[263]
It seemed like a dream to go to Worcester and see how three years had restored my young recruits to their old places in shops &c., and swept away all traces of those stirring days.
Yet the Old Guard of those elderly gentlemen were still parading the streets, and that made all the real soldiering seem more a dream than ever.
‘To keep up my interest in slavery,’ wrote
Colonel Higginson to his old army surgeon,—‘I am translating
Epictetus who is far superior to your dear
Antoninus.’
Somewhat later another most congenial literary task was accomplished by the retired
Colonel and he told
Dr. Rogers:—
I have undertaken a job—to edit the memorial volumes containing lives of those Harvard boys who have died in the war—it will take me a year almost.
I write editorially for the Independent too, as well as the Commonwealth and Atlantic-so you see I have enough on hand. . . .
I have been invited to be agent for New England of the Freedmen's Union with a salary of $2500.
This proposal
Colonel Higginson was obliged to decline.
Public speaking had been promptly resumed when his military life ended, and was never again entirely given up. He spoke easily without notes until age made memory treacherous, and his enunciation was so clear that even when his voice grew weak in later
