Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays

[118] associate with Sisters of Charity; and others who bore that uplifted and joyous serenity which now seems a part of the discipline of the Salvation lassies. There were always present those whom Emerson tersely classified as “men with beards;” this style, now familiar, being then an utter novelty, not tolerated in business or the professions, and of itself a committal to pronounced heresy. Partly as a result of this unwonted adornment, there were men who --as is indeed noticed in European Socialist meetings to-day-bore a marked resemblance to the accepted pictures of Jesus Christ. This trait was carried to an extent which the newspapers called “blasphemous” in Charles Burleigh,--a man of tall figure, benign face, and most persuasive tongue, wearing long auburn curls and somewhat tangled tempestuous beard. Lowell, whose own bearded condition marked his initiation into abolitionism, used to be amused when he went about with Burleigh and found himself jeered at as a new and still faltering disciple. Finally, there was the Hutchinson Family, with six or eight tall brothers clustered around the one rosebud of a sister, Abby: all natural singers and one might say actors, indeed unconscious poseurs, easily arousing torpid conventions with “The Car Emancipation” and such stirring melodies; or at times,