THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

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NE scarcely knows which to admire most, Colonel Higginson's record as author, soldier, lecturer, reformer, or his character as a man. We read his books and are captivated by the masterful style in which the thought is set. We see him early in life, fearless, energetic, with Phillips and Garrison in the very thick of the anti-slavery combat, a man of the highest social position, placing himself at the head of the first regiment of colored soldiers. We see him, every inch a gentleman, presiding at a woman suffrage convention, when it was considered a thing to be ridiculed that a woman should desire to express at the ballotbox an opinion upon the vital questions of our country; the country which she had loved and for which she had suffered since she prayed in the Mayflower, or buried her dead on Plymouth Hill.

We see him holding other audiences by his eloquent words on literary or political subjects, and then, best of all, we see him in his lovely home, the considerate, true-hearted husband, living out such an ideal affection with his little daughter

Margaret as makes women proud that he has been their champion.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson comes of a distinguished ancestry. Rev. Francis Higginson, two centuries ago, came from England and settled at Salem, the spiritual leader of that first large colony. Being a non-conformist, he was deprived of his benefice, but came to his adopted country with a spirit of tolerance which all might do well to copy. Cotton Mather tells us that as his ship was passing Land's End he called the passengers about him and exclaimed: "We will not say as the Separatists were wont to say at their leaving of England, Farewell, Babylon; farewell, Rome!' but we will say, Farewell, dear England! farewell, the church of God in England, and all the Christian friends there. We do not go to New England as Separatists, though we cannot but separate from the corruptions of it. But we go to practise the positive part of church reformation, and propagate the gospel in America."

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John Higginson, the son of Francis, was, like his father, an author as well as preacher for seventy-two years. Stephen Higginson, the grandfather of Thomas Wentworth, a member of the Continental Congress, was also an author, supposed to have written the "Laco" letters against John Hancock, which were thought to rival those of Junius. His son Stephen, the father of Thomas, a highly honored Boston merchant and

philanthropist, also wrote several pamphlets, while the mother, descended from Chaucer, the father of English poetry, wrote several books for children. It is not strange, therefore, that authorship was in the boy's blood.

Stephen Higginson, "having lost a moderate fortune by Jefferson's embargo," moved to Cambridge, and became the Bursar of Harvard College. Here Thomas was born, Dec. 22, 1823. Of his early life he says in the "Forum": "I was born and cradled within the college atmosphere, and amid a world of books and bookish men, the list of these last including many since famous, who were familiar visitors at our house. My first nurse, if not a poet, was the theme of poetry, being one Rowena Pratt, the wife of Longfellow's 'Village Blacksmith'; and no doubt her singing made the heart of her young charge rejoice, as when she sang in that paradise to which the poet has raised her. Later, I tumbled about in a library, as Holmes recommends, and in the self-same library where he practised the like gymnastics; that of his kind old. father, Dr. Abiel Holmes, whose grandson, now Dr. C. W. Parsons, of Providence, was my constant playmate. At home the process could be repeated in a comfortable library of Queen Anne literature in delightful old-fashioned editions, on which I began to browse as soon as the period of 'Sandford and Merton' and Mrs. Edgeworth's 'Frank' had passed. "It passed early, for it was the custom in those