Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

[68] essential; the Woman Suffrage movement has made a dozen and more women into orators and authors; and Helen Jackson was as thoroughly thrilled and inspired by the wrongs of the American Indians, as was Mrs. Stowe by those of the Negroes. The American writers who signed the petition for the pardon of the Chicago Anarchists, had at least the wholesome experience of standing firmly, whether they were right or wrong, against the current opinion of those around them. The contributions toward the discussion of social questions which have of late flowed so freely from clergymen and other nonexperts, must undoubtedly do good to those from whom they proceed, if to no others. The essential thing is that the literary man should be interested in something which he feels to be of incomparably more importance to the universe than the development of his own pretty talent. We see the same thing across the ocean, when Swinburne writes his ‘Song in Time of Order,’ and Morris marches in a Socialist procession. Here lies the power of the Russian writers, of Victor Hugo. Probably no man who ever lived had an egotism more colossal than