Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises

[88] were three dollars. By his daughter Louisa's testimony he returned late at night with a single dollar in his pocket, this fact being thus explained in his own language : “Many promises were not kept and travelling is costly; but I have opened the way, and another year shall do better.” ¹ At any rate, his daughter thus pathetically described his appearance at this interview, as her mother wrote to a friend: “He looked as cold and thin as an icicle; but as serene as God.” ²

There is an almost dramatic interest in transferring our imaginations to the later visit he made westward, when he was eighty-one years old, between October, 1880, and May, 1881. He then traveled more than five thousand miles, lectured or held conversations at the rate of more than one a day, Sundays included, and came back with a thousand dollars, although more than half of his addresses had been gratuitous. For seven years after this he was the nominal dean of the so-called School of Philosophy in Concord, and for four years took an active part in its lectures and discussions. His last written works were most appropriately two sonnets on “Immortality,” this being the only theme remaining inexhaustibly open.

Perhaps no two persons in the world were in