Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises

[217] and vigorous pamphleteer, his first pamphlet being published during the Civil War and entitled “Cheap Cotton by free labor,” and this publication led to his acquaintance with David R. Wells and Charles Nordhoff, thenceforth his life-long friends. His early pamphlets were on the cotton question in different forms (1863-76); he wrote on blockade-running (1865) ; on the Pacific Railway (1871) ; and on mutual fire insurance (1885), this last being based on personal experience as the head of a mutual company. He was also, during his whole life, in print and otherwise, a strong and effective fighter for sound currency.

A large part of his attention from 1889 onward was occupied by experiments in cooking and diet, culminating in an invention of his own called “The Aladdin Oven.” This led him into investigations as to the cost of nutrition in different countries, on which subject he also wrote pamphlets. He soon was led into experiments so daring that he claimed to have proved it possible to cook with it, in open air, a five-course dinner for ten persons, and gave illustrations of this at outdoor entertainments. He claimed that good nutrition could be had for $ per week, and that a family of five, by moderate management, could be comfortably supported on $i 80 per year (Boston Herald, October 8, 1891). These surprising figures unfortunately created among the