Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies

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[166] which he, a mere lad of sixteen years, had shown upon the field. Warren was justly proud of his brother's well-merited honors, and he might well have found in them an augury of like capacity in himself for the perilous service of war.

To a man like Russell the acceptance of his commission was the critical act of self-devotion. For any danger or hardship, to which the highest sense of honor and duty could call him, or an intrepid spirit carry him, was involved in that act as a moral necessity. And he felt it to be so. Hence came a strong presentiment of his fate, to which he casually gave expression, before his departures when some one spoke to him of his return home after the war. ‘Why,’ said he, with some surprise, ‘I never expect to come back.’ This feeling did not spring from any despondency, but from the habit of continually testing himself in thought by the highest standard of sacrifice. It was an untried hero's vague presage of his heroism. He went to the war in a cheerful and joyous mood. For he reached this high plane of conduct, not as one dragged by a dead lift of the will up to the level of his conception of duty, and there left exhausted and disheartened, but as one who rose to it buoyantly and held it easily by the constant energy of noble passion.

The impression of him, derived from a year and a half of daily intercourse, is fresh, strong, and ineffaceable. He had a bright, pleasant, manly countenance. It reflected the vivaciousness of bounding health and spirits, a thoroughly amiable disposition, and an open, ingenuous nature. He was quick in his impulses, but not controlled by them, and had a singularly even temper. I never heard from his lips an ill-tempered word. His thoughts were directed outward upon things, rather than inward upon himself, and were habitually kept close to the facts of observation and experience. He magnified the present, the scene of action and of duty, and inclined to that theory of living which makes the most of life. A firmness of mental fibre and a mirthful appreciation of the ludicrous kept him within the bounds of moderation. He had strong common-sense, simple and unperverted tastes.