Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays

[302] written in an immense hand on sheets twice as large as any foolscap paper I had ever seen; and he read from these without glasses. He was at this time seventy-six, but looked ten years younger. He stood behind two great sconces, each holding six candles; above these appeared his strong white-bearded face, and above him rose Voltaire and his laurel wreath. He used much gesture, and in impassioned moments waved his arm above his head, the fingers apart and trembling with emotion. Sometimes he clapped one hand to his head as if to tear out some of his white hairs, though this hardly seemed, at the moment, melodramatic. His voice was vigorous, and yet from some defect of utterance, I lost more of what he said than in case of the other speakers. Others around me made the same complaint. His delivery, however, was as characteristic as his literary style, and quite in keeping with it, being a series of brilliant detached points. It must be a stimulating thing, indeed, to speak to a French audience, --to men who give sighs of delight over a fine phrase, and shouts of enthusiasm over a great thought. The most striking part of Hugo's address, to my mind, was his defense of the smile of Voltaire, and his turning of the enthusiasm for the pending Exposition into an appeal for international peace. Never was there a more