I went the day after to describe the whole services to 
 Charles Coddington, whom you may remember, a very 
 interesting blind young man here, who is now in 
 wretched health and confined to the house. He wished 
 that in addition to the other speakers there could have 
 been one pupil of Dr. Howe, who could have described 
 him as he appeared at the institution for the blind. 
 This seemed to me the only thing that could have 
 added to the interest of that unique occasion. 
 
 1880 
 
 Dear Friend [Mrs. Howe]: 
 Our Oldport will always be dear. The new-New- 
 
232 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 port . . . seems a sort of dusty daylight place that 
 must be hard to dream in; in which picturesque, 
 romantic, unique figures such as Mariana Mott and 
 Margie Hazard [the heroine of " Decoration Day "] 
 have no part. 
 
 To Mrs. Howe's daughter, Mrs. Elliott, Colonel 
 Higginson wrote, in January, 1891 : 
 
 I shall be glad to come, if only to see what kind of 
 very superior woman has married Mr. Stanley [the 
 African explorer], whom (between ourselves) I do not 
 greatly admire. We had too many officers like him ia 
 our war, with magnificent push and go, but otherwise 
 ignoble, selfish, merciless, and sometimes even with 
 that Evangelical varnish he has lately put on. 
 
 Cambhidqb, December 13, 1887 
 Dear Mrs. Howe: 
 
 Your kind note and purpose embarrass me. They 
 raise the question so often met. How far are generous 
 people to be asked by us to help those who have earned 
 money for years profusely and spent it as profusely? 
 I have never known a more defiantly reckless person 
 in this way than A. D. When she was earning six 
 thousand dollars a year, she not only did not know how 
 to draw a cheque, but when I offered to teach her in 
 five minutes, utterly declined, saying that she did not 
 care to learn. I think she was generous to others, but 
 denied herself absolutely nothing; and her health 
 broke down, I think, in the dogged effort to convince 
 the world that she was an actress. Of course, she 
 
NEWPORT 233 
 
 should be helped in need, but can I honestly ask 
 people for three thousand dollars for her, when I 
 know so many, as deserving or more so, who are suf- 
 fering for want of one hundred dollars? ... 
 
 P.S. " Sister Moulton," as you used to call her, was 
 an intimate friend of A. D. and is always warm- 
 hearted and generous; and she has a large circle of 
 friends both here and in England. 
 
 Cambridge, October, 1900 
 
 Dear Mrs, President [Mrs. Howe] : 
 
 . . . Has the Boston Authors' Club the intellectual 
 resources for a Chaucer celebration? Rolfe might 
 doubtless contribute something learned and our presi- 
 dentess should preside. If you wish a descendant of 
 Chaucer present, I can only offer a (supposed) de- 
 scendant of Chaucer's sister . . . since Reverend 
 John Higginson, of Salem, married her descendant, the 
 daughter of old Parson Whitfield, of Connecticut; and 
 I can prove it by the family tree. To be sure, I never 
 could get any other authority for the existence of this 
 Chaucerian sister — but is not a family tree to be 
 trusted? 
 
 So I am not the man to resist such a demonstration, 
 but it would seem a risky enterprise, just such as you 
 used to like 
 
 " In the days when we went gipsying 
 A long time ago." 
 
 Cordially your minion 
 
234 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 October, 1905 
 
 Dear Mrs. Howe: 
 
 I am interested in what you say about a balance in 
 the hands of the dear old Town and Country Club. As 
 you were the creator, baptizer, and long-continued 
 curse of the club, I think that the disposal of the bal- 
 ance left in the treasurer's hands should be decided by 
 you, whether you devote it to your personal adorn- 
 ments which maturer years justify, or to beneficiaries 
 among the colored race, or those Italians who write you 
 such graceful odes on your birthdays, should be left 
 to you. You have put far from you those Vices of 
 whom I am one, but I have no doubt that they would 
 all agree in their opinion. 
 
 Cordially yours 
 
 Thomas Wentworth Higginson 
 Ex V[ice] Ptesident] 
 
 1906 
 
 Dear Friend: 
 
 Now I wish you would consent to do what has only 
 lately been possible, i.e. to nominate you as the first 
 woman member of the National Institute of Arts and 
 Letters in New York, of which Stedman is the president 
 and Howells first vice-president. ... It includes al- 
 most all our leading authors and has also departments 
 of art and music. There must be three proposers, of 
 whom Gilder will be one, Clemens another, and I the 
 third, but the blank says, " It is understood that this 
 proposal is made with the consent of the candidate " 
 — so I write you now. 
 
NEWPORT 235 
 
 The Secretary, Robert U. Johnson (of the " Cen- 
 tury "), is very desirous that you should be chosen, and 
 so is Gilder, who did much to carry through the 
 amendment. Clemens writes me, " Indeed I shall be 
 unlimitedly glad to join you and Gilder in nominating 
 Mrs. Howe. I agree with you that it is eminently 
 proper that she should be the first woman member. It 
 is her earned and rightful place." This should cer- 
 tainly satisfy you. 
 
 Cambbidgb, Mass., February B, 1907 
 
 Deae Friend: 
 
 Victory at last, and you are the first woman member 
 of the American Authors' Club. It was carried through 
 by the two editors of the " Century " and Mark 
 Twain, with maybe a little help from your humble 
 servant, who would not join the Club till the constitu- 
 tion was so altered as to admit women. The world 
 moves! 
 
 While in Newport the Higginsons lived for a time 
 with Mrs. Dame, a dear old Quaker, whose house 
 was a rendezvous for the faithful. 
 
 June, 1865 
 
 We are deep in Friends' Yearly Meeting — every 
 corner of the house saturated with drab, and the 
 boarders contracted to a minimum. We dined forty 
 to-day. I help carve. Such appetites as the weighty 
 brethren possess! — the women being more spiritual. 
 One noble woman is here, one of their great lights. 
 
236 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Sybil Jones, of Maine, slender and erect, with a 
 queenly bearing and lovely face and the sweetest voice; 
 it is beautiful to hear her speak of the war, where she 
 has lately lost her eldest son. It is peculiarly hard, of 
 course, for them, disapproving war as they do; but her 
 mingling of fidelity to her principles and pride in this 
 son was very beautiful; she said, " Of course they 
 were disowned by the Society." "Disowned" is a 
 tremendous word to a Friend, meaning dropped from 
 the Society. She has been in Washington, in the hospi- 
 tals, etc., and was sent for by Mrs. Lincoln. Mrs. L. 
 told her that the day of the President's death, he said 
 to her, " I never felt so happy in my Ufe," and she said, 
 " Don't you remember feeling just so, before our little 
 boy died? " Afterwards it seemed like an omen. 
 
 June, 1874 
 
 The best recent occurrence is this scene! Mrs. 
 Dame's house full of Quakers; a prayer meeting in the 
 evening. . . . Suddenly strange, inexplicable, dis- 
 cordant sounds come up. What are they, " animal, 
 vegetable, or mineral "? Investigation shows that it is 
 the Quakers — for the first time in their lives — 
 
 Singing a Hymn! 
 
 Till lately, you know, they have all utterly forsworn 
 music, though a few radical Quakers in Worcester used 
 to own musical boxes. Now, as Mary says, " when 
 their religion is two hundred and fifty years old, it 
 suddenly occurs to them that it is a religious duty to 
 squawk! ' 
 
NEWPORT 237 
 
 They are trying in all ways to get up the revival 
 methods, and it does not come natural to them. Last 
 year one woman raised a hymn in the meeting, but it 
 was not approved. Now they are rehearsing at home. 
 
 It was while living in Newport that Mr. Higginson 
 first knew Hawthorne's eldest daughter, who was then 
 engaged to his nephew. In the spring of 1867, during 
 Una's first visit to the Higginson family home in Brat- 
 tleboro', her newly adopted uncle wrote his sisters: 
 
 Tell her I bought the other day at an auction an old 
 " Token " with several of her father's stories, and it is 
 fascinating to me to read them there and wonder how 
 it seemed to him to print them among the trash that is 
 there, when nobody but himself had an idea how ex- 
 quisite they were. I always wonder how it was to him 
 and whether he dismissed them indifferently or with a 
 faith so profound he felt no anxiety as to their worth. 
 How could he have loved art with a love so pure as to 
 be wholly indifferent to the reception of what he wrote 
 and to keep his standards so high when no one else had 
 any standard? 
 
 The next letter is dated a few months later: 
 I lectm-ed in Stoneham ... in a hard rain; then 
 went to Concord next day, not arriving till twelve. 
 The house [Hawthorne's] is at one end of the village 
 street, just beyond Mr. Alcott's; pretty enough, but 
 with nothing very neat around it — a pretty, loverlike 
 path opposite leading through willows and across a 
 brook. Una opened the door. Her face and eyes were 
 
238 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 what I expected, but her figure and port were nobler 
 than I expected, and her magnificent hair blazed and 
 ghttered upon me in the doorway most unexpectedly; 
 I think I expected it to be brown, and more unlike 
 Rose's. She was sweet and confiding as possible and 
 perfectly free, and it was as if I had known her from 
 the cradle; this was just as I expected. We were very 
 happy together for a time in the little plain parlor, too 
 plain almost for comfort and with a forlorn little 
 airtight stove; I longed so to give her a Franklin and a 
 tract of woodland. There were some unpainted shelves 
 of books, worn out with reading, and a few photo- 
 graphs and little ornaments on the mantelpiece. But 
 Una did not really seem to need anything more, there 
 was something so rare about her, and when the pretty 
 Httle wayward, spoiled Rose came in with another 
 gorgeous head and with that exquisite beauty of com- 
 plexion which Una wants, it seemed as much ornament 
 as the httle room would bear. Mrs. H. was not well 
 and did not come down till tea, and I dined with the 
 two girls in a room larger, pleasanter, and more home- 
 like, with a piano and some pictures, and soapstone 
 stove for airtight. After dinner Una's eyes glowed 
 lustrous at my proposing a long walk and she put on 
 her waterproof suit — for it drizzled — and we set off; 
 through groves and up orchards and toward Walden 
 Pond, past Thoreau's cellar with a pine tree of ten 
 years' growth in the middle, and up over some cliffs 
 which he also described. • . . 
 
 Later we passed through the village and went to the 
 Old Manse. It looked most picturesque against its 
 
NEWPORT 239 
 
 dark trees in the misty twilight, and the slender black- 
 robed Elizabeth Ripley, who opened the door, seemed 
 as if she might have lived there since the Revolution. 
 . . . We dripped in, and while Una dried herself I 
 sought inscriptions on window-panes, as thus: . . . 
 " Una Hawthorne, aged ten months, was held up at 
 that window to see the falling golden leaves, and how 
 she enjoyed them." (These are not just the words.) I 
 looked at her and thought it might have been another 
 tale for the " Wonder Book " how they fell on her head 
 and clothed it forever. . • . 
 
 It was all very thrilling to me, and still more so, 
 when in the evening I sat and looked over some of 
 Hawthorne's note-books, perhaps in the very chair 
 where he had sat, looking up sometimes at the quiet 
 face of the gray-haired woman he had loved or the 
 bright heads of his young daughters. Una sat by the 
 stove, in her expressive quietness, while little Rose 
 shifted uneasily from one book to another, now a 
 thumbed volume of Shakespeare, opened at " Corio- 
 lanus," then Dickens, then nothing. . . . 
 
 It rained very hard and the Sanborns came in, so I 
 did not call at Mr. Emerson's or Mr. Alcott's as I 
 should otherwise have done. Later I was shown the 
 rooms upstairs, at least Una's and her mother's. . . • 
 Una's was very tasteful and maidenly; Mrs. Haw- 
 thorne's bed had Thorwaldsen's Night upon the foot- 
 board and Morning at the head; and the chairs have 
 Flaxman's outlines. Hawthorne's room in the tower 
 is empty; Julian has all its relics in Cambridge. 
 Julian is their idol, and when he and Una are both 
 
240 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 away, Rose pines in Concord. . . . I slept in the lowet 
 room in the tower. Next day Una came down with me 
 to Boston. 
 
 And this is the way one of her letters was described : 
 I have just had the loveliest note from Una, like a 
 clump of sod from the woods with all the spring flowers 
 in it and dank with moisture and fragrant with rich 
 earth. It has transported me there and made me think 
 it a kind of insanity of conscience which made me think 
 I must go to meetings in New York and Boston instead. 
 
 June 29, 1868 
 Afternoon left for Concord. Una met me at train 
 and we went through Sleepy Hollow to her father's 
 grave — on a lovely wooded knoll. Just a low marble 
 stone at each end with Hawthorne; the grave grown 
 with periwinkle and she gave me some. 
 
 Of Mrs. Hawthorne's gifted and eccentric sister, the 
 " mother of the kindergarten," Mr. Higginson wrote 
 in 1865: 
 
 Last week I went to Concord to lecture and stayed 
 at Mrs. Horace Mann's. There was no especial 
 presence of cream or absence of butter at the board 
 (see " Christianity in the kitchen "), but plenty of 
 agreeable conversation as well as food. Miss Peabody 
 looks most singularly and tends to elaborate caps and 
 ribbons, but is as bright as of yore. 
 
 Two years later, he writes of the same lady: 
 
 Mr. saw once at Neuchatel, emerging from 
 
NEWPORT 241 
 
 the railway train, a party of three ladies with the 
 most villanous-looking courier he ever saw. One lady 
 advanced toward him. She had a long and dusty 
 black-silk skirt, a short black sack, with something 
 like a short white night-gown emerging between, very 
 tumbled; bonnet all smashed, having been slept in, 
 spectacles on chin, and a great deal of dishevelled 
 white hair. She was of great size and held her head 
 inquiringly. It was Miss Elizabeth Peabody. 
 
 The remaining extracts are apt to be brief and dis- 
 connected. They refer to various happenings in the 
 Newport life or during lecture trips from there and 
 contain jottings about interesting people. 
 
 The following paragraph refers to a children's party: 
 
 January, 1865 
 
 • . . . Cranch [the poet and artist] was there also, shy 
 and pleasing, with hair like elderly angels, perhaps. 
 . . . Another queer little boy was much younger, son 
 of Governor Strong, whom I knew, when wounded 
 after Wagner. He introduces himself thus, " I am a 
 good little boy, five years old, named Willy Strong; 
 my father was a soldier and he is gone to heaven, that 
 is, I think he is gone to heaven, but perhaps the rebels 
 made him too lame! " 
 
 . . . Our friend Carry [Mrs. Leighton, one of the 
 Andrews family at Newburyport] is about going to live 
 in Washington Territory with her husband. They 
 have lands there, and the agent who purchased for 
 
242 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 them said that there was an Indian cemetery on the 
 place, and he has told the tribe they might continue to 
 use it. The L.'s being rather a romantic pair, thought 
 it would be very picturesque, but now they find from 
 a book that those Indians (the Flatheads) have prac- 
 tised sepulture from time immemorial in canoes hung to 
 trees; so that it will be rather like keeping house in the 
 Pyramids. 
 
 October, 1865 
 
 I had a very interesting afternoon talking over the 
 subjects for my^ [Harvard Memorial] biographies with 
 Waldo and Harry Lee; I never heard more continuous 
 brilliancy than in the latter's sketches of character; 
 the youths themselves, their fathers and grandfathers, 
 were each dismissed with the most trenchant and ir- 
 resistible touch. It is very valuable to me, too, though 
 of course, his estimates could not be taken immodified. 
 
 February, 1866 
 
 A sleety rain is falling, and the trees are covered with 
 ice, and boys are skating on pavements. Once Bayard 
 Taylor was riding with a farmer at such a time and 
 said, " How beautiful all this would be if the sun came 
 out." " Humph," quoth Rusticus, " it would make a 
 drefiful slop." Both views were correct. 
 
 This reminds me of the written examination of our 
 High School and the efforts at defining words; for 
 instance, many defined panegyric, a kind of syrup 
 (which was not a satire, but probably a reminiscence of 
 paregoric). Connoisseur, " a hairdresser " (coiffeur?). 
 
NEWPORT 243 
 
 Rosemary, " a perfume " or " an ointment," the es- 
 sence being freely advertised in newspapers. An- 
 thology, " the science of ants," one girl wrote. 
 
 Of sundry actors and artists, he wrote about the 
 same time: 
 
 Ristori I am unfashionable enough to admire very 
 greatly and as much, I think, as Rachel. ... It cer- 
 tainly was a pleasure never to be forgotten to have seen 
 her at all. Kate Field [lecturer and author], with whom 
 I went, knows her intimately and describes her as very 
 lovable and also very faithful and conscientious in her 
 professional duties. K. F. taught her the little English 
 speech with which she delighted people at her benefit. 
 She does not, of herself, know a word of English. 
 
 Evening to concert and heard Camilla Urso for the 
 first time since childhood. How wonderful her ap- 
 proach and her form, the infinite gravity, the large and 
 heavy eyes, that seem weighted by their lashes and 
 fixed on the violin. That was itself fixed against a 
 marble shoulder while the other beautiful arm waved 
 free. She might have lived through centuries of tears 
 with those cavernous eyes, weeping always. I never 
 saw a more new and impressive personal presence. 
 
 I had also a great treat in hearing Mrs. [Greenough] 
 Moulton sing . . . before a few musical people at 
 Richard Greenough's. She is a lowbrowed, dark, pic- 
 turesque Cleopatra with coarse mouth and narcotic 
 eyes, but I can easily believe that Rossini said her 
 voice was one which composers had waited for (this her 
 eminently truthful and youthful mamma told me). It 
 
244 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 seemed to me to unite all the qualities which other 
 voices had singly. 
 
 Think of my spending an afternoon with Petroleum 
 Nasby and knowing him only as Mr. Locke, of the 
 " Toledo Blade " — a stout, cheery man. 
 
 February, 1871 
 
 Miss Cushman delightful in evening at H. H.'s 
 room — talking of George Sand, about whom she is 
 enthusiastic, and of the diflference between American 
 and English audiences as to applause. Jefferson acted 
 so much better in England because more called out; 
 she told him so and he admitted. Even an English 
 auditor goes to be amused — a Frenchman to take 
 part in the play — he knows he is essential [assister]. 
 
 June, 1861 
 
 What a wonderful creature Miss Cushman is. . . . 
 After producing her, America may win pardon for a 
 million half-alive women. 
 
 In 1866 Colonel Higginson encountered the romantic 
 personality of Helen Hunt. 
 
 There is a new boarder here with two dainty rooms 
 upstairs arranged by herself — Mrs. (Major) Hunt, a 
 young widow. . , . She is in deep mourning for hus- 
 band and child, and I fancy has private depression to 
 correspond with her high spirits in the family, which 
 are so far invariable. She seems very bright and 
 sociable and may prove an accession. Do you know 
 her? 
 
NEWPORT 245 
 
 Another letter gives the origin of the Saxe Hohn 
 story called " A Four-Leaved Clover." 
 
 Mrs. Hunt told a pretty story of the war. A Prus- 
 sian sergeant in trenches before Fredericksburg found ' 
 a four-leaved clover for which he had looked all his life. 
 Springing up to show it to his comrades, he was shot 
 through both lungs and left for dead. He came to 
 consciousness in Libby Prison — so much for the four- 
 leaved clovers. Still trusting in his luck, he got well, 
 was exchanged, discharged, and went home to Chicago 
 where he was a lion. There he wooed and won Miss 
 Roxana Beecher, a charming niece of Mrs. Stowe, and 
 they are soon to be married. She is named after her 
 grandmother, the gifted Roxana Foote, old Dr. 
 Beecher's first wife. The progenitor of the Footes was 
 so named from helping some king by the foot into a 
 tree, and the arms of the family are a tree in a clover- 
 field. There comes in the luck at last. 
 
 Mrs. Hunt has just come in with a tale of a young 
 Orthodox minister who wanted some crackers for lunch 
 at a grocery and had but two cents; he ate part and 
 asked the grocer to put the rest in paper, whereat he 
 indignantly said, " We don't give string with two 
 cents worth of crackers I " 
 
 February, 1867 
 
 We are going to do something very extraordinary — 
 something to which the years of our wedded life have 
 yielded no parallel. . . . Simplicity, as Thoreau says 
 — simplicity. But there is really more of it in Europe; 
 for instance, in returning social courtesies they do not 
 
246 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 always give oysters and boned turkey, but sometimes 
 what is called an intellectual feast. Let us profit by 
 such examples of social independence, and therefore 
 we have decided to — are you ready for it? — give a 
 Ball. That is all. 
 
 There will be no gorgeous apparel, for the people are 
 not to take off their cloaks and bonnets; no halls of 
 dazzling light, for we prefer broad daylight; no beam- 
 ing and flattering hostess, for Mary is not going to be 
 visible to one of them. The only entertainment will 
 be light as air; musical airs from the Mendelssohn 
 Quintette Club, dispensed in Mrs. Dame's back parlor; 
 while " all the world " sit on sixty chairs in front. We 
 wish to do something for the public service, and finding 
 this the cheapest form of entertainment, do this. 
 Don't you think well of it? Among guests not sitting 
 in chairs we are to have Beethoven, Weber, Haydn, 
 Mendelssohn. Will you come? 
 
 Never was there in this world a more perfect success 
 than our musical party. It was really delicious to hear 
 such music rendered so much more exquisitely than 
 the same artists could render it amid the distractions of 
 a hall. 
 
 . . . Mrs. Hunt superintended the arrangements of 
 the parlors — two American flags over the farther 
 doors and all the rest flowers and hanging baskets. 
 . . . Nothing went wrong — no delays or interruptions 
 or dogs or intruders — all smooth and dehghtf ul. . . . 
 One old lady said it was worth all the parties that ever 
 were given; and our richer acquaintances wondered 
 
NEWPORT 247 
 
 they had never thought of it, and now several are going 
 to do the same! 
 
 . . . Juliet [Goodwin] said, " it seemed like the 
 kingdom of heaven, very fine music, heard in rather 
 promiscuous society." 
 
 Then follow brief extracts from the diaries of that 
 period, usually made after the writer's daily strolls in 
 the vicinity of Newport. 
 
 April 
 
 . . • On a certain day in spring one discovers that 
 the Newport days have begun. A delicate net is drawn 
 over all the world; the ocean has become a summer 
 sea; the white waves part and curl languidly over un- 
 seen reefs; the horizon undulates and shimmers; the 
 soft low hills shroud themselves in the very palest 
 blue; the sunlight glitters in the new green grass like 
 dandelion dust; all the turmoil and labor of existence 
 fades far away and one feels like a Neapolitan. 
 
 Walked to Spouting Rock, etc. The afternoon mists 
 of the last few days have made two wrecks of coal 
 vessels, and others narrowly escaped. One lies among 
 the rocks at the beach, though keel on sand — all 
 standing; with that look of stately pleading helpless- 
 ness I have seen in a dead soldier. 
 
 November, 1866 
 
 ... I was peculiarly fascinated with the revolving 
 light: it seemed too delicate and human. It seemed to 
 bud or burst or bubble out of the low dark horizon; a 
 moment and it was not, and then a moment and it was; 
 
248 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 one throb and the delicate light is bom; another, and 
 it has reached its full size, and looks at you straight and 
 coy and defiant; and then it is utterly gone. It does 
 not seem to turn, you can hardly conceive that it does; 
 it closes instantly as if soft petals of darkness clasped 
 over it. During its moments of absence, the eye can- 
 not always keep with perfect accuracy its place, and it 
 glimmers out a hair's breadth to the right or left of 
 where one expects it. This enhances the elfish and 
 playful look of the thing, and so the pretty game goes 
 on, with its flickering surprises all night long, and 
 every night throughout the year. 
 
 This letter refers to the " Decoration Day " poem. 
 
 Yesterday I took some lilies-of-the-valley (in after- 
 noon) to Margie Hazard's grave, and entering the 
 little evergreen enclosure found a robin drinking from 
 the hollows of the granite pedestal that has been there 
 for several years waiting for a monument. I have 
 found birds there before, and it seemed so appropriate 
 — she loved them so, and had a wonderful power over 
 all animals. It is curious how events carry on dramas. 
 Her house has hardly been occupied since she died, and 
 the trees are crowding round all the windows and look- 
 ing in at the piazza where she used to sit, and there is a 
 busy jangle of birds — robins and blackbirds as if they 
 owned the house. She was a very rare person, and bore 
 long illness and neglect with a bravery that was aston- 
 ishing. I remembered Frank [Admiral Higginson] writ- 
 ing once that she impressed him with more courage 
 than anybody in army or navy, and I think that put the 
 
NEWPORT 249 
 
 poem in my head; she had nothing to do with any war 
 but her own. 
 
 May 24, 1874 
 
 Afternoon to Miantonomy Hill for columbine — just 
 in perfection, season being late, just as this day year. 
 At the house the birds building closely and undis- 
 turbed, as if Margie H. were still there to love them, 
 and the great single pane of her boudoir window where 
 I always expect to see her looking out — that rare, 
 rich, wasted nature whom I am glad to have com- 
 memorated in my verses just published. 
 
 Dined at the Powels with Judge Hare, of Phila- 
 delphia, who gave me one new suggestion; said that, so 
 far as he had seen, no class of Americans were so apt to 
 form intemperate habits as educated men in an igno- 
 rant community, resorting to drink to fill the vacuum, 
 in the absence of congenial society. 
 
 ^ . . . I was at a committee meeting in the seventh 
 story of Dr. Dio Lewis's new and lofty house, 17 
 
 Beacon Street You go up by an elevator. What 
 
 a place for mortal foes to meet. Fancy General Butler 
 and Dick Dana recognizing each other halfway up and 
 cutting the ropes! 
 
 Dio Lewis was one of the pioneers in physical 
 culture. / 
 
 January, 1868 
 
 . . . I . . . went two evenings to the opera [in 
 Philadelphia], and one night went home afterwards 
 
250 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 with the Petersons, who have $100,000 a year from 
 " Peterson's Magazine " and horrify the ancient 
 Philadelphia families by the good taste with which 
 they spend their money — such lovely things, and 
 most of all that wonder of beauty and repose, William 
 Story's Sappho. I never can cease to wonder at the 
 .things that man achieves. . , . She [Sappho] seemed 
 more real than any of the inmates. Fields, who adores 
 Story, thinks this superior to the Cleopatra. It is the 
 only indoor statue that I ever saw — all others suggest 
 the propriety of removal to the yard. 
 
 June, 1869 
 
 Evening . . . called ... on Mr. and Mrs. Colfax. 
 . . . Found them pleasing — he much stouter and 
 quieter than when the hard-worked Speaker. He is 
 talkative, cordial, and cheerful, and I liked him, 
 though not a great or commanding person. She quiet 
 and sensible, well-bred, though not high-bred; a good 
 person for the place, sure to conmiand respect and be 
 free from follies. 
 
 Although Mrs. Higginson then kept house from a 
 wheeled chair, her active imagination supplied all that 
 was lacking in the daily menu. 
 
 October 14 
 
 Housekeeping is very exciting and Mary thinks most 
 
 of the time about her dinners; she has always twelve 
 
 planned in advance, and toils steadily after them in 
 
 daily efforts and nightly dreams. We are now upon a 
 
NEWPORT 251 
 
 most remarkable apple pudding. This is the second 
 day, and the apples are not yet cooked, but by the 
 time we have finished it, we think it will be baked. 
 Then we have a most wonderful clock. It is the third 
 we have tried, and it has once been home to the clock- 
 makers to have the striking part set right. This has 
 been so thoroughly done that it has just struck 46!! 
 
 Mary . . . says if you have not boarded with a 
 banjo, you know not the resources of boarding; she 
 has tried babies, belles, and a piano, but a banjo has 
 charms of its own. 
 
 . - . Miss . . . does not gain — lies out under the 
 trees every day and is supposed to be tended by spirits, 
 poor dear lady. Perhaps it is something to be saved 
 from doctors in this world. 
 
 Like most book-lovers, Higginson was always on the 
 lookout for books and more books. 
 
 January, 1869 
 
 For some ... I entered the little den of a shop 
 at the Point kept by a lame bachelor, Carr. . . . He 
 prides himself on having bought many manuscripts at 
 old Squire Hunter's sale — " Squire Hunter, who I do 
 suppose was the greatest man who ever lived, without 
 it was Calchas ? " " Who ? " said I. " Calchas," said 
 he. " I 've read about a man of that name who I sup- 
 pose was the greatest man — Calchas the great, the 
 reverend priest and good." Don't be sorry you left 
 your books when you think that it brought me such a 
 fact as that. Calchas was the soothsayer who de- 
 
252 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 vised the Trojan horse and I suppose the " reverend 
 priest " is from Pope's Homer. 
 
 This reunion of veterans of the War of 1812 is 
 suggestive of our Grand Army men of to-day, though 
 the former would seem less vigorous and less educated. 
 
 1869 
 
 Evening at meeting about soldiers of 1812 — about 
 a dozen of them; ages from seventy-three to eighty-six 
 — some deaf, some could not see, some could not write, 
 but respectable and intelligent-looking and with that 
 peaceful air which belongs to age even in rags. 
 
 It was a satisfaction to Colonel Higginson to know 
 that all honors he had ever received had come to him 
 unasked. Two years after the Civil War he wrote: 
 
 It does not occur to them [the men] . . . that if one 
 wishes for honors, one should not manoeuvre for them, 
 beg the aid of friends to secure them, and even ask for 
 them openly. The attitude of spuming honors which 
 do not come unsought appears to them fantastic or 
 incredible. I have found the same thing in politics, in 
 
 the army, and even in art and literature. General 
 
 seemed to think it a very reasonable proposition that 
 I should write to my friends at Washington and 
 elsewhere, to aid him in getting me made Brigadier- 
 General 1 
 
 Early in 1869 Colonel Higginson sent this report to 
 his sisters of a lecture: 
 
NEWPORT 253 
 
 I had really a delightful visit to Washington; had a 
 flattering audience of notables at my lecture on Satur- 
 day; dined Sunday at Mr. Sumner's with the Marquis 
 de Chambrun and Mr. Boutwell, and Monday was 
 introduced to many Representatives at the Capitol, or 
 rather had them brought up and introduced to me, 
 which was embarrassing to my natural modesty, which 
 does exist in a latent shape, as you, at least, know. Mr. 
 Colfax sent for me to go up and speak to him at his 
 desk, and when I expressed regrets that he had not 
 been in Newport answered that he thought he could 
 have went there on his late journey, which was a blowl 
 I did not see General Grant; he had taken tickets to 
 my lecture, but had a dinner party. I stayed with 
 General Chipman, an army friend and a leading lawyer 
 there. 
 
 It will be remembered that Mrs. Higginson's person- 
 ality suggested the character of Aunt Jane in the story 
 called " Malboiie." 
 
 January, 1869 
 
 I get delightful letters about " Malbone." One 
 Ohio woman writes, " I have one request to make of 
 you. Let Aunt Jane's life be precious in your sight; 
 keep her all through the romance, and after it is 
 finished, continue her in the ' New York Ledger,' if 
 you have no better use for her. I hope she is not 
 a brain-creature, but a real flesh-and-blood woman, 
 somewhere darning stockings and keeping the Ten 
 Commandments." 
 
254 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 When I think that Richard Greenough (a most 
 cultivated, gentle, and agreeable sculptor) told me the 
 other day that Hawthorne was a man of talent, but 
 had not the faintest conception of Hterary art, I see 
 how far we are from any standard of criticism and how 
 little people's opinions are worth. 
 
 To an absent Newport friend: 
 
 The event of your Newport world is Mrs. Wetherell's 
 twelfth baby; her babies are, indeed, annual, but there 
 can be but one No. 12. I went there and she opened 
 the door (the mamma), strong, blooming, and Italian 
 as ever, scrambling up from the floor where she was 
 mending a carpet; I heard little 12 cooing happily in 
 the next room of the httle hut, and she brought him 
 presently and I held him. He looks and feels just like 
 all the rest. Then the door opened and in tumbled 
 Tenny, aged five, with two younger brothers under 
 guard, all equally rosy and curly. They squatted under 
 a big table of plants in bloom. ..." A good deal of 
 care for you, Mrs. Wetherell." " I don't find 'em so," 
 she cheerily said, showing her white teeth. 
 
 August, 1869 
 T(» Morgan reception for General and Mrs. Grant. I 
 W9,s agreeably disappointed in both. Grant was well 
 dressed and perfectly quiet and at ease; not at all an 
 ordinary-looking man, with a solid, massive head to 
 which R. Greenough said no justice had been done. He 
 has a wonderful capacity of letting you talk, without 
 
NEWPORT 255 
 
 moving a muscle and then saying nothing himself. I did 
 not see him smile nor seem cordial. Sherman is verj' 
 cordial and lively, but clumsy. . . . But his face has 
 iav finer lines than I expected — he seems like a school- 
 master, tall, thin, and active-minded, though not high- 
 bred. General Franklin has a grand, massive figure.! 
 Mrs. Grant I liked; she seemed sensible, though not] 
 sympathetic; stands firmly on her feet and would hold 
 her own anywhere. 
 
 This Mrs. Channing of Brattleboro', Vermont, was 
 the grandmother of Francis Channing, now Lord 
 Channing of Wellingborough: 
 
 ... I went halfway to Boston with Cousin Susan 
 [Channing]. . . . [She] was very entertaining. Did 
 you ever hear of the Quincy aunts who used to take a 
 journey to Niagara in their own carriage, every year 
 for twenty years and never went down to the falls? 
 That surpasses our neighbor Stuyvesant le Roy, who 
 passed the Louvre daily for two years and came away 
 without going inside. Also Cousin Susan says, " My 
 dear, the greatest objection I have to Boston is that 
 there is always some word which everybody uses. 
 When I was there last, the word was culture. Every 
 chit of a girl who came to see Bessie talked about 
 culture. I got so tired of it I forbade Bessie to use it 
 in my presence. In my young days we talked about ed- 
 ucation or cultivation." Mary suggests that to say cul- 
 ture, after these, is to substitute guano for the common 
 manures. 
 
256 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Newport, March 30, 1870 
 
 Evening concert of twelve Russians, in national 
 black velvet coats and lace necktie; young men, some 
 dark, some light, and mostly of rather a peasant look, 
 with high cheek-bones. The music was wild and quite 
 fascinating, especially one quartette with a delicious 
 tenor voice, and full of little echoes and surprises, a 
 wholly new sensation. There was a dreamy character 
 to it all, and a tinge of sadness, belonging to that 
 strange, undeveloped nation, the only European nation 
 with an indefinite future. 
 
 It may not be inappropriate to insert here this item 
 about Russian school-girls: 
 
 Julia De Kay [sister-in-law of R. W. Gilder] and 
 Sarah Gibbs are chattering as hard as they can talk. 
 Julia says, " When I was at school in Dresden, we used 
 to lock up our soap to keep it from the Russian girls; 
 they eat a cake of soap as we should eat any other 
 cake, and they would bite off a whole mouthful from a 
 candle I " 
 
 June 5, 1870 
 
 . . . The summer people are fast gathering, and it is 
 like the birds returning to a nest or tree. Some day you 
 go by and find the whole family astir, and in the 
 autumn they disappear as suddenly. . . . 
 
 I was going to send you a report of my Mount 
 Auburn remarks [Decoration Day]. The best was in 
 the " Journal," for that alone put in a passage referring 
 to Governor Andrew whose name the " post " bears, 
 
NEWPORT 257 
 
 and whose widow's face, looking from her window, was 
 to me the one pathetic thing of the day as we passed 
 through Charles Street. The " Journal " never having 
 heard of Sweet Auburn naturally puts it " sweet 
 autumn." . . . The effect of the whole pageant was 
 lovely — some four hundred men, mostly young, well- 
 drilled, and with mounted officers, all bearing flow- 
 ers, and many carriages and wagons of flowers. All 
 Cambridge seemed a bower as we marched through. 
 The " posts " were out there to escort us, and soldiers 
 and firemen with flowers; and Mount Auburn one 
 mass of people. I spoke from a barouche before the 
 chapel, and it was still and very easy to speak. It was 
 touching to see the unhnoum mourners, those to whom 
 it was still an open wound — one or two women in 
 black with flowers in a carriage, or perhaps an open 
 wagon. The popular instinct seems to hit the right 
 medium very well — sympathy, with gloom; just 
 enough marks of mourning to keep the feeling true, 
 and the flowers and sunshine keeping away depres- 
 sion. 
 
 . . . That night I went to seven boarding-houses 
 [with a view of moving to Cambridge] . . . nearly 
 opposite Mary Greenleaf's [Brattle Street] was one; 
 that would be pleasant, but horrid horse-cars every 
 fifteen minutes. Mary says the passing would not be so 
 bad as the expecting. " It would be," she says, " like 
 those gentlemen who board somewhere in Europe, and 
 every time they meet say, 'Death and marrowbones,' 
 or some such thing." (Remember Death!) 
 
258 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 September 3, 1870 
 
 I breakfasted to-day with " Tom Hughes " at Mr. 
 Fields's, and you may like to hear about him. He 
 was there for the day with a young Mr. Rawlins, his 
 companion. He is a remarkably cordial and easy Eng- 
 lishman, and frank and intelligent as they all are; 
 wonderfully well acquainted with American things 
 and people, and has taken the " Anti-Slavery Stand- 
 ard " for years, so knows especially about radicals. 
 Thus one gets on with him at once. In looks he is a 
 plain likeness of his own picture — rather Scotch- 
 looking I should say, with reddish hair and side 
 whiskers, and rather marked features; tall and toler- 
 ably well-built, but not especially so, nor particularly 
 active io motion; his voice not especially English and 
 cuts off his g's like a Bostonian. I thrak the better- 
 educated an Englishman is, the less well he is apt to 
 articulate; it is mechanics and sailors who have the 
 clear, manly, ringing enunciation (bating the A's). He 
 is delighted with Lowell, but seemed to understand 
 when I spoke of his reactionary position compared with 
 his former self; said that Lowell, Holmes, and Emer- 
 son were all as good as their books, which surprised 
 him. He thinks we overrate Whittier as compared 
 to Lowell, and recited much of the latter's poetry, 
 including some against England. He knew more about 
 our humorists than any of us did, quoting Josh Billings 
 with delight and praising Mark Twain's " Jumping 
 Frog " with enthusiasm. He calls himself an advocate 
 of women's voting, but was dismayed at Lady Am- 
 berley's spe akin g in public, and said the radical men 
 
NEWPORT 259 
 
 were all frightened thinking their women would be 
 speaking also. He seemed far less interested in this 
 than Bryce and Dicey, the two young Englishmen who 
 were here just now, with whom it was a main point of 
 interest. He was delighted with a remark I quoted of 
 Stephen Foster's [noted in " Anti-Slavery Days "], 
 who said he should hate to farm at the West, and did 
 not wish to put his spade in earth where it woiild not 
 hit a rock, and said several times that he should go to 
 Worcester to see him. . . . He talked a good deal 
 about the Radical Club and wished he could attend it, 
 though he thinks us all a set of popes and the most 
 intolerant people he knows. When I refused a cigar 
 after breakfast, he said with glee, " There! I knew it! 
 Of course a member of the Radical Club would not 
 touch a cigar! " He had been at Naushon and was 
 amused with Mr. Forbes's " little principality " there; 
 said the game laws of Europe were nothing, to those 
 he enforced there! He expressed quite a dislike to 
 W^hitman and to Swinburne, and was surprised when I 
 told him that the three most zealous advocates of 
 Whitman in America were Englishmen. 
 
 Newport, 1870 
 
 . . . There is a report that at the last Woman's 
 Convention Mrs. Howe shook her small fist in S. S. 
 Foster's face, but Mrs. Mariana [Mott] says, " It 's 
 what some women ought to have done, years ago, and 
 will do him good.". . . 
 
 I saw George Bradford the other day. We hear that 
 he made the custom-house officer very angry on land- 
 
260 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 ing by insisting that every article should be taken from 
 his trunk to make sure that there was nothing contra- 
 band; and also that when he was captured as a Prus- 
 sian spy he carefully explained that though he was no 
 spy, he was far from sympathizing with the French I 
 From which you will infer that he is much the same 
 G. P. B. 
 
 This trip to New York was taken while en route for 
 Cleveland to preside at a Woman's Suffrage Convention. 
 
 November 27, 1870 
 
 The most amusing scene I had was on the steamboat 
 from here to New York. Little Mrs. Newbold Edgar 
 was put under my escort {n6e Appleton, Daniel 
 Webster's granddaughter), with lovely eyes and 
 widow's weeds; but she has been abroad a year and is 
 said to be engaged to young Jerome Bonaparte of 
 Baltimore. She is very nervous and full of French 
 vivacity. We met General Butler and I introduced 
 him to her. She at once began instructing him about 
 French affairs and our foreign ambassadors with the 
 most coquettish and airy zeal; that we had only three 
 gentlemen in Europe; that it was the wives who were 
 more important than the husbands, etc.; she never 
 keeping still an instant and playing off eyes and bonnet 
 ribbons and gloves at him unceasingly; and grim old 
 Ben listening to her and playing her off as Dr. Johnson 
 might have Mrs. Thrale, or better yet Mirabeau with 
 one of Marie Antoinette's maids of honor. 
 
 She says that the Emperor's cousin told her that 
 
NEWPORT ' 261 
 
 Eugenie says she never wishes to hear of the Regency, 
 nor of the Empire, nor of the Emperor, but to be left 
 alone with her boy. 
 
 Yesterday I dined with the Reverend Doctor de 
 Koven, an Episcopal minister who has come to live 
 here. . .• . There are two very odd old-mannish little 
 boys, twelve and eight, very remarkably educated and 
 full of facts. The little one is a demure httle fairy . . . 
 he sat by me on the sofa and we talked. He told me 
 how many feet of hose the united engines of Newport 
 had, etc.; then asked some questions about the war, 
 and then looking up in the gentlest way said gravely, 
 " Were you in the battle of Bunker Hill? "... I 
 whispered it afterwards to the father and mother 
 (very jolly people) to their immense delight, and the 
 next day she got out of little Bertie that he really 
 meant Bull Runl 
 
 - May 19, 1871 
 
 Interrupted by Bigelow and Bret Harte, with whom 
 I drove and dined. Liked him very much; not striking 
 in appearance or manner, but quite unspoiled; less 
 shy than Ho wells and perhaps less refined; but manly 
 and pleasing. 
 
 Said he could not conceive of any editors making 
 suggestions astohisstyle; it would cease to be his own. 
 
 June 25 
 
 I have dined out twice this week, but not under 
 exciting circumstances; once with four Philadelphia 
 gentlemen who talked about different vintages and 
 
262 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 brands of wine for an hour after dinner — a subject ca 
 which, as Waring suggested, I probably could not 
 afford much valuable information. I don't mean that 
 any considerable amount of wine was drunk; men talk 
 about wine still, but hardly taste it. One of these 
 (Boker the " poet ") complained, " Nobody drinks 
 now-a-days — they only sip." 
 
 July 29 
 Parton [the biographer, and husband of Fanny Fern] 
 expressed greatest delight in Howells's " Wedding 
 Journey "; thought it would live, and wished he had 
 an income of two thousand dollars to settle on H. " It 
 is no matter about me," he said; " I have n't the gift 
 — I am a drudge, but Howells is capable of something 
 better." 
 
 August 27, 1871 
 Afternoon saw M. Coquerel. . . . He described 
 George Sand, who had sent for him to talk Protestant- 
 ism. Both times he saw her she was sitting in a dark 
 corner for eyes, with a dozen guests or visitors, all 
 smoking cigarettes. She lighting one every ten min- 
 utes, asking questions and never saying a word — says 
 she never does. At Nohant she has guests all evening; 
 then at twelve walks alone in garden, then writes all 
 night, takes another turn, and goes to bed in broad day 
 and sleeps till noon. Never writes by day. 
 
 October, 1871 
 Lecture at Medford. Stayed at Hallowell's; tea 
 with Wasson. H. 's guide in the Adirondacks said, "Do 
 you know Jim Lowell?," 
 
NEWPORT 263 
 
 " No; who is he? " 
 
 " He 's a fellow down your way; writes books and 
 poems." 
 
 " Yes; James Russell Lowell, I know him." 
 
 "Well, he's a d — — d ignorant cuss, ain't he!" 
 (Then told of his wishing to be paddled on sunny side 
 of brook, etc.) 
 
 The next letter describes a Woman Suflfrage Con- 
 vention in Washington: 
 
 December, 1871 
 
 The convention was an entire success, and they all 
 said, would do much good; large and orderly audiences 
 and much attention. George Hoar of Worcester, one 
 of the ablest men in Congress, made a speech in which 
 he gave it as the result of his long experience in courts 
 that they needed nothing so much as a larger mixture 
 of feminine or institutional element and thought our 
 juries would get at truth far better if they were half 
 women and the judges the same. He quoted the wife of 
 Pontius Pilate, and many other instances of the greater 
 acuteness of women in judging character, on which, he 
 said, the investigation of evidence half consisted. 
 
 ... I went to see Mr. Sumner, who was grand as 
 ever in his egotism — "I know more about judges 
 than any man in America." " After I am gone, there is 
 nothing in the gift of the people of Massachusetts 
 which George F. Hoar may not expect." He has a 
 sort of levee every Sunday — people coming and 
 going. 
 
264 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 The same letter speaks of Judge Bell, who had 
 married one of the Storrow cousins in Virginia: 
 
 He is now judge, it seems, and he and Maria came on 
 to Lincoln's first inauguration, their Unionism hold- 
 ing out till then. At that time the [neighbors] 
 
 took the " Tribune," and I sent Maria the " Atlantic." 
 For some time neither came, and on inquiry they 
 learned that the Vigilance Committee used to bum the 
 two in the post-oflBce yard, as incendiary documents. I 
 felt quite proud of this. 
 
 Of course the life at Mrs. Dame's brought the 
 Higginsons in contact with a variety of stray " tran- 
 sients." 
 
 Nora Perry, author of a popular poem called " After 
 the Ball," was endowed with a great quantity of red 
 hair, and Colonel Higgiuson wrote thus of her: 
 
 Dear A. and L.: 
 
 . . . She [Miss Perry] is bright about one thing — 
 she saw at once the effect her head had upon me and 
 spoke of it with amazement to Juliet Goodwin, several 
 times. " To think," said she, " that a man could walk 
 up to the cannon's mouth and yet could n't stand my 
 head! " 
 
 . . . The Perrys go to-day! I went in there, and 
 Miss Nora, coming down, began at once on her usual 
 theme — " Mrs. Douglass has just been talking to 
 me about my head; she says it looks like an imitation 
 of the negroes, all crimped up sol " 
 
NEWPORT 265 
 
 January, 1872 
 
 I am just back from Providence where I spent 
 yesterday and lectured. On Saturday evening I was 
 to speak on Woman Suffrage at Woonsocket, and 
 stepping into a barber shop at Providence had the good 
 preHminary experience of being shaved by a woman — 
 the first time in my life. She said there were quite a 
 number who did it in New York and Philadelphia. 
 She was a neat colored woman of thirty-five, wife of 
 the barber. It was a very good text for my speech — 
 now, when women travelling in sleeping-cars are tucked 
 up by chambermen. 
 
 Last week I, too, heard Miss Cushman read — a 
 selection of shorter poems — and never enjoyed more, 
 hardly Fanny Kemble. She read a touching little 
 poem of humble life called " The Young Gray Head," 
 by Mrs. Southey, so that you seemed to see every 
 fibre of thatch on the roof and every bristle on the dog's 
 back. 
 
 Undated 
 
 Miss Smith is a disagreeable Philadelphian of fifty- 
 five who fell in love with Phillips Brooks and took 
 passage by steamer for Europe with him; he waiting 
 for the next. She stopped at Halifax and came on 
 board his steamer smiling. She is rather cracked and 
 hard to dislodge from boarding-houses. 
 
 October, 1872 
 
 Deae Sisters: 
 
 The Warings sailed yesterday, I suppose. . . . That 
 seems the last squeeze of the orange of Newport for the 
 
266 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 winter, and it only remains to see if any of the new- 
 comers are promising. I therefore began with the 
 Sidney Everetts. He is a little dried-up wasp of a 
 creature, son of the great E. E., studies languages and 
 nurses his lungs; she a fine, hale, English-looking 
 woman, Dick Fay's daughter; you remember her 
 mother at the old Judge's, or I do. It is odd; she says 
 she does n't feel bound to live in a country (United 
 States) where her husband has no more votes than any 
 negro or Irishman. (I never knew a big woman with a 
 forlorn little husband who did n't exalt him and abhor 
 female equality.) 
 
 In the same year he wrote again to his sisters: 
 
 Did you ever hear of any poems by Emma Lazarus? 
 She is rather an interesting person, and her volume of 
 poems was better received in England than here. They 
 are rather in the Morris style. She is a Jewess; they 
 are very rich and in fashionable society in New York, 
 and she has never seen an author till lately, though she 
 has corresponded with Emerson. It is curious to see 
 how mentally famished a person may be in the very 
 best society. • . . Less excluded from brains are the 
 J. J. Astors whom I took tea with at Richard Hunt's. 
 They are very pleasing. . . . The son, perhaps 
 twenty-two and the heir to forty million, is a modest, 
 pleasing fellow absorbed in sculpture, and quite repin- 
 ing at having to learn law and business in order to 
 manage his property. Mrs. Astor, a thin, dark woman 
 of forty-three or so, had of diamonds (1) two ear-rings; 
 (2) a cross; (3) a breastpin with monogram in small 
 
NEWPORT 267 
 
 diamonds; (4) an enamel snake coiled on her wrist, 
 with head and neck covered with diamonds; (5) three 
 diamond rings. It sounds fearful and yet had a less 
 tawdry look than . . . more varied stones. 
 
 At the Ocean House reception, last night, one of the 
 first figures I encountered was dear Jared [Sparks] 
 wandering in a dreamy manner in search of Miss 
 Florence, with whom he is staying here and who had 
 danced away somewhere. He was very sweet and 
 friendly towards you and all of us, and said many of 
 the happiest associations of his life were with our 
 family. I left him still wandering. 
 
 We have all been interested in Miss Murfree (C. E. 
 Craddock), a cheery, little, pale body, lame in one foot, 
 who goes about everywhere and enjoys Boston as we 
 enjoy London or Paris. She holds her own capitally, 
 modest and gentle, yet spirited and very wide-awake. 
 I am a great admirer of her Tennessee stories. 
 
 The dinner to Froude was given at Delmonico's, and 
 the only comment in the diary is, " not brilliant." The 
 Bottas were Newport-New York friends. Professor 
 Botta, an Italian, with a Vermont wife. 
 
 October, 1872 
 
 I went on to New York to the Froude dinner which 
 was elaborate and elegant. . . . 
 
 I stayed at the Bottas and we had Froude there to 
 lunch; also Messrs. Parke Godwin, John Bigelow 
 (late Minister to France), Professor Draper (" History 
 of the Development of Europe "), Bellows, Rev. Dr. 
 
268 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Smith, Frothingham, Godkin ("Nation"), Warner 
 (" Summer in Garden "). The latter is stiff and quiet, 
 Godkin I had never seen and liked unexpectedly : he is 
 pleasing, intelligent, and reasonable, at least in talk. 
 Proude is enjoying himself and is quite a lion; showed 
 me some of his odd letters from strangers and auto- 
 graph seekers. 
 
 This extract, written in 1873, refers to the author's 
 first meeting with that strange genius, Emily Dickinson : 
 
 ... I saw my eccentric poetess, Miss Emily 
 Dickinson, who never goes outside her father's grounds 
 and sees only me and a few others. She says, " There 
 is always one thing to be grateful for — that one is 
 one's self and not somebody else "; but Mary thinks 
 this is singularly out of place in E. D.'s case. She 
 (E. D.) glided in, in white, bearing a Daphne odora for 
 me, and said, under her breath, " How long are you 
 going to stay? " 
 
 When in camp in South Carolina in 1864, Colonel 
 Higginson received his first letter from Emily Dickin- 
 son, who wrote, " War feels to me an oblique place." 
 
 Another letter of the year 1873 describes a visit 
 made with that enthusiastic woman, Mrs. J. T, 
 Sargent, whose house on Chestnut Street was in those 
 days a popular meeting-place for distinguished men 
 and women. 
 
 I went also with Mrs. Sargent to see Mrs. Wendell 
 Phillips, who lay on her bed with a great Oriental rug 
 
NEWPORT 269 
 
 that looked like a continuation of the Bazaar. She was 
 very bright and quick-witted. By my absence I 
 missed seeing Mrs. Edward Guild, a wonderfully 
 pretty and graceful creature. She is trying sculpture 
 and came to ask Richard Greenough how to keep 
 statues from tumbling down. Her hair is wonderful — 
 the ends touch her boots; we have one hair one and 
 five-eighths yards long, and some are one and three 
 quarters. 
 
 She is going with Mrs. Hunt to Colorado. . . . The 
 grave Edward [Rev, Edward Guild] is anxious about 
 the Indians, and she says, " he does n't want them to 
 get my hair I " 
 
 Apropos of a fire which had started in Theodore 
 Parker's house, Higginson wrote: 
 
 June, 187S 
 
 The morning of that day I went to the fire, that is, to 
 Mrs. Theodore Parker's. It was really delightful to 
 see so many people going there at once; ... all sorts 
 of people, and Mrs. P. perfectly cool, though the room 
 was hot from the fire. We got all ready to move, select- 
 ing especially all Mr. Parker's manuscripts, books with 
 his notes in them, etc.; but nothing was actually 
 moved out, though one faithful adherent had a cart in 
 the court (Exeter Place), which was otherwise filled 
 with engines and hose. We had blankets and pails of 
 water to wet the outside of the house, but they were 
 not needed. We could see back to the corner of W. 
 Phillips's house, where he was moving all out, having 
 
270 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 sent away Ann P. and Anne Alvord, both sick at the 
 house — the former to the Sargents', where she told 
 me over the banisters next day that she felt nicely and 
 waked up singing, " Music in the Air." 
 
 I met Mrs. Sargent in the thick of the crowd, run- 
 ning home to receive A. P. [Mrs. PhiUips] (the carriage 
 being full), with flushed face, bonnet fallen back, and 
 grasping in hand a basket with some rolls of paper and 
 a pair of worked slippers. 
 
 February, 1874 
 
 ... In Boston I lately dined with Wilkie Collins 
 and liked him better than I had expected, as also Mark 
 Twain whom I had not seen before. I dined at the 
 latter's house in Hartford since; it seemed odd to have 
 him say grace, yet it seemed a genuine thing. He has a 
 very sweet refined wife. . . . 
 
 I went to the Woman Suffrage meeting in Provi- 
 dence. Nothing out of Dickens was ever more quaint 
 and naive than the two old Misses Smith giving before 
 an audience the latest views as to their cows; talking 
 as simply as if by their fireside, interrupting and 
 corroborating each other, smiling, waxing indignant 
 or humorous, and thoroughly satisfied to fight the 
 good fight. 
 
 July 21, 1874 
 Last week I had a very pleasant day and night at 
 Hartford, at the Philological Society meeting, staying 
 at the Warners' — a charming house on the edge of a 
 picturesque ravine near Hartford with great beautiful 
 chestnuts around it and seeming in absolute seclusion. 
 
NEWPORT 271 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. W. are most agreeable hosts, and the cat 
 Calvin stood up beside me and wished to help himself 
 from my plate. When before breakfast I went out 
 with W. to pick raspberries in the little garden and 
 " Polly " came out to meet us, it seemed like " Summer 
 in a Garden," indeed. 
 
 . . . Did I tell you of seeing General McClellan one 
 evening at Charles Perkins's? He has rather a crushed 
 and discouraged look. It rained hard that night and 
 three foreign diplomats brought me home in their 
 hack — an Italian count, a Russian baron, and a 
 Spanish admiral — and not a man of elegance among 
 them. 
 
 February, 1875 
 
 • •• • • ■ • • • • 
 
 How you do go on about Weiss! That 's the impres- 
 sion he always makes on enthusiastic young women; 
 he is " a man one part flesh and three parts fire," Mrs. 
 Runkle said. His mind has so fine an edge to it, though 
 — a feather edge, easily turned. 
 
 July 17, 1875 
 
 This week we have had the Philological Convention 
 and I have been very busy managing it and billeting 
 the people about. Thursday we went up the river to 
 Rocky Point, about one hundred of us • . . and I pre- 
 sided at the dinner and had a little good talking. Pro- 
 fessor Rogers [of the Technology] and his sweet wife 
 were there and helped. Rocky Point is a beautiful 
 place, and the long dining-hall looks directly on the 
 
272 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 water. The great shady grounds are always full of 
 people (from one to five thousand daily) enjoying 
 themselves in all ways. No liquor is sold, and some 
 German gentlemen present were quite delighted with 
 this proof that Americans could amuse themselves. 
 
 . . . We have also had in the house Elizabeth 
 Stuart Phelps whom we had never seen; she is a very 
 interesting person, sallow and sick-looking, but with 
 beautiful dark liquid eyes and fine smile; not graceful, 
 but infinitely truthful and self-devoted; utterly free 
 from selfishness or display. 
 
 May, 1875 
 
 I took two hurried trips to Boston, presiding at an 
 evening Woman Suffrage festival and again at the 
 morning session of Free Religions. Dear old Lucretia 
 Mott spoke. She said that long ago in noting the fail- 
 ing powers of a speaker, she told her daughter she 
 herself should stop speaking at sixty. Her daughters 
 think " mother takes a long time in being sixty," 
 as she is now past eighty and still spoke half an hour 
 clearly and forcibly. 
 
 The concluding notes were found on scraps of paper, 
 perhaps for use in lectures. Colonel Higginson once 
 said that nothing would induce him to go to a lecture 
 without notes in his pocket, and that nothing would 
 induce him to take them out after he got there! 
 
 Of Tom Appleton [brother-in-law of Henry Wads- 
 worth Longfellow], who was to the circle of clever men 
 
NEWPORT 273 
 
 at Cambridge what Luttrell, for instance, was to the 
 Greville circle, I knew something at Newport. Like 
 Luttrell he said better mots than anybody, and like 
 him left nothing behind, unless it were in Appleton's 
 case those verses called " The Whip of the Sky," 
 which so well describes the tonic efifect of the New 
 England climate. He was that rare character in Amer- 
 ica in those days, and even now, a man of wealth and 
 leisure without regular vocation or domestic ties, 
 affectionate yet selfish, paying deference to no man, 
 taking up favorites and putting them down at will, 
 free-thinking yet superstitious, cosmopolitan yet 
 American, unpuritanical yet free from actual vice. He 
 always had favorites about him, to whom he was 
 exuberantly kind until superseded; took sudden 
 fancies, tapped a young artist on the back while 
 copying in the Louvre, and said, " Come with me to 
 Egypt," and took him, paying all expenses. He treated 
 ladies as men, with no more courtesy, but equal in- 
 tellectual recognition. ... I once dined with him 
 t§te-a-t6te at his house ia Newport. ... I felt as if I 
 had had a day with Horace Walpole. No man of that 
 day produced so much of utterly ungarnered grain as 
 Tom Appleton. 
 
 In a circle where Holmes and Lowell were the leading 
 spirits, it was a great thing to have some one who 
 when so moved would ride directly over them and talk 
 them down. This was true of Appleton, but of no one 
 else except, at rare intervals, Agassiz. For informa- 
 tion, Whittier surpassed any of them, although trained 
 only by reading in a library, and the person who came 
 
274 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 nearest Appleton in sheer flow of reminiscences was 
 Josiah Quincy, second bearer of that name. 
 
 Another man of great practical successes and bril- 
 liant social gifts was himself a son of Newport; one 
 who traversed this country as a great engineer and 
 Europe as an organizer of expensive engineering proj- 
 ects, who went through hairbreadth adventures by the 
 dozen. . . . This was Clarence King. I know no book 
 of personal travel which is to-day so fascinating in 
 every page as his " Mountaineering in the Sierra 
 Nevada " [1871]. . . . Among the simple and power- 
 ful mountaineering notes there are scenes not to be 
 forgotten of personal peril from the frontier marauders, 
 scenes of lonely climbing, of swift rescues, and of all 
 manner of oddities. I still find myself turning to it 
 when other books fail, and there is no mood which it 
 cannot meet. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 FOREIGN TRAVELS 
 
 In 1872 and in 1878 Colonel Higginson made his first 
 trips to England and the Continent; and these " bits 
 of travel " are taken from his journals. 
 
 Soon after his arrival in England he wrote. May 9, 
 
 1872: 
 
 I came on to Chester and found a dense crowd in the 
 station, because of the races. . . . There was horsy 
 England, indeed; . . . the horses and riding were all I 
 had imagined, but the human sight much more. Be- 
 sides the gentlemen on the grandstand, and near them, 
 there were hundreds of professional betting men, each 
 standing on a chair or post, with his name and address 
 round his hat, or on his umbrella (for it rains every 
 fifteen minutes and stops, nobody minding it), and a 
 money-bag round his neck with the same address on 
 it; and in all the intervals of races all these men and 
 most of the gentlemen are shouting at the top of their 
 voices, " I back the field "; or, " Five to four on 
 Solon "; or whatever the horse is, and these thousand 
 voices make a roar like battle. The races are on the 
 loveliest green meadow outside the walls . . . and the 
 Dee winds round it and the wall is lined with people 
 overlooking; and inside the track there is an extempo- 
 rized village of tents, booths, photographers, people 
 playing Aunt Sally and throwing sticks, and great 
 steam merry-go-rounds, carrying fifty people on 
 
276 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 wooden horses three abreast. All deep in mud, all 
 jolly, and the beautiful racers with jockeys in gorgeous 
 colors cantering on the track and between the races; 
 and over all, this tumult of voices. 
 
 London, May 12 
 
 . . . The Zoological Gardens [are] . . . admirably 
 arranged and most interesting. Five tall white cranes 
 in a row asleep, each on one leg and his head and neck 
 concealed — it was like so many cotton balls on tall 
 sticks; then the funny little hopping penguin, his wing 
 only a flipper, and in the cage with him a glorious 
 frigate bird with vast wings, as figured in Michelet. 
 Presently a man said to me — a well-dressed Enghsh- 
 man — " There 's a great man, though he don't look 
 like it," and he pointed to a little short stuffy red-faced 
 man in a queer gray surtout. " That," said he, " is Sir 
 Edwin Landseerl " To see him see animals was a 
 treat — and I followed him. But he turned out to be 
 Sir Thomas Landseer, after all. Millais was there, too, 
 that afternoon, but I did not know it. 
 
 May 13 
 
 The only day of hard rain I have seen — went to 
 Hon. Mrs. Grey about Female Education, Lady Rose's 
 friend — a sweet ladylike, elderly personage with 
 plenty of good ideas and says she was always radical. 
 The royal princesses, she says, are also so. Then to 
 lunch with Sir Charles DiLke, a young, amiable, rather 
 self-important person, with a keen bright wife, like an 
 American, much quicker than himself and quite con- 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 277 
 
 servative, but thinking that England may be a repubhc 
 two hundred years hence, " when Charley 's in his httle 
 grave." We studied out the Wentworths and he is 
 proud of being descended from three regicides. In , 
 evening to House of Commons, but though I had a 
 Speaker's order, could not get in till after Gladstone 
 and Disraeli were done. 
 
 May 14 
 
 ... At four drove out with the Smalleys [George 
 W. Smalley, American journalist] and Ida Greeley — 
 Horace's daughter, a nice little naive thing — to 
 Hammersmith to see the Harvard crew row. The 
 Thames is very pastoral there, trees and slow barges. 
 Dined with Smalley and had Holyoake the radical, a 
 very interesting man to me, and told me much. . . . 
 Oh, I forgot that before dinner I went in to see dear 
 Una Hawthorne, sweet and loving as possible and look- 
 ing nobly with her great eyes, seeming perfectly well, 
 but I fear — 
 
 May 15 
 
 . . . Peeped into the wonderful Albert Hall, the 
 longest in the world — seats eight thousand people. 
 Many of the boxes and single seats were covered to 
 show them sold; i.e., leased for ninety-nine years! 
 That is English. , „„ 
 
 Mrs. Higginson, who had been a lifelong invalid, died 
 in the autumn of 1877, and the following spring Colonel 
 Higginson went abroad for several months. 
 
278 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 May 13, 1878 
 
 A perfectly delightful trip to Aldershot to see the 
 Queen review the troops. . . . 
 
 Possessing an average share of American audacity, I 
 found no great diflficulty in pressing my way, even on 
 foot, to a very favorable position, quite near the flag- 
 staff beneath which the majesty of England was to 
 take its stand. . . . 
 
 Her Majesty has the royal virtue of punctuality, and 
 all eyes were turned toward a low straw-wagon with 
 two white ponies, which came trotting along the line 
 of spectators. 
 
 ... It was called very brilhant, and certainly the 
 predominant English scarlet is incomparably more 
 effective to the eye than our sober blue. But the very 
 perfection of the appointment made it all seem such 
 a play-soldier affair; I had grown so accustomed to 
 measure soldiers by their look of actual service that a 
 single company of bronzed and tattered men would 
 have been a positive relief among these great regiments 
 of smooth-faced boys. This involved no reproach to 
 the young recruits, and did not affect the mere spec- 
 tacle, but it impaired the moral interest. However, 
 the drill and the marching were good, though there is a 
 sort of heaviness about the British soldier when com- 
 pared with the wonderful vigor and alertness of 
 German infantry. As for the uniforms, the arms, the 
 appointments, the horsesj they were simply magni- 
 ficent; I do not believe that there ever was an army in 
 finer material condition than those sixteen thousand 
 men at Aldershot. 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 279 
 
 And all this brilliant display was subject to a woman, 
 and when the final salute was paid, every gun was at 
 " present arms " for her, and in her honor the band 
 played " God save the Queen." There was something 
 of real majesty in her manner, as she stood up before 
 her soldiers in acknowledgment of the salute. She is 
 short, stout, with a rather heavy and not altogether a 
 pleasing face, even as pictures delineate her: but in 
 spite of all this, she has dignity of bearing which 
 amounts almost to grace and is the only personal charm 
 that her subjects claim for her. Even this does not 
 make her exactly popular, and at this very time I 
 heard unkind remarks in regard to the large High- 
 lander, John Brown, her confidential servant, who in 
 gorgeous array sat behind Her Majesty, much more 
 lofty and conspicuous than herself. But I am afraid it 
 is true that England still prefers to be ruled by a queen; 
 and it is certain that the present sovereign will hold 
 her prerogatives, such as they are, with a firm hand. I 
 never find myself quite such a ruthless republican 
 anywhere else as in England; and yet there is a cer- 
 tain historic satisfaction, after the long subordination 
 of women, in thinking that the wealthiest monarchy 
 of the world — and in some respects the foremost — 
 takes its orders from a woman's hand. 
 
 May 15, 1878 
 
 Lunched at [Moncure D.] Conway's. They now 
 live in a perfectly charming house, set in the middle 
 of a large old-fashioned garden with trees, lawn and 
 paths, all surrounded by a high brick wall, utterly 
 
280 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 separating it from the world-like garden in Tenny- 
 son's " Gardener's Daughter." ... At lunch was only 
 Mrs. Hennessy, the very pretty and picturesque wife 
 and model of that artist. They live in France. ... . 
 
 Then we went to see a Mrs. Rogerson, quite highly ; 
 connected, and such a character. In ran the heartiest, 
 most oflEhand little person in black silk, looking Irish 
 rather than Scotch, which she is, greeting eagerly my 
 companions (she is radical) and rattling away at first 
 about horses. She seemed like some one from Miss 
 Edgeworth's novels. " Ye may get a smacking good 
 horse in Provence for ten pound." She told the hve- 
 Uest stories of a high-born little German niece of ten 
 now staying with her, " the greatest gamin ye ever 
 heard of, except meself." This child ran outdoors, 
 eluding all governesses, and was found in a crowd, 
 perfectly absorbed in " Punch," with her arm round 
 the neck of a butcher boy who was holding her up on 
 the curbstone, a handsome, fair-haired child, beauti- 
 fully dressed. . . . She [Mrs. Rogerson] was partly 
 brought up at the Court of Hanover, where her sister 
 is lady-in-waiting. 
 
 Dined at a quarter of eight with the Russell Gurneys 
 — they were at Newport with the Joint Commission. 
 They live in the palatial part of London; superb great 
 houses in gardens, called Palace Gardens, behind 
 Kensington Palace, looking on Kensington Gardens. 
 The Gurneys have lived there twenty-five years. It 
 was quite a swell dinner party, though of nice, simple 
 people. I sat on Mrs. Gurney's left (it was not a party 
 for me) and on her right Mr. Howard, the great friend 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 281 
 
 of Mr. Sumner, and brother of the Earl of Carlisle — 
 a fine-looking, elderly man. Then there was a Mr. 
 Rothsey ... a very agreeable man who travelled 
 with Kingsley in the United States and knows all 
 about American botany; also young Northcote, who 
 was with the Joint Commission in Washington and 
 wishes he were there again. Two of the ladies were 
 pleasant nieces of Mrs. Gurney, sisters, I suppose, of 
 those three young girls who were drowned in the Nile 
 when travelling with the Gurneys there. There were 
 about a dozen in all, waited on by four menservants, 
 two in livery, two not, and these have lived from seven 
 to twenty-seven years with the Gurneys — what a 
 feeling of permanence that gives! It was strange to see 
 Mrs. Gurney, so shy and retiring in America, though 
 always sweet and intelligent, now receiving company, 
 elegantly dressed, with diamonds, and looking quite 
 at her ease. He looks and is old and ill, and the digni- 
 fied butler when I asked him, as he showed me out, 
 about his master's health, said, " We can't brag on 
 him, sir." 
 
 May 21 
 
 Breakfasted with a good typical English family, 
 Captain Verney, Royal Navy, son of Sir Henry Verney, 
 and nephew of Florence Nightingale. He is one of the 
 Prison Reform people and I met him there; has 
 travelled in America. He asked me to come before 
 five minutes of nine or after nine so as not to interrupt 
 family prayers; so I went before. There was a break- 
 fast table and a row of chairs. In came Captain V., 
 
282 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 his nice wife, and two friendly little girls, not afraid to 
 be put on my shoulder. He rang the bell; in came a 
 neat governess, four neat maids, and two neat men. 
 Fancy all that for two grown people and two children 
 in a small house I 
 
 May 22 
 
 . . . Went in afternoon to Gaiety Theatre, where 
 Kate Field got up a Shakespeare jubilee. It was 
 crowded and successful; object to build a theatre in 
 Stratford. She got delightful actors together - . . and 
 Miss Neilson with the lovely balcony scene from 
 " Romeo and Juliet." Kate Field's own acting (as a 
 marquise) was rather wooden beside the others, though 
 she had Vergin with her, and she recited an address of 
 her own in poor taste. She was well received (though 
 some one in the gallery said " Go it, Katy "0. 
 
 May 27 
 
 . . . Last night I dined with my kindest English 
 friends, the Pollocks. Lady Pollock has just returned 
 from Paris; she looks older than when I last saw her, 
 but has the same bright eyes, sweet, kindly manners 
 and intelligent talk. It was a good specimen of the 
 pleasantest kind of small dinner. There were present 
 only Sir Frederick, his eldest son, and two agreeable 
 men and capital talkers — old Mr. Venable, whom 
 I met before (he writes the " Annual Summary of 
 Events " for the " Times "), and Mr. Newton, of the 
 British Museum. The best London talkers I have 
 seen are quieter than our brightest talkers; do not 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 283 
 
 flow or dilate, don't try to shine, but quietly and rather 
 indolently bring out some capital story or witticism 
 and then let it go. 
 
 . . . To-morrow Paris, to return Jime 12. 
 
 June S 
 I had a perfectly delightful trip alone to Versailles. 
 . . . When I walked through the vast halls laden with 
 pride of kings, or at least the walls covered with them 
 till Louis Philippe made it an historical museum, I felt 
 anew what a great landmark in history the French 
 Revolution was and what strength it' showed in the 
 nation who could overthrow the old regime, with all 
 its prestige about it. . . . There we saw halls devoted 
 to Napoleon's glories in the same way — even more 
 unvaryingly warlike than the others. The Galerie des 
 Batailles is the chief of these. . . . But it touched me 
 that in the very centre of the hall is the only picture of 
 Peace — the really lovely face and figure of Joan of 
 Arc relieving the siege of Orleans in 1429, riding on 
 with her calm eyes steadily fixed above, bareheaded, 
 serene; priests precede her, women cheer her, and a 
 beautiful youth by her side seems to represent some 
 younger generation that shall be trained in thoughts 
 of peace. The battle scenes had suffocated me till I 
 came to this, which seemed the sufficient protest 
 against all. 
 
 June 6 
 
 Then the great Pantheon, with its pillars spotted 
 with bullet marks — there is always fighting there in 
 any revolution. When I was a boy I used almost to 
 
284 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 weep over Holmes's poem, " La Grisette," and his 
 vain search after her. 
 
 " I wandered through the haunts of men. 
 From Boulevard to Quai, 
 Till, frowning o'er Saint Etienne, 
 The Pantheon's shadow lay." 
 
 June 10 
 
 I had this morning a very interesting talk with a 
 young Boston artist named [Abbott] Thayer who came 
 to Henry Higginson's hotel, where H. and I were talk- 
 ing, and claimed Henry for me and was equally happy 
 to see us both. He is the son of my classmate Thayer 
 and grandson of the old teacher; he has been living 
 here three years with his wife and now his baby, in one 
 upper room working in Ger6me's studio. His wife is 
 German and a friend of Helene Gilder's, and this has 
 helped to keep him from the vices of the young artists 
 of whose life he gave the most naive particulars and 
 very repulsive, after all, only that there seem to be 
 such circles in Paris not so much of a defiance of moral- 
 ity as a sort of utter ignorance of certain virtues, so 
 that vice is a shade less disgusting and more seductive. 
 He says that the only young Frenchman in their 
 atelier who pretends to any moral standard is an ardent 
 Roman Catholic and a strong Bonapartist, the only 
 Bonapartist there, and on all these grounds he is 
 regarded as a sort of lusus naturm by the others and 
 always joked upon. He says that young American 
 artists seem to have absolutely no moral fibre. They 
 begin by good behavior, going twice to church for 
 several Sundays, and then drop suddenly out of it all 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 285 
 
 and henceforth show ambition to lead the vices of the 
 others. In Ger6me's studio there are seventy in all, 
 half a dozen Americans. There was one studio {atelier) 
 to which women were for a time admitted, chiefly 
 American, and he can only explain their staying there 
 by their not understanding the language well enough 
 to interpret the songs and jokes of the young artists 
 which were invented expressly to drive them away and 
 finally succeeded. 
 
 Reasinq [neab Oxpokd] 
 (Rev. C. R. Honey's) June 17 
 
 Came here from London. . . . Honey took me first 
 to his little church and then to the foundations of his 
 new and larger one. He is a type so interesting to an 
 American; vicar of a new parish, just created out of 
 an overflowing one, as full of energy and activity as his 
 American brother [then a Newport lawyer] and almost 
 as radical in opinion. He calls himself a repubUcan, 
 favors disestablishment (thinking it will drive out 
 drones and make the church more efficient), utterly 
 rejects the infallibility of Scripture, the Jewish Sab- 
 bath, and the resurrection of the body; aims to 
 combine all extremes in his church; has candles and 
 flowers for the High-Church people, but never uses 
 the word sacrament and calls himself Broad Church, 
 and has several Quakers in his congregation. . . . He 
 visits all famiUes in his parish (which is geographical), 
 whether Dissenters or not, and they always receive 
 him well. I notice that Dissenting churches (chapels) 
 now have steeples, but they are not allowed bells. 
 
286 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Tuesday, June 18 
 
 ... I went to call on Master Jowett (he is master 
 of the college and is addressed " Mr. Master " as we 
 should say Mr. President). I sent up Conway's card 
 of introduction and mine and was very kindly received. 
 He is a scholarly, refined-looking man, gentle and 
 quiet, with smooth, rosy face a,nd very soft, fine white 
 hair. He seemed pleased to talk about his " Plato " 
 and hear of its cordial reception in America. We spoke, 
 too, of the system of scholarships, and he thought the 
 Harvard method " a very bad system "; i.e., limiting 
 them to the poor, and said that, though rich young 
 men rarely got them, yet the fact that they sometimes 
 did increased the self-respect of all, and made it more 
 the thing for rich young men to study; and the 
 scholarships were now published as honors. Sometimes 
 the richer young men give them back after winning 
 them. 
 
 June 21 
 
 ... I went to meet the Conways at Mrs. William 
 Rossetti's reception. He is brother of Dante and 
 Christina R,, and she is daughter of Maddox Brown, 
 the artist. Their house is the headquarters of the 
 advanced set, the pre-Raphaelites in art, and those 
 who celebrate Morris, Swinburne, Walt Whitman, 
 and (formerly) Joaquin Miller. . . . The most in- 
 teresting person to me was the artist Alma-Tadema 
 with his young English (second) wife. He is short, 
 strong, and fair, looks about thirty-five, with cordial 
 manners. He has just returned from Florence with his 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 287 
 
 wife, where for six weeks it was so cloudy that she did 
 not see the mountain line once. Almost everybody 
 was artist or poet. ... In the evening I went alone 
 to a party at Mrs. [Louise Chandler] Moulton's. . . . 
 Mrs. M. looked really jBnely in a lovely dress (" The 
 Gospel of good gowns ")•... The American delega- 
 tion was not to my taste. . . . Joaquin Miller . . . 
 Kate Field, looking very thin and worn, Julian 
 Hawthorne, Grace Greenwood and daughter, a simple 
 and rather pleasing girl who inherits her mother's 
 Pennsylvania accent. The hostess appeared extremely 
 well, and all was simple and in good taste. 
 
 June 32 
 
 Very warm, a sudden summer like ours. Went with 
 the Conways to two garden parties — one in town, a 
 mere reception with a little garden plot where people 
 sat and had frozen coffee and heard the band of Cap- 
 tain Morgan's militia regiment. The one attractive 
 woman there was lovely Mrs. Hennessy, the artist's 
 wife, who ought to be photographed as much as Mrs. 
 Langtry. She told me that when Joaquin Miller was 
 first introduced to her and an English friend at a 
 reception, he sat down between them and put his amas 
 round both, touching them. Both jumped up, and the 
 other asked Mrs. H., " Is this an American custom? " 
 He had quite a flirtation with Miss Hardy, daughter of 
 Sir Thomas Hardy, just dead, before they knew he had 
 a wife, and it is since renewed with the understanding 
 that he is to be divorced. I wish he would take her to 
 his moimtains and never reappear. The other party 
 
288 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 was much more elaborate and just like a pretty scene 
 from " Punch," an exquisite place — lawn, trees, and 
 one-storied cottage, front veiy old, and all covered 
 with " creepers " (they never say vine but of grape- 
 vine). When I say from " Punch," I mean the pretty 
 pictures. 
 
 At Datchet, neab Windsor, June 23 
 
 [Here the traveller stayed with an interesting young 
 couple, parishioners of Mr. Conway's.] 
 
 . . . After early tea we had the loveliest walk to 
 Eton and Windsor (which are really one village along 
 the Thames), through meadows more American than 
 English. . . . The Queen was there, so the apartments 
 were not open, but Mrs. Hickson has great energy and 
 was resolved to get me in to the funeral services of the 
 Bang of Hanover, to take place to-morrow, and went 
 to one official after another, though the funeral is to 
 be quite private in St. George's Chapel. It seemed to 
 me that the Queen might bury her old uncle in private 
 if she was a queen, but Mrs. H. thought otherwise. 
 But we failed after going through the castle yard and 
 cloisters and looking down on the fine view from the 
 terrace. . . . The night was warm and I had an im- 
 mense feather bed with blanket over it, such as you 
 find in English houses, but I put it on the floor and 
 slept on a hard mattress. 
 
 June 24 
 . . . Hickson and I went to Windsor and at last 
 got inside the castle just as the private service was 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 289 
 
 done for King George of Hanover . . . and saw all 
 come out. From one door came the Prince of Wales, 
 while the muflfled drums beat a roll and the guard 
 presented arms. I had no good look at him, but he 
 seemed like his pictures and good-looking. (Mrs. 
 Hickson said of the Royal family, " After all, it's bad 
 blood.") Just at the same time ladies in mourning 
 came out opposite me, the Royal princesses showing 
 solid German or English ankles as they got in their 
 carriages, while the Princess of Wales had pretty feet 
 and a light step like an American or a Frenchwoman. 
 Her eyes glanced brightly, too, through her mourning 
 veil. Then another carriage came to another door. 
 The small crowd of spectators moved and the big form 
 of John Brown showed Her Majesty approaching. 
 She came from a private door and bundled in, and men 
 around me said, rather disrespectfully, " Did you see 
 Johnny Brown? " These carriages were quiet, but with 
 the Royal lackeys in red dress-coats, black trousers, 
 and white waistcoats and ties, on the box. Many 
 gentlemen of the Court and foreigners walked from 
 the chapel to the Royal apartments. They were in 
 evening dress and wearing ribbons, and oddly trying 
 to look mournful for an ex-king whom they had never 
 seen. 
 
 ... By the way, Honey was himself a ritualist for 
 some years and used to hear confession. He says it was 
 such nonsense, practically : women confessing gener- 
 ally to having neglected public worship or being too 
 much devoted to a new sealskin cape. He used to 
 prescribe the non-wearing of the cape for a certain 
 
290 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 time. . . . Have I added about my parlor that it 
 has gratings in the windows to keep students from 
 getting in or out, as have the Oxford and Eton rooms 
 generally? 
 
 June 25 
 
 Oxford. . . . Later we (Honey and I) took a dog- 
 cart and a minute pony and drove out to Blenheim, 
 eight miles. . . . We drove past a house where 
 Chaucer lived, passed the great gate, picking up a 
 small boy as guide and supervisor, and drove through 
 part of the immense estate — the whole circuit being 
 -Eight miles. . . . 
 
 The finest trees are wonderfully large cedars of 
 Lebanon, but there is no end to the beauty of trees or 
 of walks along the lake, and these are varied, not the 
 vast and stately stiffness of Versailles, only the garden 
 spots are stiff and formal. But the treasures of art are 
 beyond description or comparison — room after room 
 filled with Biubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, and Carlo 
 Dolce. It seemed incredible that it should be a private 
 collection and I longed to spend hours and days there. 
 I understand how people come from the Continent 
 to England to study great masters. . . . Then the 
 library is fascinating — dozens of old editions of 
 Dante, Petrarch, and each classical author. There is 
 no Ubrarian, and when I asked the housekeeper how 
 often they were dusted or dried she said, " They have 
 not been touched for ten years." The Duke is Lord 
 Lieutenant of Ireland where he lives and does not care 
 for books. . . . An old man of seventy-eight went 
 
T'OREIGN TRAVELS 291 
 
 about with us who has been sixty years on the place; 
 he lives three miles off, must be there from seven to 
 five-thirty every day, sweeps the paths, etc.; has 
 seen four Dukes of Marlborough and is paid a shilling 
 a day. 
 
 June 26 
 Oxford Commemoration Day, . . . E. P. [Edward 
 Potter] went with us to the theatre at eleven, and our 
 tickets admitted us to the area of lower floor among the 
 dons and students — men only. . . . After a while, as 
 we waited an hour, the cheering began for various 
 things — for " Beaconsfield . . . and for the British 
 Empire " enthusiastic; then groans for Gladstone. 
 . . . Then the doors opened and the robed procession 
 came in, all the Doctors of Law (D.C.L.) in scarlet 
 gowns, including those about to be made: Lord 
 Hartington, tall and erect, but with heavy face; Lord 
 Napier, the general, with soldierly medals, scarlet 
 gown, and chapeau bras with white feathers, a pictur- 
 esque combination and received with enthusiasm; 
 Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, the great lawyer, big 
 and ponderous; our Edward Pierrepont, the most in- 
 ferior-looking of the lot. . • . My friend, Mr. Bryce, 
 made the Latin speech for each one amid many inter- 
 ruptions from the undergraduates. . . . There was 
 renewed enthusiasm over Napier, and then all were 
 convulsed when one sung the latest form of the " Jingo 
 song " : 
 
 " We don't want to fight, but, ' by Jingo,' if we do. 
 We won't go ourselves, we 'II send the mUd Hindoo." 
 
292 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Certainly these English are readier to " chaff " them- 
 selves than any one else. . , . The Professor of 
 Poetry's Latin speech fared little better, and the chief 
 prize essayist was tormented unmercifully, being much 
 too long — such courteous taunts, " Could n't you 
 leave a little of it out, sir? " " Could n't you get on a 
 little faster, sir? " " The ladies are all going to sleep, 
 sir," in the most dulcet and encouraging tones. ... I 
 should have said that when Pierrepont came, and 
 Bryce in guarded tones comphmented his country 
 rather than him, one said softly in nasal tones, " I 
 guess we know about that," and then sang, sotto voce, 
 a verse of " Yankee Doodle." ... I should say that a 
 conspicuous figure in Bachelor of Arts gown was a very 
 black youth from Africa with whom I had some talk. 
 They call him " King Cole." 
 
 June 27 
 
 Waked early with regret from my last night in 
 College. . . . One of the Hertford College guests was 
 an extraordinary little colonial Bishop of whom I must 
 tell — Bishop McDougall, of Ceylon, or Borneo. He 
 distinguished himself some years ago by taking com- 
 mand of an English ship at Borneo, and sinking boat 
 after boat of native pirates by running them down, he 
 himself steering; and he wrote such an animated ac- 
 count of the execution done by his own rifle as to 
 scandalize people much. He is a very striking-looking 
 man, short, very broad and strong, standing firmly on 
 legs clad in Episcopal knee-breeches; he is bronzed, 
 bald, and with a magnificent black and gray beard like 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 293 
 
 Weiss; he often wears a velvet skull cap, and as he 
 walked up the area at Commemoration in this and 
 his scarlet Doctor's gown, he was most effective to 
 the eye. 
 
 In Scotland, Colonel Higginson visited his cousin, 
 Frank Channing. 
 
 June 28 
 From Edinburgh to St. Fillan's (8.30 a.m. to 2 p.m.). 
 . . . All Scotland is literally becoming one vast game 
 preserve, moors letting as high (where there are red 
 deer) as £4000 or £20,000 for the season; a common 
 estimate is that each brace of grouse costs 10 shillings 
 (or $2.50). 
 
 June 29 
 St. Fillan's, Loch Earn. I am sitting in the most 
 delightful doorway . . . looking on the beautiful lake. 
 Loch Earn is seven miles long with steep, wooded 
 banks, soft and tinged with blue. . . . The house is 
 the last in the village but one, and there is only a road 
 between it and the loch. This morning one cart has 
 passed and one or two anglers — that is literally all. 
 I don't know how we are fed, but npbody comes iA 
 the house. . . . Opposite is a bare mountain 2200 feet 
 high (Ben Bhan) ; behind this on the left is the forest 
 of Glenartney — " lone Glenartney's hazel shade " — 
 and on the right is the shoulder of Benvoirlich. Thus 
 we are at the beginning of the " Lady of the Lake." 
 This morning, when I looked out first, 
 
 " the sun his beacon red 
 Had kindled on Benvoirlich's head," 
 
294 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 and in the barking of a pack of dogs across the lake I 
 
 could fancy 
 
 " The deep-mouthed bloodhound's heavy bay 
 Besounded up the rocky way." 
 
 This lake is north of Loch Katrine; and some of the 
 scenes of " The Legend of Montrose " took place along 
 here. I walked before breakfast along the lake, and 
 brought home a handful of great foxgloves, which I 
 never can resist or get used to their growing wild. 
 
 June 30 
 
 Such a hot day! I went to the little Free Kirk, 
 holding about one hundred people and full. . . . The 
 use of Sunday is severe, though; nobody would drive 
 except to church, and there is a law forbidding boats 
 on the loch. I took a long walk up on the moors behind 
 the house, getting perhaps fifteen hundred feet above 
 the sea by a stony path. ... It was utterly wild; 
 only chattering curlews soaring and plovers, with the 
 sweetest, wailing, flute-like notes. High up I followed 
 a brook and came upon the cellars and walls of deserted 
 cottages clustered along the brook. Frank has foimd 
 other such villages; the children born there are now 
 in Canada or Australia. That is the saddest aspect of 
 Scotland — men banished to make way for grouse. 
 
 London, July 10 
 
 Went to a charming garden party at Mr. Spottis- 
 woode's. President of the Royal Society, an eminent 
 chemist. . . . Mark Pattison is quite a lady's man in 
 a professional kind of way, and sweet Mrs. Smalley 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 295 
 
 calls him " that dear old Mark." She dresses exqui- 
 sitely and is always graceful. Presently I saw two tall, 
 slim, English-looking girls in the straightest possible 
 green dresses, and a boy and another girl. These 
 turned out to be the Smalleys and Miss Huxley. The 
 Smalleys inherit the father's muscles and have big 
 hands and feet; they are perhaps thirteen and nine. 
 . . . We had refreshments, but rather too hght for our 
 coming so far, bread and butter and strawberries, 
 whereas at other out-of-door garden parties there has 
 been quite a dinner. At six or so the vehicles were 
 ready for us, and " the country people " who had come 
 in their own carriages stood on the lawn, thirty or 
 forty, to see us off before leaving. As we drove back 
 there were more children than ever to cheer us and 
 throw hay and flowers, and the Smalleys and their 
 friend Huxley's daughter, who went on our drag, 
 threw them ha'pence and were in the highest spirits. 
 I went to London in the carriage (railroad) with a 
 pleasant man, Mr. Pigott, licenser of plays, the man 
 who says what is proper to act, and how long the skirts 
 of the dancers must be. 
 
 The random chronicles now range from London to 
 the Continent. 
 
 Pabis, July 19 
 
 . . . We board with Madame d'Harmenon, well 
 known to many Bostonians, and indeed when I sent 
 her my card she thought it was Henry H., whom she 
 had formerly taught. The Foote brothers (Henry and 
 
296 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Arthur) found her through a banker and say she knows 
 half Boston. She is a sunny, talkative, good-looking 
 Frenchwoman of about fifty, I suppose, with a son of 
 about twenty-three in the army, daughter Alix (Alice) 
 at home, and a little boy. There is also a speechless 
 artist husband at the other end of the table who avoids 
 everybody. Madame is the household, keeps house, 
 manages the money, gives lessons, and is adored by 
 her children and liked by all her boarders. . . . 
 
 I spent the best hours of that day (after moving) 
 at the Exposition, taking Mrs. Moulton (Louise 
 Chandler) there and showing her things. She is much 
 improved and developed by her London life and won- 
 derfully unspoiled by it. She has really had a success 
 among literary and artistic people such as is very rare. 
 Lord Houghton, for instance, gave her two breakfasts, 
 one on her arriving (to which Browning and Swinburne 
 came and Tennyson was asked) and one on the publi- 
 cation of her book of poems which has been far more 
 noticed and admired in England than at home. 
 
 July 20 
 
 Expedition to Fontainebleau. ... A dear little 
 boy sold photographs and I said, after buying one, 
 "Aimez-vous bien la republique Frangaise," and he 
 said, so prettily, " Ah, Monsieur, je suis encore trop 
 jeune pour y former d'opinion," or something like 
 that. It was a touch of high art, especially as he was 
 not much older than the republic. The old guide had 
 been sixty years in the forest and his father before him, 
 and he said he was there " comme un oiseau sur le nid." 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS , 297 
 
 July 23 
 In the evening for the first time saw acting! . . . 
 the great parts were by Sarah Bernhardt and Croisette. 
 ... It [" L'Etrangere "] is considered a rather moral 
 play by Alexandre Dumas fils, but, as Mrs. Tweed 
 said, French morality is a shade worse than French 
 immorality. 
 
 A few days later the traveller went to Normandy to 
 visit the Hennessys. 
 
 LeManoih 
 
 NEAB HONFLEUK, NoHMANOr 
 
 July 30 
 
 ... In the war with Prussia the Uhlans came as far 
 as Honfleur, but the fishermen had carried every boat 
 large and small across to Havre and the invaders could 
 not cross. The women all hid their linen (their great 
 treasure) under their cabbage-beds. Mrs. Hennessy 
 afterwards questioned a German servant as to what 
 they would have done had the French crossed the 
 Rhine, and she said, " We should have buried our 
 linen under our cabbage-beds." So that evidently the 
 soldiers of each army would have known just where to 
 look. The pretty Lisa, the maid here, has a lover, a 
 rich, young, handsome miller who is just conscripted 
 for five years so that they cannot be married, and she 
 is in despair. They dread the conscription so that 
 when this young man's elder brother was drawn, the 
 father, being refused permission to buy him off, 
 actually shot himself so that the young man, as the 
 eldest son of a widow, would be excused. 
 
298 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Lb Manoik, August 2 
 
 I don't think you could fancy any pleasanter life 
 for my particular taste, away from home, than a 
 Normandy chateau with nothing about it that is not 
 picturesque, perfect weather, a few pleasant grown- 
 ups, and half a dozen children to romp with. ... At 
 dusk Mrs. Hennessy has to make her rounds of the 
 outbuildings — where the servants are afraid to go 
 after sunset for fear of " seeing something " — to put 
 her various animals to bed; see that the rabbits are 
 shut in; that there are stones on the hencoops to keep 
 the foxes from overturning them; to collect the young 
 pigeons from the eaves of the sheds and shut them 
 away from the little owls who come in the night from 
 the ivied church tower to devour them. It is like a 
 scene in Mireio to see this wonderful woman [from 
 Middletown, Connecticut, originally], with three or 
 four of those soft white feathery things piled against 
 her bosom and held with difficulty together by her 
 small hands, conveying them along to the doors from 
 which the older pigeons have cast them out, and 
 scolding and soothing the whole cooing family into 
 peace. . . . 
 
 In the afternoon we had a charming drive among the 
 hills. . . . On the way we passed a colombier, or old 
 water-tower for pigeons, which made such bitterness 
 before the Revolution, when only nobles were allowed 
 to rear them and they [the pigeons] fed on the crops 
 of the peasants. Old people still remember the bitter 
 feeling, and now nobody is allowed to keep that old 
 breed of pigeons, but only a domestic breed that never 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 299 
 
 strays from home. I find nothing harder to realize than 
 that this was the country of the French Revolution 
 and that all these country churches were gutted then. 
 
 August 3. En route 
 
 With real regret I have torn myself away from this 
 charming place and feel quite lonely for a moment at 
 quitting the Hennessys. ... I had an hour at Lisieux, 
 which was delightful. Of the two churches I could 
 only see St. Jacques, not the cathedral. But the old 
 houses fulfilled my visions of Normandy picturesque. 
 They are quite beyond Honfleur, and there is a 
 single house which eclipses all in Chester — the house 
 of the Salamander in a very narrow street. It is four 
 stories high, not large, but the woodwork absolutely 
 covered with the quaintest old carving; every timber 
 end and upright has weird faces or figures, sometimes 
 in very high relief, the whole crowned by a great 
 salamander, which seems crawling down from the 
 ridgepole — this creature being the crest of King 
 Francis the First, to whom it belonged. Beneath that 
 roof Pierre Ronsard and Clement Marot very probably 
 sang and caroused and then went to confession in the 
 old church near by. Now the house is almost tottering 
 and the lower part is a clothing store of the cheap 
 grade. I lifted a coarse frock marked three francs to 
 enter the door where the beauty who threw the glove 
 to the lion may have passed out (see Browning's 
 poem " The Glove "). 
 
 From Normandy Colonel Higginson strayed into 
 the borderland of Germany and Switzerland. 
 
300 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 August 6, 1878, CoBLENTZ 
 
 . . . This morning I breakfasted opposite two Ger- 
 man students with fresh rosy faces, slit all over from 
 duels — one with four cuts on nose, lip, and cheek; 
 the other with one long one. . . . About half the 
 people are English and Americans. . . . One English- 
 woman had feet so small and pretty I said she could 
 not be English, and the Hartford ladies interviewed 
 her and she proved to be half French, which explained 
 it. I have never yet seen those supercilious EngUsh 
 of whom we hear; they seem just as approachable as 
 Americans. This English-French lady has been several 
 times up the Rhine and said she needed no guidebook 
 but Longfellow. As for Mark Twain, they all quote 
 him before they have spoken with you fifteen minutes 
 and always give him a place so much higher in Ktera- 
 ture than we do. I don't think any EngUsh prose 
 writer is so universally read. 
 
 August 7 
 
 . . . My German-English-Greek friend, Mr. Chera- 
 bin, went with me up to the fortress [Ehrenbreitstein]. 
 . . . Cherabin is an interesting companion, full of 
 activity and talk. He has no children, but is very 
 fond of them, but only of English children, he says, 
 declaring that German children are so repressed and so 
 over-schooled from five years old that they have no 
 life in them — " never wish to do mischief." The only 
 mischief they ever do is to throw snowballs sometimes 
 in winter, but they are always repressed for that; 
 English children alone have life and mischief. ... I 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 301 
 
 am struck with the unsoldierly air of the German sol- 
 diers on fatigue duty. They wear coarse white frocks, 
 etc., and look like common laborers, except that a man 
 will sometimes have a china pipe literally as long as my 
 umbrella. 
 
 August 19, Neuchatel-Beene 
 ... I had a very pleasant companion in the live- 
 liest little Swiss school-boy. ... He received a few 
 little seed-cakes and plums at Bienne with that sense 
 of enormous obligation so delightful in dealing with 
 the age of thirteen, and gave much information and 
 polite advice. ... I am still always taken for English 
 by Englishmen, but twice to-day was known as Ameri- 
 can by French Swiss — first by a bookseller who could 
 not or would not say exactly why, and then by my 
 little boy, who said on cross-examination that he saw 
 Boston on a newspaper I had, but he should have 
 known it from my speaking French; that the English 
 spoke with much more accent than Americans, which 
 is certainly true, our higher and more nasal voices help- 
 ing us on this side of the Channel, no doubt. Then he 
 said, " Monsieur n'aime pas les Anglais, n'est-ce pas? " 
 He seemed fresh from the history of the Revolution by 
 the way he spoke. I said that I liked the English very 
 well, but that being a republican I preferred my own 
 country and that seemed to content him. " J'aime 
 beaucoup les Americains," he said. (It was after the 
 plums.) 
 
 August 27, AT Lausanne 
 I am alone on the little wharf from which one of the 
 
302 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 boats with great lateen sails has with difficulty got 
 away — they are like the Fayal boats and are more 
 picturesque than any other. ... I breakfasted look- 
 ing into the garden where Gibbon finished his great 
 book. The day promises to be clear, but may not. 
 Here comes the boat — such a surprise! When I 
 stepped forward four ladies rose, of whom three said, 
 " Oh! " It was Mrs. Cheney and Mrs. W. H. Chan- 
 ning and their two respective daughters, all in Boston 
 waterproofs and looking as if just from the Woman's 
 Club. They, too, were going to Chillon as I was, and 
 we naturally joined forces. . . . Some one was fishing 
 from an upper window as we approached, which looked 
 peaceful. . . • I do not think the castle is a disappoint- 
 ment on the whole. It is now a sort of arsenal and 
 had Patrie et LibertS painted in large letters outside. 
 Afterwards we walked to Montreux to a beautiful ter- 
 race before a church, and waited there for the boat. 
 Theodore Parker used to sit there in his last illness. 
 
 Stalden, September 6, 7 p.m. 
 I have walked here from Visp (one and one-half 
 hours), and it is by far the most genuine bit of moun- 
 tain life I have seen. . . . My guide was a young 
 fellow of twenty who went round by his house to get 
 his old mother to hand him out his satchel with food. 
 I asked if he was a good son, and he hung his head and 
 said, " except about going to church." I thought this 
 so like mothers, the world round, probably. 
 
 The next foreign trip was made in 1897. At Gen- 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 303 
 
 eral Sir George Higginson's bidding, we visited his 
 home on the Thames. 
 
 July 15 
 
 Here we are at Sir George Higginson's beautiful 
 country-seat, which he inherited. The house is large 
 and part of it was built in Queen Elizabeth's time. 
 
 First experience of the simple ways of English 
 houses, but I do not like so much waiting upon. 
 
 From this visit we returned to London. 
 
 July 17 
 
 Afternoon at Alma-Tadema's studio, a fascinating 
 and picturesque house of which the studio is the centre; 
 his wife has one also. He is a rigorous Dutchman, 
 cordial in his praise of American art as seen in La 
 Farge's stained glass and Tiffany's glass-work. Says 
 America leads the world in these. 
 
 In September Colonel Higginson wrote from Paris: 
 
 - The best thing I have done is to go to the top of the 
 Eiffel Tower, twice as high as any other building on 
 earth. There was a high wind when we got up and the 
 building did not tremble. It seemed to me as great a 
 triumph of man in dealing with matter as were the 
 Pyramids — perhaps greater. Another great triumph 
 of men (or women) over accidents is the cheerful and 
 active life of a young [American] girl here . . . who 
 was born without legs and with only one arm; she is 
 full of activity, a capital traveller (on a httle portable 
 chair), speaks four languages, and has a fine voice for 
 
804 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGTNSON 
 
 singing, highly trained. She is as great a wonder as 
 Helen Keller. 
 
 Invehsnaid Hotel 
 Loch Lomond, September 21 
 
 Here we are in the bonnie Highlands. We . . . had 
 a pleasant Scotchman (a clergyman) for companion 
 as far as Aberfoyle, which we reached about eleven- 
 thirty, riding through moors where the heather was like 
 purple cushions. He pointed out the mountains by 
 name and said, " They say in the colonies that a 
 Scotchman is a man who keeps the Sabbath Day and 
 everything else he can lay his hands on! " 
 
 In the spring of 1901 we again " crossed," this time 
 on an excursion steamer for Italy. 
 
 March, 1901 
 
 Then came Tangier. . . . We saw a wedding pro- 
 cession pass the house with a veiled bride in a curtained 
 arrangement on a donkey, and men before and behind 
 with lighted candles round their hats. 
 
 March 27 
 
 . . . On Sunday we walked through two vast and 
 wonderful markets (it was market-day), among in- 
 numerable Arabs mostly wearing a few flapping gar- 
 ments of bagging, but some of the richer ones dark 
 blue. The women, barelegged to the knees, with faces 
 muflBed, and little girls always had something over 
 their heads, but had no great care to keep the face 
 covered. Bright-eyed babies in pouches on back. 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 805 
 
 Every conceivable thing was carried on their shoulders; 
 even large sheep and goats were held by their legs like 
 shawls around their necks. There were many beggars, 
 but our alert young guide kept them off. . . . The 
 streets are so narrow that it is hard to pass a loaded 
 donkey, and they are fearfully dirty. . . . After 
 lunch we all went to ride on mules (I!) to different 
 points — through the market again, now thinner, but 
 with more specialties, men peddling water held in goat- 
 skins (with brass cups on a brass chain, which they 
 rattle to attract attention, water being two cents per 
 cup); and a juggler covered with bells and dancing 
 about. . . . We aimed especially for the Sultan's 
 gardens (each city or district has a sultan), and as 
 we rode up and down sandy and sometimes muddy 
 hills, there was an endless stream of people alongside; 
 poor peasants going home from market to their huts 
 miles off — all wretchedly dressed and mostly women. 
 One of us asked if these people lived in pretty thatched 
 huts of turf which we sometimes passed, and the an- 
 swer was, " Noi that is where the rich people live." 
 The road was bordered with aloes and eucalyptus and 
 what looked like gorse, prickly pear, and palmetto. 
 At last we came to a high, locked door, and after 
 pounding were admitted by a picturesque, Greek- 
 looking youth, and were soon led among rough, neg- 
 lected paths among innumerable orange trees (with 
 both flowers and fruits) and kept laden with oranges 
 [which we were allowed to freely pick]. After this we 
 were led back through an old ruined castle, now used 
 for a city prison, where our girls were led in and saw the 
 
S06 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 poor fellows behind gratings, who pointed to their 
 mouths to show hunger. . . . The British gave up 
 Tangier in 1684 after twenty-two years' occupancy. 
 (It came to them in 1662 as a part of the dowry of 
 Catherine of Braganza who married Charles II.) They 
 blew up a fine mole or pier they had built, and there 
 are still great fragments of rock which look like persons 
 praying or veiled women, so that the Arab women 
 sometimes go and kneel to them, when the tide is low. 
 . . . [The name of] one young Portuguese with whom 
 I talked French . . . was Quillinan, nephew or grand- 
 nephew of the Quillinan who married Dora Words- 
 worth — so little is this world I 
 
 March 23, 1901 
 
 Last night we all went with our bright young 
 Spanish guide ... to one of the coffee-house concerts. 
 . . . Ernest led us down the little paved lane we call a 
 street and upstairs into a room decked to the ceiling 
 with all sorts of Moorish arms and pipes and orna- 
 ments, and among them two cheap American clocks, 
 one of which had stopped. Before us was a pile of 
 slippers which the Moors had dropped because the 
 music is considered religious, though hilarious. All 
 over the floor squatted turbaned men, in every variety 
 of flowing raiment, the older usually wearing white 
 turbans to show they were married and the younger 
 having red, as bachelors. There were some thirty in 
 all of whom ten were the band, thrumming various 
 stringed instruments; others were smoking, often with 
 a preparation of opium in a long, delicate pipe which 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 307 
 
 they showed us; as they also did their plain guitars 
 and violins, often beautifully delicate and two-stringed; 
 while others had Spanish instruments, richly deco- 
 rated. It all seemed a doubtful scene for ladies, but 
 the only other guests were a Scotch Presbyterian 
 minister and his wife, who came from San Francisco 
 and had crossed from Gibraltar with us, so we con- 
 cluded that it was safe. We were each expected to take 
 a cup of coffee for the benefit of the establishment. 
 . . . Nothing stronger was sold and there was absolute 
 decorum and courtesy. The singing was earnest and 
 sometimes lively, almost uproarious, but never actu- 
 ally harsh and discordant, though there seemed no 
 really fine voices. The whole thing reminded me curi- 
 ously of the " shouts " of my black soldiers, as many of 
 the blacks here look ]ust like them, and as some who 
 had no instruments clapped their hands in unison, as 
 my men did, though there was no going round and 
 round in a circle as they used to do, but all kept their 
 seats on the ground. No women (native) were there, 
 but one of the guests got up after a little while and 
 went out with a little child in his arms. Gradually 
 more Europeans came in, chiefly young English fel- 
 lows, who were evidently learning to smoke after the 
 Moorish fashion and sat on the floor taking lessons, 
 and also learning to take snuff after the Moorish way, 
 which is to press out a little from a box that has a 
 spring to it, upon the palm of the hand, and then rub 
 the nose against it. All this accession of visitors seemed 
 to cheapen the scene a little and we came out after an 
 hour or so. 
 
308 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 Our guide had engaged a " man with a lamp " to go 
 with us through dark streets. The man named Ma- 
 homet . . . walked before us with a large lantern of 
 red and yellow glass. There were openings into dingy 
 houses, and Moors crouching on street corners. 
 
 The next letter is from Granada: 
 
 We are much interested in the Spaniards, who seem 
 more alert, ruddy, and picturesque than the Italians. 
 The men seemed nearer the Moors as to covering their 
 faces and like to throw a scarf or the end of a cloak over 
 mouth and chin. When I was in college, Spanish 
 cloaks were in fashion and were thrown over the left 
 shoulder a second time so as to partly cover the face, 
 and the well-to-do people have just that garment now; 
 and sometimes a peaceful citizen looks like a pictur- 
 esque bandit, glancing round a corner. They seem a 
 stronger race than the Italians and are more turbulent, 
 so that you see more soldiers about. 
 
 For the Alhambra I can say that it is utterly beyond 
 expectation. . . . Some things cannot even be hinted 
 at in the photographs, especially the ceilings which 
 I had never seen in the least described — an extraor- 
 dinary fretwork, as if made by hives of celestial 
 bees. The endless tracery of the walls, moreover, 
 although made in stucco, has always the efifect of sohd 
 marble, and it is hard to think of it as anything else. 
 It was originally made by pressing iron moulds on the 
 soft stucco, but this art is lost and the modern imita- 
 tions are carved more coarsely with knives. . . . 
 Irving's " Alhambra " is with one (or at least with me) 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 309 
 
 at every moment, and all is wonderfully little changed; 
 only he has had rooms in the building itself and a 
 Spanish family lived there. One thinks of him on the 
 lovely balconies, looking from the Alhambra itself to 
 the Generalife (or summer palace) across quaint prim 
 gardens of box and flowers, with the tops of trees below 
 the level of one's feet. All the trees have grown since 
 his time and are a dense grove everywhere. Only a few 
 of the buildings are ruined or even uncovered, and 
 more and more care is taken of them. In some places 
 three inches of plaster, put on by the Christians, are 
 all being gradually scraped off, showing more and more 
 of the beautiful work beneath. ... In one room 
 one hundred and sixty different iron patterns were 
 used. There is much color left in the ceilings, but 
 httle on the walls, yet it is not needed. Of course there 
 is no human figure or face portrayed; it is merely an 
 orderly wilderness of beautiful shapes and intricate 
 patterns. 
 
 CasteiiLaiiimabe, April 16 
 
 ... I saw Pompeii first from the terrace of this 
 house, a dark line of dingy, low buildings . . . lying in 
 sullen distinctness among the white and buff houses 
 which prevail elsewhere. I could hardly believe my 
 eyes, so long have I dreamed about it; yet half an 
 hour's drive takes one there . . . and some days later 
 we went. At first I chafed at the commonness of the 
 entrance — you practically go through the grounds of 
 a hotel and a horde of guides and vehicles make it 
 commonplace. I longed to be left alone with the lizards 
 
310 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 who seemed the only fit residents there, but I kept the 
 guide with the girls as far as I could, and dreamed 
 about myself. I cannot see how any one can be dis- 
 appointed. It is not as Herculaneum is, dark and 
 underground, but all open and sunny and continuous, 
 simply a dead city unroofed and silent with the cart- 
 tracks worn in the stone pavements and signs of use in 
 many such ways about the broken walls. The city was 
 fortunately on a hill and only filled in with ashes and 
 dirt; whereas Herculaneum was solidly buried in ac- 
 tual lava and had to be mined out, a thing so difficult 
 that much less work has been done on it, yet it is be- 
 lieved that it was really the more important place of 
 the two, and all the large bronze groups in the Naples 
 Museum have come from it while the pretty frescoes 
 and the innumerable dainty things are from Pompeii. 
 Yet as only about half the ground of the latter is yet 
 explored, it is too soon to predict what may be; but 
 all the larger halls and houses are there and the most 
 interesting and pretty are the latest explored, the walls 
 tinted so exquisitely, red predominating, and such 
 pretty groups of little winged Loves. The latest of the 
 houses remain just as they were found, and it is 
 infinitely more effective than to see the same things 
 transferred to the Naples Museum; yet this has to be 
 done, they say, to save the colors from fading out. 
 Then all the floors in private houses are laid in mosaic, 
 though this has to be covered with earth except here 
 and there. The rooms are small and dark, often with 
 only one small window in the roof, and this seems so 
 strange. On the other hand, the public baths are 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 311 
 
 magnificently large and elaborate, the water pipes still 
 there which supplied them all — some of these still 
 flowing. The ornamentation of the baths was most 
 elaborate and can still be traced; for instance, a long 
 row of square apertures where the bathers left their 
 clothes, and these all separated by beautifully carved 
 little heads. All the bathrooms have cornices or fres- 
 coed ceilings; and the walls are hollow, with apertures 
 to let the heat through. No modern bath-houses rival 
 them. In the shops, markets, kitchens, etc., you see 
 the same ingenious contrivances, though the small 
 articles of jewelry are to be sought at the Naples 
 Museum, where it takes time to study them out among 
 the many things from other places. The main impres- 
 sion felt at Pompeii is that of an essentially luxurious 
 and almost trivial people, with no signs of the earnest- 
 ness of the greater Greek or even Roman sculpture. 
 Not that there are not figures of deities and represen- 
 tations of religious rites, but you do not feel that they 
 represent the real life of the people, and perhaps did 
 not anywhere. The theatre and larger amphitheatre 
 are very well preserved and real and make all our 
 modern, wooden-seated structures seem trivial and 
 transient. 
 
 EoME, May 12 
 ... Of the places I saw in that region [Naples] 
 Herculaneum interested me most, and all the more 
 because it is so neglected; nobody else seemed to go 
 to it. . . . It was to me far more interesting than 
 Pompeii, first as representing a far higher and more 
 
SU THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 earnest type of civilization, as shown by the fact that 
 all the large works of art in the Naples Museum are 
 from Herculaneum, and secondly, because the iron 
 solidity of the lava walls, with ends of implements or 
 works of art sticking out here and there, waiting to be 
 quarried, seems to make its exploration a work far 
 more heroic than to shovel away the earth and ashes 
 from the Pompeian surface. In all, Herculaneum be- 
 longs to Gi;eek tradition and Pompeii to the Ughter 
 mood of Rome in its dechne. The latter is charming 
 and graceful, but represents a decadent, watering- 
 place sort of life; and it will be a good thing when it is 
 all explored and the world comes back to the graver 
 civilization of Herculaneum. 
 
 . • . We have pleasant calls or cards or invitations 
 from old and new acquaintances — the American 
 minister, the artists Richard Greenough and Vedder, 
 Luigi Monti (formerly teacher at Harvard), and 
 others. Those who interested me most are ecclesiastics, 
 for whom I have letters which Miss MetcaK got for me 
 and through whom I hope to get a shade nearer to the 
 inner life of the Catholic Church, beyond the merely 
 spectacular. A very interesting man spent the evening 
 with me, Monsignor O'Connell, who has lived here 
 thirty or forty years and to whom Archbishop Keane 
 gave me a letter. He is of Virginian birth with the 
 pleasant Southern manner, and has also plenty of 
 Irish humor. He is strong in the belief that the old 
 simplicity and village-like quality of the Roman 
 peasant is lost with the dependence of the forestieri 
 and that it is only in country villages that one finds it 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 313 
 
 preserved: they have grown dependent on patronage 
 of people they despise as essentially as the Hindoo or 
 the Chinese look down upon Europeans. To my sur- 
 prise he volunteered the remark that this is eminently 
 true of the priesthood, and that every non-Italian 
 priest feels it from the beginning to the end and soon 
 finds that there is no higher promotion for him. The 
 Church authorities wish the Church to be absolutely 
 Italian and the few appointments outside carry no 
 weight in them; the secretary of the Propaganda does 
 not even know French. The only foreign prelate who 
 has ever conquered this antagonism, even for a mo- 
 ment, he says, was Cardinal Manning, and he mainly 
 because he contributed, just at the right time, his 
 immense support to the doctrine of Papal Infallibility; 
 as a result he swayed the Pope in the direction of labor 
 reform and the governments of Europe had to imite 
 and sway him back. 
 
 Flobence, May 24 
 We reached this lovely place last Tuesday and have 
 found the truth of what my friend Monsignor Brandi, 
 a most attractive Jesuit, said in Rome, " You will 
 find Florence a very ladylike town compared with 
 Rome — all clean and neat." It is wholly diflFerent 
 from Rome where such an immense variety of thought 
 pressed on one all the while: but here life seems 
 simpler and with fewer cross-currents and overpower- 
 ing thoughts pressing in. Our window looks out on the 
 beautiful (though yellow) Arno, with a dam trans- 
 versely crossing and yielding a perpetual waterfall day 
 
314 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 and night; and fishing boats are always coining and 
 going. 
 
 Venice, May 29 
 
 ... At last the " City by the Sea " showed itself 
 and all sorrows were forgotten. ... I do not see how 
 any one can be disappointed in Venice, because it is 
 so exactly what has been told; but it touches the im- 
 agination yet more than one expects, and is not really 
 hurt by the long, inflated sentences in which Ruskin 
 tells its tale. The pervading feeling is of the with- 
 drawal of a former splendor, now crumbling and 
 sinking, and the presence of a new and foreign world 
 of mere sight-seers and critics. . . . 
 
 It is no matter how much one hears about Venice 
 beforehand; it is really more unlike any other place 
 than one can imagine. . . . You can walk to any part 
 of the city, but by devious little narrow ways, like ants 
 burrowing into an ant-hill; there are shops and often 
 beautiful ones in these little ant-hills; and the only 
 exception to this is the one great square of Piazza San 
 Marco. . . . Then all Venice goes there for dinner or 
 ices, or for coffee after dinner at sunset, and we have 
 been there several times, and how the young Italians 
 do stroll by and stare at our two stalwart girls! 
 
 In making a call at a private house (called usually a 
 palace) you pause on a step usually covered with dirty 
 water and look up at a door usually old and battered; 
 you open and look through to a garden enclosed within 
 the house itseH, and then the door shuts and all with- 
 out seems left far behind. This garden, if large, is in 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 815 
 
 the rear, but oftener in the middle of the house, and 
 the rooms open upon it and into each other, with no 
 connecting entry. Mr. Eugene Benson, the artist, who 
 lives in one of them, says that their arrangement is 
 the relic of a seafaring race and built on the plan of a 
 ship's staterooms. ... In a remarkable old palazzo 
 bequeathed by the last heir of the city, and preserved 
 with everything unchanged, the rooms are hardly more 
 than a series of closets, each with some diflPerent class 
 of paintings in it, or with revolving stands of designs 
 of great painters, or with a collection of books or manu- 
 scripts or coins. The paintings usually reach to the 
 ceiling, and the furniture is rich, but extremely simple 
 and free from French display. One of the finest 
 palaces, the Rezzonico, begun in 1678, is that in which 
 Browning died, and his son (whom we saw at Florence) 
 now owns it, though he and his aunt do not live there 
 much, but chiefly at Asolo among the mountains. In 
 this palace (near here and on the Grand Canal as we 
 are) the rooms are magnificently high, perhaps forty 
 feet, and the great main hall (more marked in this 
 palace than usual) was used till lately for a chapel of 
 the Church of England. The house is full of memorials 
 of the two poets; for instance. Browning's writing- 
 desk, much like one in our hall at Cambridge, but 
 plainer. You open it upon a pile of letters addressed 
 to him, a photograph of his wife's tomb at Florence 
 with memoranda in his hand of some alterations to be 
 made, and then a pile of written sheets of " The Ring 
 and the Book " with various readings. There are many 
 portraits and busts of the two poets, especially two 
 
316 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 early pen-and-ink drawings of Mrs. B. far more at- 
 tractive than any I have seen engraved. . . . There 
 was on the wall a framed playbill of the occasion when 
 " Strafford " was performed at Covent Garden in 
 1837; and in an alcove a copy of the inscription on 
 the Casa Guidi house at Florence in which it is said of 
 her that she made through her verse a golden ring 
 (/ece del suo verso aurea anello) between Italy and 
 England. I liked it that B. should have wished a 
 duphcate of this within the house. 
 
 From Venice we journeyed to the Tyrol. 
 
 Tai, June 20, 1901 
 . . . We left Belluno yesterday afternoon. . . . We 
 passed at a leap into the climate and scenery of 
 Switzerland and it is a great delight. Margaret and I 
 walked this morning to Pieve, a village a mile from 
 here, along the brow of a beautiful, deep, green valley, 
 full of flowers everywhere, with snow-capped moun- 
 tains on the other side and rivulets running down; all 
 this in the brilliant sunlight. Pieve was the birthplace 
 and early home of Titian and his early boyhood 
 sketches and a variety of early works are there, with 
 the house of his grandfather, a quaint and now dilapi- 
 dated little place. 
 
 CoKTiNA, June 26 
 
 ... I have never seen so many wild flowers any- 
 where — Colorado coming the nearest — not merely 
 the quantity of species (we have found about sixty so 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 317 
 
 far), but the great numbers of each, whole acres of 
 yellow or blue or purple. For instance, the little lady's- 
 delight will make an acre of ground look yellow. . . . 
 Those we found include some of the commonest in 
 America, buttercup, dandelion, whiteweed, clover, etc., 
 and many most interesting. 
 
 The people here are the most interesting I have seen, 
 with all the picturesqueness of the Itahans, but with 
 a splendidly healthy and solid look and sometimes a 
 dehcate beauty; the children almost always very rosy 
 and with a quaint, old-fashioned look. They come by 
 to school every morning with books and satchels, and 
 all leam to read and write in two languages, Italian 
 and German. I went also to an industrial school where 
 the boys are taught to make all sorts of nice inlaying in 
 wood and ivory and wire, all brought to a smooth 
 surface by acids and fiUng. It was curious to see them 
 all at work on this, instead of the machinery and in- 
 genious processes of our schools. The girls take no 
 share in this, but have a school for making lace and 
 embroidery, which they do beautifully. They are very 
 honest, and you do not have to beat them down on 
 everything as in Italy, and there are hardly any beg- 
 gars. ... A funny thing happened in connection with 
 an Italian " courier maid " whom we sent to Liverpool 
 with G. She was recommended to us by Rev. Dr. 
 Robertson, of the Presbyterian mission at Venice. . . . 
 In crossing the Channel to England she was fearfully 
 seasick for the first time, and in all the interval kept 
 constantly appealing to the Madonna and every saint 
 in the calendar, forgetting all her Protestantism! 
 
318 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Innsbhtjck, July 1 
 
 . . . We came here from Cortina on Friday, be- 
 ginning with a drive of eighteen mile? over the most 
 superb mountain passes on a glorious morning: then 
 taking the cars at Tohlbach and coming through here, 
 still in fine scenery with streaks of snow on the moun- 
 tains. . . . We had also, just at the end, a gay party 
 of Oxford students, mountain climbers, one of whom 
 turned out to be still another Wordsworth, nephew of 
 the very superior man I met at Capri and named W.W. 
 like him with his grand-uncle Christopher's name 
 prefixed. Here we have met for the second time my 
 old playmate, Mrs. Swan of Cambridge, who at 
 seventy-six goes round water-color sketching through 
 the Continent. . . . But the people we meet, whether 
 English or American, are rarely of especial interest, 
 the latter perhaps the more commonplace, though the 
 former ask more original questions. . . . But the full 
 tide of summer travel has not begun, and perhaps we 
 do not see the best, and perhaps they may be equally 
 disappointed in us. Women largely preponderate, 
 perhaps for the same cause — the early season. Our 
 spoken language is already a curious mixture of 
 English, French, German, and Italian words; but 
 there is no doubt of the steady increase of English 
 over French everywhere around us. . . . We enjoyed 
 the colossal figures in the Hofkirche here and they 
 give a wholly pecuUar sensation. 
 
 From the Lake region, Colonel Higginson wrote: 
 
FOREIGN TRAVELS 319 
 
 WiNDEMERE, August 1 
 ... I am more and more struck with the fact that 
 the mass of summer " trippers " who pour through the 
 Lake region, almost wholly English, view it simply as 
 a place for excursions and care absolutely nothing for 
 the literary or personal associations with the place. 
 I usually find, on sounding them, that they do not 
 know any minor name associated with the region as 
 those of De Quincey and Professor Wilson (" Christo- 
 pher North ") and hardly anybody beyond Words- 
 worth and perhaps Southey. This is like the utter 
 want of English travellers at Stratford-on-Avon, a 
 fact with which every American is struck. It is so 
 different from the throng of visitors to Cambridge and 
 Concord in America. ... It seems to me that the 
 Boer War has intensified the love of royalty every- 
 where, and I get no glimpse anywhere, even in the 
 newspapers, of that strong republican minority of 
 which one caught sight thirty years ago. In this 
 respect the late Queen's moderate reign has been 
 perhaps an evil as commending institutions bad in 
 themselves, and perhaps Thackeray's " Four Georges " 
 builded better than they knew. 
 
 Grasmebs, August 4 
 . . . My wife and I drove out to Rydal Mount. . . . 
 My host took me ... up to the little upper-story 
 room where the poet [Wordsworth] died; and he 
 described to me how his widow lived there till her 
 death years after, always coming down the steep 
 stairway unaided, leaning on the rail, she being bhnd, 
 
S20 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 while the younger members of the household looked up 
 in perpetual anxiety lest she should fall. We stayed 
 as long as seemed discreet, and came away very grate- 
 ful to the kindly hosts; English people are always so 
 hospitable when you are once inside their walls. . . . 
 After this we drove to Dove Cottage, Wordsworth's 
 early home. . . . What interested me most were his 
 little old-fashioned skates, because in his " Prelude " 
 there is the only description which gives the record of 
 what skating is to a boy, and it is also the only glimpse 
 
 of what these lakes are in winter. 
 
 August 18 
 
 ... At Keswick lives my friend Canon Rawnsley. 
 . . . He is the King of all poetical localities in the 
 Lake region and his books . . . are the best guide. 
 He is vicar of a picturesque old church and, having a 
 rich wife and no children, spends a good deal of money 
 himself in buying lots, opening paths, erecting me- 
 morials, etc., and raising money for such things; and 
 told us where to go and went about with us. 
 
 Ltnmouth, Noeth Devon, September 8 
 
 Another day we went to see the staghound meet; 
 a scene out of Washington Irving — the red-coated 
 hunters, the thirty-five lithe and active and eager dogs, 
 the whole countryside gathered to see them " throw 
 off " and track the deer. After all they did not reach 
 him, but he raised his superb horns among the bushes 
 not far from where we were sitting and disappeared. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CAMBRIDGE IN LATER LIFE 
 
 These letters, when not otherwise specified, were 
 written to Mr. Higginson's sister. The first one refers 
 to the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the 
 settlement of Cambridge when a reception was given 
 to Longfellow by grammar-school children. 
 
 December 31, 1880 
 . . . The morning celebration was a charming 
 scene; the way the eleven hundred children received 
 Holmes and Longfellow was delightful, and L. looked 
 infinitely picturesque in a richly furred wrapper, with 
 his long white hair and beard. 
 
 October 30. 1881 
 
 ... I had called on the Freemans at Tremont 
 House; he is an ordinary-looking little squat English- 
 man with bushy beard; she is cheery and jolly. The 
 thing that strikes them as strange in America is to see 
 black women in the streets; they had hardly seen even 
 black men before. She yearns to see a black baby, but 
 they go soon to a son married in Virginia and will see 
 plenty. 
 
 I heard a good answer at Sunday-School from a 
 little Irish child: "Where do you live?" "On the 
 Ma'sh, mum "; then eagerly, " It 's the Old Cambridge 
 Ma'sh, mum." The aristocratic distinction still holds. 
 
322 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 December 8, 1881 
 
 Professor Bryce is staying here for three days, and 
 last night we had about thirty people to meet him. 
 . . . To-night I dine with Bryce at the Charles Per- 
 kins's before his lecture; he is very easy and agreeable. 
 
 June 30, 1883 
 
 I have not seen what Mr. Venable has written about 
 Carlyle; but he is doubtless the agreeable old gentle- 
 man \^ith whom I dined at Sir Frederick Pollock's 
 and who seemed so much like a living Horace Wal- 
 pole. He has written the " Annual Obituary " in the 
 " Times " for many years and knows everybody. I 
 should think him candid and fair-minded. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle I have not read yet, but it must be a 
 tragic book. Charles Norton said of the " Reminis- 
 cences " that he did not think Froude loved Carlyle, 
 or he could not have done anything so cruel. I think 
 you will be surprised at the self-restraint and good 
 taste of Norton's notes to the " Emerson-Carlyle 
 Correspondence." For a man so set in his opinions, 
 I think this quite remarkable. 
 
 We who are complaining of the aftermath of war, 
 so soon after it has actually ceased, may read with 
 surprise this remark of Charles Francis Adams, nearly 
 twenty years after the close of the Civil War: 
 
 August 6, 1883 
 C. F. Adams, Jr., spent the morning here. He thinks 
 the country not yet recovered from the tremendous 
 
CAMBRIDGE IN LATER LIFE 323 
 
 excitement of war and demands quiet more than any- 
 thing; hence the greatest weakness of [Governor] 
 Butler's position. 
 
 Thinks there must be a class of professional politi- 
 cians, but that there is never a time of excitement 
 when a man of character and energy cannot ride over 
 them. 
 
 His grandfather, P. C. Brooks, was at time of death 
 the richest man in New England (over two mUUons), 
 this thirty-five years ago. But his annual expenses for 
 city and country house, greenhouse, etc., were but 
 six thousand dollars a year. 
 
 November 28, 1883 
 This morning I spent in taking Matthew Arnold 
 to schools in Boston: Normal Art, Boys' Latin, Boys' 
 English High, and ditto ditto girls. He is very cordial 
 and appreciative, not in the least cynical or patroniz- 
 ing; shook hands with all the teachers as friendly as if 
 up for oflBce; they all liked him, I think. He is about 
 my height, rather slender, with a Jewish cast of face, 
 and some gaucherie of manner, but always kindly and 
 cordial, takes your arm or puts his hand on your 
 shoulder. He is slow to comprehend, . . . and is still 
 trying to find out what a "primary school" is or 
 how many pounds sterling twenty-five hundred dollars 
 represent; and he sometimes says things awkwardly, 
 meaning no harm, as when he said to Ellen Emerson of 
 her father in England, " I understand he wished to 
 see me," which offends Boston and Concord, but really 
 meant nothing. I have heard him say nothing uppish 
 
S24 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 and don't think he felt it. He is much touched with 
 the familiarity he finds among teachers with his 
 father's work. It was amusing to hear him lamenting 
 over his inability to hear Phillips Brooks, when hardly 
 any one can hear hi'un. It is commonly said that he is 
 making himself unpopular, but I don't see why. He 
 has liked every place where he has lectured but 
 Worcester; he did not wish to lecture there because 
 he had " never heard of such a place "; and only two 
 hundred came to hear him. Probably he does not 
 realize that the general disappointment must affect 
 his lectures. 
 
 December 22, 1883 
 You 'd have been amused to see Pere Hyacinthe 
 and me at Mrs. Cilley's, comparing photographs of 
 ourselves with our babies. His is now the sweetest 
 little boy of eight or nine with the most winning little 
 French ways and the most delicious way of speaking 
 in either dialect. ... I was much pleased with le 
 p^re and Mme. Loyson, both; he is short and stout, 
 rosy and beaming, the type of one of Beranger's cheery 
 and kindly priests. He talks with great eagerness and 
 cordiality and had been reading the French version 
 of my history, which his little boy has; he has talked 
 chiefly about French and American republicanism 
 and seemed full of thought. 
 
 The next letter was written during the presidential 
 campaign of 1884, when Mr. Higginson as a " mug- 
 wump " was very active in behalf of Cleveland, speak- 
 ing on successive nights in many different towns. 
 
CAMBRIDGE IN LATER LIFE 825 
 
 Univbbsitt Cltjb, October 30, 1884 
 . . . New York is fairly seething; every day there 
 is some demonstration; first the business men's pro- 
 cessions for Cleveland and Blaine respectively; then 
 the review of troops before Cleveland; then a great 
 dinner to Blaine at Delmonico's; to-day an open-air 
 meeting in Wall Street; Saturday another business 
 men's procession for Cleveland. All this in a steady 
 rain. Young men go by with badges for one candidate 
 or the other and • . . business is practically suspended; 
 nobody talks of anything but politics. 
 
 On Tuesday, the day of military review, Governor 
 Cleveland was at my hotel. ... I sent up my card 
 and was at once admitted and cordially received. I 
 found him a large man, nearly as tall as I and heavily 
 built . . . not exactly clumsy and with a certain heavy 
 dignity or at least imposing quality. His face is better 
 and worse than his pictures; better in expression, but 
 somewhat disfigured by smallpox and therefore de- 
 cidedly plain, but with a very good clear eye and a 
 frank and honest though not handsome mouth. He 
 has not an air of polish; rather what we would call a 
 Western than Eastern type, but prepossessing through 
 frankness and strength. He seemed quite absorbed in 
 the canvass and at once asked me about it, but showed 
 no pettiness. . . . No one could see him, I think, and 
 regard him as a weak man, but the contrary; and he 
 makes an impression of essential manliness and even 
 goodness, but not of refined manners, while he has too 
 much simplicity and good sense to commit any special 
 gaucherie. 
 
326 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Colonel Higginson was easily moved by any tale 
 of distress; and when ex-Govemor Moses, of South 
 Carolina, lately released from Sing Sing, called on 
 him, sending in the card of a prominent Southerner, 
 his unsuspecting host readily responded to the appeal 
 for a loan of money, and when Moses was arrested and 
 confined in the East Cambridge jail, kept him suppUed 
 with reading matter. 
 
 January 31, 1885 
 
 To see Moses in Jail at East Cambridge by his re- 
 quest. He a good deal broken down and unnerved; 
 said I could not abhor his crime more than he did; 
 that he was not all bad, but easily influenced; that 
 he had done good to many, but had had no helping 
 hand. Said the first time for years that he had a chance 
 was in getting a position at Chicago • . . and this my 
 complaint of him had overthrown. Since then he had 
 lived the life of a fugitive, worse than prison. Even 
 when at liberty, his days were agony and nights hell. 
 Asked only for a companion in cell, and was chiefly 
 anxious I should know meant no harm by getting my 
 photo. Reminded me that his first aHenation from 
 friends was through his siding with the blacks whom I 
 had befriended. Would not take my hand at first. 
 In short, worked skillfully on my feelings, while not 
 committing himself when I spoke of his having as- 
 sumed a name or having swindled others. 
 
 September 15, 1889 
 ... I enjoyed my Guilford [Connecticut] trip. It is 
 an old town on the Sound full of old houses, one of 
 
CAMBRIDGE IN LATER LIFE 327 
 
 them two hundred and fifty years old this year, the 
 oldest in the United States, a stone house in perfect 
 condition. There Rev. John Higginson married Parson 
 Whitfield's daughter. All the old houses were labelled 
 with the year they were built and often with the names 
 of the earlier residents; so that it was like stepping 
 back two hundred and fifty years. I went to a large 
 reception, where everybody, on being introduced to 
 everybody else, would begin by explaining his right 
 to be there. " You see my great-grandmother was a 
 Terry," etc. 
 
 Some wore old costumes at this reception and all 
 seemed to be enacting their ancestors. I stayed with 
 Miss Kate Foote, the author, on a fine old farm; 
 General Hawley married a Miss Foote and they are a 
 very cultivated family. I saw various remote relatives 
 and brought home an old book with preface by John 
 Higginson, and a delightful old love-letter by Rev. 
 Edward Taylor, 1674. 
 
 June 9, 1890 
 I suppose you have heard of Henry Higginson's gift 
 to the college of thirty-five thousand dollars of land 
 across the river for playgrounds — Emery Willard's 
 old farm; and the most amazing thing is that he is to 
 talk to the students about it at Sever Hall to-morrow 
 night, as it is in memory of friends who fell in the war. 
 
 June 13, 1890 
 I wish you could have heard Henry Higginson. It 
 was one of the most thoroughly simple and admirable 
 
328 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 things I ever heard — a reticent man breaking the 
 habit of a lifetime and talking about an affair of his 
 own. He held the yoimg men perfectly, especially in 
 his terse sketches of the characters of his friends. They 
 will remember it all their lives — that close contact 
 with a perfectly truthful and transparent nature. He 
 spoke without notes, but with a prompter having his 
 manuscript behind him, and he was so simple, and un- 
 concerned about that, it made it seem the only fit 
 way for a man to speak — looking round occasionally 
 at the prompter and saying quietly, " What next? " 
 Some of the best things were inserted offhand and were 
 not in the printed notes; e.g., his saying, " Remember 
 that this is our university; it was John Harvard's, but 
 now it is what we make it." There was a poetic and 
 ideal atmosphere about it which I feel keenly and I 
 was very proud of being Henry's cousin. 
 
 Dtjbun, N.H., June 20, 1890 
 
 We . . . are right among the pine trees with the 
 pretty lake in sight and mountains farther off. . . . 
 Then close behind us are the children of Thayer, the 
 New York artist, wild, very picturesque little crea- 
 tures. . . . There is a perpetual Pumpelly circus 
 [children of Raphael Pumpelly]. . . . They keep seven 
 ponies and are always riding about the country, bare- 
 backed and astride, boys and girls alike. One boy, 
 Raphael, ... is always galloping about with long 
 curls over his shoulders, like a sort of angelic Co- 
 manche. . . . Rob is here, and enjoying it much, but 
 the dogs suffer terribly from getting hedgehogs' quills 
 
CAMBRIDGE IN LATER LIFE 829 
 
 into their mouths and noses; he has had only one 
 moderate dose, but often their mouths are lilce pin- 
 cushions and they have to be put under ether and each 
 quill pulled out by forceps. 
 
 July 31, 1890 
 
 Last night I got up an entertainment in the Town 
 Hall for the Dublin Library. There were beautiful 
 tableaux arranged by artists, in a full-sized frame — 
 mostly simple figures, Venetian, Swiss, etc. The 
 unique one was a Madonna with children holding 
 lilies (by Bellini), the Madonna being Mary Thayer, 
 the artist's daughter, who has a singularly beautiful 
 face. 
 
 Dublin, July 13, 1902 
 Heard CoUyer in a really remarkable sermon in his 
 familiar way on the importance of being our individual 
 selves in the future life. Animals he thought might live 
 forever on earth, for they had no individuahty to go 
 on developing, apparently; but human beings needed 
 spheres for constant development. The angel life as 
 commonly described too vague; the angels never had 
 fathers and mothers, never fell in love. He quoted a 
 man who said he preferred hell to annihilation. Told 
 us several good stories; as of seeing picture of Mat- 
 thew Henry whose commentaries were so severe, and 
 finding that he would turn the scales at three hundred 
 pounds, and reading afterwards that he postponed 
 finishing his work on " The Evidences " until fly- 
 fishing should be over; and of a Reverend Doctor who 
 
330 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 was dying and asked physician if he could not be kept 
 alive till the season of strawberries was passed. 
 
 Dublin, July 31, 1905 
 Evening. Dined . . . with Mr. and Miss Clemens. 
 . • . An interesting talk . . . after dinner. 
 
 Clemens lent three thousand dollars in all to Bret 
 Harte when he first came East, though knowing him 
 to be laden with California debts already. When H. 
 asked him for two hundred and fifty dollars, he prof- 
 fered five hundred dollars. One man to whom B. H. 
 owed three thousand dollars for loans wrote him on 
 his birthday sending all his notes back, and B. wrote 
 one of the most brutal letters he ever saw. 
 
 Dublin, August 12, 1905 
 
 George De Forest Brush lectured at Club — quite 
 delightful, though extravagant. His essential point 
 was that art came from the love of order; that people 
 instinctively feel the three triangles which outline the 
 Sistine Madonna; and that the row of trees which a 
 farmer sets before his door is a tribute to this. 
 
 Cambbidge, January 23, 1904 
 . . . Last night I went in to the Twentieth Century 
 Club dinner, which went off finely. I sat next to the 
 President of Mount Holyoke College who made a 
 capital speech and told some wholly new stories with 
 immense success — as this; a little boy watching a 
 balloon go straight up very, very high, and when it was 
 smallest asking wistfully, " Mother, is God expecting 
 
CAMBRIDGE IN LATER LIFE 331 
 
 those gentlemen to-day? " or this: she saw at an 
 English seaside place a series of iron chains along the 
 
 beach with the motto, " Given to the town of 
 
 by Thomas Jones. The sea is his and he made it." 
 Also some one spoke of an Irishman who saw the 
 winged Victory of Samothrace and said, "Begorra, 
 it 's meself would like to see the other lady that was in 
 the scratch! " 
 
 The letters to Mrs. Mabel Loomis Todd were written 
 while she and Colonel Higginson were editing the 
 poems of Emily Dickinson. 
 
 November 12, 1890 
 
 Dbab Mes. Todd: 
 
 I am distressed exceedingly to find that among 
 E. D.'s countless letters there are poems as good as 
 any we printed — one on the Blue Jay, one on the Hum- 
 ming Bird, etc. This shows we must have another 
 volume by and by, and must include prose from her 
 letters, often quite as marvellous as her poetry. 
 Howells is doing missionary work in private, and that 
 lovely child Mildred selected as her chief favorite to- 
 day, in talking with me, your favorite about the two 
 who died and talked between the tombs. 
 
 February 9, 1891 
 
 Dear Mrs. Todd: 
 
 . . . One thing strikes me very much in the book 
 notices. No two critics quote the same poems. Each 
 finds something different. That is a much surer 
 
332 THOMAS WENTWORTH fflGGINSON 
 
 guarantee of permanent interest than where all fasten 
 on one or two poems. 
 
 Lay this laurel on the one 
 Too intrinsic for renown. 
 Laurel Veil your deathless tree. 
 Him you chasten, that is He! " 
 
 She wrote it after re-reading my " Decoration." It 
 is the condensed essence of that and so far finer. 
 
 To Horace E, Scudder, then editor of the" Atlantic ": 
 
 March 21, 1896 
 There is a good French saying, whose author I wish 
 I knew, " Le renom, fruit d'une longue patience de 
 vivre, s'augmente avec rimbecilHt6." I am in a fair 
 way to prove it so, with my very mild renom. I have 
 just had a fourth request for my " Reminiscences," in 
 series, this time from Lyman Abbott of the " Outlook," 
 and should have accepted it in preference to either of 
 the others, though not to yours. So I notify you of it, 
 with the courtesy of an engaged maiden who wishes 
 her betrothed to know that he was not her only chance! 
 I have told him of my " prior attachment," but asked 
 him not to mention it, thinking you might wish to take 
 your own time and way about that. I hope you are 
 enjoying your trip. Once, when your predecessor 
 Fields was going to Europe, I said, " I hope you will 
 not give it all to business; do find time to enjoy your- 
 self I ' He replied, with his inimitable smile, " Rely 
 upon me! " and so I rely on you. 
 
 Colonel Higginson constantly corresponded with his 
 
CAMBRIDGE IN LATER LIFE 333 
 
 kinsman, Edmund Clarence Stedman, and Miss Sted- 
 man has kindly allowed the use of these extracts. 
 
 Newpoet, November 28, 1875 
 
 My dear Stedman: 
 
 ... I think that you place Matthew Arnold far 
 too high, he seeming to me to rank among the fourth 
 rates as a poet, whatever the merit of his prose. Then 
 I think you dismiss Charles (Turner) Tennyson with 
 much contempt; I have always felt there was a great 
 deal of delicate feeling and felicity in his sonnets. 
 
 Per contra, the only serious fault I find with the 
 book [" Victorian Poets "] is what seems to me the 
 treason to America in two passages (pp. xvii and 125). 
 To those I utterly disagree, and indeed read them with 
 great grief. It is such men as you who ought to see that 
 there is not " a lack of inspiring theme or historic halo 
 of dramatic contrast and material," and that, as I have 
 urged at length in my " Americanism in Literature," 
 it is the democratic society of the future which, by 
 subordinating the conventional and the individual, is 
 really to afford more material and a far higher style of 
 contrast. I am almost indignant when you speak of 
 the " barren sentiment of a plain New England life " 
 — plain if you please, but not necessarily barren. 
 Emerson and Hawthorne certainly did not find it 
 practically barren, though the latter in one moment 
 of degeneracy made a similar remark. The strength of 
 Whittier has been in finding all needed elements of 
 poetry at home. 
 
S34 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 In answer to this letter of criticism, Stedman replied 
 that he was speaking only of his personal experience in 
 youth; that it was not the sentiment of Newport or 
 Boston, but of a Calvinistic back-country, where he 
 was injured for life and " almost perished of repression 
 and atrophy." 
 
 January 9, 1888 
 Do pay proper attention to William Austin, of 
 whom Duyckinck has some account. I think his 
 " Peter Rugg " had marked influence on Hawthorne. 
 At any rate, he anticipated Hawthorne in what may be 
 called the penumbra of his style — passing out of a 
 purely imaginative creation through a medium neither 
 real nor unreal and so getting back to common earth. 
 Brockden Brown could not do this, but always had 
 to come back with a slump upon somnambulism or 
 ventriloquism; and Edward Bellamy, who has I think 
 more of the pure Hawthorne invention than any of our 
 men, fails always in the same way. 
 
 Austin's " English Travels," which I have, are racy 
 and remarkable, especially for the period (1804). I 
 knew his daughter and granddaughters, all uncom- 
 monly fine women. 
 
 Cambridge, May 13, 1903 
 It is a great pleasure to hear from you again, and 
 all the more since you are seventy, as you allege, and 
 so practically coeval with me, since I, please note, am 
 only seventy-nine and a half and so stUl among the 
 septuagenarians. I have just been answering, with 
 some difl5culty, an authoress who had spoken of me, 
 
CAMBRIDGE IN LATER LIFE 335 
 
 with the best intentions, as " venerable," and my 
 thoughts reverted to that halcyon period when I was 
 in my thirties, and I heard a black soldier, peeping 
 through my tent door, by permission of the orderly, 
 remark, " Sho' 'nuf ; de ole gem'man, he fas' asleep! " 
 You will doubtless miss Stoddard very much. I knew 
 him intimately and have always thought his poems 
 somewhat overrated. But I suppose he had no equal 
 among us for varied literary knowledge. 
 
 Cambbidgb, May 31, 1905 
 Dear Stedman: 
 
 How fast the literary world goes on, and I suppose 
 we oldsters naturally find the newer books more 
 commonplace, but we may be wrong. I met Yeats 
 several times while in this country, and though I had 
 always admired a few of his things, found him more 
 and more likable, at least. He amused us here by 
 going up to Concord for a Sunday and searching out 
 the minutest memorials of Thoreau, while not interest- 
 ing himself in the least in anything connected with 
 Emerson and Hawthorne. 
 
 The following was written in a copy of "The 
 Monarch of Dreams " which was given to Stedman: 
 
 Cambbidgb, October 24, 1887 
 This is rather my favorite child, I think, partly 
 because it is the only thing I ever had rejected by a 
 magazine (Scudder in the " Atlantic "), and yet it has 
 
336 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 been more praised by many than anything I ever 
 did — including very cool critics such as Lowell and 
 Norton. 
 
 This description of a summer in Plymouth, New 
 Hampshire, was found in the journal of 1880: 
 
 Our chief drives were over the mountain roads and 
 the greatest delight was to come out on some unex- 
 pected view of the beautiful Franconia Notch, which 
 seems the gateway to some happy land. . . . One is 
 never wearied of mountain views; in the brightest day 
 there are usually soft cloud shadows sailing over them, 
 and when visible, they are never monotonous. It is 
 always pleasurable in these mountain drives to turn 
 back to the green intervales of Crooked Mountain Pine 
 Place and its outlying mountains, all wooded to the 
 top. These high felicities were seldom much impeded 
 by the care of Dorcas, our landlady's old horse; if her 
 reins were tightened she would tear recklessly down 
 the steepest path, but if the reins were left on her back 
 she would pick her own way, as is the wont of New 
 Hampshire horses, as securely as a donkey. Some of 
 the roads are in point of roughness like donkey-tracks 
 and quite unlike those smooth avenues that surprise 
 the American traveller in Switzerland and in the 
 Scotch mountains. 
 
 Dorcas was clearly deficient, as her mistress honestly 
 admitted, in " gimp." The confession at first bewil- 
 dered us, since we had never heard of a horse which 
 adorned herself with that feminine appliance. But the 
 discovery of a local phrase is as interesting as that of a 
 
CAMBRIDGE IN LATER LIFE S37 
 
 local flower, and when, on consulting Webster's Dic- 
 tionary, we found that beside the " gimp " of the 
 upholsterers there was another " gimp " signifying 
 " smart, spruce, trim, nice," and found the word 
 farther designated as " not in use," it became a matter 
 of great satisfaction to find it still lingering in the 
 highlands of New Hampshire. It was as if we had 
 picked up an Indian tomahawk at the site of the 
 aboriginal village on Baker's River; it was like a bo- 
 tanical find, as when we brought home great purple 
 orchises from Campton Bog, or harebells from Liver- 
 more Falls, or fragrant handfuls of wild lily-of-the- 
 valley from Holderness woods. 
 
 Whatever our mountain drives might be, we came 
 back to the " intervale " with renewed delight. An 
 intervale is more than a river valley; it is a dry 
 meadow, a sometimes inundated prairie. I dare say 
 there are intervales in other countries, though I never 
 happened to see them; but the level breadth of verdure, 
 the soft border of trees, the beautiful adornment of 
 elms, these no country can rival; I do not know that 
 even Japan, which duplicates so much of our flora — 
 as we are trying to duplicate its art — exhibits an 
 American elm. When we first came, the intervale was 
 one vast field of grass with scarcely a fence; and every- 
 where the tall yellow-red lilies and the gay yellow and 
 black rudbeckia grew amid the grass, as scarlet poppies 
 grow in England. Gradually we saw the grass cut, and 
 daily the fragrant loads were carried into the great 
 barns beyond the intervale, and now in September the 
 rural roads lead through short grass and past clumps 
 
8S8 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 of still wild sunflowers and still lingering rose-rasp- 
 berry — the most conspicuous all-summer bloom. 
 The whole intervale belongs to one farm, originally a 
 thousand acres or a mile square, and stretching far 
 up into the beautiful Holderness woods behind. The 
 boundary of the farm is the Pemigewasset River; and 
 one comer boundary of the farm is described in the 
 old deed, with unconscious repetition, as the " Pont- 
 Fayette bridge." I have sought in vain for the origin 
 of this French name; and Crooked Mountain Pine 
 Place has no historian. It is known that in 1780 a 
 brigade of New Hampshire troops, commanded by 
 Colonel Poor, served under Lafayette at West Point 
 and in New Jersey; and possibly this bridge may have 
 been first built soon after this time and by some of 
 Lafayette's old soldiers. 
 
 The name was given at the time when Lafayette 
 visited Concord, New Hampshire. My informant, 
 formerly town clerk (who remembers when there was 
 only a ford), thinks that the bridge had been built a 
 short time before; at any rate, some leading men from 
 the village went to Concord and saw L. F., and on 
 their return proposed this name for the bridge which 
 was adopted. I can find no reference to it in the town 
 records earlier than 1826, where the name appears 
 several times. It once appeared also as a street sign 
 on the little street leading to the bridge. The curiosity 
 is in the use of the French word " Pont," which seems 
 as if suggested by the Marquis himself or one of his 
 French companions. 
 
 Nothing adds so much to one's happiness in the 
 
CAMBRIDGE IN LATER LIFE S39 
 
 country as to be collecting something. Our two 
 objects of interest, in our wanderings with Dorcas, 
 were ferns and old chairs. In the woods we watched 
 for new ferns, although we rarely found them; and for 
 ten weeks we looked for furniture on the piazzas and 
 through the farmhouse windows and came away with 
 one. We were often assured that they had all been 
 gleaned from this region, and were sometimes greeted 
 with " Be you Mr. ? " referring to some emi- 
 nent collector whose vast sweep had anticipated 
 our modest demand. We were shown old kitchen 
 chairs of the humblest description, and treasures were 
 sometimes exhibited to us which were not to be sold; 
 we were told that a dozen fiddle-backed chairs had 
 just been sent to Lowell to the folks there; or that 
 " he " had one chair that he kept because grandmother 
 died in it. There was a good deal of the romance of 
 domestic antiquity, we found, about chairs; we no 
 longer wondered at the number of songs that had been 
 written about them, but found none that could be got 
 for a song. In each village there was an impression 
 that in some remoter village we could find plenty. Our 
 one great success was early in our inquiries and after 
 several failures. We had just been most graciously 
 received by a farmer's wife who had insisted on 
 making up in flowers for the want of chairs, and we 
 were driving along, when my companion looked up 
 from a lap full of gay lilies to exclaim, " There's a 
 chair! " It was seen through a dining-room window, 
 where the farmer was evidently taking his early tea. 
 I hastened to the b^k door and looked in. The farmer 
 
S40 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 and his son sat at table; before them were tea, bread, 
 butter, cheese, cold meat, and the invariable snowy 
 pie of sour apple. " I beg your pardon," said I, " but 
 we are furnishing a house and have a fancy for old 
 furniture. Will you sell your armchair? " " Wife," 
 shouted the farmer to some one unseen, " want to sell 
 your armchair? " " No," shouted a resounding voice 
 from the pantry, with instantaneous decision, and a 
 bouncing, good-natured woman bustled into the parlor. 
 Then with softened voice she said, " Who wants it? " 
 — and then with milder tones, " Well, I won't say that 
 it mightn't depend somewhat on what I could get 
 for it "; and her vehement repugnance presently 
 yielded to an offer so moderate that I rfecline to 
 mention the amount. " Well, the chair 's yours," she 
 said abruptly: and the consequence was that all the 
 way home we were wondering, at intervals, whether 
 we could not have got it for less; while doubtless 
 " he " and " she " were wondering at similar intervals 
 whether we would not have given more. These little 
 remorses, these retrospective variations of possible 
 price, form the zest of even possible aesthetic bar- 
 gainings. 
 
 We could not help suspecting that most of the early 
 settlers of this region must have been youths who came 
 here with only an axe on their shoulders and left the 
 family furniture behind — so much less does there 
 seem to be of it than in seaside villages. Yet this may 
 be called the native land of eight-day clocks, most of 
 these made in New England, a century ago, having 
 come from the up-country villages of New Hampshire, 
 
CAMBRIDGE IN LATER LIFE 341 
 
 and we found one clock-maker in our own village who 
 had collected hundreds of them from this and the 
 neighboring counties for the Boston and New York 
 markets. Spinning-wheels were also to be had without 
 difficulty; but does a spinning-wheel ever look really 
 happy in a new house, even if it be built like Charles 
 Lamb's with conveniences for growing old? 
 
 It often occurred to us, in what may be called the 
 summer-visited regions, how extremes have met by 
 the reappearance of early ways among the modern 
 visitors. The oldest cottages had bare floors, so have 
 those of to-day. The older ones had open fireplaces, so 
 have the new. The early settlers eschewed feather 
 beds from necessity; so do the modern visitors from 
 preference. The pioneers drove one-horse carts; so do 
 the moderns. The pioneers wore knee-breeches, so do 
 the most ambitious youth among the new arrivals. 
 The shawls and afghans and rugs which the summer 
 boarders of to-day are knitting and crocheting simply 
 reproduce in more aesthetic forms the garments and 
 carpets which used in these cottages to be woven and 
 spun. Thus does gracious Queen Anne resume us under 
 her sway; and these aesthetic clubs of which one hears 
 in England, who meet at Hampstead Heath in costume 
 a century and a half old, and who even reprint the 
 " Spectator " and " Tatler " with modern dates, are 
 only carrying to an absurdity that reversion, if such it 
 be, which is touching us all. Human progress, it is 
 always said, moves in a spiral; and I suppose that we 
 have come round to the same point, bare floors and 
 knee-breeches, on a higher plane of civilization. 
 
342 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 Every time and place has its supernaturalism. We 
 look on these quiet mountain farms, and fancy their 
 life as prosaic and bare even in the midst of the beauty; 
 and then one comes accidentally upon some tale of 
 local wonder that needs no coloring from the imagina- 
 tion to enhance its strangeness. On the road from 
 Blair's Hotel to Campton Bog, there is a farmer in 
 whose house there has for some eight years occurred 
 a series of local wonders which might, under other 
 circumstances, have rivalled the Rochester knockings 
 in the attention they excited. Some five or six years 
 ago members of the family went away in winter, for 
 a little visiting among their kindred; they remained 
 away a night or two longer than was expected and 
 there was some anxiety in the house. One of the 
 children, a silent and rather dull boy of eight, sat gaz- 
 ing in the fire, and presently said, " There they are 
 sitting together in a room; do not you see them in the 
 coals? " — and gave a general description of the room 
 and their respective positions. Next day the family 
 returned, the account was repeated to them, and 
 proved perfectly correct. The report spread a little, 
 and when a Campton farmer lost his axe, he came, 
 made the boy look in the fire, and recovered it. After 
 this, one of the railway conductors lost a dog and con- 
 sulted the oracle; the boy gave a good description of 
 the dog, which he had never seen, and told where he 
 was and at the same time described another dog, which 
 was also found and had been lost like the previous one, 
 several weeks. This was described to me by the con- 
 ductor himself. 
 
CAMBRIDGE IN LATER LIFE 343 
 
 On another occasion a lady who was staying at the 
 Profile House visited the points of interest round the 
 Flume House and on her return missed a diamond ring. 
 She returned and looked all about the flume and pool 
 in a rain. Hearing of the boy she drove to Campton, 
 some twenty miles away, and visited him. He said, 
 looking in the fire, that he saw the ring lying under 
 the piazza at the Flume House, where it had slipped 
 through a crack of the floor, after falling from her hand. 
 On looking beneath the piazza it was found. 
 
 Several such incidents happened, and one day, when 
 some men came from Lancaster to Plymouth to follow 
 up inquiries about a watch that had been stolen from 
 a dwelling-house, they were advised by the railway 
 conductor aforesaid to consult the strange boy. They 
 accordingly drove up to Campton and bade the boy 
 look in the fire. He said at once, " I see the watch in 
 the house from which it was stolen; you go through a 
 front room with a black shut-up bed in it, then through 
 a passage, then into an unfinished room with a cup- 
 board in the corner; there you will find the watch." 
 The men laughed at his description; there was no 
 shut-up bed in the house, they said, and no such cup- 
 board. The boy persisting, they took him bodily to 
 Lancaster, where he had never before been. Arrived 
 at the house, he walked straight into the parlor, said, 
 " There is the shut-up bed," pointing to the piano — a 
 thing he had never before seen — with a black cloth 
 over it; then following through the passage, he went 
 at once to an unfinished room, and to a corner where 
 the planks had been only partly nailed on, making a 
 
344 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 sort of compartment like a cupboard, into which he 
 put his hand, and then looked round bewildered, say- 
 ing, " The watch is gone." They took the lad at once 
 to the fireside, and left him gazing in. He presently , 
 said, " I see the watch; it has been put under a pile of 
 chips in the yard of a house." He described the house 
 so that it was recognized, went with them to the yard, 
 showed the pile of chips, and there they found the 
 watch. The house was the abode of a young woman 
 who had worked in the dwelling from which the watch 
 had been lost. These wonders have continued at in- 
 tervals up to the present year; the family making no 
 trade of it, and the boy receiving for his services what- 
 ever the applicant may choose to give. This very 
 summer a child was lost from Haverhill, New Hamp- 
 shire, and the woods were searched for him far 
 
 and near; some friends came to D to inquire. 
 
 Looking in the fire, as usual, he said, " I see him lying 
 by a brook, almost dead," and described the brook. 
 That night a violent storm occurred; and going to the 
 brook in the morning, they found it much swollen, and 
 the lifeless body of the boy was found in the Connecti- 
 cut River, just below the brook. In this case a large 
 reward (five hundred dollars) had been offered for 
 news of the lost child, and ten dollars were paid to the 
 diviner. The boy is now sixteen or seventeen years old, 
 and of rather dull aspect; the parents are poor, he has 
 had little reading or instruction, and has scarcely ever 
 been away from home, and the stories I give, which I 
 have set down carefully from the narrative of people 
 who know the child, in whom they inspire only a vague 
 
CAMBRIDGE IN LATER LIFE 345 
 
 wonder, simply add to that vast shadow land of tales 
 uncertified and improbable, but nevertheless haunting 
 the imagination. It is well to add that the family say 
 that an elder sister of this boy, who died several years 
 since at the age of fourteen, had the same faculty in a 
 yet greater degree. The mother says that they were 
 both born " with a veil over their eyes," but whether 
 this is meant literally or symbolically I do not know. 
 
 Two letters that follow were written during the 
 Ogden educational trip of 1904. 
 
 FoRTHBSS Monroe, ViHGiinA 
 April 21 
 
 ... A fine meeting in a great gymnasium with a 
 great army of pupils all singing in a superbly rousing 
 way the " negro spirituals " I love. The leader, a 
 magnificently big and strong fellow, could fill the 
 Stadium, I think, with his voice alone. On talking with 
 him later, I found that he had studied my " Young 
 Folks' History of the United States." Besides singing 
 we had speeches, and one superb one from a Richmond 
 professor, wholly modern and enthusiastic in new 
 thoughts. . . . Last evening we had jovial story- 
 telling in which the Virginians beat out and out and 
 Yankees were nowhere. 
 
 EocK HiLii, South Carolina 
 April 21 
 
 In the afternoon we rode in sight of the Blue Ridge, 
 through woods lighted up by the starry dogwood, over 
 the poorest land in the South, 't was said. We saw old 
 
846 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 deserted cotton-fields, with dry stalks and pods. . . . 
 Here and there a solitary negro cabin, swanning with 
 women and children. But in some regions the people 
 seemed to be all white, and the new brick cotton mills 
 were worked by white people from the mountains — 
 the class said to be absolutely ignorant. . . . One of 
 our Southern teachers told of going into a kindergarten 
 with about thirty children, all with the saddest faces — 
 even when playing games — and when he spoke to the 
 teacher about it, she said that this was owing to the 
 great repression in their homes, and there was great 
 improvement in this respect over a year before. And 
 she told of one of the fathers, who told her he could not 
 live there any longer because his children were so 
 changed since they went to school. Formerly they 
 were perfectly quiet and silent; now they came home 
 laughing and wanted to play, and he could n't stand it. 
 
 We are now just passing from South Carolina into 
 Georgia and just in that " valley of Habersham " of 
 which Lanier sang so beautifully, though none of our 
 hard-working educational party seem to have heard of 
 him. . . , All this is the " New South " region where 
 cotton nulls and villages are growing up and you 
 see new buildings and schoolhouses everywhere. . . . 
 To-day we had the Governor of South Carolina, as 
 yesterday of Virginia. People hardly seem to remem- 
 ber the war at all. 
 
 Cambhidge, March 6, 1902 
 Prince Henry of Prussia here, and great gathering. 
 
CAMBRIDGE IN LATER LIFE 347 
 
 He is an attractive, slenderish man of forty, with a 
 high American head rather than a German broad one. 
 Saw him at Professor Miinsterberg's, where he ap- 
 peared easy and smiling, though unusually grave, 
 they say — an attractive man decidedly. 
 
 April 12, 1906 
 To funeral of Professor Shaler. Long procession of 
 students to gate of Yard — the first since Phillips 
 Brooks's, 
 
 It left a wonderful impression of the power with 
 coming generations of a single great teacher. Every 
 one of those boys may become a great source of power 
 himself — no one can tell which. The author has vast 
 power also • . • ; but it is not brought together in so 
 direct and visible a shape. 
 
 The next few pages are composed of brief extracts 
 and musings taken from various note-books and writ- 
 ten at different times and places. 
 
 We all need action. This is shown by the way it 
 transforms us, just as the water of a brook that glides 
 turbid and dull along its common bed, becomes radiant 
 and of a sunny purity when compelled to find its way 
 over a cascade of rocks. 
 
 Most gifted persons cannot keep their souls strong 
 and active without the stimulus of some brooding 
 sorrow. They must sing by night — " learn in suffer- 
 ing what they teach in song." It is nobler to learn in 
 joy and peace and have the stimulus of simple fresh 
 
848 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 life suffice. Sorrow thus used is no better than opium 
 or wine, and we become as dependent on its stimulus. 
 In physical fighting there is always a relief in store 
 for the defeated — the worst that can happen is death. 
 In moral fighting it is not so. The defeated lives to 
 brood over his shame. 
 
 One thing, however, I must remember. I cannot 
 live a past experience over again. Life is a spiral, not 
 a circle. If I try for an instant to reproduce a past 
 experience, except in a higher form, I shall fail. 
 
 ... I have a passion for red tape and lists and 
 the arrangement of details; understand perfectly Na- 
 poleon's loving to read over his army lists, in mo- 
 ments of leisure; give me something that interests me, 
 to codify and arrange, and I am perfectly happy; with 
 a shade less of the element of action, I should be a 
 perfect librarian, in bliss among pamphlets and glut- 
 tonous of work. 
 
 October SO, 1860 
 
 Why should we all (save Emerson) be so impatient 
 to speak? Why not wait till next moment or next 
 sphere, if necessary, and say it deliberately and well? 
 But no, the terrible throb of eager desire for utterance 
 drives men on, like hunger or lust, with no power to 
 calculate or resist. 
 
 When you have found a day to be idle, be idle for a 
 day, says a Chinese proverb. But the name of idleness 
 is a misnomer for any day, however spent, by a man 
 
CAMBRIDGE IN LATER LIFE 849 
 
 whose brain is active. Awaken a man's faculties in 
 a hundred different directions, give him a thousand 
 eager aptitudes all longing for a supply of knowledge 
 and of life, and he can no more be idle than yon- 
 der robin whose winged picturesque day is spent put- 
 ting worms into the gaping beaks of her insatiable 
 offspring. . . . 
 
 It is not wonderful displays of intellect which in- 
 terest me; it is the daily life, sensations, and motives 
 of these humble things. The birds are as real and ab- 
 sorbing to me as human beings. That kingfisher, for 
 instance, who lives among the myriad birds and boys 
 of the lake as lonely as an eagle on a mountain: no 
 one ever finds his nest, no one sees him near his young, 
 no one watches his flight or tracks his migration; yet 
 every year he comes silently and fills the lake with his 
 rattle. 
 
 To-day went down under a gray sky with Sanborn 
 to see a man go down in a submarine armor to inspect 
 the new causeway; he looked like a gigantic lobster or 
 (F. S. said) a teapot; and it was pretty to trace his 
 subaqueous path by the bubbles coming to the sur- 
 face. I wonder if in higher spheres they trace us so. 
 
 October, 1861 
 Coming homeward, listened to my crickets with 
 quiet delight. I may well call them mine, since no one 
 else seems to notice their little ways. 
 
 I find that to me works of art do not look like those 
 
350 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 of Nature. I grow tired of pictures — never of a 
 butterfly. 
 
 The eternal youthfulness of Nature answers to my 
 own feeling of youth and preserves it. As I turn from 
 these men and women around me, whom I watch 
 gradually submerged under the tide of gray hairs, it 
 seems a bliss I have not earned to find bird, insect, and 
 flower renewing itself each year in fresh eternal beauty, 
 the same as in my earliest childhood. 
 
 So perfect is the health and beauty of Nature that 
 there is no room for sorrow or doubt; — I will trust 
 this butterfly against all the dyspeptic theologians or 
 atheists of the world. I know that the sunny heart and 
 the healthy body can gain out of pain and bereavement 
 and sin and privation and nursing only a renewed faith 
 in the eternal law. I know that all which is noblest 
 is immortal. 
 
 Tieck's story of the Runenberg is no exaggeration of 
 what I have felt again and again in lonely places. It 
 was one of the educations of my youth, those days at 
 the solitary lake, all hid in woods and steep hill preci- 
 pices, Hammond's Pond. The old leaky boat, the 
 black water, that darkest spot of all where another 
 boat had sullenly sunk at its moorings and which I 
 hated to approach, as if water spirits had drawn her 
 down. . . . 
 
 What could Germany or Scotland have given me, 
 more than that lake and woods and hills? Yet it is 
 
CAMBRIDGE IN LATER LIFE 351 
 
 not so remarkable a region in itself; dreams, fancies, 
 associations made it. The pine was Shelley's " one 
 vast pine"; the rocks were those where Mignon's 
 serpents cowered; the lake was the gloomy Mum- 
 melsee where the enchanted lily maidens dwell; the 
 pine woods were such as Sterling describes in his 
 " Woodland Mountains," where all grand ideal shapes 
 go by. Yet it was all in the suburbs of Boston and I 
 was nineteen. 
 
 It takes time and the long years to saturate every 
 locality with romance and tenderness, but we are doing 
 it slowly and surely in this dear America of ours. 
 
 To a literary fame, death comes like the leaves in 
 " Alice's Adventures," by eating which one suddenly 
 grew tall or short. How instantaneously Bayard Tay- 
 lor's shrunk when he died; when he went to Berlin he 
 had a series of parting f Stes as if he were a leader in 
 literature; the moment he died he became an insignifi- 
 cant figure. It was equally instantaneous with Willis 
 and Tuckerman, before him. ... On the other hand, 
 Hawthorne, Thoreau, and even Poe, suddenly rose in 
 dimensions. 
 
 THE END 
 
INDEX 
 
 AdiTondacka, journey to, 120-24. 
 
 Agnew, John, 74. 
 
 Aloott, A. BronBon, 227. 
 
 Alma-Tadema, Laurence, descrip- 
 tion of, 286, 287, 303. 
 
 Amberleys, the, 258; at Newport, 
 225-27. 
 
 Andrew, John A., War Governor of 
 Massachusetts, 161, 162, 256. 
 
 Andrews, Jane and Caroline, 17, 18, 
 and note, 241, 242. 
 
 Anti-slavery, policy, 157-59. 
 
 Appleton, Thomas J3., 147; sketch 
 of, 272-74. 
 
 Army Life in a Black Regiment, 185, 
 219. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, in America, 323, 
 324; fame of, 333. 
 
 Astors, the J. J., 266, 267. 
 
 Atlantic Monthly, the, authors' din- 
 ner, 106-10, 112; editorship of, 
 111, 112; criticized, 112-14. 
 
 Austin, William, 334. 
 
 Baltimore, Md., men killed at, 155. 
 
 Barnum, P. T., 80, 81. 
 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, description 
 
 of, 45-48; compared with Parker, 
 
 46, 47, 53. 
 Bigelow, Luther, 171, 175. 
 Blackwell, Antoinette Brown, lilt 
 Blackwell, Henry B., 60-63. 
 Boston Authors' Club, 233. 
 Bowena, the, of Baltimore, 165. 
 Bradford, George P., 259, 260. 
 Brook Farm, 14. 
 Brown, Brownlee, 49. 
 Brown, John, 77; family of, 84-88. 
 Brown, Theophilus, 223. 
 Brownings, the, in Venice, 30, 31, 
 
 315, 316; sketch of, 65, 66. 
 Brownlow, Parson, 168, 169. 
 Brush, George De Forest, 330. 
 Bryce, James, at Newport, 229; at 
 
 Oxford, 291, 292; at Cambridge, 
 
 322. ' ^ 
 
 Buchanan, James, 77 
 
 Bull, Ole, 2, 11. 
 Burleigh, Charles, 60-63. 
 Bums, Anthony, case of, 68, 81. 
 Butler, Gen. B. F., 156-58, 260, 
 Butman affaur, 66, 68, 69. 
 
 Cambridge, Mass., early society ini 
 1-3 ; two hundred and fiftieth an- 
 niversary of, 321. 
 
 Canada, descriptions of, 94-98. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 322. 
 
 Channing, Barbara, sketch of, 64, 
 65. 
 
 Channing, EUery, quoted, 7; on 
 Emerson, 42; on Thoreau, 42, 43. 
 
 Channing, Mrs. Susan, 255. 
 
 Channing, William Henry, at Roch- 
 ester, 66, 67, 
 
 Chapman, Mrs. Maria W., described 
 by Whittier, 9-11; letter to, 68, 
 69. 
 
 Child, Mrs. Lydia Maria, 82. 
 
 Civil War, preparation at Worcester 
 for, 154, 155; Bull Run, 156; Ma- 
 nassas, 157; Fort Donelson, 165, 
 166; Union sentiment at South, 
 166; anxiety, 166; effects of, 322, 
 323. 
 
 Clarke, James Freeman, 162. 
 
 Clemens, Samuel L., 234, 235; at 
 home of, 270; fame of, 300; at 
 Dublin, N.H., 330. 
 
 Cleveland, Grover, political cam- 
 paign, 324, 325. 
 
 Colfax, Schuyler, Speaker, 250, 
 253. 
 
 Collyer, Robert, 329. 
 
 Conway, Moncure D., '279, 280, 286, 
 287. 
 
 Cox, Hannah, 76. 
 
 Crosby, Prof. Alpheus, 40, 41. 
 
 Curson, Mrs., 6. 
 
 Curtis, George William, desoribedi 
 46; slavery attitude, 71, 72. '' 
 
 Curtis, Judge, 70. 
 
 Gushing, Mrs. Betsey, 34, 35. 
 
 Cushman,. Charlotte S., 244, 265. 
 
m 
 
 INDEX 
 
 t)abneys,' the; of Fayai; 125, 126, 
 133, 134, 136, 137; letter to, about 
 Kansas, 142-44. 
 
 Dame, Mrs., and Newport boarding- 
 
 \ house, 235, 246, 264. 
 
 Dana, Charles, described, 13, 14, 46. 
 
 Darley, Felix O. C, the artist, 147. 
 
 Davis, Andrew Jackson, 109, 110. 
 
 Davis, Jefferson, 205. 
 
 Devens, Charles, 156, 157; at Ma- 
 nassas, 159 ; wounded, 168. 
 
 Dicey, Albert, at Newport, 229. 
 
 Dickinson, Emily, 268; poems, 331, 
 332. 
 
 Dilke, Sir Charles, 276. 
 
 Disunion, Worcester Convention, 
 77-79; Quincy on, 88, 89. 
 
 Dodge, Mary Mapes, 228. 
 
 Duulap, Sergeant, 171. 
 
 Durant, Henry F., founder of Welles- 
 ley, 70, 71. 
 
 Earle, Thomas, in Civil War, 166, 
 167. 
 
 Emancipation, 164. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, letter to, 
 33; Channing on, 42; proposed 
 lecture of, 59; described, 93. 
 
 Everetts, the Sidney, 266. 
 
 Fay, Maria, 1, and note. 
 
 Fayal, 124r-37; fascination of, 126- 
 
 30; storms at, 131-37. 
 Field, Kate, 228, 243; in London, 
 
 282. 
 Fields, James T., home of, 102, 103; 
 
 editor, 111, 112; criticized, 112-14. 
 Fields, Mrs. James T., letter to, 28. 
 First South Carolina Volunteers, 
 
 181-221. 
 Foster, Stephen S., 259; in jail, 69,70. 
 Freemans, the, in America, 321. 
 Fremont, Col. John C, 160, 161; 
 
 reception to, 170. 
 Frothingham, Octavius B., 49. 
 Froude, J. A., dinner to, 267, 268. 
 
 Garrison, William Lloyd, described 
 by Whittier, 8, 9, 11; described by 
 Higginson, 93. 
 
 Gaston, Lieut. R. M., death of, 205, 
 206. 
 
 Geary, John W., Governor of Kan- 
 
 _ sas, 141-43. 
 
 Gibbs, Miss, of Newport, 224, 225. 
 Gilder, Richard Watson, 234, 235. 
 Goldschmidt, Otto, husband of 
 
 Jenny Lind, 39, 40. 
 Gomez, Capt., 191, 192. 
 Goodell, John, 171. 
 Grant, Gen. tJ. S., at Newport, 254, 
 
 255. 
 Guild, Mrs. Edward, 269. 
 Gurneys, the Russell, 280, 281. 
 
 Hale, John P., 70. 
 
 Hale, Sarah, 3. 
 
 Hallet, Benjamin F., 69. 
 
 Hanover, King of, funeral of, 288, 
 289. 
 
 Harkness, Major, 178, 179. 
 
 Harper's Ferry, 87. 
 
 Harte, Bret, 261; loans to, 330. 
 
 Harvard Divinity School, gradua- 
 tion, 4, 5. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 254. 
 
 Hawthorne, Una, daughter of Na- 
 thaniel, 237-40, 277. 
 
 Hay, John, Lincoln's secretary, 202. 
 
 Hayes, Dr. Isaac I., Arctic explorer, 
 90-92. 
 
 Hazard, Margie, 248, 249. 
 
 Hennessys, the, 280, 297-99. 
 
 Henry of Prussia, 346, 347. 
 
 Higginson, Charles, 148. 
 
 Higginson, George, 155. 
 
 Higginson, Henry, 284, anecdote of, 
 193; and Soldiers' Field, 327, 328. 
 
 Higginson, Rev. John, 327. 
 
 Higginson, Louisa Storrow (mother 
 of T. W. H.), letters to, 4 £f., 17 
 ff., 24 ff., 34, 63, 81 ff., 85 ff., 101, 
 106, 111, 117, 121, 137 ff., 144, 
 146, 157, 164 ff., 194, 199, 201, 
 221 ff., 224. 
 
 Higginson, Mary Channing, 222, 
 246, 253, 257; on Quakers, 236; on 
 housekeeping, 250, 251; death, 
 277. 
 
 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, re- 
 turns to Cambridge, 1—5; at New- 
 buryport, 5-43 ; conversation with 
 Whittier, 7-11; on inunigrants, 
 14; Samuel Johnson, 14-17, 51; 
 religious ideas, 15-17; Christmas 
 celebration, 17-19; slavery at- 
 titude, 19, 67; resignation of, 19- 
 22; at Artichoke Mills, 22-43; at 
 
INDEX 
 
 355 
 
 Isles of Shoals, 24-27; and Hurl- 
 but, 29-33 ; at Brattleboro', 37, 38; 
 lecturing, 38, 45, 47-60, 56-58, 66, 
 72, 92-102, 253; and temperance, 
 41, 42, 55, 56, 80; at Worcester, 
 44-182, 221-23; on "Sir Charles 
 Grandison," 44, 45; and H. W. 
 Beecher, 45-48; and Samuel 
 Longfellow, 47—49 ; exchanges pul- 
 pits, 61, 52, 59; and Theodore 
 Parker, 53, 64; and Lucy Stone, 
 55, 59-63; and Mrs. Chapman, 
 68, 69; and Anthony Bums, 68, 
 81; and Stephen Foster, 69, 70; 
 arrested, 70; and the Quakers, 73- 
 77; and disunion, 77-79; and Bar- 
 num, 80, 81 ; and the John Browns, 
 77, 84-88; and Sanborn, 86; 
 preaching, 91 ; notes on contempo- 
 raries, 93, 94; in Canada, 94r-101; 
 and Harriet Prescott, 103-11; and 
 Thoreau, 106; and Emerson, 106, 
 106; at Atlantic dinners, 106-11; 
 and Atlantic Monthly, 111, 112; 
 his essay on Snow, 114; travels, 
 117-53; goes to Mt. Katahdin, 
 117-20; excursion to Adirondacks, 
 120-24; journey to Fayal, 124-37; 
 and Kansas, 137-44; at Princeton, 
 Mass., 144-46; at Pigeon Cove, 
 Mass., 146-51; description of 
 "Aunt Hannah," 161-53; and 
 military preparations at Worces- 
 ter, 164, 155, 162-64, 169-81; on 
 emancipation, 164; in barracks, 
 170-81; takes command Ist S.C. 
 Vols. 181, 182; with the regiment, 
 182-221; up the St. Mary's, 185; 
 up the St. John's, 185-91 ; wounded 
 and on leave, 209, 210; returns 
 to regiment, 210; resigns commis- 
 sion, 221; at Newport, 224-32, 
 235-74; and Julia Ward Howe, 
 228-35; and Harvard Memorial 
 Biographies, 242; refers to Helen 
 Hunt, 244-46; honors received, 
 252; at Mt. Auburn, 256, 257; and 
 Thomas Hughes, 258, 259; and 
 Woman's Suffrage, 263, 265, 270; 
 and Emily Dickinson, 268; and 
 Philological Convention, 271, 272; 
 on T. G. Appletou, 272-74; in Eu- 
 rope in 1872, 276-77; in Chester, 
 276, 276; at London, 276, 277; in 
 
 Europe in 1878, 278-302 ; at Alder- 
 shot review, 278, 279; in London, 
 279-83, 286-88, 294; in France, 
 283-86; at Reading, 286; at Ox- 
 ford, 286, 290-92; at Windsor, 
 288; in Scotland, 293, 294; in 
 Normandy, 297-99; in Germany, 
 300, 301; in Switzerland, 301, 302; 
 in Europe in 1897, 303, 304; in 
 England, 303; in London, 303; in 
 Paris, 303; in Scotland, 304; in 
 Europe in 1901, 304-20; in Tan- 
 gier, 304^08; in Granada, 308, 
 309; in Italy, 309-16; in Venice, 
 314-16; in the Tyrol, 316-18; in 
 English Lake region, 319, 320; re- 
 turns to Cambridge to live, 321; 
 effects of Civil Wa;r, 322, 323; and 
 Matthew Arnold, 323, 324; and 
 Cleveland campaign, 324, 326; at 
 home of ancestors, 326, 327; and 
 Henry Higginson, 327, 328; at 
 Dublin, N.H., 328-30; and Sted- 
 man, 333-36; his Monarch of 
 Dreams, 335, 336; account of a 
 New Hampshire summer, 336-45; 
 on Southern educational trip, 345, 
 346; musings of, 347-51; on liter- 
 ary fame, 351. 
 
 Higginson sisters, letters to, 151, 221 
 ff., 226 £f., 252, 264, 266, 321 ff. 
 
 Hoar, George, on Woman's Suffrage, 
 263. 
 
 Holden, Mass., tavern at, 56-68. 
 
 Holmes, John, 124. 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, at Atlantic 
 dinners, 106-12. 
 
 Honey, Rev. C. R., of England, 285, 
 289, 290. 
 
 Howe, Julia Ward, 113; accounts of, 
 228, 229, 259; and Town and 
 Country Club, 230; letters to, 
 231-36; first woman member of 
 National Institute of Arts and 
 Letters, 234, 235. 
 
 Howe, Samuel Gridley, and Kansas, 
 138, 139; death of, 230, 231. 
 
 Howell, Mrs., of Philadelphia, 145. 
 
 Howells, Wm. Dean, 262. 
 
 Hughes, Thomas, described, 258, 269. 
 
 Hunt, Helen, 244-46. 
 
 Hunt, William, the artist, 31, 32. 
 
 Hunter, Gen. David, described, 198; 
 and Jefferson Davis, 206. 
 
356 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hurlbut, William Henry, Jiis'foTeign 
 experiences, 29-33. 
 
 Jacksonville, Fla., 185-91, 194r-97. 
 
 Johnson, Robert U., 235. 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, letters to, 14-17, 
 
 51. 
 Jowett, Master, of Balliol, visit to, 
 
 286. 
 
 Kane, Dr. Elisha K., Arctic explorer, 
 
 90-92. 
 Kansas, emigrants and money sent 
 
 to, 137-39; Higginson's trip to, 
 
 139-44. 
 Kemble, Mrs. Fanny, 35-37, 218. 
 Kensett, John F., the artist, 147. 
 Kimball, Capt., 177. 
 King, Clarence, 274. 
 Koven, Rev. Henry de, 261. 
 
 La Farge, John, the artist, 226, 227. 
 
 Lander, Mrs. F. W., 205, 206; sketch 
 of, 201, 202. 
 
 Lane, Gen. James H., of Kansas, 
 143, 144. 
 
 Lazarus, Emma, 266. 
 
 Lewis, Dio, 249. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 164; and Fre- 
 mont, 160; anecdote of, 202; 
 death, 236. 
 
 Lincoln, Mrs. Abraham, 165; de- 
 scribed, 164; about the President's 
 death, 236. 
 
 Lind, Jenny, marriage of, 39, 40. 
 
 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 8; 
 accounts of, 11, 12, 321; portrait 
 of children of, 107. 
 
 Longfellow, Samuel, 47-49. 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, 8, 94, 113; 
 evening with, 11-13; at Atlantic 
 dinners, 107-12; as editor, 111; 
 anecdote of, 262, 263. 
 
 Lowell, Maria, sketch of, 12, 13, 111. 
 
 MoClellan, Gen., 271. 
 McDougall, Bishop, 292, 293. 
 Mag'gi, Lt.-Col., anecdote of, 212. 
 Malbone, 253. 
 May, Samuel, 4. 
 
 Miller, Joaquin, in England, 287. 
 Millerites, the, account of, 51. 
 Milne, Mr., 96; invites Lucy Stone to 
 lecture, 98. 
 
 Monarch of Dreams, 335, 336. 
 Montgomery, Col. James, in Civil 
 
 War, 186, 188-91, 206-09. 
 Morton, Edward, 115. 
 Mott, Lucretia, 272. 
 Moulton, Mrs. L. C, in Newport, 
 
 228; in London, 287. 
 Mt. Katahdin, excursion to; 117-20. 
 Murfree, Miss (C. E. Craddock), 
 
 267. 
 
 Nantucket, described, 92, 93. 
 
 Nasby, Petroleum, 244. 
 
 Negroes, accounts of, 183, 184, 193, 
 
 194, 197, 199, 207-21; on tactics, 
 
 203, 204. 
 Newburyport, early, 5-43. 
 Newport, R.I., early, 224-32, 235- 
 
 74; Town and Country Club, 230, 
 
 231, 234; scenery of, 247-49. 
 Norton, Jane, 2. 
 
 O'Connell, Monsignor, 312, 313. 
 
 Ogden, Robert, Southern educa- 
 tional trip, 345, 346. 
 
 Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, account of, 
 29, 30, 32. 
 
 Ossoli, Count, 30. 
 
 Oxford, England, Commemoration 
 Day at, 291, 292. 
 
 Palfrey, Dr. J. G., 3. 
 
 Palfrey sisters, description of, 1-3. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, at graduation 
 
 exercises, 4; compared with H. W. 
 
 Beecher, 46, 47; eloquence of, 53; 
 
 Higginson and, 53, 54; described, 
 
 94; fire at home of, 269. 
 Peabody, Elizabeth, founder of the 
 
 kindergarten, 240, 241. 
 Pennsylvania, rural, and Quakers, 
 
 72-76. 
 Perkins, Stephen, in Civil War, 167, 
 
 168. 
 Perry, 'Nora, 264. ' 
 Petersons, the, of Philadelphia, 250. 
 Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 272. 
 Phillips, Wendell, 82, 93; and Whit- 
 tier, 9, 11; fire at home of, 269, 
 
 270. 
 Phillips, Mrs. Wendell, 268, 269. 
 Pierrepont, Edward, 291, 292. 
 Pigeon Cove, Mass., described, 146- 
 
 61. 
 
INDEX 
 
 357 
 
 Pollock, Sir Frederick and Lady, 
 
 282, 283. 
 Princeton, Mass., summer at, 144r- 
 
 46. 
 Pumpellys, the, 328. 
 
 Quakers, meetings of, 73-77, 235- 
 
 37. 
 Quincy, President, of Harvard, on 
 
 Disunion, 88, 89. 
 
 Bachel, Mile., actress, 50, 51. 
 Barey, John S., and his horses, 50. 
 Eawnsley, Canon, 320. 
 Kistori, Adelaide, actress, 243. 
 Rogers, Dr. Seth, 207, 209, 215. 
 Rogerson, Mrs., 280. 
 Rust, Col. J. D., 188. 
 
 Sanborn, Frank, 139, 349; descrip- 
 tion of, 86. 
 
 Sand, George, description of, 262. 
 
 Sargent, Mrs. J. T., 268, 270. 
 
 Saxton, Gen. Eufus, 181, 202. 
 
 Bcudder, Horace E., letter to, 332. 
 
 Secession, 79, 80. 
 
 Shaler, Prof. Nathaniel S., funeral of, 
 347. 
 
 Sibley, John Langdon, 2. 
 
 Sims, Thomas, case of, 166, 157. 
 
 Sixth Mass. Vols., account of, 155, 
 156. 
 
 Bmalley, George, 82, 83. 
 
 Smalleys, the, 277, 294, 295. 
 
 South, the, Union sentiment, 165, 
 166, 264; Higginson's accounts of, 
 183-92, 217. 
 
 Sparks, Jared, 267. 
 
 Spofford, Harriet Prescott, in New- 
 buryport, 103, 104; advice about 
 reading, 105, 106; at Atlantic din- 
 ner, 106-11. 
 
 Sprague, Lt.-Col. A.B.R., 179; de- 
 scription of, 172, 182. 
 
 Spring, Edward, 123. 
 
 Springfield Republican, the, 157, 158, 
 165. 
 
 Stanley, Henry M., the African 
 explorer, 232. 
 
 Stedman, Edmund Clarence, letters 
 to, 333 ff. 
 
 Stillman, William J., the artist, 123, 
 124. 
 
 Stone, Lucy, at temperance meeting. 
 
 55; at suffrage meeting, 59; her 
 wedding, 60-63; in Canada, 98. 
 
 Storrow, Anne (Aunt Nancy), letter 
 to, 1-3. 
 
 Storrs, Rev. Richard S., 46, 47. 
 
 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin, 54; description of, 64, 55; 
 at Atlantic dinner, 107-09. 
 
 Studley, Lt.-Col., 179. 
 
 Sumner, Charles, 78, 263; on seces- 
 sion, 79; speech, 165. 
 
 Taylor, Bayard, 74, 113. 
 Temperance movement, 41, 42, 55, 
 
 66, 80. 
 Tennyson, Alfred, marriage of, 32, 
 
 33. 
 Terry, Rose, 101. 
 Thaxter, Celia Leighton, described, 
 
 26, 29; marriage of, 27, 28. 
 Thaxter, Levi, 24r-29. 
 Thayer, Abbott, in Paris, 284, 285; 
 
 daughter of, 329. 
 Thayer, Perry, 63. 
 Thoreau, Henry D., 119; Channing 
 
 on, 42, 43; described, 94; works of, 
 
 106. 
 Todd, Mabel Loomis, letters to, 
 
 331. 
 Tracys, the, of Newburyport, 7. 
 Tubman, Harriet, fugitive slave, 81, 
 
 82. 
 Tukey, Marshal, and temperance, 
 
 41,42. 
 
 Urso, Camille, violinist, 243. 
 
 Verney, Capt., 281, 282. 
 Victoria, Queen, 289 ; reviews troops, 
 278, 279. 
 
 Ward, Col., 178, 180. 
 
 Wards, the, and Jenny Lind, 39, 
 
 40. 
 Warners, C. D., 270, 271. 
 Waterhouse, Dr., 13. 
 Watson, Marston, 52, 53. 
 Webster, Daniel, criticism of, 90. 
 Weiss, Rev. John, sketch of, 24-26, 
 
 271. 
 Wheeler, Capt., 177. 
 Whitney, Anne, description of, 115, 
 
 116. 
 Whittier, J. G., 72; visit to, 7, 8; con- 
 
358 
 
 INDEX 
 
 versation with, 8-11; W. Phillips 
 on, 11; description of, 93, 107. 
 
 Willard, Dr., of the navy, 212. 
 
 Woman's Sufirage, Washington Con- 
 vention, 263; meetings, 265, 270. 
 
 Worcester, Mass., Disunion Conven- 
 tion at, 77-79; preparations for 
 war, 154, 169-81; return of Sixth 
 Mass. Vols., 155, 156. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 319, 320. 
 
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