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Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing) 539 1 Browse Search
Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3 (ed. Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950.) 88 0 Browse Search
Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 1, Colonial and Revolutionary Literature: Early National Literature: Part I (ed. Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950.) 58 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men 54 0 Browse Search
C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874. 54 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life 44 0 Browse Search
Adam Badeau, Grant in peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a personal memoir 39 1 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book 38 0 Browse Search
George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 7, 4th edition. 38 0 Browse Search
Bliss Perry, The American spirit in lierature: a chronicle of great interpreters 36 0 Browse Search
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Browsing named entities in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays. You can also browse the collection for Americans or search for Americans in all documents.

Your search returned 16 results in 7 document sections:

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays, I. A Cambridge boyhood (search)
mosphere of one's native village — if one is fortunate enough to have been born in such a locality — lie around the memory like the horizon line, unreachable, impassable. Even a so-called cosmopolitan man has never seemed to me a very happy being, and a cosmopolitan child is above all things to be pitied. To be identified in early memories with some limited and therefore characteristic region,--that is happiness. No child is old enough to be a citizen of the world. What denationalized Americans hasten to stamp as provincial is for children, at least, a saving grace. You do not call a nest provincial. All this is particularly true of those marked out by temperament for a literary career. The predestined painter or musician needs an early contact with the treasures and traditions of an older world, but literature needs for its material only men, nature, and books; and of these, the first two are everywhere, and the last are easily transportable, since you can pile the few suprem
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays, chapter 6 (search)
Boston society, leaving most of the more powerful or wealthy families on the conservative side. What finally determined me in the other direction was the immediate influence of two books, both by women. One of these was Miss Martineau's tract, The Martyr age in America, portraying the work of the Abolitionists with such force and eloquence that it seemed as if no generous youth could be happy in any other company; and the other book was Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's Appeal for that Class of Americans called Africans. This little work, for all its cumbrous title, was so wonderfully clear, compact, and convincing, it covered all its points so well and was so absolutely free from all unfairness or shrill invective, that it joined with Miss Martineau's less modulated strains to make me an Abolitionist. This was, it must be remembered, some years before the publication of Uncle Tom's cabin. I longed to be counted worthy of such companionship; I wrote and printed a rather crude sonnet to
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays, VII. Kansas and John Brown (search)
nd John W. LeBarnes, afterwards lieutenant of a German company in the Second Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War. It was decided that an attempt at rescue could best be made from a rendezvous at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and that Hinton should go to Kansas, supplied with money by LeBarnes and myself, to get the cooperation of Captain James Montgomery and eight or ten tried and trusty men. I was to meet these men at Harrisburg, while LeBarnes was to secure a reinforcement of German-Americans, among whom he had much influence, from New York. Only one man in Harrisburg, an active Abolitionist, knew of our purpose, and I met Montgomery at this man's house, after taking up my own residence, on February 17, 1860, at the United States Hotel, under the name of Charles P. Carter. I had met the guerrilla leader once before in Kansas, and we now consulted about the expedition, which presented no ordinary obstacles. The enterprise would involve traversing fifty miles of mountain cou
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays, chapter 10 (search)
e abortive Virginia foray-had chivalrously constituted themselves the body-guard of Wendell Phillips, and were at his side day and night, thus being in a manner on special service. Their part of the work being so well done, they may naturally have supposed the rest to be in an equally satisfactory condition; but as a matter of fact the so-called organization was only the flimsiest shell. It consisted, while nominally under my command, of some forty men, half of these being Germans, half Americans: the Germans were inconveniently full of fight, and the Americans hardly awakened to the possibility of it. After going through the form of posting my men at the numerous doors of the Music Hall, each as it were on picket duty, I almost always found, on visiting them half an hour later, that the Americans had taken comfortable seats inside and were applauding the speakers, as if that were their main duty; while the Germans had perhaps got into some high discussion in the corridors, ending
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays, chapter 11 (search)
years ago than it now is, since the English ignorance of Americans was then even greater than it is to-day, and was perhaps rning. She said to me, Is it not rather strange that you Americans, who seem such a friendly and cordial race, should invarit so universal; and then she added, I have been told that Americans begin every sentence with Well, stranger, I guess. I wa, within twenty miles of Boston. But I explained that we Americans, being a very inventive race, had devised a little apparaon to inform me that I spoke English differently from any Americans she had ever seen, and she had known heaps of them in Flover thought of such a thing; I supposed that you were all Americans because you could n't help it; and I assured her that we was the impression that the poet disliked to be bored by Americans; but when two ladies whom I had met in London, Lady Polloh the air of a vexed schoolboy, I am rather afraid of you Americans; your countrymen do not treat me very well. There was Ba
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays, X. Literary Paris twenty years ago (search)
When the roll was called, there proved to be eighty-five Frenchmen present, and only thirty-five from all other nations put together; five of this minority being Americans. I was the only one of these who had ever published a book, I think. Mr. W. H. Bishop was another delegate, but his first novel, Detmold, had not yet reached cature's, to adopt Tennyson's distinction, and not merely those next to best manners which the poet attributes to the great. Tourgueneff greeted us heartily as Americans,--Mr. Bishop also forming one of the group,--and spoke warmly of those of our compatriots whom he had known, as Emma Lazarus and Professor Boyesen. He seemed mu us had an especially cultivated look, and soon encouraged some conversation. At first they took us for English, but were obviously pleased to hear that we were Americans, and then as visibly disappointed at learning, on inquiry, that neither of us belonged to the masonic order, with which European radicals claim a certain affinit
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays, chapter 13 (search)
d, who sat in the next seat to mine during a whole session. I believe that the instinct of this whole class for politics is on the whole a sign of promise, although producing some temporary evils; and that it is much more hopeful, for instance, than the comparative indifference to public affairs among our large French-Canadian population. The desire for office, once partially gratified, soon becomes very strong, and the pride of being known as a vote-getter is a very potent stimulus to Americans, and is very demoralizing. Few men are willing to let the offices come to them, and although they respect this quality of abstinence in another, if combined with success, they do not have the same feeling for it per se. They early glide into the habit of regarding office as a perquisite, and as something to be given to the man who works hardest for it, not to the man who is best fitted for it. Money too necessarily enters into the account, as is shown by the habit of assessing candidates