Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises

[242] to Elizabeth Dwight, daughter of Edmund Dwight, Esq., a woman of rare qualities and great public usefulness, who singularly carried on the tradition of those Essex County women of an earlier generation, who were such strong helpmates to their husbands. Of Mrs. Cabot it might almost have been said, as was said by John Lowell in 1826 of his cousin, Elizabeth Higginson, wife of her double first cousin, George Cabot: “She had none of the advantages of early education afforded so bountifully to the young ladies of the present age; but she surpassed all of them in the acuteness of her observation, in the knowledge of human nature, and in her power of expressing and defending the opinions which she had formed.” ¹ Thus Elliot Cabot writes of his wife: “From the time when the care of her children ceased to occupy the most of her time, she gradually became one of the most valuable of the town officials, as well as the unofficial counselor of many who needed the unfailing succor of her inexhaustible sympathy and practical helpfulness.”

Cabot visited Europe anew after his marriage, and after his return, served for nine years as a school-committee-man in Brookline, where he resided. He afterwards did faithful duty for six