Mary Thacher Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson: the story of his life

‘ [297] Irish members, who hated Woman's Suffrage but loved the Colonel, sat outside growling while the vote was taken. They could not bring themselves to vote for the bill, but would not annoy Higginson by voting against it.’

In December of the same year we moved into the little Queen Anne cottage on Buckingham Street which we had built and which was henceforth Colonel Higginson's home. A certain policeman's opinion of this new abode afforded much amusement to the owner. When asked where Colonel Higginson lived, this guardian of the peace replied, ‘Look till you see the ugliest house in Cambridge.’ Another, somewhat later, opinion was that of our daughter Margaret, who said, ‘O papa, I am glad you are not rich! You have such a dainty little clean house and not fancy either—no lace curtains at all.’

The fifty-seventh birthday, December 22, 1880, was celebrated by skating on Fresh Pond, and he wrote to his sister:—

I have not been on that black ice for more than thirty years and it seemed a very appropriate birthday celebration, the ice and hills and sky were so unchanged. It led me to the thought that this is certainly the happiest birthday since those days and probably of my life. It is such inexpressible happiness to have at last a permanent home and one so wholly to my mind and to look around and think