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

[341] are preserved in ‘Cheerful Yesterdays.’ At a French Prison Reform meeting he found he ‘could get on in the general French Committee work well enough, but as for two excited Frenchmen talking to one another, it is like interpreting heat lightning.’ But Colonel Higginson had a natural aptitude for acquiring languages, and on his first arrival at Paris he wrote: ‘French came to me like a flash and I interpreted for stray Englishmen at the customhouse!’ During this second visit he strolled into the suburbs of Paris and walked from Sceaux to Chatenay, and ‘bought vin ordinaire in the very room where Voltaire was born.’

To continue the extracts:—

Paris, Monday, July 22. I dined at Mr. Hitt's (American Sec'y of Legation) to meet Stanley the explorer. . . . I sat next to Stanley who is a very queer combination—much smoothed and softened they say but a Herald reporter still—not of distinguished look but with a resolute air—accent neither English, American nor French—talks of course about himself mainly but not in a specially conceited way—and seems perfectly incapable of a joke . . . He gave an amusing description of his intense delight at finding the queer little old man [Livingstone] but as the natives were all looking on they repressed it all and he and Dr. L. met as if in Piccadilly, perfectly coldly. Then he went on to complain and