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

[327] exclaimed, ‘Some of his sentences were on fire!’ A London paper spoke of the evident delight this American traveller found in England, adding, ‘Even the climate, he, like most Americans, does not denounce!’

Before sailing for home, Higginson was given a farewell entertainment by the Anglo-American Association. At this meeting, of which Thomas Hughes was president, a letter was read from Professor Tyndall, saying, ‘The Association desire to express to Colonel Higginson their sense of the services he has rendered to the cause of human freedom, and to wish him God speed as an unofficial messenger of peace between two nations.’ The last clause referred to the fact that there were then certain treaty complications between the two countries.

In the spring of 1878, Colonel Higginson made a second visit to Europe. He wrote from the steamer:

When I sailed before I felt a sort of dismay as we left the wharf as if the experiment were wildly dangerous and I had better jump ashore; now I did not feel that, only that fear of having left something essential behind which we often have on setting out for journeys . . . . I found with regret that I could not look on the Irish hills with quite the intense delight they inspired when they were my first glimpse of Europe.

Arrived again in London, in May, he writes:—