Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises

[125] Ezra Abbot, his father's translations of the Gospels with notes (2 vols.), and his “Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels” (3 vols.). Charles Norton made further visits to Europe in 1855-57, and again resided there from 1868 until 1873; during which time his rapidly expanding literary acquaintanceships quite weaned his mind from the early atmosphere of theology.

Although one of the writers in the very first number of the “Atlantic Monthly,” he had no direct part in its planning. He wrote to me (January 9, 1899), “I am sorry that I can tell you nothing about the primordia of the ‘Atlantic.’ I was in Europe in 1856-57, whence I brought home some Mss. for the new magazine.” It appears from his later statement in the Anniversary Number that he had put all these manuscripts by English authors in a trunk together, but that this trunk and all the manuscripts were lost, except one accidentally left unpacked, which was a prose paper by James Hannay on Douglas Jerrold, “who is hardly,” as Norton justly says, “to be reckoned among the immortals.” Hannay is yet more thoroughly forgotten. But this inadequate service in respect to foreign material was soon more than balanced, as one sees on tracing the list of papers catalogued under Norton's name in the Atlantic Index.

To appreciate the great variety and thorough