[169]
. . . We make little walks and visits in the cool of the evening, water our seeds, dig round the fruit trees, train our vines and plan for improving rosebushes.
The sunsets never were so lovely here; and copious dishes of currants (succeeding cherries) partially console us for the disasters of the times..
I am particularly popular in private just now, for what I am doing about Kansas, and it is rather pathetic to have them thank me for doing what they ought to have taken hold of, themselves, but have not . . .
I am probably to be Agent for Kansas parties from New England officially, which I have hitherto been unofficially—this will save me trouble by putting funds in my hands. . . .
A party left Boston for Kansas on Tuesday— 20 were from Maine and the strongest looking men I ever saw—mostly in red shirts.
In September
Mr. Higginson was made an agent of the
Kansas National Committee, and in this capacity went to
Kansas to superintend the movements of these very
Maine lumbermen.
In his letters to the New York Tribune describing this trip, and later printed in a little pamphlet called ‘A Ride Through
Kansas,’ he says:—
Coming from a land where millionaires think themselves generous in giving fifty dollars to Kansas, I converse daily with men who have sacrificed all their property in its service, and are ready at any hour to add their lives.