  The absorption rate of low-energy, or soft, electromagnetic radiation by
spherically symmetric black holes in arbitrary dimensions is shown to be fixed
by conservation of energy and large gauge transformations. We interpret this
result as the explicit realization of the Hawking-Perry-Strominger Ward
identity for large gauge transformations in the background of a non-evaporating
black hole. Along the way we rederive and extend previous analytic results
regarding the absorption rate for the minimal scalar and the photon.
