Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies

He did not take that high rank in his Class of which his ability and acquirements gave promise. This was due, in part, to a weakness of the eyes, which prevented regular and continuous study, and in part to a lack of the power or habit of concentration. Either he wanted the faculty of patient, longcontinued effort in one direction, or he found in his college life no sufficient motive to put that power forth. His native ability could not have been more unquestioned among us, had he been nominally the first scholar of his Class, and still we never expected that he would rise to the first place. Yet he was a likely candidate for any prize that could tempt him.

We expected him to take the Bowdoin and the Boylston prizes, if he desired them, and he took both. The first was for Latin versification. The subject proposed was a portion of Tennyson's ‘Lotos-Eaters.’ He used to come to our room, while he was writing it, and I thought the poem never sounded so nobly as in his fluent Latin verses. He was strong in debate, taking front rank in the ‘Institute’; and his manly oratory always won for him admiration in the ‘O. K.’ The versatility of his talents may be inferred from the fact that there was scarcely a department of college life, literary, social, or political, in which he did not shine by his ready wit and wisdom. ‘Take him all in all,’ I have heard more than one classmate say, ‘he was the most brilliant man we had.’

It is not to be supposed that one so lavishly endowed and so much admired could remain unconscious of his talents. He was not unconscious of them. He was ‘smart,’ and knew it, as he once said to me; laughingly adding, ‘Is that conceited?’

If it was, it was a harmless conceit, so far as other men were concerned; for it never interfered with his appreciation of others. He was scrupulously just to all men. ‘There was a deep kindliness and charity about him, which speedily won my affection,’ writes a college friend. ‘He saw the faults and foibles of others with great clearness, and laughed at them, but ’