Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies

[48] chaplain, during the absence from his post of a friend. And thus engaged, through the heats of last summer, month in, month out, without one day's rest or intermission, did our humane and heroic brother labor on, with resistless energy, till he fell, fainting and fever-struck, in the midst of the wide harvest-field of charity, waiting for the husbandman to garner.

A few days before he was called “to come up higher,” he said to a fellow-laborer: “I almost wish I was up yonder, to help our poor boys who are putting off mortality and seeking a soldier's rest in heaven. I should so rejoice to welcome them there.” The wish was very characteristic,—expressive at once of his glowing faith in the nearness of the spirit-world to earth, and the closeness of angelic ministries to man, and also of his generous disinterestedness. The prayer was heard, and he was promoted to higher services. He had fought a good fight, and won a crown, as a hero of humanity.

Personally I never knew our friend till I met him in Washington; but I had often heard of him as extravagant in enthusiasm, and erratic through divergent tendencies. Like many richly endowed men, James Richardson had probably never found his true sphere till the scenes of suffering and sacrifice called his varied powers into action, and concentrated their influence into one glowing focus of good — will for the soldiers of freedom. Here was a bond of unity that gave harmony to otherwise discordant tastes. He could here be spiritualist and physiologist, architect and musician, good neighbor and preacher, reformer and man of business, all at once. The result was charming, in a rare blending of almost feminine sweetness with courageous energy, of poetic ardor with practical skill, of patient fidelity in minutest detail with a loving-kindness wide as the horizon, and hope high as the heavens. Moving swiftly and noiselessly to and fro, with his soft yet luminous blue eyes seeing all, penetrating all around him at a glance,— courteous and graceful in manner, while dauntless insincerity, in speech and deed,— he suggested the thought of one ready to be translated from the struggles of earth to the blessed fellowship of guardian angels.

The manner of his departure seemed in harmony, not alone with the self-devotion of his life, but with the peculiar nervous quality which had always marked it. His wife, who was with him in Washington for some months before his death, says