New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1905-10-14
MR. HTGGINSON.
His Chapters of AmiabIe Comment
and Anecdote.

PART OF A MANS LIFE. BY Thomas Went
worth Higginson. Crown 8vo, PIP. 81. Hough-
ton, Miff1in & Co
This volume offers to the leisurely reader
collection of more or less pleasant, if not very
important, comments on people its author has
known, and on matters of life. literature and
opinion which have occupied or interested him.
If there is not much that is fresh in these pages
it must be admitted that the choice Of well worn
subjects is a privilege of the veteran in the
chimney corner The Transcendental period in
New England has been written 10 death in
cent years; nevertheless we have read with
pleasure what he has to say concerning it. He
does not emulate the vein of humor in which
fair New Englander describes the Transcen-
dentalists as "a who dove into the infinite,
scared into the ilIimitable and never paid cash.
and the kindlier picture is more just if less
amusing We have to thank him for a delightful
story at the outset-that of the visiting British
authoress who at a dinner of our Cambridge
notabities confidingly observed to one of them
the author himsef-"Don't you think it rather
pity that all the really interesting Americans
seem TO be dead?"
Mr.. Higginson records in another chapter the
equally comic remarks of an Engshwoman en-
countered her native heath. This friendly
dame said that it had always seemed odd to
her-since Americans were so cordial and So
stiff-that it should nevertheless be Americans
who addressed every newcomer as stranger, or
Stranger she added, when English people
would more naturally say my friend"
When I defended my fellow countryn1en against
the charge and described the offending epfthet as
belonging 10 the newer and settled parts of
the land, she said with surprise that she had al
ways been told that we addressed every
quantance with Well strahnger, l guess" got
the advantage OF per little however, when we
came TO talk of railway travel She inquired if it
railway conductors often stopped the trains in
order 10 drive stray cattle of the track did not
done in my childhood, when the first railways were
BLAMED that it might sl he done oe 9G N
the great farming and grazing regions of the coun-
try were it not that We had contrivance in the
tive to guard against that danger. This valuable in
yenton, l told her, was known as 'cowcatcher.'
She listened with deep interest, and then asked
gerous for The b0v?'' and inGJired in some he
wilierment. What boy?" Why" she answered
the boy of whom you spoke, the cowcatcher!"
In a chapter on English and American
Cousins" the author makes some neat com
parsons and INDUCES in some pertinent remin-
iscences. mo criticism from Americans is more
common" he says, than that to the greater
slowness of the English mind compared with
the American"
was amused 10 find, as he told me, that whereas
he had to repeat his explanation three tmes-once
to make his hearers comprehend what he was
about to do then TO show what he doing and
then to explain what he had done-he could after
his first lecture America omit the final explana-
ton. and latterly the middle one as Well He also
told a story the effect about English
manager minstrel troupe travelling In
America. vino was accustomed to prolOng his Jokes
by the aid of end men. each bringing a
part of the joke, but who found with indignation
that every American audience caught on with
out waiting for the second end man Yet the care
ful American observer soon finds that the standard
OF quickness is to be determined in England. as
everywhere else by the point OF view. People who
slowly ground may turn out to be
quick enough when wholly at home with any par
ucuar line Of thought.
Of the letters OF celebrities here reproduced
In facsimile several merely brief notes of
courtesy, and are of no interest save to the
person to whom they are addressed OF the
longer epistles, that from J. A. Froude In refer
ence To Carlyle and hfs "reminiscences is best
worth quoting: You will not misunderstood
me- he writes, when l say that / am not
sorIy myself that the rush OF unmeaning adula-
non which burst out at his death was checked
by me "reminiscences fer which I am resnon
sble." '' 'epoii-
D1nh IS an exact picture Of him and 1vhar
~ JSs'n ~, stleusJ To think what he Was anj
tefni 49, ~ the world they Will feel forever
autheIltlc as IL is beautfu u MN 10
IIIs, t..it nuIe than general 6preSrnent ~
l-h6t'ild anu america that Ee had 49, - - rat
man, ara mat ne must have ST., - d $50 -
Inc lessons winch he taught were renrdie tel az