Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises

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XX. Julia Ward Howe.

Many years of what may be called intimacy with Mrs. Julia Ward Howe do not impair one's power of painting her as she is, and this for two reasons: first, because she does not care to be portrayed in any other way; and secondly, because her freshness of temperament is so inexhaustible as to fix one's attention always on what she said or did not merely yesterday, but this morning. After knowing her more than forty years, and having been fellow member or officer in half-a-dozen clubs with her, first and last, during that time, I now see in her, not merely the woman of to-day, but the woman who went through the education of wifehood and motherhood, of reformer and agitator, and in all these was educated by the experience of life.

She lived to refute much early criticism or hasty judgment, and this partly from inward growth, partly because the society in which she moved was growing for itself and understood her better. The wife of a reformer is apt to be tested by the obstacles her husband encounters; if she is sympathetic, she shares his