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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Short studies of American authors 23 11 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men 18 4 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, John Greenleaf Whittier 4 0 Browse Search
Mary Thacher Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson: the story of his life 4 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli 3 1 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises 3 1 Browse Search
Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 25. (ed. Reverend J. William Jones) 2 2 Browse Search
The Daily Dispatch: September 3, 1863., [Electronic resource] 2 0 Browse Search
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight) 2 0 Browse Search
Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America. 1 1 Browse Search
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Browsing named entities in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men. You can also browse the collection for Howells or search for Howells in all documents.

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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men, chapter 8 (search)
en into a well, and whom the collected ladders and ropes of the neighborhood could not extract, was heard shouting from the depths of the earth, Why don't you send for Miss Kent, you fools? The arrival of Miss Kent set everything working smoothly; and so it always is when maiden aunts arrive. The lady from Philadelphia, in Miss Lucretia Hale's Peterkin stories, who always got that luckless family out of all perplexities, was unquestionably a maiden aunt. The party stranded in mid-air, in Howells's Elevator, would undoubtedly have been rescued by a maiden aunt had not the author-with his well-known severity towards women-shut up his aunt Mary in the elevator itself, where she could only request her silly niece not to be a goose. Even in this, we perceive, is the utility of maiden aunts vindicated. It might seem, as we look around at these priceless relatives, as if there were a good many of them in the world, but in reality there are far too few. Their ranks are so easily deple
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men, X. The flood-tide of youth. (search)
er's happiness, the last and most blessed of all Heaven's gifts to man. You have a thousand advantages over your venerable relative who stands, an unobserved wall-flower, behind you; but he has one vast advantage that you cannot share: he can partake in imagination of every thrill of your happiness, for he has had it all; but you cannot comprehend an atom of his, for you have not come to it. As he watches his daughter or his favorite niece with divided emotions in the ballroom — enraged, as Howells says, when she has not a partner, and jealous when she has — he still has a pleasure that he would not, on the whole, exchange for yours. Your enjoyments are more ardent, it may be, but his have wider range, for they represent the whole genial sympathy of matured existence. And beyond all this-and still more utterly beyond the comprehension of the young — is that sense of wealth and inherent resources in the human race which we obtain from watching this incessant tide. What the indivi<
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men, chapter 12 (search)
uragement as a copyist. These occupations are always crowded; but if you have a special gift it is likely to lie in some line where, if the demand be less, there is also less competition. As civilization advances, arts and accomplishments develop. I can remember the time when there was hardly a teacher of gymnastics in America who was not an ignorant and vulgar pugilist, whereas such instruction now is an occupation for educated men and women. What I mean to urge is that the very gifts which are considered ornamental may often be utilized if combined with energy and ingenuity; and that for this purpose those who have known better days possess a real advantage in a circle of acquaintance ready-made and willing to aid them, and also in the acquired manners which make their work attractive. It always seemed to me that the impoverished heroine of Mr. Howells's A woman's reason would not have had quite so hard a struggle in real life as that with which his ingenuity has provided her.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men, chapter 20 (search)
nably the local population. It is rare to go into any school-house of a country town in New England, and not see some one child who has a genuine and winning gracefulness of manner. She may be of foreign parentage or she may be descended from those who came in the Mayflower; she may have inaccuracies of speech, and these may or may not add to her naive attractions; but the type is there, and it will be recognized by every observant person in connection with our Eastern and Middle States. Howells rarely deals with it-his Lydia Blood comes the nearest to it, but it is unquestionably there, and the effect of its presence, even as exhibited among children, is to make the rural life of New England far more attractive than our novelists usually paint it. Rusticity, on the whole, fares well in English literature. When we think of it as depicted by Shakespeare, we think less of his dull or vulgar Audreys and Mopsas than of Miranda and Perdita. Both these last heroines represent a life
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men, chapter 28 (search)
is story of a very celebrated English general. The military hero was once dining with Mr. S-- , when a stray mouse was seen running to and fro, looking for a hiding-place. With one spring the general was on his chair; with another, on the table. Amid much laughter the host rose and proceeded in the direction of the mouse. Oh! Stop, S- , shouted the man of war; for Heaven's sake don't exasperate him! The exasperated mouse and the intimidated beholders are still on duty, it seems, in Mr. Howells's good-natured farce, The mouse-trap; but the lions are the painters, and the sex is conveniently changed. Every woman who comes into the room in his little drama takes more or less gracefully to chair or table, when the mouse is announced; and even the Irish domestic follows them, though I have generally found Bridget ready to enforce home rule vigorously on such intruders by the aid of a pair of tongs. The only person in the tale who is not frightened is a man, and he is not severely
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men, chapter 31 (search)
it is the men, not the women, who have taken up Miss Austen's work, while the women show more inclination, if not to the big bow-wow style of Scott, at least to the novel of plot and narrative. Anthony Trollope among the lately dead, James and Howells among the living, are the lineal successors of Miss Austen. Perhaps it is an old-fashioned taste which leads me to think that neither of these does his work quite so well as she ; but they all belong to the same photographic school; each sets ut the really great novel includes the creation of character, and does not stop there; for after all one asks, What is the use of the finest delineation of persons if they do nothing worth doing after they are created? The trouble with James and Howells seems to be that they expend all their strength in the masterly construction of marionettes; and after these little personages are so real that they seem as good as alive they are made to do nothing more than throw their arms and legs about a wh
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men, chapter 35 (search)
er literary style; she died at eighty-four, and the edition of her works published just before her death comprised just eighty-four volumes-one for every year. It is half a century since her death, and it is said that at least twenty of her books are still popular in France. This is to make the fruitage of a life better than the flower, and so is such a beautiful old age as that of Lucretia Mott or Lydia Maria Child. It is the fashion to sneer at old women; the novelists neglect — them: Howells hardly recognizes their existence; Thackeray makes them worldly and wicked, like old Lady Kew, or a little oversentimental, like Madame de Florae; Aliss Edgeworth's Lady Davenant in Helen is perhaps the best example of the class. In pictorial art I know of no more impressive representation of feminine old age, of the more commanding sort, than an etching in Mrs. Jameson's Commonplace book from a German artist, Steinle. Eve, in her banishment, prematurely old with care, sits leaning with s
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men, chapter 38 (search)
little; but why not go a step farther, and say, Greater is the great? An artist is commissioned to unlock for us all the mysteries of the human soul. Is Silas Lapham everything, and Arthur Dimmesdale nothing? The sincere observer of man, Mr. Howells says in Their wedding Journey, will not desire to look upon his heroic or occasional phases, but will seek him in his habitual moods of vacancy and tiresomeness. Tis simply illustrates Coleridge's remark that we may safely take every man's oock and smokes a cigarette; that is not the question. The question is whether he is utterly worthless as an object of art when he rides to certain death in a cavalry charge. Is he not then also real? This is the whole point at issue between Mr. Howells and what he calls the childish demands of his contemporary critics. If it be said that it is because the uncommonplace demands too much skill that authors avoid it, that is a legitimate excuse. Only let this be called, as it is, a confessi
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men, Index. (search)
itteraire des Femmes Francaises, 252. Holmes, Dr. O. W., quoted, 51. Also 96, 153, 203. home, American love of, 281. home, the Creator of the, 28. Homer, 8, 203. Homes, occasional permanence of, in America, 283. Hood, Thomas, 19. Horse-chestnuts, the value of, 295. house of Cards, A, 138. House of Lords, English, decline of, 136. Household decoration, stages of, 161. household decorators, women as, 161. House-keeping in America, 72, 116; in England, 73. Howells, W. 1)., quoted, 40, 52, 64, 194. Also 102, 141, 157, 158, 180. Howitt, A. W., 45. Hugo, Victor, 309. Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 182. humility in Americans, on A certain, 95. Humility, the spring of; 309. humor of children, the, 217. Hun, Dr. E. R., 183, 181. Huxley, T. H., 99. I. Independent Purse, the, 115. Industry, female, changes in, 7. influence, the woman of, 17. Ingelow, Jean, cited, 133. Invalids, visits to, 227. Italian manners, 25. J. Jacks