Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Published: 2015-07-12
Total Pages: 502
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Excerpt from Harvard Memorial Biographies, Vol. 1 Those of us whose fortunate lot it was to enlist in the army, during that magic epoch of adventure which has just passed by, will never again find in life a day of such strange excitement as that when they first put on uniform and went into camp. It was a day absolutely broken off from all that had gone before it. To say that it brought a sense of utter novelty, is nothing; the transformation seemed as perfect as if, by some suddenly revealed process, one had learned to swim in air, and were striking out for some new planet. The past was annihilated, the future was all. Now that dimly-visioned future has itself become a portion of the past; that new cycle of existence is ended; already its memories grow dim; and, after all that seeming metamorphosis, the survivors still find themselves with their feet upon the familiar earth, and pursue once more the quiet paths they left. The aureole is vanished from their lives, but it still lingers round the heads of the fallen. No time, no change, can restore them to the old ways, or take them from the enchanted sphere in which they hence forth dwell. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
