Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
HARLOW NILES HIGINBOTHAM
A MEMOIR
with Brief Autobiography and Extracts
from
Speeches and Letters
CONTENTS
| Page | ||
|---|---|---|
| Biography | 9 | |
| Appendix A | ||
| Lincoln in 1864 | 49 | |
| Appendix B | ||
| The power of personality | 53 | |
| Appendix C | ||
| The man who did me a good turn | 57 | |
| Appendix D | ||
| An inscription in a copy of “Echoes from the Sabine Farm” | 61 | |
HARLOW NILES HIGINBOTHAM
Harlow Niles Higinbotham, represented, to a singulardegree, the best citizenship of the second and third half-centuriesof the Republic. Born on an Illinois farmOctober tenth, 1838; educated in his native state;serving as a volunteer soldier through the Civil War;employed by a small dry-goods house and working forit loyally and with perfect integrity until it had becomeone of the greatest merchandising firms in the world,and he one of its most active partners; responding withardor to every public call, whether it came from anewsboys’ and bootblacks’ club or from the World’sColumbian Exposition; retiring from business at sixtyor more, and giving his later years, with beautiful devotion,to his family and his favorite charities and publicworks; and dying at eighty in full career and with facultiesunimpaired; such a life epitomizes the strength andcharacter of the nation during its robust and adventurousformative period.
The story of his earlier years may be outlined inMr. Higinbotham’s own words; for a rough manuscript,autobiographical but written in the third10person, was found among his papers after his suddendeath. It begins as follows:
“Harlow Nile