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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/37878-8.txt b/37878-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..da47d1e --- /dev/null +++ b/37878-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7341 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes, by E. E. Brown + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes + +Author: E. E. Brown + +Release Date: October 30, 2011 [EBook #37878] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES *** + + + + +Produced by Tor Martin Kristiansen, Ron Stephens, Carol +Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + [Illustration: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.] + + + + + LIFE OF + OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES + + BY + E.E. BROWN + + Author of "LIFE OF GARFIELD," "LIFE OF WASHINGTON," + "FROM NIGHT TO LIGHT," ETC., ETC. + + + CHICAGO NEW YORK + THE WERNER COMPANY + + + + + COPYRIGHT 1884 + BY D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY + + COPYRIGHT 1895 + BY THE WERNER COMPANY + + Holmes + + + + +OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + CHAP. PAGE. + + I. ANCESTRY 9 + + II. BOYHOOD 20 + + III. EARLY RECOLLECTIONS 30 + + IV. OTHER REMINISCENCES 40 + + V. ABROAD 49 + + VI. CHANGE IN THE HOME 60 + + VII. THE PROFESSOR 67 + + VIII. THE LECTURER 74 + + IX. NAMING THE NEW MAGAZINE 83 + + X. ELSIE VENNER 92 + + XI. FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE 107 + + XII. FAVORITES OF SONG 114 + + XIII. THE MAN OF SCIENCE 136 + + XIV. THE HOLMES BREAKFAST 152 + + XV. ORATIONS AND ESSAYS 171 + + XVI. THE HOME CIRCLE 208 + + XVII. LOVE OF NATURE 227 + + XVIII. THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL 240 + + XIX. TOKENS OF ESTEEM 284 + + XX. IN LATER YEARS 302 + + XXI. LAST DAYS 320 + + + + +OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +ANCESTRY. + + +In a quaint old gambrel-roofed house that once stood on Cambridge +Common, Oliver Wendell Holmes--poet, professor, "beloved physician"--was +born, on the twenty-ninth of August, 1809. His father, the Rev. Abiel +Holmes, was the pastor of the "First Church" in Cambridge-- + + That ancient church whose lofty tower, + Beneath the loftier spire, + Is shadowed when the sunset hour + Clothes the tall shaft in fire. + +Here, in Revolutionary times, General Washington frequently worshiped, +and the old homestead itself was the headquarters of the American army +during the siege of Boston. + +"It was a great happiness," writes the _Poet at the Breakfast-Table_, +"to have been born in an old house haunted by such recollections, with +harmless ghosts walking its corridors, with fields of waving grass and +trees and singing birds, and that vast territory of four or five acres +around it, to give a child the sense that he was born to a noble +principality.... + +"The gambrel-roofed house was not one of those old Tory, Episcopal +church-goer's strongholds. One of its doors opens directly upon the +Green, always called the Common; the other faces the south, a few steps +from it, over a paved foot-walk on the other side of which is the +miniature front yard, bordered with lilacs and syringas. + +"The honest mansion makes no pretensions. Accessible, companionable, +holding its hand out to all--comfortable, respectable, and even in its +way dignified, but not imposing; not a house for his Majesty's +Counsellor, or the Right Reverend successor of Him who had not where to +lay his head, for something like a hundred and fifty years it has stood +in its lot, and seen the generations of men come and go like the leaves +of the forest." + +The house was not originally built for a parsonage. It was first the +residence of a well-to-do tailor, who sold it to Jonathan Hastings, a +prosperous farmer whom the college students used to call "Yankee Jont.," +and whose son was the college steward in 1775. It was long known in +Cambridge as the "Hastings House," but about the year 1792 it was sold +to Eliphalet Pearson, the Hebrew Professor at Harvard, and in 1807 it +passed into the hands of the Rev. Abiel Holmes. + +For forty years the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes ministered to his +Cambridge parish, revered and loved by all who knew him. He was a man of +marked literary ability, as his _Annals of America_ shows--"full of +learning," as some one has said, "but never distressing others by +showing how learned he was." + +Said T.W. Higginson, at the Holmes Breakfast: + +"I should like to speak of that most delightful of sunny old men, the +father of Doctor Holmes, whom I knew and loved when I was a child.... I +was brought up in Cambridge, my father's house being next door to that +of Doctor Holmes' gambrel-roofed house, and the library I most enjoyed +tumbling about in was the same in which his infant gambols had first +disturbed the repose of the books. I shall always remember a certain +winter evening, when we boys were playing before the fire, how the old +man--gray, and gentle, and kindly as any old German professor, and never +complaining of our loudest gambols--going to the frost-covered window, +sketched with his pen-knife what seemed a cluster of brambles and a +galaxy of glittering stars, and above that he wrote, _Per aspera ad +astra_: 'Through difficulties to the stars.' He explained to us what it +meant, and I have never forgotten that quiet winter evening and the +sweet talk of that old man." + +The good pastor was a graduate of Yale College, and before coming to +Cambridge had taught at his _Alma Mater_, and preached in Georgia. He +was the son of Doctor David Holmes, a physician of Woodstock, Ct., who +had served as captain in the French and Indian wars, and afterward as +surgeon in the Revolutionary army. The grandfather of Doctor David +Holmes was one of the original settlers of Woodstock.[1] + +The genealogy of the Holmes family of Woodstock dates from Thomas +Holmes, a lawyer of Gray's Inn, London. In 1686, John Holmes, one of his +descendants, joined a colony from Roxbury, Mass., and settled in +Woodstock, Conn. His son David married a certain "Bathsheba," who had a +remarkable reputation as nurse and doctress. + +In the great storm of 1717, when the settlers' houses were almost buried +in the snow, it is said that she climbed out of an upper-story window +and travelled on snow-shoes through almost impassable drifts to Dudley, +Mass., to visit a sick woman. The son of this noble Bathsheba was "Dr. +David," the grandfather of Oliver Wendell Holmes. + +In 1790, Abiel Holmes was married to the daughter of President Stiles of +Yale, who died without children. His second wife, and the mother of +Oliver Wendell Holmes, was a daughter of Hon. Oliver Wendell, an eminent +lawyer. He was descended from various Wendells, Olivers, Quinceys, and +Bradstreets--names that belonged to the best blue blood of New +England--and his wife was Mary Jackson, a daughter of Dorothy Quincy, +the "Dorothy Q." whom Doctor Holmes has immortalized in his poem. And +just here, lest some of my readers may have forgotten some parts of this +delicious bit of family portraiture, I am tempted to give the entire +poem: + + Grandmother's mother, her age I guess, + Thirteen summers or something less; + Girlish bust, but womanly air, + Smooth square forehead, with uprolled hair, + Lips that lover has never kissed, + Taper fingers and slender wrist, + Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade-- + So they painted the little maid. + + On her hand a parrot green + Sits unmoving and broods serene; + Hold up the canvas full in view-- + Look, there's a rent the light shines through. + Dark with a century's fringe of dust, + That was a Redcoat's rapier thrust! + Such is the tale the lady old, + Dorothy's daughter's daughter told. + + Who the painter was none may tell-- + One whose best was not over well; + Hard and dry, it must be confessed, + Flat as a rose that has long been pressed; + Yet in her cheek the hues are bright, + Dainty colors of red and white; + And in her slender shape are seen + Hint and promise of stately mien. + + Look not on her with eyes of scorn-- + Dorothy Q. was a lady born! + Ay, since the galloping Normans came, + England's annals have known her name; + And still to the three-hilled rebel town + Dear is that ancient name's renown, + For many a civic wreath they won, + The youthful sire and the gray-haired son. + + O damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q., + Strange is the gift that I owe to you; + Such a gift as never a king + Save to daughter or son might bring-- + All my tenure of heart and hand, + All my title to house and land; + Mother and sister, and child and wife, + And joy and sorrow, and death and life. + + What if a hundred years ago + Those close-shut lips had answered, no, + When forth the tremulous question came + That cost the maiden her Norman name; + And under the folds that look so still + The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill + Should I be I, or would it be + One tenth another to nine tenths me? + + Soft is the breath of a maiden's yes; + Not the light gossamer stirs with less; + But never a cable that holds so fast, + Through all the battles of wave and blast, + And never an echo of speech or song + That lives in the babbling air so long! + There were tones in the voice that whispered then + You may hear to-day in a hundred men. + + O lady and lover, how faint and far + Your images hover, and here we are, + Solid and stirring in flesh and bone, + Edward's and Dorothy's--all their own-- + A goodly record for time to show + Of a syllable spoken so long ago! + Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive, + For the tender whisper that bade me live? + + It shall be a blessing, my little maid, + I will heal the stab of the Redcoat's blade, + And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame, + And gild with a rhyme your household name, + So you shall smile on us, brave and bright, + As first you greeted the morning's light, + And live untroubled by woes and fears, + Through a second youth of a hundred years. + +This Dorothy Quincy, it is interesting to note, was the aunt of a second +Dorothy Quincy, who married Governor Hancock. The Wendells were of Dutch +descent. + +Evert Jansen Wendell, who came from East Friesland in 1645, was the +original settler in Albany. From the church records, we find that he was +the _Regerendo Dijaken_ in 1656, and upon one of the windows of the old +Dutch church in Albany, the arms of the Wendells--a ship riding at two +anchors--were represented in stained glass. Very little is known of +these early ancestors, but the name is still an influential one among +the old Knickerbocker families. + +Early in the eighteenth century, Abraham and Jacob Wendell left their +Albany home and came to Boston. It is said that Jacob (the +great-grandfather of Oliver Wendell Holmes) fell in love with his future +wife, the daughter of Doctor James Oliver, when she was only nine years +of age. Seeing her at play, he was so impressed by her beauty and grace +that, like the Jacob of old, he willingly waited the flight of years. +Twelve children blessed this happy union, and the youngest daughter +married William Phillips, the first mayor of Boston, and the father of +Wendell Phillips. + + Fair cousin, Wendell P., + +says Doctor Holmes in his Phi Beta Kappa poem of 1881: + + Our ancestors were dwellers beside the Zuyder Zee; + Both Grotius and Erasmus were countrymen of we, + And Vondel was our namesake, though he spelt it with a v. + +Jacob Wendell became, eventually, one of the richest merchants of +Boston; was a member of the City Council and colonel of the Boston +regiment. His son, Oliver (the grandfather of Doctor Holmes), was born +in 1733, and after his graduation at Harvard, in 1753, he went into +business with his father. He still continued his studies, however, and +preferring a professional life to that of a business man, he afterwards +graduated at the Law School, was admitted to the bar, and soon after +appointed Judge of Probate for Suffolk County. In Drake's _Old Landmarks +of Boston_, we find that Judge Wendell was a selectman during the siege +of Boston, and was commissioned by General Washington to raise a company +of men to watch the British after the evacuation, so that no spies might +pass between the two armies. + +The original Bradstreet was Simon, the old Charter Governor, who +married Governor Dudley's daughter Anne.[2] This accomplished lady, +the first New England poetess, and frequently called by her +contemporaries "The Tenth Muse," was Doctor Holmes' grandmother's +great-great-grandmother.[3] + +With such an ancestry, Oliver Wendell Holmes surely fulfils all the +conditions of "a man of family," and who will not readily agree with the +_Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table_, when he writes as follows: + +"I go for the man with the family portraits against the one with the +twenty-five cent daguerreotype, unless I find out that the last is the +better of the two. I go for the man that inherits family traditions and +the cumulative humanities of at least four or five generations. Above +all things, as a child, he should have tumbled about in a library. All +men are afraid of books that have not handled them from infancy." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] From notes furnished the writer by Dr. Holmes. + +[2] In the Harvard College Library may be seen a copy of Anne +Bradstreet's poems, which passed through eight editions. The +extraordinary title of her world-renowned book reads as follows: +"Several poems compiled with great variety of wit and learning, full of +delight, wherein especially is contained a complete discourse and +description of the four elements, constitutions, ages of man, seasons of +the year, together with an exact epitome of the three first monarchies, +viz., the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and beginning of the Roman +Commonweal to the end of their last king: with diverse other pleasant +and serious poems. By a gentlewoman in New England." This talented lady +was the ancestress not only of Oliver Wendell Holmes, but also of the +Channings, Danas and Phillipses. + +[3] From notes furnished by Doctor Holmes. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +BOYHOOD. + + +In a curious little almanac for 1809 may still be seen against the date +of August 29, the simple record, "Son b." Twice before had good Parson +Holmes recorded in similar manner the births of his children, for Oliver +Wendell, who bore his grandfather's name, was his third child; but this +was the first time he could write "son." + +A few years later another son came--the "brother John" whose wit and +talents have gladdened so many hearts--and, last of all, another +daughter came to brighten the family circle for a few brief years. + +The little Oliver was a bright, sunny-tempered child, highly imaginative +and extremely sensitive. Speaking of his childhood in after years, and +of certain superstitious fancies that always clung to him, he says: + +"I tell you it was not so pleasant for a little boy of impressible +nature to go up to bed in an old gambrel-roofed house, with untenanted, +locked upper chambers, and a most ghostly garret; ... There was a dark +store-room, too, on looking through the keyhole of which I could dimly +see a heap of chairs and tables and other four-footed things, which +seemed to me to have rushed in there frightened, and in their fright to +have huddled together and climbed up on each other's backs--as the +people did in that awful crush where so many were killed at the +execution of Holloway and Haggerty. Then the lady's portrait up-stairs +with the sword-thrusts through it--marks of the British officers' +rapiers--and the tall mirror in which they used to look at their red +coats--confound them for smashing its mate!--and the deep, +cunningly-wrought arm-chair in which Lord Percy used to sit while his +hair was dressing; he was a gentleman, and always had it covered with a +large _peignoir_ to save the silk covering my grandmother embroidered. +Then the little room down-stairs from which went the orders to throw up +a bank of earth on the hill yonder where you may now observe a granite +obelisk, the study in my father's time, but in those days the +council-chamber of armed men, sometimes filled with soldiers. Come with +me, and I will show you the 'dents' left by the butts of their muskets +all over the floor. With all these suggestive objects round me, aided by +the wild stories those awful country boys that came to live in our +service brought with them--of contracts written in blood and left out +over night not to be found the next morning (removed by the Evil One who +takes his nightly round among our dwellings, and filed away for future +use), of dreams coming true, of death-signs, of apparitions, no wonder +that my imagination got excited, and I was liable to superstitious +fancies." + +What some of these fancies were, he tells us elsewhere: + +"I was afraid of ships. Why, I could never tell. The masts looked +frightfully tall, but they were not so tall as the steeple of our old +yellow meeting-house. At any rate, I used to hide my eyes from the +sloops and schooners that were wont to lie at the end of the bridge, and +I confess that traces of this undefined terror lasted very long. One +other source of alarm had a still more fearful significance. There was +a great wooden hand, a glovemaker's sign, which used to swing and creak +in the blast as it hung from a pillar before a certain shop a mile or +two outside of the city. Oh, the dreadful hand! Always hanging there +ready to catch up a little boy who would come home to supper no more, +nor yet to bed, whose porringer would be laid away empty thenceforth, +and his half-worn shoes wait until his small brother grew to fit them. + +"As for all manner of superstitious observances, I used once to think I +must have been peculiar in having such a list of them, but I now believe +that half the children of the same age go through the same experiences. +No Roman soothsayer ever had such a catalogue of omens as I found in the +sibylline leaves of my childhood. That trick of throwing a stone at a +tree and attaching some mighty issue to hitting or missing, which you +will find mentioned in one or more biographies, I well remember. +Stepping on or over certain particular things or spots--Doctor Johnson's +special weakness--I got the habit of at a very early age. + +"With these follies mingled sweet delusions which I loved so well I +would not outgrow them, even when it required a voluntary effort to put +a momentary trust in them. Here is one which I cannot help telling you. + +"The firing of the great guns at the Navy Yard is easily heard at the +place where I was born and lived. 'There is a ship of war come in,' they +used to say, when they heard them. Of course I supposed that such +vessels came in unexpectedly, after indefinite years of absence, +suddenly as falling stones, and that the great guns roared in their +astonishment and delight at the sight of the old war-ship splitting the +bay with her cut-water. Now, the sloop-of-war the _Wasp_, Captain +Blakely, after gloriously capturing the _Reindeer_ and the _Avon_, had +disappeared from the face of the ocean, and was supposed to be lost. But +there was no proof of it, and of course for a time, hopes were +entertained that she might be heard from. Long after the last real +chance had utterly vanished, I pleased myself with the fond illusion +that somewhere on the waste of waters she was still floating, and there +were _years_ during which I never heard the sound of the great guns +booming inland from the Navy Yard without saying to myself, 'the _Wasp_ +has come!' and almost thinking I could see her as she rolled in, +crumpling the waters before her, weather-beaten, barnacled, with +shattered spars and threadbare canvas, welcomed by the shouts and tears +of thousands. This was one of those dreams that I mused and never told. +Let me make a clean breast of it now, and say, that, so late as to have +outgrown childhood, perhaps to have got far on towards manhood, when the +roar of the cannon has struck suddenly on my ear, I have started with a +thrill of vague expectation and tremulous delight, and the long unspoken +words have articulated themselves in the mind's dumb whisper, _The Wasp +has come!_ + +"Yes; children believe plenty of queer things. I suppose all of you have +had the pocket-book fever when you were little? What do I mean? Why, +ripping up old pocket-books in the firm belief that bank-bills to an +immense amount were hidden in them. So, too, you must all remember some +splendid unfulfilled promise of somebody or other, which fed you with +hopes perhaps for years, and which left a blank in your life which +nothing has ever filled up. O.T. quitted our household carrying with +him the passionate regrets of the more youthful members. He was an +ingenious youngster; wrote wonderful copies, and carved the two initials +given above with great skill on all available surfaces. I thought, by +the way, they were all gone, but the other day, I found them on a +certain door. How it surprised me to find them so near the ground! I had +thought the boy of no trivial dimensions. Well, O.T., when he went, made +a solemn promise to two of us. I was to have a ship, and the other a +martin house (last syllable pronounced as in the word _tin_). Neither +ever came; but oh! how many and many a time I have stolen to the +corner--the cars pass close by it at this time--and looked up that long +avenue, thinking that he must be coming now, almost sure as I turned to +look northward that there he would be, trudging toward me, the ship in +one hand and the mar_tin_ house in the other!" + +At an early age the merry, restless little fellow was sent to a +neighboring school, kept by Ma'am Prentiss, a good, motherly old dame, +who ruled her little flock, not with a scourge of birches, but with a +long willow rod that reached quite across the schoolroom, +"reminding,[4] rather than chastening." Among her pupils was Alfred +Lee, afterwards the beloved Bishop of Delaware. + +"It is by little things," says the Autocrat, "that we know ourselves; a +soul would very probably mistake itself for another, when once +disembodied, were it not for individual experiences which differ from +those of others only in details seemingly trivial. All of us have been +thirsty thousands of times, and felt with Pindar, that water was the +best of things. I alone, as I think, of all mankind, remember one +particular pailful of water, flavored with the white-pine of which the +pail was made, and the brown mug out of which one Edmund, a red-faced +and curly-haired boy, was averred to have bitten a fragment in his haste +to drink; it being then high summer, and little full-blooded boys +feeling very warm and porous in the low studded schoolroom where Dame +Prentiss, dead and gone, ruled over young children. Thirst belongs to +humanity everywhere, in all ages, but that white-pine pail and that +brown mug belong to me in particular." + +The next school to which the Cambridge pastor sent his little son was +kept by William Biglow, a man of considerable scholarship and much +native wit. Five years were spent at a school in Cambridgeport, which +was kept by several successive teachers, and it was here, as +schoolmates, that Oliver Wendell Holmes first met Margaret Fuller and +Richard Henry Dana. + +"I was moderately studious," says Doctor Holmes, "and very fond of +reading stories, which I sometimes did in school hours. I was fond also +of whispering, and my desk bore sad witness to my passion for whittling. +For these misdemeanors I sometimes had a visitation from the ferule, and +once when a Gunter's scale was used for this purpose, it flew to pieces +as it came down on my palm."[5] + +It was about this time, doubtless, that the _Autocrat_ learned that +important fact about the "hat." + +"I was once equipped," he says, "in a hat of Leghorn straw, having a +brim of much wider dimensions than were usual at that time, and sent to +school in that portion of my native town which lies nearest to the +metropolis. On my way I was met by a 'Port-Chuck,' as we used to call +the young gentlemen of that locality, and the following dialogue ensued: + +"_The Port-Chuck_: 'Hullo, you sir, joo know th' wus goin' to be a race +to-morrah?' + +"_Myself_: 'No. Who's goin' to run, 'n' wher' 's't goin' to be?' + +"_The Port-Chuck_: 'Squire Mico 'n' Doctor Williams, round the brim o' +your hat.' + +"These two much-respected gentlemen being the oldest inhabitants at that +time, and the alleged race-course being out of the question, the +Port-Chuck also winking and thrusting his tongue into his cheek, I +perceived that I had been trifled with, and the effect has been to make +me sensitive and observant respecting this article ever since. The hat +is the vulnerable point of the artificial integument." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[4] From notes furnished by Doctor Holmes. + +[5] From notes furnished by Doctor Holmes. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. + + +Of the boyhood of Doctor Holmes we have many delightful glimpses. + +"Like other boys in the country," he tells us, "I had my patch of ground +to which in the springtime I intrusted the seeds furnished me with a +confident trust in their resurrection and glorification in the better +world of summer. But I soon found that my lines had fallen in a place +where a vegetable growth had to run the gauntlet of as many foes and +trials as a Christian pilgrim. Flowers would not blow; daffodils +perished like criminals in their condemned caps, without their petals +ever seeing daylight; roses were disfigured with monstrous protrusions +through their very centres, something that looked like a second bud +pushing through the middle of the corolla; lettuces and cabbages would +not head; radishes knotted themselves until they looked like +centenarians' fringes; and on every stem, on every leaf, and both sides +of it, and at the root of everything that grew, was a professional +specialist in the shape of grub, caterpillar, aphis, or other expert, +whose business it was to devour that particular part, and help murder +the whole attempt at vegetation.... Yet Nature is never wholly unkind. +Economical as she was in my unparadised Eden, hard as it was to make +some of my floral houris unveil, still the damask roses sweetened +the June breezes, the bladed and plumed flower-de-luces unfolded +their close-wrapped cones, and larkspurs, and lupins, lady's +delights--plebeian manifestations of the pansy--self-sowing marigolds, +hollyhocks; the forest flowers of two seasons, and the perennial lilacs +and syringas, all whispered to the winds blowing over them that some +caressing presence was around me. + +"Beyond the garden was the field, a vast domain of four acres or +thereabouts by the measurement of after years, bordered to the north by +a fathomless chasm--the ditch the base-ball players of the present era +jump over; on the east by unexplored territory; on the south by a +barren enclosure, where the red sorrel proclaimed liberty and equality +under its _drapeau rouge_, and succeeded in establishing a vegetable +commune where all were alike, poor, mean, sour, and uninteresting; and +on the west by the Common, not then disgraced by jealous enclosures +which make it look like a cattle-market. + +"Beyond, as I looked round, were the colleges, the meeting-house, the +little square market-house, long vanished, the burial ground where the +dead presidents stretched their weary bones under epitaphs stretched out +at as full length as their subjects; the pretty church where the gouty +Tories used to kneel on their hassocks, the district schoolhouse, and +hard by it Ma'am Hancock's cottage, never so called in those days, but +rather 'ten-footer'; then houses scattered near and far, open spaces, +the shadowy elms, round hilltops in the distance, and over all the great +bowl of the sky. Mind you, this was the WORLD, as I first knew it; +_terra veteribus cognita_, as Mr. Arrowsmith would have called it, if he +had mapped the universe of my infancy." + +"When I was of smallest dimensions," he says at another time, "and wont +to ride impacted between the knees of fond parental pair, we would +sometimes cross the bridge to the next village town and stop opposite a +low, brown, gambrel-roofed cottage. Out of it would come one Sally, +sister of its swarthy tenant, swarthy herself, shady-lipped, sad-voiced, +and bending over her flower bed, would gather a 'posy,' as she called +it, for the little boy. Sally lies in the churchyard, with a slab of +blue slate at her head, lichen-crusted, and leaning a little within the +last few years. Cottage, garden-bed, posies, grenadier-like rows of +seeding-onions--stateliest of vegetables--all are gone, but the breath +of a marigold brings them all back to me." + +Of Cambridge at this time, James Russell Lowell, in his _Fireside +Travels_, tells us: "It was still a country village with its own habits +and traditions, not yet feeling too strongly the force of suburban +gravitation. Approaching it from the west, by what was then called the +New Road, you would pause on the brow of Symond's Hill to enjoy a view +singularly soothing and placid. In front of you lay the town, tufted +with elms, lindens, and horse-chestnuts, which had seen Massachusetts a +colony, and were fortunately unable to emigrate with the Tories by +whom, or by whose fathers they were planted. Over it rose the noisy +belfry of the College, the square, brown tower of the Episcopal Church, +and the slim yellow spire of the parish meeting-house. On your right the +Charles slipped smoothly through green and purple salt meadows, darkened +here and there with the blossoming black grass as with a stranded +cloud-shadow. To your left upon the Old Road you saw some half-dozen +dignified old houses of the colonial time, all comfortably fronting +southward.... We called it 'the Village' then, and it was essentially an +English village--quiet, unspeculative, without enterprise, sufficing to +itself, and only showing such differences from the original type as the +public school and the system of town government might superinduce. A few +houses, chiefly old, stood around the bare common, with ample +elbow-room, and old women, capped and spectacled, still peered through +the same windows from which they had watched Lord Percy's artillery +rumble by to Lexington, or caught a glimpse of the handsome Virginia +general who had come to wield our homespun Saxon chivalry. The hooks +were to be seen from which had swung the hammocks of Burgoyne's captive +red-coats. If memory does not deceive me, women still washed clothes in +the town spring, clear as that of Bandusia. One coach sufficed for all +the travel to the metropolis. Commencement had not ceased to be the +great holiday of the Boston commonwealth, and a fitting one it was. The +students (scholars they were called then) wore their sober uniform, not +ostentatiously distinctive, or capable of rousing democratic envy; and +the old lines of caste were blurred rather than rubbed out, as servitor +was softened into beneficiary. Was it possible for us in those days to +conceive of a greater potentate than the president of the University, in +his square doctor's cap, that still filially recalled Oxford and +Cambridge?" + +The father of Oliver Wendell Holmes was a Calvanist, not indeed of the +severest cast, but still strictly "orthodox" in all his religious views, +and when Oliver, his elder son, was fifteen years of age, he sent him to +the Phillips Academy in Andover, thinking that the religious atmosphere +there was less heretical than at Phillips Academy, Exeter, where +Arminian tendencies were just beginning to show themselves. + +"I have some recollections of Andover, pleasant and other," says Doctor +Holmes. "I wonder if the old Seminary clock strikes as slowly as it used +to. My room-mate thought, when he first came, it was the bell tolling +deaths, and people's ages, as they do in the country. He swore +(ministers' sons get so familiar with good words that they are apt to +handle them carelessly), that the children were dying by the dozen of +all ages, from one to twelve, and ran off next day in recess when it +began to strike eleven, but was caught before the clock got through +striking. At the foot of the hill, down in town, is, or was, a tidy old +elm, which was said to have been hooped with iron to protect it from +Indian tomahawks (_Credab Hahnucmannus_), and to have grown round its +hoops and buried them in its wood." + +The extreme conscientiousness of the boy is strikingly depicted in the +following revelation: + +"The first unequivocal act of wrong that has left its trace in my memory +was this: refusing a small favor asked of me--nothing more than telling +what had happened at school one morning. No matter who asked it; but +there were circumstances which saddened and awed me. I had no heart to +speak; I faltered some miserable, perhaps petulant excuse, stole away, +and the first battle of life was lost. + +"What remorse followed I need not tell. Then and there to the best of my +knowledge, I first consciously took Sin by the hand and turned my back +on Duty. Time has led me to look upon my offence more leniently; I do +not believe it or any other childish wrong is infinite, as some have +pretended, but infinitely finite. Yet, if I had but won that first +battle!" + +And what a charming picture he gives us of the peaceful, hallowing +influences about him in that quiet old parsonage! + +"The Puritan 'Sabbath,' as everybody knows, began at 'sundown' on +Saturday evening. To such observances of it I was born and bred. As the +large, round disk of day declined, a stillness, a solemnity, a somewhat +melancholy hush came over us all. It was time for work to cease, and for +playthings to be put away. The world of active life passed into the +shadow of an eclipse, not to emerge until the sun should sink again +beneath the horizon. + +"It was in the stillness of the world without and of the soul within +that the pulsating lullaby of the evening crickets used to make itself +most distinctly heard--so that I well remember I used to think that the +purring of these little creatures, which mingled with the batrachian +hymns from the neighboring swamps, _was peculiar to Saturday evenings_. +I don't know that anything could give a clearer idea of the quieting and +subduing effect of the old habit of observance of what was considered +holy time, than this strange, childish fancy." + +Had all the clergymen who visited the parsonage been as true to their +profession as his own dear father, the thoughtful, impressible boy +might, very possibly, have devoted his brilliant talents to the +ministry. "It was a real delight," he says, "to have one of those good, +hearty, happy, benignant old clergymen pass the Sunday with us, and I +can remember one whose advent made the day feel almost like +'Thanksgiving.' But now and then would come along a clerical visitor +with a sad face and a wailing voice, which sounded exactly as if +somebody must be lying dead up-stairs, who took no interest in us +children, except a painful one, as being in a bad way with our cheery +looks, and did more to unchristianize us with his woebegone ways than +all his sermons were like to accomplish in the other direction. I +remember one in particular who twitted me so with my blessings as a +Christian child, and whined so to me about the naked black children, +that he did more in that one day to make me a heathen than he had ever +done in a month to make a Christian out of an infant Hottentot. I might +have been a minister myself for aught I know, if this clergyman had not +looked and talked so like an undertaker." + +An exercise written while at Andover, shows at what an early age he +attempted versification. It is a translation from the first book of +Virgil's Æneid, and reads as smoothly as any lines of Pope. The +following extract shows the angry god giving his orders to Zephyrus and +Eurus: + + Is this your glory in a noble line, + To leave your confines and to ravage mine? + Whom I--but let these troubled waves subside-- + Another tempest and I'll quell your pride! + Go bear our message to your master's ear, + That wide as ocean I am despot here; + Let him sit monarch in his barren caves! + I wield the trident and control the waves. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +OTHER REMINISCENCES. + + +In his vacations the inquiring mind of the young student had made +"strange acquaintances" in a certain book infirmary up in the attic of +the gambrel-roofed house. + +"_The Negro Plot at New York_," he says, "helped to implant a feeling in +me which it took Mr. Garrison a good many years to root out. _Thinks I +to myself_, an old novel which has been attributed to a famous +statesman, introduced me to a world of fiction which was not represented +on the shelves of the library proper, unless perhaps by _Caelebs in +search of a Wife_, or allegories of the bitter tonic class." + +Then there was an old, old Latin alchemy book, with the manuscript +annotations of some ancient Rosicrucian, "In the pages of which," he +says, "I had a vague notion that I might find the mighty secret of the +_Lapis Philosophorum_, otherwise called Chaos, the Dragon, the Green +Lion, the _Quinta Essentia_, the Soap of Sages, the vinegar of Heavenly +Grace, the Egg, the Old Man, the Sun, the Moon, and by all manner of odd +_aliases_, as I am assured by the plethoric little book before me, in +parchment covers browned like a meerschaum with the smoke of furnaces, +and the thumbing of dead gold-seekers, and the fingering of bony-handed +book-misers, and the long intervals of dusty slumber on the shelves of +the _bonquiniste_." + +"I have never lost my taste for alchemy," he adds, "since I first got +hold of the _Palladium Spagyricum_ of Peter John Faber, and sought--in +vain, it is true--through its pages for a clear, intelligible, and +practical statement of how I could turn my lead sinkers and the weights +of the tall kitchen clock into good yellow gold specific gravity, 19.2, +and exchangeable for whatever I then wanted, and for many more things +than I was then aware of. + +"One of the greatest pleasures of childhood is found in the mysteries +which it hides from the scepticism of the elders, and works up into +small mythologies of its own. I have seen all this played over again in +adult life, the same delightful bewilderment of semi-emotional belief +in listening to the gaseous promises of this or that fantastic system, +that I found in the pleasing mirages conjured up for me by the ragged +old volume I used to pore over in the southeast attic chamber." + +There are other reminiscences of these days that show us not only the +outward surroundings, but the inner workings of the boy's mind. + +"The great Destroyer," he says, "had come near me, but never so as to be +distinctly seen and remembered during my tender years. There flits dimly +before me the image of a little girl whose name even I have forgotten, a +schoolmate whom we missed one day, and were told that she had died. But +what death was I never had any very distinct idea until one day I +climbed the low stone-wall of the old burial ground and mingled with a +group that were looking into a very deep, long, narrow hole, dug down +through the green sod, down through the brown loam, down through the +yellow gravel, and there at the bottom was an oblong red box, and a +still, sharp, white face of a young man seen through an opening at one +end of it. + +"When the lid was closed, and the gravel and stones rattled down +pell-mell, and the woman in black who was crying and wringing her hands +went off with the other mourners, and left him, then I felt that I had +seen Death, and should never forget him." + +There were certain sounds too, he tells us, that had "a mysterious +suggestiveness" to him. One was the "creaking of the woodsleds, bringing +their loads of oak and walnut from the country, as the slow-swinging +oxen trailed them along over the complaining snow in the cold, brown +light of early morning. Lying in bed and listening to their dreary music +had a pleasure in it akin to the Lucretian luxury, or that which Byron +speaks of as to be enjoyed in looking on at a battle by one 'who hath no +friend, no brother there.' + +"Yes, and there was still another sound which mingled its solemn +cadences with the waking and sleeping dreams of my boyhood. It was heard +only at times, a deep, muffled roar, which rose and fell, not loud, but +vast; a whistling boy would have drowned it for his next neighbor, but +it must have been heard over the space of a hundred square miles. I used +to wonder what this might be. Could it be the roar of the thousand +wheels and the ten thousand footsteps jarring and trampling along the +stones of the neighboring city? That would be continuous; but this, as I +have said, rose and fell in regular rhythm. I remember being told, and I +suppose this to have been the true solution, that it was the sound of +the waves after a high wind breaking on the long beaches many miles +distant." + +After a year's study at Andover, he was fully prepared to enter Harvard +University. + +In the Charlestown Navy Yard, at this time, was the old frigate +_Constitution_, which the government purposed to break up as unfit for +service, thoughtless of the desecration: + + There was an hour when patriots dared profane + The mast that Britain strove to bow in vain, + And one, who listened to the tale of shame, + Whose heart still answered to that sacred name, + Whose eye still followed o'er his country's tides + Thy glorious flag, our brave _Old Ironsides!_ + From yon lone attic, on a summer's morn, + Thus mocked the spoilers with his schoolboy scorn: + + Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! + Long has it waved on high, + And many an eye has danced to see + That banner in the sky; + Beneath it rung the battle shout, + And burst the cannon's roar; + The meteor of the ocean air + Shall sweep the clouds no more! + + Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, + Where knelt the vanquished foe, + When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, + And waves were white below, + No more shall feel the victor's tread, + Or know the conquered knee; + The harpies of the shore shall pluck + The eagle of the sea. + + Oh, better that her shattered hulk + Should sink beneath the wave; + Her thunders shook the mighty deep, + And there should be her grave; + Nail to the mast her holy flag, + Set every thread-bare sail, + And give her to the god of storms + The lightning and the gale! + +This stirring poem--the first to make him known--was written by Oliver +Wendell Holmes in 1830, "with a pencil in the White Chamber _Stans pede +in uno_, pretty nearly," and was published in the Boston _Advertiser_. +From these columns it was extensively copied by other newspapers +throughout the country, and handbills containing the verses were +circulated in Washington. The eloquent, patriotic outburst not only +brought instant fame to the young poet, but so thoroughly aroused the +heart of the people that the grand old vessel was saved from +destruction. + +The "schoolboy" had already entered Harvard College, and among his +classmates in that famous class of 1829, were Benjamin R. Curtis, +afterwards Judge of the Supreme Court, James Freeman Clarke, Chandler +Robbins, Samuel F. Smith (the author of "My country, 'tis of thee"), +G.T. Bigelow (Judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts), G.T. Davis, +and Benjamin Pierce. + +In the class just below him (1830) was Charles Sumner; and his cousin, +Wendell Phillips, with John Lothrop Motley, entered Harvard during his +Junior year. George Ticknor was one of his instructors, and Josiah +Quincy became president of the college before he graduated. + +Throughout his whole college course Oliver Wendell Holmes maintained an +excellent rank in scholarship. He was a frequent contributor to the +college periodicals, and delivered several poems upon a variety of +subjects. One of these was given before the "Hasty Pudding Club," and +another entitled "Forgotten Days," at an "Exhibition." He was the class +poet; was called upon to write the poem at Commencement, and was one of +the sixteen chosen into the Phi Beta Kappa Society.[6] + +After his graduation, he studied law one year in the Dane Law School of +Harvard College. It was at this time that _The Collegian_, a periodical +published by a number of the Harvard under-graduates, was started at +Cambridge. To this paper the young law student sent numerous anonymous +contributions, among them "Evening, by a Tailor," "The Height of the +Ridiculous," "The Meeting of the Dryads," and "The Spectre Pig." A +brilliant little journal it must have been with Holmes' inimitable +outbursts of wit, "Lochfast's" (William H. Simmons) translations from +Schiller, and the numerous pen thrusts from John O. Sargent, Robert +Habersham and Theodore William Snow, who wrote under the respective +signatures of "Charles Sherry," "Mr. Airy" and "Geoffery La Touche." +Young Motley, too, was an occasional contributor to _The Collegian_, and +his brother-in-law, Park Benjamin, joined Holmes and Epes Sargent, in +1833, in writing a gift book called "The Harbinger," the profits of +which were given to Dr. Howe's Asylum for the blind. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[6] From notes furnished by Dr. Holmes. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +ABROAD. + + +After a year's study of law, during which time the Muses were constantly +tempting him to "pen a stanza when he should engross," young Holmes +determined to take up the study of medicine, which was much more +congenial to his tastes than the formulas of Coke and Blackstone. Doctor +James Jackson and his associates were his instructors for the following +two years and a half; and then before taking his degree of M.D., he +spent three years in Europe, perfecting his studies in the hospitals and +lecture-rooms of Paris and Edinburgh. + +Of this European tour, we find occasional allusions scattered throughout +his writings. Listen, for instance, to this grand description of +Salisbury Cathedral: + +"It was the first cathedral we ever saw, and none has ever so impressed +us since. Vast, simple, awful in dimensions and height, just beginning +to grow tall at the point where our proudest steeples taper out, it +fills the whole soul, pervades the vast landscape over which it reigns, +and, like Niagara and the Alps, abolishes that five or six foot +personality in the beholder which is fostered by keeping company with +the little life of the day in its little dwellings. In the Alps your +voice is as the piping of a cricket. Under the sheet of Niagara the +beating of your heart seems too trivial a movement to take reckoning of. +In the buttressed hollow of one of these paleozoic cathedrals you are +ashamed of your ribs, and blush for the exiguous pillars of bone on +which your breathing structure reposes.... These old cathedrals are +beyond all comparison, what are best worth seeing of man's handiwork in +Europe." + +"Lively emotions very commonly do not strike us full in front, but +obliquely from the side," he says at another time. "A scene or incident +in _undress_ often affects us more than one in full costume." + + Is this the mighty ocean?--is this all? + +Says the Princess in Gebir. The rush that should have flooded my soul in +the Coliseum did not come. But walking one day in the fields about the +city, I stumbled over a fragment of broken masonry, and lo! the World's +Mistress in her stone girdle--_alta mænia Romæ_--rose before me, and +whitened my cheek with her pale shadow, as never before or since. + +"I used very often, when coming home from my morning's work at one of +the public institutions of Paris, to stop in at the dear old church of +St. Etienne du Mont. The tomb of St. Genevieve, surrounded by burning +candles and votive tablets was there; there was a noble organ with +carved figures; the pulpit was borne on the oaken shoulders of a +stooping Samson; and there was a marvellous staircase, like a coil of +lace. These things I mention from memory, but not all of them together +impressed me so much as an inscription on a small slab of marble fixed +in one of the walls. It told how this Church of St. Stephen was repaired +and beautified in the 16--, and how during the celebration of its +re-opening, two girls of the parish (_filles de la paroisse_), fell +from the gallery, carrying a part of the balustrade with them, to the +pavement, but by miracle escaped uninjured. Two young girls, nameless, +but real presences to my imagination, as much as when they came +fluttering down on the tiles with a cry that outscreamed the sharpest +treble in the _Te Deum_. All the crowd gone but these two _filles de la +paroisse_--gone as utterly as the dresses they wore, as the shoes that +were on their feet, as the bread and meat that were in the market on +that day. + +"Not the great historical events, but the personal incidents that call +up single sharp pictures of some human being in its pang of struggle, +reach us most nearly. I remember the platform at Berne, over the parapet +of which Theobald Weinzäpfli's restive horse sprang with him and landed +him more than a hundred feet beneath in the lower town, not dead, but +sorely broken, and no longer a wild youth, but God's servant from that +day forward. I have forgotten the famous bears and all else. I remember +the Percy lion on the bridge over the little river at Alnwick--the +leaden lion with his tail stretched out straight like a pump-handle--and +why? Because of the story of the village boy who must fain bestride the +leaden tail, standing out over the water--which breaking, he dropped +into the stream far below, and was taken out an idiot for the rest of +his life." + +Again he says: "I once ascended the spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which +is the highest, I think, in Europe. It is a shaft of stone +filigree-work, frightfully open, so that the guide puts his arms behind +you to keep you from falling. To climb it is a noonday nightmare, and to +think of having climbed it crisps all the fifty-six joints of one's +twenty digits. While I was on it, 'pinnacled dim in the intense inane,' +a strong wind was blowing, and I felt sure that the spire was rocking. +It swayed back and forward like a stalk of rye, or a cat-o'-nine tails +(bulrush) with a bobolink on it. I mentioned it to the guide, and he +said that the spire did really swing back and forward, I think he said +some feet. + +"Keep any line of knowledge ten years and some other line will intersect +it. Long after I was hunting out a paper of Dumeril's in an old +journal--the '_Magazin Encyclopédique_'--for _l'an troiséme_ (1795), +when I stumbled upon a brief article on the vibrations of the spire of +Strasburg Cathedral. A man can shake it so the movement shall be shown +in a vessel of water nearly seventy feet below the summit, and higher up +the vibration is like that of an earthquake. I have seen one of those +wretched wooden spires with which we very shabbily finish some of our +stone churches (thinking that the lidless blue eye of heaven cannot tell +the counterfeit we try to pass on it), swinging like a reed in a wind, +but one would hardly think of such a thing happening in a stone spire." + +Nor does he forget that dear little child he saw and heard in a French +hospital. "Between two and three years old. Fell out of her chair and +snapped both thigh-bones. Lying in bed, patient, gentle. Rough students +round her, some in white aprons, looking fearfully businesslike; but the +child placid, perfectly still. I spoke to her, and the blessed little +creature answered me in a voice of such heavenly sweetness, with that +reedy thrill in it which you have heard in the thrush's even-song, that +I hear it at this moment. '_C'est tout comme unserin_,' said the French +student at my side." + +[Illustration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.] + +The ruins of a Roman aqueduct he describes in another place, and now and +then some incident that happened in England or Scotland, may be found +among his writings; but when, after three years' absence, he returns to +Cambridge and delivers his poem before the "Phi Beta Kappa Society," he +begs his classmates to-- + + Ask no garlands sought beyond the tide, + But take the leaflets gathered at your side. + +How affectionately his thoughts turned homeward is strikingly shown in +the very first lines of the poem: + + Scenes of my youth! awake its slumbering fire! + Ye winds of memory, sweep the silent lyre! + Ray of the past, if yet thou canst appear, + Break through the clouds of Fancy's waning year; + Chase from her breast the thin autumnal snow, + If leaf or blossom still is fresh below! + Long have I wandered; the returning tide + Brought back an exile to his cradle's side; + And as my bark her time-worn flag unrolled + To greet the land-breeze with its faded fold, + So, in remembrance of my boyhood's time, + I lift these ensigns of neglected rhyme; + O more than blest, that all my wanderings through, + My anchor falls where first my pennons flew! + +And read yet again in another place this loving tribute to the home of +his childhood: + +"To what small things our memory and our affections attach themselves! I +remember when I was a child that one of the girls planted some Star of +Bethlehem bulbs in the southwest corner of our front yard. Well, I left +the paternal roof and wandered in other lands, and learned to think in +the words of strange people. But after many years, as I looked in the +little front yard again, it occurred to me that there used to be some +Stars of Bethlehem in the southwest corner. The grass was tall there, +and the blade of the plant is very much like grass, only thicker and +glossier. + +"Even as Tully parted the briers and brambles when he hunted for the +sphere-containing cylinder that marked the grave of Archimedes, so did I +comb the grass with my fingers for my monumental memorial flower. Nature +had stored my keepsake tenderly in her bosom. The glossy, +faintly-streaked blades were there; they are there still, though they +never flower, darkened as they are by the shade of the elms and rooted +in the matted turf. + +"Our hearts are held down to our homes by innumerable fibres, trivial as +that I have just recalled; but Gulliver was fixed to the soil, you +remember, by pinning his head a hair at a time. Even a stone, with a +whitish band crossing it, belonging to the pavement of the back yard, +insisted on becoming one of the talismans of memory. + +"This intersusception of the ideas of inanimate objects, and their +faithful storing away among the sentiments, are curiously prefigured in +the material structure of the thinking centre itself. In the very core +of the brain, in the part where Des Cartes placed the soul, is a small +mineral deposit of grape-like masses of crystalline matter. + +"But the plants that come up every year in the same place, like the +Stars of Bethlehem, of all the lesser objects, give me the liveliest +home-feeling." + +To return to the Phi Beta Kappa poem, modestly termed by the author "A +Metrical Essay," it is interesting to note Lowell's hearty appreciation +of it in his _Fable for Critics_: + + There's _Holmes_, who is matchless among you for wit, + A Leyden jar always full-charged, from which flit + The electrical tingles of hit after hit. + In long poems 'tis painful sometimes, and invites + A thought of the way the new telegraph writes, + Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spitefully, + As if you got more than you'd title to rightfully. + And you find yourself hoping its wild father Lightning + Would flame in for a second and give you a fright'ning. + He has perfect sway of what I call a sham metre, + But many admire it, the English pentameter, + And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse. + With less nerve, swing and fire, in the same kind of verse. + Nor e'er achieved aught in 't so worthy of praise + As the tribute of Holmes to the grand _Marseillaise_. + You went crazy last year over Bulwer's _New Simon_; + Why, if B., to the day of his dying should rhyme on, + Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes, + He could ne'er reach the best point and vigor of Holmes! + His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric + Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satyric + In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes + That are trodden upon, are your own or your foes. + +This tribute of Holmes to the grand Marseillaise is indeed one of the +finest passages in a poem abounding in point and vigor, as well as in +fancy and feeling. Who can read these stirring lines without a +sympathetic thrill for the watching, weeping Rouget de l'Isle, composing +in one night both music and words of the nameless song? + + The city slept beneath the moonbeam's glance, + Her white walls gleaming through the vines of France, + And all was hushed save where the footsteps fell + On some high tower, of midnight sentinel. + But one still watched; no self-encircled woes + Chased from his lids the angel of repose; + He watched, he wept, for thoughts of bitter years + Bowed his dark lashes, wet with burning tears; + His country's sufferings and her children's shame + Streamed o'er his memory like a forest's flame, + Each treasured insult, each remembered wrong, + Rolled through his heart and kindled into song; + His taper faded; and the morning gales + Swept through the world the war song of Marseilles! + +In this same Phi Beta Kappa poem may be found that beautiful pastoral, +_The Cambridge Churchyard_, and + + Since the lyric dress + Relieves the statelier with its sprightliness, + +the stirring verses on _Old Ironsides_ are here repeated. Said one who +heard young Holmes deliver this poem in the college church: + +"Extremely youthful in his appearance, bubbling over with the mingled +humor and pathos that have always marked his poetry, and sparkling with +the coruscations of his peculiar genius, he delivered the poem with a +clear, ringing enunciation which imparted to the hearers his own +enjoyment of his thoughts and expressions." + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +CHANGE IN THE HOME. + + +In 1836, Oliver Wendell Holmes took his degree of M.D. The following +year was made sadly memorable to the happy family at the parsonage by +the death of the beloved father. He had reached his threescore years and +ten, but still seemed so vigorous in mind and body that neither his +family nor the parish were prepared for the sad event. Mary and Ann, the +two eldest daughters, were already married; the one to Usher Parson, +M.D., the other to Honorable Charles Wentworth Upham. Sarah, the +youngest, had died in early childhood, and only Oliver Wendell and his +brother John remained of the once large family at the parsonage. Mrs. +Holmes still continued to reside with her two sons in the old +gambrel-roofed house which her father, Judge Oliver Wendell, had bought +for her at the time of her marriage. + +The _Poet at the Breakfast-Table_ thus describes the delightful old +dwelling now used as one of the College buildings: + +"The worst of a modern stylish mansion is, that it has no place for +ghosts.... Now the old house had wainscots behind which the mice were +always scampering, and squeaking, and rattling down the plaster, and +enacting family scenes and parlor theatricals. It had a cellar where the +cold slug clung to the walls and the misanthropic spider withdrew from +the garish day; where the green mould loved to grow, and the long, +white, potato-shoots went feeling along the floor if happily they might +find the daylight; it had great brick pillars, always in a cold sweat +with holding up the burden they had been aching under day and night for +a century and more; it had sepulchral arches closed by rough doors that +hung on hinges rotten with rust, behind which doors, if there was not a +heap of bones connected with a mysterious disappearance of long ago, +there well might have been, for it was just the place to look for them. + +"Let us look at the garret as I can reproduce it from memory. It has a +flooring of lath, with ridges of mortar squeezed up between them, which +if you tread on you will go to--the Lord have mercy on you! where will +you go to?--the same being crossed by narrow bridges of boards, on which +you may put your feet, but with fear and trembling. + +"Above you and around you are beams and joists, on some of which you may +see, when the light is let in, the marks of the conchoidal clippings of +the broadaxes, showing the rude way in which the timber was shaped, as +it came, full of sap, from the neighboring forest. It is a realm of +darkness and thick dust, and shroudlike cobwebs and dead things they +wrap in their gray folds. For a garret is like a seashore, where wrecks +are thrown up and slowly go to pieces. There is the cradle which the old +man you just remember was rocked in; there is the ruin of the bedstead +he died on; that ugly slanting contrivance used to be put under his +pillow in the days when his breath came hard; there is his old chair +with both arms gone, symbol of the desolate time when he had nothing +earthly left to lean on; there is the large wooden reel which the +blear-eyed old deacon sent the minister's lady, who thanked him +graciously, and twirled it smilingly, and in fitting season bowed it +out decently to the limbo of troublesome conveniences. And there are old +leather portmanteaus, like stranded porpoises, their mouths gaping in +gaunt hunger for the food with which they used to be gorged to bulging +repletion; and the empty churn with its idle dasher which the Nancys and +Phebes, who have left their comfortable places to the Bridgets and +Norahs, used to handle to good purpose; and the brown, shaky old +spinningwheel, which was running, it may be, in the days when they were +hanging the Salem witches. + +"Under the dark and haunted garret were attic chambers which themselves +had histories.... The rooms of the second story, the chambers of birth +and death, are sacred to silent memories. + +"Let us go down to the ground floor. I retain my doubts about those +dents on the floor of the right-hand room, the study of successive +occupants, said to have been made by the butts of the Continental +militia's firelocks, but this was the cause the story told me in +childhood, laid them to. That military consultations were held in that +room when the house was General Ward's headquarters, that the Provincial +generals and colonels and other men of war there planned the movement +which ended in the fortifying of Bunker's Hill, that Warren slept in the +house the night before the battle, that President Langdon went forth +from the western door and prayed for God's blessing on the men just +setting forth on their bloody expedition--all these things have been +told, and perhaps none of them need be doubted.... + +"In the days of my earliest remembrance, a row of tall Lombardy poplars +mounted guard on the western side of the old mansion. Whether like the +cypress, these trees suggest the idea of the funeral torch or the +monumental spire, whether their tremulous leaves make us afraid by +sympathy with their nervous thrills, whether the faint balsamic smell of +their leaves and their closely swathed limbs have in them vague hints of +dead Pharaohs stiffened in their cerements, I will not guess; but they +always seemed to me to give an air of sepulchral sadness to the house +before which they stood sentries. + +"Not so with the row of elms you may see leading up towards the western +entrance. I think the patriarch of them all went over in the great gale +of 1815; I know I used to shake the youngest of them with my hands, +stout as it is now, with a trunk that would defy the bully of Crotona, +or the strong man whose _liaison_ with the Lady Delilah proved so +disastrous. + +"The College plain would be nothing without its elms. As the long hair +of a woman is a glory to her, so are these green tresses that bank +themselves against the sky in thick clustered masses, the ornament and +the pride of the classic green.... + +"There is a row of elms just in front of the old house on the south. +When I was a child the one at the southwest corner was struck by +lightning, and one of its limbs and a long ribbon of bark torn away. The +tree never fully recovered its symmetry and vigor, and forty years and +more afterwards a second thunderbolt crashed upon it and set its heart +on fire, like those of the lost souls in the Hall of Eblis. Heaven had +twice blasted it, and the axe finished what the lightning had begun." + +"Ah me!" he exclaims at another time, "what strains of unwritten verse +pulsate through my soul when I open a certain closet in the ancient +house where I was born! On its shelves used to lie bundles of sweet +marjoram and pennyroyal and lavender and mint and catnip; there apples +were stored until their seeds should grow black, which happy period +there were sharp little milk teeth always ready to anticipate; there +peaches lay in the dark, thinking of the sunshine they had lost, until, +like the hearts of saints that dream of heaven in their sorrow, they +grew fragrant as the breath of angels. The odorous echo of a score of +dead summers lingers yet in those dim recesses." + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE PROFESSOR. + + +In 1839, Doctor Holmes was appointed Professor of Anatomy and Physiology +in Dartmouth College, and pleasantly describes in _The Professor_, his +"Autumnal sojourn by the Connecticut, where it comes loitering down from +its mountain fastnesses like a great lord swallowing up the small +proprietary rivulets very quietly as it goes." The little country tavern +where he stayed while delivering his lectures, he calls "that +caravansary on the banks of the stream where Ledyard launched his log +canoe, and the jovial old Colonel used to lead the Commencement +processions." And what a charming description this of the little town of +Hanover, "where blue Ascutney looked down from the far distance and the +'hills of Beulah' rolled up the opposite horizon in soft, climbing +masses, so suggestive of the Pilgrim's Heavenward Path that he (the +Professor) used to look through his old 'Dollond' to see if the Shining +Ones were not within range of sight--sweet visions, sweetest in those +Sunday walks which carried him by the peaceful common, through the +solemn village lying in cataleptic stillness under the shadow of the rod +of Moses, to the terminus of his harmless stroll, the spreading +beech-tree." + +In 1840, Doctor Holmes was married to Amelia Lee Jackson, a daughter of +Hon. Charles Jackson, formerly judge of the Supreme Court of +Massachusetts. The first home of the young couple was at No. 8, +Montgomery Place, the house at the left-hand side of the court, and next +the farther corner. Here Doctor Holmes resided for about eighteen +years,[7] and here all his children were born. + +"When he entered that door, two shadows glided over the threshold; five +lingered in the doorway when he passed through it for the last time, and +one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to be longer than his own. +What changes he saw in that quiet place! Death rained through every roof +but his; children came into life, grew to maturity, wedded, faded away, +threw themselves away; the whole drama of life was played in that stock +company's theatre of a dozen houses, one of which was his, and no deep +sorrow or severe calamity ever entered his dwelling in that little court +where he lived in gay loneliness so long." + +In order to devote himself more strictly to his practice in Boston, +Doctor Holmes resigned his professorship at Dartmouth College soon after +his marriage. During the summer months, however, he delivered lectures +before the Berkshire Medical School at Pittsfield, Mass., and +established his summer residence "up among those hills that shut in the +amber-flowing Housatonic, in the home overlooking the winding stream and +the smooth, flat meadow; looked down upon by wild hills where the tracks +of bears and catamounts may yet sometimes be seen upon the winter +snow--a home," he adds, "where seven blessed summers were passed which +stand in memory like the seven golden candlesticks in the beatific +vision of the holy dreamer." + +The township of Pontoosuc, now Pittsfield, including some twenty-four +thousand acres, was bought by Doctor Holmes' great-grandfather, Jacob +Wendell, about the year 1734. It was on a small part of this large +possession that "Canoe Place," the pleasant summer home of Doctor +Holmes, was built. + +Hawthorne was then living at Lenox, which is only a few miles from +Pittsfield, and in his contribution to Lowell's magazine, _The Pioneer_, +in 1843, he describes in his _Hall of Fantasy_, the poets he saw +"talking in groups, with a liveliness of expression, or ready smile, and +a light, intellectual laughter which showed how rapidly the shafts of +wit were glancing to and fro among them. In the most vivacious of +these," he adds, "I recognized Holmes." + +Beside Hawthorne, there was Herman Melville, Miss Sedgwick and Fanny +Kemble near by on those "maple-shadowed plains of Berkshire," while +Bryant and Ellery Channing not unfrequently joined the brilliant circle +in their summer trips to the Stockbridge hills. + +In the Boston home of Doctor Holmes, John Lothrop Motley was a welcome +visitor--a man whose "generous sympathies with popular liberty no homage +paid to his genius by the class whose admiring welcome is most seductive +to scholars could ever spoil." Both young men were members of the +Massachusetts Historical Society, and after the death of Motley, Holmes +became his biographer. + +Charles Sumner formed another of this pleasant literary coterie, and is +described by Doctor Holmes, after a short acquaintance, as "an amiable, +blameless young man; pleasant, affable and cheerful." Years after, when +Sumner was assaulted in the Senate, Doctor Holmes, at a public dinner in +Boston, denounced in strong language, the shameful outrage as an assault +not only upon the man, but upon the Union. + +At the Berkshire festivals, the poet was often called upon to furnish a +song, and brimful of wit and wisdom they always were, though often +composed upon the spur of the moment. Here is a part of one of them: + + Come back to your mother, ye children, for shame, + Who have wandered like truants, for riches or fame! + With a smile on her face, and a sprig in her cap, + She calls you to feast from her bountiful lap. + + Come out from your alleys, your courts, and your lanes, + And breathe, like young eagles, the air of our plains, + Take a whiff from our fields, and your excellent wives + Will declare it's all nonsense insuring your lives. + + Come you of the law, who can talk, if you please, + Till the Man in the Moon will declare it's a cheese, + And leave 'the old lady that never tell lies,' + To sleep with her handkerchief over her eyes. + + Ye healers of men, for a moment decline + Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line; + While you shut up your turnpike, your neighbors can go + The old roundabout road, to the regions below. + + You clerk, on whose ears are a couple of pens, + And whose head is an anthill of units and tens, + Though Plato denies you, we welcome you still + As a featherless biped, in spite of your quill. + + Poor drudge of the city! how happy he feels + With the burrs on his legs and the grass at his heels! + No _dodger_ behind, his bandannas to share, + No constable grumbling "You mustn't walk there!" + + In yonder green meadow, to memory dear, + He slaps a mosquito and brushes a tear; + The dewdrops hang round him on blossoms and shoots, + He breathes but one sigh for his youth and his boots. + + There stands the old schoolhouse, hard by the old church + That tree at its side had the flavor of birch; + O sweet were the days of his juvenile tricks, + Though the prairie of youth had so many "big licks." + + By the side of yon river he weeps and he slumps, + The boots fill with water as if they were pumps; + Till, sated with rapture, he steals to his bed, + With a glow in his heart, and a cold in his head. + +At the annual dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, in 1843, Doctor +Holmes read the fine poem entitled _Terpsichore_. + +Three years later he delivered _Urania, A Rhyme Lesson_ before the +Boston Mercantile Library Association. "To save a question that is +sometimes put," remarks the poet, "it is proper to say that in naming +these two poems after two of the Muses, nothing more was intended than a +suggestion of their general character and aim." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[7] From notes furnished by Dr. Holmes. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +THE LECTURER. + + +When Doctor Warren gave up the Parkman professorship at Harvard, in +1847, Doctor Holmes was appointed to take his place as Professor of +Anatomy and Physiology. For eight months of the year, four lectures are +delivered each week in this department of the college, and yet Doctor +Holmes still found time "between whiles," to attend to his Boston +practice, and to write many charming poems and essays. He also entered +the lyceum arena, "an original American contrivance," as Theodore Parker +describes it in 1857, "for educating the people. The world has nothing +like it. In it are combined the best things of the Church: i.e., the +preaching; and of the College: i.e., the informing thought, with some of +the fun of the theatre. Besides, it gives the rural districts a chance +to see the men they read about--to see the lions--for the lecturer is +also a show to the eyes. For ten years past six or eight of the most +progressive minds in America have been lecturing fifty or a hundred +times a year." + +Among the many subjects that Doctor Holmes touched upon in these lyceum +lectures was a fine, witty, and remarkably just criticism on the +_English Poets of the Nineteenth Century_. What a pity that Oscar Wilde +and his brother poets of this later day could not have the benefit of +just such a clear, microscopic analysis! What the Autocrat himself +thought of these lecturing tours through the country we have in his own +words: + +"I have played the part of 'Poor Gentleman' before many audiences," he +says; "more, I trust, than I shall ever face again. I did not wear a +stage costume, nor a wig, nor mustaches of burnt cork; but I was +placarded and announced as a public performer, and at the proper hour I +came forward with the ballet-dancer's smile upon my countenance, and +made my bow and acted my part. I have seen my name stuck up in letters +so big that I was ashamed to show myself in the place by daylight. I +have gone to a town with a sober literary essay in my pocket, and seen +myself everywhere announced as the most desperate of _buffos_. I have +been through as many hardships as Ulysses in the exercise of my +histrionic vocation. I have sometimes felt as if I were a wandering +spirit, and this great, unchanging multivertebrate which I faced night +after night was one ever-listening animal, which writhed along after me +wherever I fled, and coiled at my feet every evening turning up to me +the same sleepless eyes which I thought I had closed with my last drowsy +incantation." + +Of his audiences he writes again as follows: + +"Two lyceum assemblies, of five hundred each, are so nearly alike, that +they are absolutely undistinguishable in many cases by any definite +mark, and there is nothing but the place and time by which one can tell +the 'remarkably intelligent audience' of a town in New York or Ohio from +one in any New England town of similar size. Of course, if any principle +of selection has come in, as in those special associations of young men +which are common in cities, it deranges the uniformity of the +assemblage. But let there be no such interfering circumstances, and one +knows pretty well even the look the audience will have, before he goes +in. Front seats, a few old folks--shiny-headed--slant up best ear toward +the speaker--drop off asleep after a while, when the air begins to get a +little narcotic with carbonic acid. Bright women's faces, young and +middle-aged, a little behind these, but toward the front--(pick out the +best, and lecture mainly to that). Here and there a countenance, sharp +and scholarlike, and a dozen pretty female ones sprinkled about. An +indefinite number of pairs of young people--happy, but not always very +attentive. Boys in the background more or less quiet. Dull faces here, +there--in how many places! I don't say dull _people_, but faces without +a ray of sympathy or a movement of expression. They are what kill the +lecturer. These negative faces with their vacuous eyes and stony +lineaments pump and suck the warm soul out of him;--that is the chief +reason why lecturers grow so pale before the season is over. + +"Out of all these inevitable elements the audience is generated--a great +compound vertebrate, as much like fifty others you have seen as any two +mammals of the same species are like each other." + +"Pretty nigh killed himself," says the good landlady, "goin' about +lecterin' two or three winters, talking in cold country lyceums--as he +used to say--goin' home to cold parlors and bein' treated to cold apples +and cold water, and then goin' up into a cold bed in a cold chamber, and +comin' home next mornin' with a cold in his head as bad as the horse +distemper. Then he'd look kind of sorry for havin' said it, and tell how +kind some of the good women was to him; how one spread an eiderdown +comforter for him, and another fixed up somethin' hot for him after the +lectur, and another one said, 'There now, you smoke that cigar of yours +after the lectur, jest as if you was at home,' and if they'd all been +like that, he'd have gone on lecturing forever, but, as it was, he had +got pooty nigh enough of it, and preferred a nateral death to puttin' +himself out of the world by such violent means as lecturin'." + +To these graphic pictures of the "lyceum lecturer" we would add one more +which was given by Mr. J.W. Harper, at the Holmes Breakfast. + +"I well remember," he said, "the first time I saw Doctor Holmes. It was +long ago; not as our Autocrat expresses it, 'in the year eighteen +hundred and ever so few;' nor, as Thackeray has it, 'when the present +century was in its teens.' It was just after the close of the last half +century, and on a cold winter's afternoon, when the sun was fast setting +behind the then ungilded dome of the State House, and it was in old +Bromfield street. It was not in the Bromfield Street Methodist Church, +nor in the contiguous Methodist inn, known as the Bromfield House, +which, for many years, might have been the convenient resort of good +Methodist elders, and of the peripatetic presiding elders, who were +called by the genial Bishop Wainwright, the 'bob-tailed bishops' of +their flocks and districts.... I was in the large stable adjoining the +Bromfield House, endeavoring to secure a sleigh, when there entered a +gentleman apparently of my own age. He came in quickly, and with +impatience demanded the immediate production of a team and sleigh, +which, though ordered for him, had somehow been forgotten. The +new-comer, it was evident, was not to be trifled with. There was no +nonsense about him, and I was not surprised, when, a few years later, I +learned that he had become an Autocrat. + +"On that particular night he had a long drive before him, for he was to +lecture at Newburyport, or Nantasket, or Nantucket, or some other then +unannexed suburb of Boston. I doubt if the horse survived the drive, and +I am quite sure he is not now living. But the driver lives, and the +young New Yorker who then admired him, and would fain have driven with +him on that cold winter night, has since, in common with thousands of +other New Yorkers, been filled with grateful admiration for what that +driver has done for literature, and for the happiness and improvement of +the world." + +In 1838 Doctor Holmes wrote the _Boylston Prize Dissertation_, and in +1842, _Homoeopothy and its kindred Delusions_. The Boylston prizes +were established in 1803, by Ward Nicholas Boylston. Doctor Holmes +gained three of these prizes, and the _Dissertations_, one of which was +upon Intermittent Fever, were published together in book form in 1838. + +When, in February of the same year (1842), the young men of Boston gave +a dinner to Charles Dickens, Doctor Holmes welcomed the distinguished +visitor in the following beautiful song: + + The stars their early vigils keep, + The silent hours are near, + When drooping eyes forget to weep-- + Yet still we linger here; + And what--the passing churl may ask-- + Can claim such wondrous power, + That Toil forgets his wonted task, + And Love his promised hour? + + The Irish harp no longer thrills, + Or breathes a fainter tone; + The clarion blast from Scotland's hills + Alas! no more is blown. + And Passion's burning lip bewails + Her Harold's wasted fire, + Still lingering o'er the dust that veils + The Lord of England's lyre. + + But grieve not o'er its broken strings, + Nor think its soul hath died, + While yet the lark at heaven's gate sings, + As once o'er Avon's side;-- + While gentle summer sheds her bloom, + And dewy blossoms wave, + Alike o'er Juliet's storied tomb + And Nelly's nameless grave. + + Thou glorious island of the sea! + Though wide the wasting flood + That parts our distant land from thee, + We claim thy generous blood. + Nor o'er thy far horizon springs + One hallowed star of fame. + But kindles, like an angel's wings, + Our western skies in flame! + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +NAMING THE NEW MAGAZINE. + + +In the year 1857, Mr. Phillips, of the firm of Phillips & Sampson, +undertook the publication in Boston, of a new literary magazine. They +were fortunate in securing James Russell Lowell as editor, and one +condition he made upon accepting the office was, that his friend, Doctor +Holmes, should be one of the chief contributors. + +It was the latter, also, who was called upon to name the new magazine. +Thus was the _Atlantic Monthly_ launched upon the great sea of +literature--a periodical that has never lost its first high prestige. + +When Doctor Holmes sat down to write his first article for the new +magazine, he remembered that some twenty-five years before, he had begun +a series of papers for a certain _New England Magazine_, published in +Boston, by J. T. & E. Buckingham, with the title of _Autocrat of the +Breakfast-Table_. Curious, as he says, to try the experiment of shaking +the same bough again and finding out if the ripe fruit were better or +worse than the early wind-falls, he took the same title for his new +articles. + +"The man is father to the boy that was," he adds, "and I am my own son, +as it seems to me, in those papers of the _New England Magazine_." + +To show the reader some family traits of this "young autocrat," we quote +from these earlier articles the following fine extracts: + +"When I feel inclined to read poetry, I take down my dictionary. The +poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author +may arrange the gems effectively, but their shape and lustre have been +given by the attrition of ages. Bring me the finest simile from the +whole range of imaginative writing, and I will show you a single word +which conveys a more profound, a more accurate, and a more eloquent +analogy. + +"Once on a time, a notion was started that if all the people in the +world would shout at once, it might be heard in the moon. So the +projectors agreed it should be done in just ten years. Some thousand +shiploads of chronometers were distributed to the selectmen and other +great folks of all the different nations. For a year beforehand, nothing +else was talked about but the awful noise that was to be made on the +great occasion. When the time came everybody had their ears so wide open +to hear the universal ejaculation of boo--the word agreed upon--that +nobody spoke except a deaf man in one of the Fejee Islands, and a woman +in Pekin, so that the world was never so still since the creation." + +At the close of the year when the twelve numbers of _The Autocrat of the +Breakfast-Table_ were completed in the _Atlantic Monthly_ and published +in book form, the _British Review_ wrote of the illustrious author as +follows: + +"Oliver Wendell Holmes has been long known in this country as the author +of some poems written in stately classic verse, abounding in happy +thoughts and bright bird-peeps of fancy, such as this, for example: + + The punch-bowl's sounding depths were stirred, + Its silver cherubs smiling as they heard. + +And this first glint of spring-- + + The spendthrift Crocus, bursting through the mould, + Naked and shivering with his cup of gold. + +He is also known as the writer of many pieces which wear a serious look +until they break out into a laugh at the end, perhaps in the last line, +as with those on _Lending a Punch Bowl_, a cunning way of the writer's; +just as the knot is tied in the whip cord at the end of the lash to +enhance the smack. + +"But neither of these kinds of verse prepared us for anything so good, +so sustained, so national, and yet so akin to our finest humorists, as +_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table_; a very delightful book--a handy +book for the breakfast table. A book to conjure up a cosey winter +picture of a ruddy fire and singing kettle, soft hearth-rug, warm +slippers, and easy chair; a musical chime of cups and saucers, fragrance +of tea and toast within, and those flowers of frost fading on the +windows without as though old Winter just looked in, but his cold breath +was melted, and so he passed by. A book to possess two copies of; one to +be read and marked, thumbed and dog-eared; and one to stand up in its +pride of place with the rest on the shelves, all ranged in shining +rows, as dear old friends, and not merely as nodding acquaintances. + +"Not at all like that ponderous and overbearing autocrat, Doctor +Johnson, is our Yankee friend. He has more of Goldsmith's sweetness and +lovability. He is as true a lover of elegance and high bred grace, +dainty fancies, and all pleasurable things, as was Leigh Hunt; he has +more wordly sense without the moral languor; but there is the same +boy-heart beating in a manly breast, beneath the poet's singing robe. +For he is a poet as well as a humorist. Indeed, although this book is +written in prose, it is full of poetry, with the 'beaded bubbles' of +humor dancing up through the true hippocrene and 'winking at the brim' +with a winning look of invitation shining in their merry eyes. + +"The humor and the poetry of the book do not lie in tangible nuggets for +extraction, but they are there; they pervade it from beginning to end. +We cannot spoon out the sparkles of sunshine as they shimmer on the +wavelets of water; but they are there, moving in all their golden life +and evanescent grace. + +"Holmes may not be so recognizably national as Lowell; his prominent +characteristics are not so exceptionally Yankee; the traits are not so +peculiar as those delineated in the _Biglow Papers_. But he is national. +One of the most hopeful literary signs of this book is its quiet +nationality. The writer has made no straining and gasping efforts after +that which is striking and peculiar, which has always been the bane of +youth, whether in nations or individuals. He has been content to take +the common, homespun, everyday humanity that he found ready to +hand--people who do congregate around the breakfast table of an American +boarding-house; and out of this material he has wrought with a vivid +touch and truth of portraiture, and won the most legitimate triumph of a +genuine book.... + +"Holmes has the pleasantest possible way of saying things that many +people don't like to hear. His tonics are bitter and bland. He does not +spare the various foibles and vices of his countrymen and women. But it +is done so good-naturedly, or with a sly puff of diamond dust in the +eyes of the victims, who don't see the joke which is so apparent to us. +As good old Isaak Walton advises respecting the worm, he impales them +tenderly as though he loved them." + + * * * * * + +How vividly every personage around that delightful "Breakfast-Table" is +photographed upon the reader's mind! Can you not see the dear "Old +Gentleman" just opposite the "Autocrat," as he suddenly surprises the +company by repeating a beautiful hymn he learned in childhood? And the +pale sweet "Schoolmistress" in her modest mourning dress? no wonder the +eyes of the Autocrat frequently wandered to that part of the table and +certain remarks are addressed to her alone! To tell the truth, we can't +help falling in love with her ourselves! What a fine foil to this +"soft-voiced little woman," is the landlady's daughter--that +"tender-eyed blonde, with her long ringlets, cameo pin, gold pencil-case +on a chain, locket, bracelet, album, autograph book, and accordion--who +says 'Yes?' when you tell her anything, and reads Byron, Tupper, and +Sylvanus Cobb Junior, while her mother makes the puddings!" Then there +is the "poor relation" from the country--"a somewhat more than +middle-aged female, with parchment forehead and a dry little frizette +shingling it, a sallow neck with a necklace of gold beads, and a black +dress too rusty for recent grief." Can you not hear the very tones of +her high-pitched voice as she remarks that "Buckwheat is skerce and +high." + +"The Professor" under chloroform--"the young man whom they call John," +appropriating the three peaches in illustration of the Autocrat's +metaphysics--the boy, Benjamin Franklin, poring over his French +exercises--the Poet, who had to leave town when the anniversaries came +round--and the divinity student whose head the Autocrat tries +occasionally, "as housewives try eggs," all these are so real to the +reader that he can but feel they were something more than imaginary +characters to the writer. + +Among the poems that close each number of the _Autocrat_, are some of +the finest in our language. _The Chambered Nautilus_, _The Living +Temple_, _The Voiceless_, and _The Two Armies_, are full of inspiring +thought and deep pathos, while _The Deacon's Masterpiece_, _Parson +Turell's Legacy_, _The Old Man's Dream_, and _Contentment_, sparkle with +the Autocrat's own peculiar humor. + +"When we think of the familiar confidences of the Autocrat," says +Underwood, "we might liken him to Montaigne. But when the parallel is +being considered, we come upon passages so full of tingling hits or of +rollicking fun, that we are sure we are mistaken, and that he resembles +no one so much as Sidney Smith. But presently he sounds the depths of +our consciousness, explores the concealed channels of feeling, flashes +the light of genius upon our half-acknowledged thoughts, and we see that +this is what neither the great Gascon nor the hearty and jovial +Englishman could have attempted, ... when the world forgets the sallies +that have set tables in a roar, and even the lyrics that have set a +nation's heart on fire, Holmes' picture of the ship of pearl will +preserve his name forever." + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +ELSIE VENNER. + + +The _Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table_ was followed in 1859 by _The +Professor_, a series of similar essays, in which we are introduced to +"Iris" and "Little Boston," and begin to realize Doctor Holmes' +inimitable skill in dramatic effect as well as in character painting. +_The Story of Iris_ has been printed by itself in Rossiter Johnson's +_Little Classics_, and reads like an exquisite prose poem; but after +all, we like best to follow the delicate thread of narrative just as the +professor himself has introduced it--a dainty aria whose harmony runs +under and over and all through the deep philosophy and sparkling table +talk of the book. + +It prepares us, too, for _Elsie Venner_, the "Professor's Story"--a +novel whose weird conception holds us spell-bound from beginning to +end, in spite of the sadness--"the pity of it." At the very first +introduction to Elsie we have a hint of the strange hereditary curse +that throws its blight over her whole nature: + +"Who and what is that," asks the new master, "sitting a little apart +there--that strange, wild-looking girl?" + +The lady teacher's face changed; one would have said she was frightened +or troubled. She looked at the girl doubtfully, as if she might hear the +master's question and its answer. But the girl did not look up; she was +winding a gold chain about her wrist, and then uncoiling it, as if in a +kind of reverie. + +Miss Dailey drew close to the master and placed her hand so as to hide +her lips. + +"Don't look at her as if we were talking about her," she whispered +softly, "that is Elsie Venner." + +The more we read of her, the more her sad beauty fascinates us. + +"She looked as if she might hate, but could not love. She hardly smiled +at anything, spoke rarely, but seemed to feel that her natural power of +expression lay all in her bright eyes, the force of which so many had +felt, but none perhaps had tried to explain to themselves. A person +accustomed to watch the faces of those who were ailing in body or mind, +and to search in every line and tint for some underlying source of +disorder, could hardly help analyzing the impression such a face +produced upon him. The light of those beautiful eyes was like the lustre +of ice; in all her features there was nothing of that human warmth which +shows that sympathy has reached the soul beneath the mask of flesh it +wears. The look was that of remoteness, of utter isolation. There was in +its stony apathy the pathos which we find in the blind who show no film +or speck over the organs of sight; for Nature had meant her to be +lovely, and left out nothing but love." + +The mother of Elsie, some months before the birth of her child, had been +bitten by a rattlesnake. The instant use of powerful antidotes seemed to +arrest the fatal poison, but death ensued a few weeks after the birth of +her little girl. + +"There was something not human looking out of Elsie's eyes.... There +were two warring principles in that superb organization and proud soul. +One made her a woman, with all a woman's powers and longings. The other +chilled all the currents of outlets for her emotions. It made her +tearless and mute, when another woman would have wept and pleaded. And +it infused into her soul something--it was cruel to call it +malice--which was still and watchful and dangerous--which waited its +opportunity, and then shot like an arrow from its bow out of the coil of +brooding premeditation." + +But the cloud--"the ante-natal impression which had mingled an alien +element in Elsie's nature"--is mercifully lifted just before her death. + +She had fallen into a light slumber, and when she awoke and looked up +into her father's face, she seemed to realize his tenderness and +affection as never before. + +"Elsie dear," he said, "we were thinking how much your expression was, +sometimes, like that of your sweet mother. If you could but have seen +her so as to remember her!" + +The tender look and tone, the yearning of the daughter's heart +for the mother she had never seen, save only with the unfixed, +undistinguishable eyes of earliest infancy, perhaps the understanding +that she might soon rejoin her in another state of being,--all came upon +her with a sudden overflow of feeling which broke through all the +barriers between her heart and her eyes, and Elsie wept. It seemed to +her father as if the malign influence--evil spirit it might almost be +called--which had pervaded her being, had at least been driven forth or +exorcised, and that these tears were at once the sign and pledge of her +redeemed nature. But now she was to be soothed and not excited. After +her tears she slept again, and the look her face wore was peaceful as +never before. + +While "Elsie Venner" is a purely imaginary conception, the author tells +us that after beginning the story he received the most striking +confirmation of the possibility of the existence of such a character. +The reader is awakened to new views of human responsibility in the +perusal of Elsie's life, and with good old pastor Honeywood learns a +lesson of patience with his fellow creatures in their inborn +peculiarities and of charity in judging what seem to him wilful faults +of character. + +The Professor's story while centring the interest upon Elsie, gives +numerous side glances of New England village life; and old Sophy, Helen +Darley, Silas Peckham, Bernard Langdon, Dick Venner, and the good Doctor +are portrayed in vivid colors. There is a deal of psychology throughout +the book, and not a little theology--good wholesome theology too, as the +following brief extract shows: + +"The good minister was as kind-hearted as if he had never groped in the +dust and ashes of those cruel old abstractions which have killed out so +much of the world's life and happiness. 'With the heart man believeth +unto righteousness;' a man's love is the measure of his fitness for good +or bad company here or elsewhere. Men are tattooed with their special +beliefs like so many South Sea Islanders; but a real human heart, with +divine love in it, beats with the same glow under all the patterns of +all earth's thousand tribes!" + +The pathos of poor Elsie's story is relieved now and then by humorous +descriptions of country manners and customs. The Sprowles' party and the +Widow Rowen's "tea-fight" give a vein of light comedy that rests the +sympathetic reader as a sudden merry smile upon a grave and troubled +face. + +_The Guardian Angel_, the second novel of Doctor Holmes, was not +published until 1867, but it is interesting to compare the two stories, +for there is a strong family likeness between them. Both show the power +of inherited tendencies, though Myrtle Hazard, the heroine of _The +Guardian Angel_, has no alien element in her blood like that which +tormented poor Elsie. With Myrtle "it was as when several grafts, +bearing fruit that ripens at different times, are growing upon the same +stock. Her earlier impulses may have been derived directly from her +father and mother, but various ancestors came uppermost in their time +before the absolute and total result of their several forces had found +its equilibrium in the character by which she was to be known as an +individual. These inherited impulses were therefore many, conflicting, +some of them dangerous. The World, the Flesh, and the Devil held +mortgages on her life before its deed was put in her hands; but sweet +and gracious influences were also born with her; and the battle of life +was to be fought between them, God helping her in her need, and her own +free choice siding with one or the other." + +The scene opens in a quiet New England village which is roused from its +usual lethargy by the startling announcement in the weekly paper of a +lost child. This is none other than the little orphan, Myrtle Hazard, +who after a few dreary years in the dismal Wither's homestead, escapes +by night in her little boat, is rescued by a young student from a +frightful death at the rapids, and brought back to her distressed Aunt +Silence by good old Byles Gridley--the true "Guardian Angel" of her +life. + +When old Doctor Hurlbut "ninety-two, very deaf, very feeble, yet a wise +counsellor in doubtful and difficult cases," comes to prescribe for the +young girl, he says to his son: + +"I've seen that look on another face of the same blood--it's a great +many years ago, and she was dead before you were born, my boy,--but I've +seen that look, and it meant trouble then, and I'm afraid it means +trouble now. I see some danger of a brain fever. And if she doesn't +have that, then look out for some hysteric fits that will make +mischief.... I've been through it all before in that same house. Live +folks are only dead folks warmed over. I can see 'em all in that girl's +face.--Handsome Judith to begin with. And that queer woman, the Deacon's +mother--there's where she gets that hystericky look. Yes, and the +black-eyed woman with the Indian blood in her--look out for that--look +out for that. + +... Four generations--four generations, man and wife--yes, five +generations before this Hazard child I've looked on with these old eyes. +And it seems to me that I can see something of almost every one of 'em +in this child's face--it's the forehead of this one, and it's the eyes +of that one, and it's that other's mouth, and the look that I remember +in another, and when she speaks, why, I've heard that same voice +before--yes, yes--as long ago as when I was first married." + +Aside from the interest of the story there is a strange fascination in +tracing the development of these various ancestral traits. + +"This body in which we journey across the isthmus between the two oceans +is not a private carriage, but an omnibus," says old Byles Gridley in +his _Thoughts on the Universe_--dead book that was destined to so grand +a resurrection! Surely no one can deny the successive development of +inherited bodily aspects and habitudes, and the same thing happens, the +author avers, "in the mental and moral nature, though the latter may be +less obvious to common observation." + +_The Guardian Angel_ while a deep study of the Reflex Function in its +higher sphere, is not without its lighter, more mirthful side. Says _The +London News_, "the story is exceedingly humorous and comic in the less +serious chapters. There is no such minor poet in the whole range of +fiction as the immortal Gifted Hopkins. In the character of Hopkins all +the foibles and vanities of the literary nature are exemplified in the +most mirthful manner. If Doctor Holmes has more characters like Gifted +Hopkins in his mind, the hilarity of two continents is not in much +danger of being extinguished." + +Here is a glimpse of the young poet when racked with jealousy: + +"He retired pensive from the interview, and flinging himself at his +desk, attempted wreaking his thoughts upon expression, to borrow the +language of one of his brother bards, in a passionate lyric which he +began thus: + + Another's! + Another's! O the pang, the smart! + Fate owes to Love a deathless grudge-- + The barbed fang has rent a heart + Which--which-- + +judge--judge--no, not judge. Budge, drudge, fudge--what a disgusting +language English is! Nothing fit to couple with such a word as grudge! +And an impassioned moment arrested in full flow, stopped short, +corked up, for want of a paltry rhyme! Judge--budge--drudge +nudge--oh!--smudge--misery!--fudge. In vain--futile--no use--all +up for to-night!'" + +The next day the dejected poet "wandered about with a dreadfully +disconsolate look upon his countenance. He showed a falling-off in his +appetite at tea-time, which surprised and disturbed his mother.... The +most touching evidence of his unhappiness--whether intentional on the +result of accident was not evident--was a _broken heart_, which he left +upon his plate, the meaning of which was as plain as anything in the +language of flowers. His thoughts were gloomy, running a good deal on +the more picturesque and impressive methods of bidding a voluntary +farewell to a world which had allured him with visions of beauty only to +snatch them from his impassioned gaze. His mother saw something of this, +and got from him a few disjointed words, which led her to lock up the +clothes-line and hide her late husband's razors--an affectionate, yet +perhaps unnecessary precaution, for self-elimination contemplated from +this point of view by those who have the natural outlet of verse to +relieve them is rarely followed by a casualty. It may be considered as +implying a more than average chance for longevity; as those who meditate +an imposing finish naturally save themselves for it, and are therefore +careful of their health until the time comes, and this is apt to be +indefinitely postponed so long as there is a poem to write or a proof to +be corrected." + +Gifted Hopkins survives the ordeal, and completes his volume of poems, +_Blossoms of the Soul_. Good old master Gridley, who foresees what the +end will be, offers to accompany the young poet in his visit to the city +publisher. What a world of pathos there is in the fond mother's +preparations for the momentous journey: She brings down from the garret +"a capacious trunk, of solid wood, but covered with leather, and adorned +with brass-headed nails, by the cunning disposition of which, also, the +paternal initials stood out on the rounded lid, in the most conspicuous +manner. It was his father's trunk, and the first thing that went into +it, as the widow lifted the cover, and the smothering shut-up smell +struck an old chord of associations, was a single tear-drop. How well +she remembered the time when she first unpacked it for her young +husband, and the white shirt bosoms showed their snowy plaits! O dear, +dear! + +"But women decant their affections, sweet and sound, out of the old +bottles into the new ones--off from the lees of the past generation, +clear and bright, into the clean vessels just made ready to receive it. +Gifted Hopkins was his mother's idol, and no wonder. She had not only +the common attachment of a parent for him, as her offspring, but she +felt that her race was to be rendered illustrious by his genius, and +thought proudly of the time when some future biographer would mention +her own humble name, to be held in lasting remembrance as that of the +mother of Hopkins." + +The description of the various articles that went into the trunk is +humorous enough. + +"Best clothes and common clothes, thick clothes and thin clothes, +flannels and linens, socks and collars, with handkerchiefs enough to +keep the pickpockets busy for a week, with a paper of gingerbread and +some lozenges for gastralgia, and 'hot drops,' and ruled paper to write +letters on, and a little Bible and a phial with _hiera piera_, and +another with paregoric, and another with 'camphire' for sprains and +bruises. Gifted went forth equipped for every climate from the tropic to +the pole, and armed against every malady from ague to zoster." + +The poet's interview with the publisher is one of the best things in the +book, but to be thoroughly enjoyed, it must be read entire. + +The genial, kindly nature of Doctor Holmes is strikingly shown +throughout the whole volume. Good, quaint Byles Gridley endears himself +more and more to the reader, Gifted Hopkins finds in his heart's choice +an appreciative, admiring audience of at least one, Cyprian Eveleth and +young Doctor Hurlbut are most happily disposed of, Clement Lindsay +receives his reward, Myrtle Hazard emerges from the conflict of mingled +lives in her blood with the dross of her nature burned away, aunt +Silence throws off her melancholy, Miss Cynthia Badlam repents of her +evil manoeuvrings and dies "with the comfortable assurance that she is +going to a better world," the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker learns to +appreciate his patient wife--even Murray Bradshaw, the acknowledged +villain of the book, is not without a few redeeming traits, and we close +the volume with a sense of hearty goodwill and fervent charity toward +all mankind. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE. + + +Between the writing of _Elsie Venner_ and _The Guardian Angel_, Doctor +Holmes wrote a number of essays for the _Atlantic Monthly_, some of +which were afterwards collected in the volume entitled _Soundings from +the Atlantic_. + +_Currents and Counter-currents_ was published in 1861, and _Border-lines +of Knowledge_ in 1862. The two latter books deal with scientific +subjects, but are written in such an attractive style that they have +been extremely popular not only with students but with the whole reading +public. _Songs in many Keys_, a volume of poems dedicated to his mother, +was published by Doctor Holmes in 1862. _Mechanism in Thoughts and +Morals_ appeared in 1871, the same year that _The Poet at the +Breakfast-Table_ was running as a serial in the _Atlantic Monthly_, +and numerous stray poems were also written in this prolific decade. In +1872 the poet's breakfast talk was published in book form. It is +interesting to compare these three volumes--The Autocrat, the Professor, +and the Poet. As a series they are as necessary to one another as the +three strands of a cable, and yet each volume is, in a certain way, +completed in itself. Where in the whole range of the English language, +or indeed, of any language, will you find such an overflow of +spontaneous wit and humor? While in no sense a story or even a +narrative, the breakfast talk is enlivened by wonderfully life-like +characters. We can easily imagine ourselves sitting beside them at the +social table, and just as it is in real life, these chance acquaintances +touch us at different points, awaken various degrees of interest, and +are at all times quite distinct from the observer's own individuality. + +There is not a page without its sparkle of humor, and nugget of sound +philosophy beneath, which the reader appropriates to himself in a +delightfully unconscious manner--for the time being, it is he who is the +Autocrat, the Professor, the Poet! As some one has truly said, "It is +our thoughts which Doctor Holmes speaks; it is our humor to which he +gives expression; it is the pictures of our own fancy that he clothes in +words, and shows us what we ourselves thought, and only lacked the means +of expressing. We never realized until he taught us by his magic power +over us, how much each of us had of genius and invention and +expression." + +Each book has its little romance, and the "Poet" introduces a poor +gentlewoman whose story interests us quite as much as does that of the +two lovers. + +"In a little chamber," he says, "into which a small thread of sunshine +finds its way for half an hour or so every day during a month or six +weeks of the spring or autumn, at all other times obliged to content +itself with ungilded daylight, lives this boarder, whom, without +wronging any others of our company, I may call, as she is very generally +called in the household, the Lady.... + +"From an aspect of dignified but undisguised economy which showed itself +in her dress as well as in her limited quarters, I suspected a story of +shipwrecked fortune, and determined to question our Landlady. That +worthy woman was delighted to tell the history of her most distinguished +boarder. She was, as I had supposed, a gentlewoman whom a change of +circumstances had brought down from her high estate.--Did I know the +Goldenrod family?--Of course I did.--Well, the lady was first cousin to +Mrs. Midas Goldenrod. She had been here in her carriage to call upon +her--not very often.--Were her rich relations kind and helpful to +her?--Well, yes; at least they made her presents now and then. Three or +four years ago they sent her a silver waiter, and every Christmas they +sent her a bouquet--it must cost as much as five dollars, the Landlady +thought. + +"And how did the Lady receive these valuable and useful things? + +"Every Christmas she got out the silver waiter and borrowed a glass +tumbler and filled it with water, and put the bouquet in it and set it +on the waiter. It smelt sweet enough and looked pretty for a day or two, +but the Landlady thought it wouldn't have hurt 'em if they'd sent a +piece of goods for a dress, or at least a pocket handkercher or two, or +something or other that she could 'a' made use of.... + +"What did she do?--Why, she read, and she drew pictures, and she did +needlework patterns, and played on an old harp she had; the gilt was +mostly off, but it sounded very sweet, and she sung to it, sometimes, +those old songs that used to be in fashion twenty or thirty years ago, +with words to 'em that folks could understand.... + +"Poor Lady! She seems to me like a picture that has fallen face downward +on the dusty floor. The picture never was as needful as a window or a +door, but it was pleasant to see it in its place, and it would be +pleasant to see it there again, and I for one, should be thankful to +have the Lady restored by some turn of fortune to the position from +which she has been so cruelly cast down." + +Before the Poet closes his breakfast talk, the poor Lady has, through +the efforts of another boarder, the Register of Deeds, recovered her +property. Mrs. Midas Goldenrod makes frequent and longer calls--"the +very moment her relative, the Lady of our breakfast table, began to find +herself in a streak of sunshine she came forward with a lighted candle +to show her which way her path lay before her. + +"The Lady saw all this, how plainly, how painfully! yet she exercised a +true charity for the weakness of her relative. Sensible people have as +much consideration for the frailties of the rich as for those of the +poor. + +"The Lady that's been so long with me is going to a house of her own," +said the Landlady, "one she has bought back again, for it used to belong +to her folks. It's a beautiful house, and the sun shines in at the front +windows all day long. She's going to be wealthy again, but it doesn't +make any difference in her ways. I've had boarders complain when I was +doing as well as I knowed how for them, but I never heerd a word from +her that wasn't as pleasant as if she'd been talking to the Governor's +lady." + +The strange little man, denominated "Scarabee," who had grown to look so +much like the beetles he studied; the "Member of the House" with his +Down East phrases; the little "Scheherazade" who furnishes a new story +each week for the newspapers;--the good looking, rosy-cheeked salesman +"of very polite manners, only a little more brisk than the approved +style of carriage permits, as one in the habit of springing with a +certain alacrity at the call of a customer;" the good old Master of Arts +who makes so many sage remarks;--the young Astronomer with his heart +confessions in the _Wind-clouds and Star-drifts_--all these are new +acquaintances whom we are loth to part with, when the Landlady announces +her intention of giving up the famous boarding-house, and the Poet drops +the curtain. Would that the Old Master could yet be induced to give to +the public those "notes and reflections and new suggestions" of his +marvellous "interleaved volume!" + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +FAVORITES OF SONG. + + +When we come to consider Doctor Holmes on the poet side of his +many-sided nature, his own words at the famous Breakfast-Table are +vividly brought to mind: + +"The works of other men live, but their personality dies out of their +labors; the poet, who reproduces himself in his creation, as no other +artist does or can, goes down to posterity with all his personality +blended with whatever is imperishable in his song.... A single lyric is +enough, if one can only find in his soul and finish in his intellect one +of those jewels fit to sparkle on the stretched forefinger of all time." + +In the poems of Doctor Holmes we are quite sure there are many just such +lyrics that the world will not willingly let die. _The Last Leaf, The +Voiceless, The Chambered Nautilus, The Two Armies, The Old Man's Dream, +Under the Violets, Dorothy Q._--but where shall we stop in the long +enumeration of popular favorites like these? + +Oliver Wendell Holmes touches the heart as well as the intellect, and +that aside from his power as a humorist, is one great secret of his +success. + +Listen, for instance, to this exquisite bit: + + Yes, dear departed, cherished days + Could Memory's hand restore + Your Morning light, your evening rays + From Time's gray urn once more,-- + Then might this restless heart be still, + This straining eye might close, + And Hope her fainting pinions fold, + While the fair phantoms rose. + + But, like a child in ocean's arms, + We strive against the stream, + Each moment farther from the shore + Where life's young fountains gleam;-- + Each moment fainter wave the fields, + And wider rolls the sea; + The mist grows dark,--the sun goes down,-- + Day breaks,--and where are we? + +And what a dainty touch is given to this _Song of the Sun-Worshipper's +Daughter_! + + Kiss mine eyelids, beauteous Morn + Blushing into life new born! + Send me violets for my hair + And thy russet robe to wear, + And thy ring of rosiest hue + Set in drops of diamond dew! + + * * * * * + + Kiss my lips, thou Lord of light, + Kiss my lips a soft good-night! + Westward sinks thy golden car; + Leave me but the evening star + And my solace that shall be + Borrowing all its light from thee. + +And where will you find a more pathetic picture than that of the old +musician in _The Silent Melody_? + + Bring me my broken harp, he said; + We both are wrecks--but as ye will-- + Though all its ringing tones have fled, + Their echoes linger round it still; + It had some golden strings, I know, + But that was long--how long!--ago. + + I cannot see its tarnished gold; + I cannot hear its vanished tone; + Scarce can my trembling fingers hold + The pillared frame so long their own; + We both are wrecks--a while ago + It had some silver strings, I know. + + But on them Time too long has played + The solemn strain that knows no change, + And where of old my fingers strayed + The chords they find are new and strange-- + Yes; iron strings--I know--I know-- + We both are wrecks of long ago. + +With pitying smiles the broken harp is brought to him. Not a single +string remains. + + But see! like children overjoyed, + His fingers rambling through the void! + +They gather softly around the old musician. + + Rapt in his tuneful trance he seems; + His fingers move; but not a sound! + A silence like the song of dreams.... + "There! ye have heard the air," he cries, + "That brought the tears from Marian's eyes!" + +The poem closes with these fine stanzas: + + Ah, smile not at his fond conceit, + Nor deem his fancy wrought in vain; + To him the unreal sounds are sweet, + No discord mars the silent strain + Scored on life's latest, starlit page + The voiceless melody of age. + + Sweet are the lips of all that sing, + When Nature's music breathes unsought, + But never yet could voice or string + So truly shape our tenderest thought, + As when by life's decaying fire + Our fingers sweep the stringless lyre! + +Though entirely different in style, _Bill and Joe_ is another of those +heart-reaching, tear-starting poems. + +Listen, for instance, to these few verses: + + Come, dear old comrade, you and I + Will steal an hour from days gone by; + The shining days when life was new, + And all was bright with morning dew, + The lusty days of long ago + When you were Bill and I was Joe. + + * * * * * + + You've won the judge's ermined robe, + You've taught your name to half the globe, + You've sung mankind a deathless strain; + You've made the dead past live again; + The world may call you what it will, + But you and I are Joe and Bill. + + * * * * * + + How Bill forgets his hour of pride, + While Joe sits smiling at his side; + How Joe, in spite of time's disguise + Finds the old schoolmate in his eyes,-- + Those calm, stern eyes that melt and fill, + As Joe looks fondly up at Bill. + + Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame? + A fitful tongue of leaping flame; + A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust + That lifts a pinch of mortal dust; + A few swift years and who can show + Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe? + + The weary idol takes his stand, + Holds out his bruised and aching hand, + While gaping thousands come and go,-- + How vain it seems, his empty show! + Till all at once his pulses thrill: + 'Tis poor old Joe's God bless you, Bill! + +The earlier poems of Doctor Holmes are frequently written in the +favorite measures of Pope and Hood. This is not at all strange when we +remember that in the boyhood of Doctor Holmes these two poets were the +most popular of all the English bards. In his later poems, however, we +find an endless variety of rhythms, and the careful reader will notice +in every instance, a wonderful adaptation of the various poetical forms +to the particular thought the poet wishes to convey. + +How well Doctor Holmes understands the "mechanism" of verse may be seen +from his _Physiology of Versification and the Harmonies of Organic and +Animal Life_, a valuable article published in the _Boston Medical and +Surgical Journal_ of January 7, 1875. + +"Respiration," he says, "has an intimate relation to the structure of +metrical compositions, and the reason why octosyllabic verse is so easy +to read aloud is because it follows more exactly than any other measure +the natural rhythm of the respiration.... + +"The ten syllable, or heroic line has a peculiar majesty from the very +fact that its pronunciation requires a longer respiration than is +ordinary. + +"The cæsura, it is true, comes in at irregular intervals and serves as a +breathing place, but its management requires care in reading, and +entirely breaks up the natural rhythm of breathing. The reason why the +'common metre' of our hymn books and the fourteen syllable line of +Chapman's Homer is such easy reading is because of the short alternate +lines of six and eight syllables. One of the most irksome of all +measures is the twelve-syllable line in which Drayton's Polyolbion is +written. While the fourteen syllable line can be easily divided in half +in reading, the twelve syllable one is too much for one expiration and +not enough for two, and for this reason has been avoided by poets. + +"There is, however, the personal equation to be taken into account. A +person of quiet temperament and ample chest may habitually breathe but +fourteen times in a minute, and the heroic measure will therefore be +very easy reading to him; a narrow-chested, nervous person, on the +contrary, who breathes oftener than twenty times a minute, may prefer +the seven-syllable verse, like that of Dyer's _Grongar Hill_, to the +heroic measure, and quick-breathing children will recite Mother Goose +melodies with delight, when long metres would weary and distract them. + +"Nothing in poetry or in vocal music is widely popular that is not +calculated with strict reference to the respiratory function. All the +early ballad poetry shows how instinctively the reciters accommodated +their rhythm to their breathing: _Chevy Chace_, or _The Babes in the +Wood_ may be taken as an example for verse. _God save the King_, which +has a compass of some half a dozen notes, and takes one expiration, +economically used, to each line, may be referred to as the musical +illustration. + +"The unconscious adaptation of voluntary life to the organic rhythm is +perhaps a more pervading fact than we have been in the habit of +considering it. One can hardly doubt that Spenser breathed habitually +more slowly than Prior, and that Anacreon had a quicker respiration than +Homer. And this difference, which we conjecture from their rhythmical +instincts, if our conjecture is true, probably, almost certainly, +characterized all their vital movements." + +So much for the bare _vehicle_ of verse, but the poet himself, as Doctor +Holmes says in his review of "Exotics," is a medium, a clairvoyant. "The +will is first called in requisition to exclude interfering outward +impressions and alien trains of thought. After a certain time the second +state or adjustment of the poet's double consciousness (for he has two +states, just as the somnambulists have) sets up its own automatic +movement, with its special trains of ideas and feelings in the thinking +and emotional centres. As soon as the fine frenzy, or _quasi_ +trance-state, is fairly established, the consciousness watches the +torrent of thoughts and arrests the ones wanted, singly with their +fitting expression, or in groups of fortunate sequences which he cannot +better by after treatment. As the poetical vocabulary is limited, and +its plasticity lends itself only to certain moulds, the mind works under +great difficulty, at least until it has acquired by practice such +handling of language that every possibility of rhythm or rhyme offers +itself actually or potentially to the clairvoyant perception +simultaneously with the thought it is to embody. Thus poetical +composition is the most intense, the most exciting, and therefore the +most exhausting of mental exercises. It is exciting because its mental +states are a series of revelations and surprises; intense on account of +the double strain upon the attention. The poet is not the same man who +seated himself an hour ago at his desk with the dust-cart and the +gutter, or the duck-pond and the hay-stack, and the barnyard fowls +beneath his window. He is in the forest with the song-birds; he is on +the mountain-top with the eagles. He sat down in rusty broadcloth, he is +arrayed in the imperial purple of his singing robes. Let him alone, now, +if you are wise, for you might as well have pushed the arm that was +finishing the smile of a Madonna, or laid a veil before a train that had +a queen on board, as thrust your untimely question on this +half-cataleptic child of the Muse, who hardly knows whether he is in the +body or out of the body. And do not wonder if, when the fit is over, he +is in some respects like one who is recovering after an excess of the +baser stimulants." + +As a writer of humorous poetry, it is safe to say that Oliver Wendell +Holmes is without a peer. + +_The Height of the Ridiculous_, _The September Gale_, _The Hot Season_, +_The Deacon's Master-piece_, _Nux Postcoenatica_, _The Stethoscope +Song_, how many a "cobweb" have they shaken from the tired brain! + +And where in the whole range of humorous literature will you find a more +delightful morsel than the "_Parting Word_," that follows?-- + + I must leave thee, lady sweet! + Months shall waste before we meet; + Winds are fair and sails are spread, + Anchors leave their ocean bed; + Ere this shining day grows dark, + Skies shall guide my shoreless bark; + Through thy tears, O lady mine, + Read thy lover's parting line. + + When the first sad sun shall set, + Thou shalt tear thy locks of jet; + When the morning star shall rise + Thou shalt wake with weeping eyes; + When the second sun goes down + Thou more tranquil shalt be grown, + Taught too well that wild despair + Dims thine eyes, and spoils thy hair. + + All the first unquiet week + Thou shalt wear a smileless cheek; + In the first month's second half + Thou shalt once attempt to laugh; + Then in _Pickwick_ thou shalt dip, + Lightly puckering round the lip, + Till at last, in sorrow's spite, + Samuel makes thee laugh outright. + + While the first seven mornings last, + Round thy chamber bolted fast + Many a youth shall fume and pout, + "Hang the girl, she's always out!" + While the second week goes round, + Vainly shall they sing and pound; + When the third week shall begin, + "Martha, let the creature in!" + + Now once more the flattering throng + Round thee flock with smile and song, + But thy lips unweaned as yet, + Lisp, "O, how can I forget!" + Men and devils both contrive + Traps for catching girls alive; + Eve was duped, and Helen kissed, + How, O how can you resist? + + First, be careful of your fan, + Trust it not to youth or man; + Love has filled a pirate's sail + Often with its perfumed gale. + Mind your kerchief most of all, + Fingers touch when kerchiefs fall; + Shorter ell than mercers clip + Is the space from hand to lip. + + Trust not such as talk in tropes + Full of pistols, daggers, ropes; + All the hemp that Russia bears + Scarce would answer lovers' prayers; + Never thread was spun so fine, + Never spider stretched the line, + Would not hold the lovers true + That would really swing for you. + + Fiercely some shall storm and swear, + Beating breasts in black despair; + Others murmur with a sigh + You must melt or they will die; + Painted words on empty lies, + Grubs with wings like butterflies; + Let them die, and welcome, too; + Pray what better could they do? + + Fare thee well, if years efface + From thy heart love's burning trace, + Keep, O keep that hallowed seat + From the tread of vulgar feet; + If the blue lips of the sea + Wait with icy kiss for me, + Let not thine forget that vow, + Sealed how often, love, as now! + +In his _Mechanism in Thought and Morals_, Doctor Holmes reveals one of +the secrets of humorous writing. "The poet," he says, "sits down to his +desk with an odd conceit in his brain; and presently his eyes filled +with tears, his thought slides into the minor key, and his heart is full +of sad and plaintive melodies. Or he goes to his work, saying-- + +"'To-night I would have tears;' and before he rises from his table he +has written a burlesque, such as he might think fit to send to one of +the comic papers, if these were not so commonly cemeteries of hilarity +interspersed with cenotaphs of wit and humor. These strange hysterics of +the intelligence which make us pass from weeping to laughter, and from +laughter back again to weeping, must be familiar to every impressible +nature; and all this is as automatic, involuntary, as entirely +self-evolved by a hidden, organic process, as are the changing moods of +the laughing and crying woman. The poet always recognizes a dictation +_ab extra_; and we hardly think it a figure of speech when we talk of +his inspiration." + +Of Doctor Holmes' inimitable _vers d'occasion_ we select the following: + +At the reception given to Harriet Beecher Stowe on her seventieth +birthday, at Governor Claflin's beautiful summer residence in +Newtonville, Doctor Holmes read the following witty and characteristic +poem: + + If every tongue that speaks her praise + For whom I shape my tinkling phrase + Were summoned to the table, + The vocal chorus that would meet + Of mingling accents harsh or sweet + From every land and tribe would beat + The polyglots of Babel. + + Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane, + Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine, + Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi, + High Dutchman and Low Dutchman, too, + The Russian serf, the Polish Jew, + Arab, Armenian and Mantchoo + Would shout, "We know the lady." + + Know her! Who knows not Uncle Tom + And her he learned his gospel from + Has never heard of Moses; + Full well the brave black hand we know + That gave to freedom's grasp the hoe + That killed the weed that used to grow + Among the Southern roses. + + When Archimedes, long ago, + Spoke out so grandly "_dos pou sto_,-- + Give me a place to stand on, + I'll move your planet for you, now," + He little dreamed or fancied how + The _sto_ at last should find its _pou_ + For woman's faith to land on. + + Her lever was the wand of art, + Her fulcrum was the human heart + Whence all unfailing aid is; + She moved the earth! its thunders pealed, + Its mountains shook, its temples reeled, + The blood-red fountains were unsealed, + And Moloch sunk to Hades. + + All through the conflict, up and down + Marched Uncle Tom and Old John Brown, + One ghost, one form ideal, + And which was false and which was true. + And which was mightier of the two, + The wisest sibyl never knew, + For both alike were real. + + Sister, the holy maid does well + Who counts her beads in convent cell, + Where pale devotion lingers; + But she who serves the sufferer's needs, + Whose prayers are spelt in loving deeds + May trust the Lord will count her beads + As well as human fingers. + + When Truth herself was Slavery's slave + Thy hand the prisoned suppliant gave + The rainbow wings of fiction. + And Truth who soared descends to-day + Bearing an angel's wreath away, + Its lilies at thy feet to lay + With heaven's own benediction. + +The following poem was read by Doctor Holmes at the Unitarian Festival, +June 2, 1882. + + The waves upbuild the wasting shore: + Where mountains towered the billows sweep: + Yet still their borrowed spoils restore + And raise new empires from the deep. + So, while the floods of thought lay waste + The old domain of chartered creeds, + The heaven-appointed tides will haste + To shape new homes for human needs. + Be ours to mark with hearts unchilled + The change an outworn age deplores; + The legend sinks, but Faith shall build + A fairer throne on new-found shores, + The star shall glow in western skies, + That shone o'er Bethlehem's hallowed shrine, + And once again the temple rise + That crowned the rock of Palestine. + Not when the wondering shepherds bowed + Did angels sing their latest song, + Nor yet to Israel's kneeling crowd + Did heaven's one sacred dome belong-- + Let priest and prophet have their dues, + The Levite counts but half a man, + Whose proud "salvation of the Jews" + Shuts out the good Samaritan! + Though scattered far the flock may stray, + His own the shepherd still shall claim,-- + The saints who never learned to pray,-- + The friends who never spoke his name. + Dear Master, while we hear thy voice, + That says, "The truth shall make you free," + Thy servant still, by loving choice, + O keep us faithful unto Thee! + +Doctor Holmes being unable to attend the annual reunion of the Harvard +Club in New York City, February 21, 1882, sent the following letter and +sonnet which were read at the banquet: + + DEAR BROTHERS ALUMNI: + + As I am obliged to deny myself the pleasure of being with you, I do + not feel at liberty to ask many minutes of your time and attention. + I have compressed into the limits of a sonnet the feelings I am sure + we all share that, besides the roof that shelters us we have need of + some wider house where we can visit and find ourselves in a more + extended circle of sympathy than the narrow ring of a family, and + nowhere can we seek a truer and purer bond of fellowship than under + the benignant smile of our _Alma Mater_. Let me thank you for the + kindness which has signified to me that I should be welcome at your + festival. + + In all the rewards of a literary life none is more precious than the + kindly recognition of those who have clung to the heart of the same + nursing mother, and will always flee to each other in the widest + distances of space, and let us hope in those unbounded realms in + which we may not utterly forget our earthly pilgrimage and its dear + companions. + + Very sincerely yours, + OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. + +SONNET. + + Yes, home is sweet! and yet we needs must sigh, + Restless until our longing souls have found + Some realm beyond the fireside's narrow bound, + Where slippered ease and sleepy comfort lie, + Some fair ideal form that cannot die, + By age dismantled and by change uncrowned, + Else life creeps circling in the self-same round, + And the low ceiling hides the lofty sky. + Ah, then to thee our truant hearts return, + Dear mother, Alma, Casta--spotless, kind! + Thy sacred walls a larger home we find, + And still for thee thy wandering children yearn, + While with undying fires thine altars burn, + Where all our holiest memories rest enshrined. + +POEM READ BY DOCTOR HOLMES AT THE WHITTIER CELEBRATION. + + I believe that the copies of verses I've spun, + Like Scheherazade's tales, are a thousand and one, + You remember the story--those mornings in bed-- + 'Twas the turn of a copper--a tale or a head. + + A doom like Scheherazade's falls upon me + In a mandate as stern as the Sultan's decree; + I'm a florist in verse, and what _would_ people say + If I came to a banquet without my bouquet? + + It is trying, no doubt, when the company knows + Just the look and the smell of each lily and rose, + The green of each leaf in the sprigs that I bring, + And the shape of the bunch and the knot of the string. + + Yes, 'the style is the man,' and the nib of one's pen + Makes the same mark at twenty, and threescore and ten; + It is so in all matters, if truth may be told; + Let one look at the cast he can tell you the mould. + + How we all know each other! No use in disguise; + Through the holes in the mask comes the flash of the eyes; + We can tell by his--somewhat--each one of our tribe, + As we know the old hat which we cannot describe. + + Though in Hebrew, in Sanscrit, in Choctaw, you write, + Sweet singer who gave us the Voices of Night, + Though in buskin or slipper your song may be shod, + Or the velvety verse that Evangeline trod. + + We shall say, 'You can't cheat us--we know it is you-- + There is one voice like that, but there cannot be two. + _Maëstro_, whose chant like the dulcimer rings; + And the woods will be hushed when the nightingale sings. + + And he, so serene, so majestic, so true, + Whose temple hypæthral the planets shine through, + Let us catch but five words from that mystical pen + We should know our one sage from all children of men. + + And he whose bright image no distance can dim, + Through a hundred disguises we can't mistake him, + Whose play is all earnest, whose wit is the edge + (With a beetle behind) of a sham-splitting wedge. + + Do you know whom we send you, Hidalgos of Spain? + Do you know your old friends when you see them again? + Hosea was Sancho! you Dons of Madrid, + But Sancho that wielded the lance of the Cid! + + And the wood-thrush of Essex--you know whom I mean, + Whose song echoes round us when he sits unseen, + Whose heart-throbs of verse through our memories thrill + Like a breath from the wood, like a breeze from the hill. + + So fervid, so simple, so loving, so pure, + We hear but one strain and our verdict is sure-- + Thee cannot elude us--no further we search-- + 'Tis Holy George Herbert cut loose from his church! + + We think it the voice of a cherub that sings-- + Alas! we remember that angels have wings-- + What story is this of the day of his birth? + Let him live to a hundred! we want him on earth! + + One life has been paid him (in gold) by the sun; + One account has been squared and another begun; + But he never will die if he lingers below + Till we've paid him in love half the balance we owe! + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +THE MAN OF SCIENCE. + + +"What decided me," says Doctor Holmes, "to give up Law and apply myself +to Medicine, I can hardly say, but I had from the first looked upon my +law studies as an experiment. At any rate, I made the change, and soon +found myself introduced to new scenes and new companionships. + +"I can scarcely credit my memory when I recall the first impressions +produced upon me by sights afterwards become so familiar that they could +no more disturb a pulse-beat than the commonest of every-day +experiences. The skeleton, hung aloft like a gibbeted criminal, looked +grimly at me as I entered the room devoted to the students of the school +I had joined, just as the fleshless figure of Time, with the hour-glass +and scythe, used to glare upon me in my childhood from the _New England +Primer_. The white faces in the beds at the Hospital found their +reflection in my own cheeks which lost their color as I looked upon +them. All this had to pass away in a little time; I had chosen my +profession, and must meet all its aspects until they lost their power +over my sensibility.... + +"After attending two courses of lectures in the School of the +University, I went to Europe to continue my studies. I can hardly +believe my own memory when I recall the old practitioners and professors +who were still going round the hospitals when I mingled with the train +of students in the École de Médicine." + +Of the famous Baron Boyer, author of a nine-volumed book on surgery, +Doctor Holmes says, "I never saw him do more than look as if he wanted +to cut a good collop out of a patient he was examining." Baron Larrey, +the favorite surgeon of Napoleon, he describes as a short, square, +substantial man, with iron-gray hair, red face, and white apron. To go +round the Hotel des Invalides with Larrey was to live over the campaign +of Napoleon, to look on the sun of Austerlitz, to hear the cannon of +Marengo, to struggle through the icy waters of the Beresina, to shiver +in the snows of the Russian retreat, and to gaze through the battle +smoke upon the last charge of the red lancers on the redder field of +Waterloo. + +Then there was Baron Dupuytren, "_ce grand homme de lautre côté de la +rivièrè_,--with his high, full-doomed head and oracular utterances; +Lisfrance, the great drawer of blood and hewer of members; Velpeau, who, +coming to Paris in wooden shoes, and starving, almost, at first, raised +himself to great eminence as surgeon and author; Broussais, the +knotty-featured, savage old man who reminded one of a volcano, which had +well-nigh used up its fire and brimstone, and Gabriel Audral, the rapid, +fluent, fervid and imaginative speaker. + +"The object of our reverence, however, I might almost say idolatry," +adds Doctor Holmes, "was Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis, a tall, rather +spare, dignified personage, of serene and grave aspect, but with a +pleasant smile and kindly voice for the student with whom he came into +personal relations. + +"If I summed up the lessons of Louis in two expressions, they would be +these: First, always make sure that you form a distinct and clear idea +of the matter you are considering. Second, always avoid vague +approximations where exact estimates are possible.... + +"Yes, as I say, I look back on the long hours of the many days I spent +in the wards and in the autopsy room of La Pitié, where Louis was one +of the attending physicians--yes, Louis did a great work for practical +medicine. Modest in the presence of nature, fearless in the face of +authority, unwearying in the pursuit of truth, he was a man whom any +student might be happy and proud to claim as his teacher and his friend. +And yet, as I look back on the days when I followed his teachings, I +feel that I gave myself up too exclusively to his methods of thought and +study. There is one part of their business that certain medical +practitioners are too apt to forget; namely, that what they should most +of all try to do is to ward off disease, to alleviate suffering, to +preserve life, or at least to prolong it if possible. It is not of the +slightest interest to the patient to know whether three or three and a +quarter inches of his lungs are hepatized. His mind is not occupied with +thinking of the curious problems which are to be solved by his own +autopsy, whether this or that strand of the spinal marrow is the seat of +this or that form of degeneration. He wants something to relieve his +pain, to mitigate the anguish of dyspnæa, to bring back motion and +sensibility to the dead limb, to still the tortures of neuralgia. What +is it to him that you can localize and name by some uncouth term, the +disease which you could not prevent and which you can not cure? an old +woman who knows how to make a poultice and how to put it on, and does it +_tuto_, _cito_, _jucunde_, just when and where it is wanted, is +better--a thousand times better in many cases--than a staring +pathologist who explores and thumps and doubts and guesses and tells his +patient he will be better to-morrow, and so goes home to tumble his +books over and make out a diagnosis. + +"But in those days I, like most of my fellow students, was thinking much +more of 'science' than of practical medicine, and I believe if we had +not clung so closely to the skirts of Louis, and had followed some of +the courses of men like Rousseau,--therapeutists, who gave special +attention to curative methods, and not chiefly to diagnosis--it would +have been better for me and others. One thing, at any rate, we did learn +in the wards of Louis. We learned that a very large proportion of +diseases get well of themselves, without any special medication--the +great fact formulated, enforced and popularized by Doctor Jacob +Bigelow." + +It is well known that Doctor Holmes detests the habit of drugging +practised by so many physicians of the "old school," and in his address +before the Massachusetts Medical Society, entitled Currents and Counter +Currents in Medical Science, he makes a severe attack upon the +inordinate use of medicines. + +"What is the honest truth," he says at another time, "about the medical +art? By far the largest number of diseases which physicians are called +to treat will get well at any rate, even in spite of reasonably bad +treatment. Of the other fraction, a certain number will inevitably die, +whatever is done: there remains a small margin of cases where the life +of the patient depends on the skill of the physician. Drugs now and then +save life; they often shorten disease and remove symptoms; but they are +second in importance to food, air, temperature, and the other hygienic +influences. That was a shrewd trick of Alexander's physician on the +occasion of his attack after bathing. He asked three days to prepare his +medicine. Time is the great physician as well as the great consoler. +Sensible men in all ages have trusted most to nature." + +Of quacks and other humbugs, Doctor Holmes had an undisguised, wholesome +contempt. + +"Shall we try," he says, "the medicines advertised with the certificates +of justices of the peace, of clergymen, or even members of Congress? +Certainly, it may be answered, any one of them which makes a good case +for itself. But the difficulty is, that the whole class of commercial +remedies are shown by long experience, with the rarest exceptions, to be +very sovereign cures for empty pockets, and of no peculiar efficacy for +anything else. You may be well assured that if any really convincing +evidence was brought forward in behalf of the most vulgar nostrum, the +chemists would go at once to work to analyze it, the physiologists to +experiment with it, and the young doctors would all be trying it on +their own bodies, if not on their patients. But we do not think it worth +while, as a general rule, to send a Cheap Jack's gilt chains and lockets +to be tested for gold. We know they are made to sell, and so with the +pills and potions.... Think how rapidly any real discovery is +appropriated and comes into universal use. Take anæsthetics, take the +use of bromide of potassium, and see how easily they obtained +acceptance. If you are disposed to think any of the fancy systems has +brought forward any new remedy of value which the medical profession has +been slow to accept, ask any fancy practitioner to name it. Let him +name one,--the best his system claims,--not a hundred, but one. A single +new, efficient, trustworthy remedy which the medical profession can test +as they are ready to test before any scientific tribunal, opium, +quinine, ether, the bromide of potassium. There is no such remedy on +which any of the fancy practitioners dare stake his reputation. If there +were, it would long ago have been accepted, though it had been flowers +of brimstone from the borders of Styx or Cocytus." + +Homoeopathy is classed by Doctor Holmes among such "Kindred Delusions" +as the Royal Cure for the King's Evil, the Weapon Ointment, the +Sympathetic Powder, the Tar-water mania of Bishop Berkeley, and the +Metallic Tractors, or Perkinsism. + +In making a direct attack upon the pretentions of Homoeopathy, Doctor +Holmes declares at the outset that he shall treat it not by ridicule, +but by argument; with great freedom, but with good temper and in +peaceable language. + +_Similia similibus curantur._ Like cures like, is one of the fundamental +principles of Homoeopathy, and "improbable though it may seem to +some," says Doctor Holmes with his usual impartial fairness, "there is +no essential absurdity involved in the proposition that diseases yield +to remedies capable of producing like symptoms. There are, on the other +hand, some analogies which lend a degree of plausibility to the +statement. There are well-ascertained facts, known from the earliest +periods of medicine, showing that under certain circumstances, the very +medicine which from its known effects, one would expect to aggravate the +disease, may contribute to its relief. I may be permitted to allude, in +the most general way, to the case in which the spontaneous efforts of an +over-tasked stomach are quieted by the agency of a drug which that organ +refuses to entertain upon any terms. But that _every_ cure ever +performed by medicine should have been founded upon this principle, +although without the knowledge of a physician, that the Homoeopathy +axiom is, as Hahnemann asserts, "the _sole_ law of nature in +therapeutics," a law of which nothing more than a transient glimpse ever +presented itself to the innumerable host of medical observers, is a +dogma of such sweeping extent and pregnant novelty, that it demands a +corresponding breath and depth of unquestionable facts to cover its vast +pretensions." + +Among the many facts of which great use has been made by the +Homoeopathists, is that found in the precept given for the treatment +of parts which have been frozen, by friction with snow, etc. + +"But," says Doctor Holmes, "we deceive ourselves by names, if we suppose +the frozen part to be treated by cold, and not by heat. The snow may +even be actually _warmer_ than the part to which it is applied. But even +if it were at the same temperature when applied, it never did and never +could do the least good to a frozen part, except as a mode of regulating +the application of what? of _heat_. But the heat must be applied +_gradually_, just as food must be given a little at a time to those +perishing with hunger. If the patient were brought into a warm room, +heat would be applied _very rapidly_, were not something interposed to +prevent this, and allow its gradual admission. Snow or iced water is +exactly what is wanted; it is not cold to the part; it is very possibly +warm, on the contrary, for these terms are relative, and if it does not +melt and let the heat in, or is not taken away, the part will remain +frozen up until doomsday. Now the treatment of a frozen limb by heat, in +large or small quantities, is not Homoeopathy." + +Another supposed illustration of the Homoeopathic law is the alleged +successful management of burns, by holding them to the fire. "This is a +popular mode of treating those burns which are of too little consequence +to require any more efficacious remedy, and would inevitably get well of +themselves, without any trouble being bestowed upon them. It produces a +most acute pain in the part, which is followed by some loss of +sensibility, as happens with the eye after exposure to strong light, and +the ear after being subjected to very intense sounds. This is all it is +capable of doing, and all further notions of its efficacy must be +attributed merely to the vulgar love of paradox. If this example affords +any comfort to the Homoeopathist, it seems as cruel to deprive him of +it as it would be to convince the mistress of the smoke-jack or the +flatiron that the fire does not literally draw the fire out, which is +her hypothesis. + +"But if it were true that frost-bites were cured by cold and burns by +heat, it would be subversive, so far as it went, of the great principle +of Homoeopathy. For you will remember that this principle is that +_Like_ cures _Like_, and not that _Same_ cures _Same_; that there is +_resemblance_ and not _identity_ between the symptoms of the disease and +those produced by the drug which cures it, and none have been readier to +insist upon this distinction than the Homoeopathists themselves. For +if _Same_ cures _Same_, then every poison must be its own +antidote,--which is neither a part of their theory nor their so-called +experience. They have been asked often enough, why it was that arsenic +could not cure the mischief which arsenic had caused, and why the +infectious cause of small-pox did not remedy the disease it had +produced, and then they were ready enough to see the distinction I have +pointed out. "O no! it was not the hair of the same dog, but only of one +very much like him!" + +The belief in and employment of the "Infinitesimal doses," Doctor Holmes +handles with the same fairness and acumen; but the absurd idea affirmed +by Hahnemann that Psora is the cause of the great majority of chronic +diseases, he treats as it deserves, with unqualified contempt. + +In conclusion, he says, "As one humble member of a profession which for +more than two thousand years has devoted itself to the pursuit of the +best earthly interests of mankind always assailed and insulted from +without by such as are ignorant of its infinite perplexities and labors, +always striving in unequal contest with the hundred armed giants who +walk in the noonday and sleep not in the midnight, yet still toiling not +merely for itself and the present moment, but for the race and the +future, I have lifted up my voice against this lifeless delusion, +rolling its shapeless bulk into the path of a noble science it is too +weak to strike or to injure." + +Upon the contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, Doctor Holmes wrote an able +treatise some forty years ago. This was reprinted with some additions, +in 1855, and in an introductory note which accompanies the still later +addition (1883), Doctor Holmes says, "The subject of this Paper has the +same profound interest for me at the present moment as it had when I +was first collecting the terrible evidence out of which, as it seems to +me, the commonest exercise of reason could not help shaping the truth it +involved. It is not merely on account of the bearing of the question--if +there is a question--on all that is most sacred in human life and +happiness that the subject cannot lose its interest. It is because it +seems evident that a fair statement of the facts must produce its +proportion of well-constituted and unprejudiced minds." + +The essay, a most valuable one, is republished without the change of a +word or syllable, as the author upon reviewing finds that it anticipates +and eliminates those secondary questions which cannot be for a moment +entertained until the one great point of fact is peremptorily settled. + +There are but very few subjects, indeed, in medical science, that Doctor +Holmes has not investigated, and investigated, too, most thoroughly.... + +In his article on "Reflex Vision," published in Volume IV. of the +Proceedings of the American Academy, will be found a very interesting +account of his experiments in optics. One, indeed, that will both +interest and instruct. + +To him, as is well known, we are indebted for numerous improvements in +the stereoscope; and in microscopes also, he has done some original and +important work. + +Said an admirer of Doctor Holmes in referring to his career as a medical +professor: + +"He always makes people attentive, and I have been told that there is no +professor whom the students so much like to listen to. In one of his +books he says that every one of us is three persons, and I think that if +the statement is true in regard to ordinary men and women, Doctor Holmes +himself is at least half a dozen persons. He lectures so well on anatomy +that his students never suspect him to be a poet, and he writes verses +so well that most people do not suspect him of being an authority among +scientific men. Though he illustrates his medical lectures by quotations +of the most appropriate and interesting sort, from a wonderful variety +of authors, he has never been known to refer to his own writings in that +way." + +In celebrating the silver anniversary year of his wedding with the Muse +of the monthlies--meaning his reappearance in the _Atlantic_--he +observed that during the larger part of his absence, his time had been +in a great measure occupied with other duties. "I never forgot the +advice of Coleridge," he said, "that a literary man should have a +regular calling. I may say, in passing, that I have often given the +advice to others, and too often wished that I could supplement it with +the words, "And confine himself to it.'" + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +THE HOLMES BREAKFAST. + + +As the seventieth birthday of Doctor Holmes drew near, the publishers of +the _Atlantic Monthly_ resolved to give a "Breakfast" in his honor. The +twenty-ninth of August, 1879, was, of course, the true anniversary, but +knowing it would be difficult to bring together at that season of the +year the friends and literary associates of Doctor Holmes, Mr. Houghton +decided to postpone the invitations until the thirteenth of November. +Upon that day a brilliant company assembled at noon in the spacious +parlors of the Hotel Brunswick, in Boston. + +Doctor Holmes and his daughter, Mrs. Sargent, received the guests, who +numbered in all about one hundred. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs. +Julia Ward Howe, Ralph Waldo Emerson and John G. Whittier assisted in +this ceremony, and after a couple of hours spent in sparkling converse, +the company adjourned to the dining-room, where a sumptuous "Breakfast" +was served to the "Autocrat" and his friends. + +At the six tables were seated writers of eminence in every department of +literature. Grace was said by the Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D., and after +the cloth was removed, Mr. H.O. Houghton introduced the guest of the day +in a few happily-chosen words. + +The company then rose and drank the health of the poet, after which +Doctor Holmes read the following beautiful poem: + +THE IRON GATE. + + Where is the patriarch you are kindly greeting? + Not unfamiliar to my ear his name, + Not yet unknown to many a joyous meeting + In days long vanished,--is he still the same, + + Or changed by years forgotten and forgetting, + Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech and thought, + Still o'er the sad, degenerate present fretting, + Where all goes wrong and nothing as it ought? + + Old age, the gray-beard! Well, indeed, I know him,-- + Shrunk, tottering, bent, of aches and ills the prey; + In sermon, story, fable, picture, poem, + Oft have I met him from my earliest day. + + In my old Æsop, toiling with his bundle,-- + His load of sticks,--politely asking Death, + Who comes when called for,--would he lug or trundle + His fagot for him?--he was scant of breath. + + And sad "Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher," + Has he not stamped the image on my soul, + In that last chapter, where the worn-out Teacher + Sighs o'er the loosened cord, the broken bowl? + + Yes, long, indeed, I've known him at a distance, + And now my lifted door-latch shows him here; + I take his shrivelled hand without resistance, + And find him smiling as his step draws near. + + What though of gilded baubles he bereaves us, + Dear to the heart of youth, to manhood's prime, + Think of the calm he brings, the wealth he leaves us, + The hoarded spoils, the legacies of time! + + Altars once flaming, still with incense fragrant, + Passion's uneasy nurslings rocked asleep, + Hope's anchor faster, wild desire less vagrant, + Life's flow less noisy, but the stream how deep! + + Still as the silver cord gets worn and slender, + Its lightened task-work tugs with lessening strain, + Hands get more helpful, voices grown more tender, + Soothe with their softened tones the slumberous brain. + + Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers, + Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past, + Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embers + That warm its creeping life-blood till the last. + + Dear to its heart is every loving token + That comes unbidden ere its pulse grows cold, + Ere the last lingering ties of life are broken, + Its labors ended, and its story told. + + Ah, while around us rosy youth rejoices, + For us the sorrow-laden breezes sigh, + And through the chorus of its jocund voices + Throbs the sharp note of misery's hopeless cry. + + As on the gauzy wings of fancy flying + From some far orb I track our watery sphere, + Home of the struggling, suffering, doubting, dying, + The silvered globule seems a glistening tear. + + But Nature lends her mirror of illusion + To win from saddening scenes our age-dimmed eyes, + And misty day-dreams blend in sweet confusion + The wintery landscape and the summer skies. + + So when the iron portal shuts behind us, + And life forgets us in its noise and whirl, + Visions that shunned the glaring noonday find us, + And glimmering starlight shows the gates of pearl. + + I come not here your morning hour to sadden + A limping pilgrim leaning on his staff,-- + I, who have never deemed it sin to gladden + This vale of sorrows with a wholesome laugh. + + If word of mine another's gloom has brightened, + Through my dumb lips the heaven-sent message came; + If hand of mine another's task has lightened, + It felt the guidance that it dares not claim. + + But, O my gentle sisters, O my brothers, + These thick-sown snow-flakes hint of toil's release; + These feebler pulses bid me leave to others + The tasks once welcome; evening asks for peace. + + Time claims his tribute; silence now is golden; + Let me not vex the too long suffering lyre; + Though to your love untiring still beholden, + The curfew tells me--cover up the fire. + + And now with grateful smile and accents cheerful, + And warmer heart than look or word can tell, + In simplest phrase--these traitorous eyes are tearful-- + Thanks, Brothers, Sisters,--Children, and farewell! + +After the reading of the poem, the following reminiscence from Doctor +Holmes' pen, was read by Mr. Houghton:-- + +"The establishment of the _Atlantic Monthly_ was due to the liberal +enterprise of the then flourishing firm of Phillips & Sampson. Mr. +Phillips, more especially, was most active and sanguine. The publishers +were fortunate enough to secure the services of Mr. Lowell as editor. +Mr. Lowell had a fancy that I could be useful as a contributor, and woke +me from a kind of literary lethargy in which I was half slumbering, to +call me to active service. Remembering some crude contributions of mine +to an old magazine, it occurred to me that their title might serve for +some fresh papers, and so I sat down and wrote off what came into my +head under the title _The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table_. This series +of papers was not the result of an express premeditation, but was, as I +may say, dipped from the running stream of my thoughts. Its very kind +reception encouraged me, and you know the consequences, which have +lasted from that day to this. + +"But what I want especially to say here is, that I owe the impulse which +started my second growth, to the urgent hint of my friend Mr. Lowell, +and that you have him to thank, not only for his own noble contributions +to our literature, but for the spur which moved me to action, to which +you owe any pleasure I may have given, and I am indebted for the +crowning happiness of this occasion. His absence I most deeply regret +for your and my own sake, while I congratulate the country to which in +his eminent station he is devoting his services." + +As Mr. Whittier had been obliged to leave the company before this, Mr. +James T. Fields read his fine poem entitled "Our Autocrat," from which +we quote the last verses: + + What shapes and fancies, grave or gay, + Before us at his bidding come! + The Treadmill tramp, the "One Hoss Shay," + The dumb despair of Elsie's doom! + + The tale of Aris and the Maid, + The plea for lips that cannot speak, + The holy kiss that Iris laid + On Little Boston's pallid cheek! + + Long may he live to sing for us + His sweetest songs at evening time, + And like his Chambered Nautilus + To holier heights of beauty climb! + + Though now unnumbered guests surround + The table that he rules at will, + Its Autocrat, however crowned, + Is but our friend and comrade still. + + The world may keep his honored name, + The wealth of all his varied powers; + A stronger claim has love than fame + And he himself is only ours! + +Mr W.D. Howells then took the chair and was introduced to the company as +the representative of the "mythical editor." + +In his remarks, Mr. Howells paid the following tribute to the Autocrat: + +"The fact is known to you all, and I will not insist upon it, but it was +Oliver Wendell Holmes who not only named, but who made the _Atlantic_. +How did he do this? Oh, very simply! He merely invented a new kind of +literature, something so beautiful and rare and fine that while you were +trying to determine its character as monologue or colloquy, prose or +poetry, philosophy or humor, it was gradually penetrating your +consciousness with a sense that the best of all these had been fused in +one--a perfect form, an exquisite wisdom, an unsurpassable grace. This, +and much more than any poor words of mine can say, was the Autocrat, +followed by the Professor, and then by the Poet, at the same +Breakfast-Table. We pledge him by all these names to-day, not only with +the wine in our cups, but with the pride and love in our hearts, where +we have enshrined him immortally young, in spite of the birthdays that +come and go, and where we defy the future that lies in wait for our +precious things, to know his quality better, or value his genius more +highly than we." + +Mrs. Julia Ward Howe was then called upon to respond to the toast, "The +girls we have _not_ left behind us," and after a few words in reply, she +read a fine poem in honor of the illustrious guest. + +Charles Dudley Warner was then introduced, and after a short speech, +read a poem by H. H., "To Oliver Wendell Holmes, on his seventieth +birthday." In these charming lines almost every poem of Doctor Holmes is +mentioned with rare tact and skill. + +At the close of the poem, President Eliot of Harvard, rose and said: + +"It seems to me that it is my duty to remind all these poets, essayists +and story-tellers who are gathered here, that the main work of our +friend's life has been of an altogether different nature. I know him as +the professor of anatomy and physiology in the Medical School of Harvard +University for the last thirty-two years, and I know him to-day as one +of the most active and hard-working of our lecturers. Some of you +gentlemen, I observe, are lecturers by profession, at least during the +winter months. Doctor Holmes delivers four lectures every week for eight +months of the year. I am sure the lecturers by profession will +understand that this task requires an extraordinary amount of mental and +physical vigor. And I congratulate our friend on the weekly +demonstration of that vigor which he gives in our medical school. Most +of you have perhaps the impression that Doctor Holmes chiefly enjoys a +pretty couplet, a beautiful verse, an elegant sentence. It has fallen to +me to observe that he has other great enjoyments. I never heard any +other mortal exhibit such enthusiasm over an elegant dissection. And +perhaps you think it is the pen with which Doctor Holmes is chiefly +skilful. I assure you that he is equally skilful with scalpel and with +microscope. And I think that none of us can understand the meaning and +scope of Doctor Holmes' writing, unless we have observed that the daily +work of his life has been to study and teach a natural science, the +noble science of anatomy. It is his to know with absolute exactness the +form of every bone in this wonderful body of ours, the course of every +artery, and vein, and nerve, the form and function of every muscle, and +not only to know it, but to describe it with a fascinating precision and +enthusiasm. When I read his writings I find the traces of this life-work +of his on every page. There are three thousand men scattered through New +England at this moment who will remember Doctor Holmes through their +lives, and transmit to their children the memory of him, as student and +teacher of exact science. And let us honor him to-day, not +forgetting--they can never be forgotten--his poems and essays, as a +noble representative of the profession of the scientific student and +teacher." + +Mr. S.L. Clemens (Mark Twain) followed President Eliot. + +"I would have travelled," he began, "a much greater distance than I have +come to witness the paying of honors to Doctor Holmes, for my feeling +toward him has always been one of peculiar warmth. When one receives a +letter from a great man for the first time in his life, it is a large +event to him, as all of you know by your own experience. Well, the first +great man who ever wrote me a letter was our guest--Oliver Wendell +Holmes. He was also the first great literary man I ever stole anything +from, and that is how I came to write to him and he to me. When my first +book was new, a friend of mine said, 'The dedication is very neat.' +'Yes,' I said, 'I thought it was.' My friend said, 'I always admired it +even before I saw it in _The Innocents Abroad_.' I naturally said, 'What +do you mean? Where did you ever see it before?' 'Well, I saw it some +years ago, as Doctor Holmes' dedication to his _Songs in Many Keys_.' Of +course my first impulse was to prepare this man's remains for burial, +but upon reflection I said I would reprieve him for a moment or two and +give him a chance to prove his assertion if he could. We stepped into a +bookstore and he did prove it. I had really stolen that dedication +almost word for word. I could not imagine how this curious thing +happened, for I knew one thing for a dead certainty--that a certain +amount of pride always goes along with a teaspoonful of brains, and that +this pride protects a man from deliberately stealing other people's +ideas. That is what a teaspoonful of brains will do for a man, and +admirers had often told me I had nearly a basketful, though they were +rather reserved as to the size of the basket. However, I thought the +thing out and solved the mystery. Two years before I had been laid up a +couple of weeks in the Sandwich Islands, and had read and re-read Doctor +Holmes's poems till my mental reservoir was filled with them to the +brim. The dedication lay on top and handy, so by and by I unconsciously +stole it. Perhaps I unconsciously stole the rest of the volume, too, for +many people have told me that my book was pretty poetical in one way or +another. Well, of course I wrote Doctor Holmes and told him I hadn't +meant to steal, and he wrote back and said in the kindest way that it +was all right and no harm done; and added that he believed we all +unconsciously worked over ideas gathered in reading and hearing, +imagining they were original with ourselves. He stated a truth and did +it in such a pleasant way, and salved over my sore spot so gently and so +healingly that I was rather glad I had committed the crime, for the sake +of the letter. I afterward called on him and told him to make perfectly +free with any ideas of mine that struck him as being good protoplasm +for poetry. He could see by that that there wasn't anything mean about +me; so we got along right from the start. + +"I have met Doctor Holmes many times since; and lately he said--however, +I am wandering away from the one thing which I got on my feet to do, +that is, to make my compliments to you, my fellow-teachers of the great +public, and likewise to say I am right glad to see that Doctor Holmes is +still in his prime and full of generous life; and as age is not +determined by years, but by trouble and by infirmities of mind and body, +I hope it may be a very long time yet before any one can truthfully say, +'He is growing old.'" + +Mr. Howells then introduced Mr. J.W. Harper of New York, who gave in his +remarks a delightful pen portrait of Doctor Holmes, the lyceum lecturer, +which we have elsewhere quoted. Mr. E.C. Stedman followed Mr. Harper +with a brief speech and graceful poem. Mr. T.B. Aldrich spoke of the +"inexhaustible kindness of Doctor Holmes to his younger brothers in +literature," and Mr. William Winter paid his tribute to the honored +guest by "The Chieftain," a poem which he named for the occasion _Hearts +and Holmes_. + +Mr. J.T. Trowbridge then read a poem entitled "Filling an Order," in +which Nature compounds for Miss Columbia "three geniuses A 1.," to grace +her favorite city. She concludes her mixture as follows: + + Says she, "The fault I'm well aware, with genius is the presence + Of altogether too much clay with quite too little essence, + And sluggish atoms that obstruct the spiritual solution; + So now instead of spoiling these by over-much dilution + With their fine elements I'll make a single rare phenomenon, + And of three common geniuses concoct a most uncommon one, + So that the world shall smile to see a soul so universal, + Such poesy and pleasantry, packed in so small a parcel. + + So said, so done; the three in one she wrapped, and stuck the label + _Poet, Professor, Autocrat of Wit's own Breakfast-Table._" + +C.P. Cranch then read a fine sonnet, and Colonel T.W. Higginson followed +with felicitous remarks, a portion of which referring to the father of +Doctor Holmes we have quoted elsewhere in the book. + +Letters of regrets were then read from R. B. Hayes, John Holmes, the +poet's brother, George William Curtis and George Bancroft. + +Among others unable to be present, but who sent regrets, were Rebecca +Harding Davis, Carl Schurz, Edwin P. Whipple, Noah Porter, George +Ripley, Henry Watterson, George H. Boker, Frances Hodgson Burnett, L. +Maria Child, Gail Hamilton, Parke Godwin, Donald G. Mitchell, John J. +Piatt, Richard Grant White, D.C. Gilman, J.W. DeForest, Frederick +Douglass, J.G. Holland, George W. Childs, John Hay and W.W. Story. + +Mr. James T. Fields was obliged to fulfil a lecture engagement soon +after the speaking began, else he would have read the following fairy +tale:-- + +Once upon a time a company of good-natured fairies assembled for a +summer moonlight dance on a green lawn in front of a certain picturesque +old house in Cambridge. They had come out for a midnight lark, and as +their twinkling feet flew about among the musical dewdrops they were +suddenly interrupted by the well-known figure of the village doctor, +which, emerging from the old mansion, rapidly made its way homeward. + +"Another new mortal has alighted on our happy planet," whispered a fairy +gossip to her near companion. + +"Evidently so," replied the tiny creature, smiling good-naturedly on the +doctor's footprints in the grass. + +"That is the minister's house," said another small personage, with a +wink of satisfaction. + +"Perhaps it is a boy," ejaculated Fairy Number One. + +"I _know_ it is a boy!" said Fairy Number Two. I read it in the Doctor's +face when the moon lighted up his countenance as he shut the door so +softly behind him. + +"It _is_ a boy!" responded the Fairy Queen, who always knew everything, +and that settled the question. + +"If that is the case," cried all the fairies at once, "let us try what +magic still remains to us in this busy, bustling New England. Let us +make that child's life a happy and a famous one if we can." + +"Agreed," replied the queen; "and I will lead off with a substantial +gift to the little new-comer. I will crown him with Cheerfulness, a +sunny temperament, brimming over with mirth and happiness." + +"And I will second your Majesty's gift to the little man," said a +sweet-voiced creature, "and tender him the ever-abiding gift of Song. He +shall be a perpetual minstrel to gladden the hearts of all his +fellow-mortals." + +"And I," said another, "will shower upon him the subtle power of Pathos +and Romance, and he shall take unto himself the spell of a sorcerer +whenever he chooses to scatter abroad his wise and beautiful fancies." + +"And I," said a very astute-looking fairy, "will touch his lips with +Persuasion; he shall be a teacher of knowledge, and the divine gift of +eloquence shall be at his command, to uplift and instruct the people." + +"And I," said a quaint, energetic little body, "will endow him with a +passionate desire to help forward the less favored sons and daughters of +earth, who are struggling for recognition and success in their various +avocations." + +"And I," said a motherly-looking, amiable fairy, "will see that in due +time he finds the best among women for his companionship, a helpmeet +indeed, whose life shall be happily bound up in _his_ life." + +"Do give me a chance," cried a beautiful young fairy "and I will answer +for his children, that they may be worthy of their father, and all a +mother's heart may pray that Heaven will vouchsafe to her." + +And after seventy years have rolled away into space, the same fairies +assembled on the same lawn at the same season of the year, to compare +notes with reference to their now famous _protégé_. And they declared +that their magic had been thoroughly successful, and that their charms +had all worked without a single flaw. + +Then they took hands, and dancing slowly around the time-honored +mansion, sang this roundelay, framed in the words of their own beloved +poet:-- + + Strength to his hours of manly toil! + Peace to his star-lit dreams! + He loves alike the furrowed soil, + The music-haunted streams! + + Sweet smiles to keep forever bright + The sunshine on his lips, + And faith that sees the ring of light + Round Nature's last eclipse! + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +ORATIONS AND ESSAYS. + + +In _Pages from an old Volume of Life_, one of the latest books published +by Doctor Holmes, we have a collection of most delightful orations and +essays. Some of them we recognize as old, familiar friends. "Bread and +the Newspaper," for instance, recalls vividly those sad, terribly +earnest days when the civil war was rending not only our land but our +hearts. Something to eat, and the daily papers to read--these we must +have, no matter what else we had to give up! + +War taught us, as nothing else could, what we really were. It exalted +our manhood and our womanhood, and showed us our substantial human +qualities for a long time kept out of sight, it may be, by the spirit of +commerce, the love of art, science, or literature. Those who had called +Doctor Holmes "an aristocrat," "a Tory," forgot all their bitter +feelings when he said, "We are finding out that not only 'patriotism is +eloquence,' but that heroism is gentility. All ranks are wonderfully +equalized under the fire of a masked battery. The plain artisan, or the +rough fireman, who faces the lead and iron like a man, is the truest +representative we can show of the heroes of Crécy and Agincourt. And if +one of our fine gentlemen puts off his straw-colored kids and stands by +the other, shoulder to shoulder, or leads him on to the attack, he is as +honorable in our eyes and in theirs as if he were ill-dressed and his +hands were soiled with labor. + +In _The Inevitable Trial_, an oration delivered on the 4th of July, +1863, before the City Authorities of Boston, Doctor Holmes who had been +falsely classed among the enemies of the Anti-slavery movement, spoke as +follows:-- + +"Long before the accents of our famous statesmen resounded in the halls +of the Capitol, long before the _Liberator_ opened its batteries, the +controversy now working itself out by trial of battle was foreseen and +predicted. Washington warned his countrymen of the danger of sectional +divisions, well knowing the line of clearage that ran through the +seemingly solid fabric. Jefferson foreshadowed the judgment to fall upon +the land for its sins against a just God. Andrew Jackson announced a +quarter of a century beforehand that the next pretext of revolution +would be slavery. De Tocqueville recognized with that penetrating +insight which analyzed our institutions and conditions so keenly, that +the Union was to be endangered by slavery not through its interests, but +through the change of character it was bringing about in the people of +the two sections, the same fatal change which George Mason, more than +half a century before, had declared to be the most pernicious effect of +the system, adding the solemn warning, now fearfully justifying itself +in the sight of his descendants, that 'by an inevitable chain of causes +and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities.' + +"The Virginian romancer pictured the far-off scenes of the conflict +which he saw approaching as the prophets of Israel painted the coming +woes of Jerusalem, and the strong iconoclast of Boston announced the +very year when the curtain should rise on the yet unopened drama. + +"The wise men of the past, and the shrewd men of our own time, who +warned us of the calamities in store for our nation, never doubted what +was the cause which was to produce first alienation and finally rupture. +The descendants of the men, 'daily exercised in tyranny,' the 'petty +tyrants,' as their own leading statesmen called them long ago, came at +length to love the institution which their fathers had condemned while +they tolerated. It is the fearful realization of that vision of the poet +where the lost angels snuff up with eager nostrils the sulphurous +emanations of the bottomless abyss,--so have their natures become +changed by long breathing the atmosphere of the realm of darkness." + +In this same grand oration occur also these eloquent words:-- + +"Whether we know it or not, whether we mean it or not, we cannot help +fighting against the system that has proved the source of all those +miseries which the author of the Declaration of Independence trembled to +anticipate. And this ought to make us willing to do and to suffer +cheerfully. There were Holy Wars of old, in which it was glory enough +to die; wars in which the one aim was to rescue the sepulchre of Christ +from the hands of infidels. The sepulchre of Christ is not in Palestine! +He rose from that burial-place more than eighteen hundred years ago. He +is crucified wherever his brothers are slain without cause; he lies +buried wherever man, made in his Maker's image, is entombed in ignorance +lest he should learn the rights which his Divine Master gave him! This +is our Holy War, and we must bring to it all the power with which he +fought against the Almighty before he was cast from heaven." + +In his _Hunt after the Captain_, we realize how near the "dull dead +ghastliness of War" came to the fond father's heart as he sought his +wounded hero through those dreary hospital wards! He knew of what he +spake when appealing so eloquently to his fellow-patriots:-- + +"Sons and daughters of New England, men and women of the North, brothers +and sisters in the bond of the American Union, you have among you the +scarred and wasted soldiers who have shed their blood for your temporal +salvation. They bore your nation's emblems bravely through the fire and +smoke of the battle-field; nay, their own bodies are starred with +bullet-wounds and striped with sabre-cuts, as if to mark them as +belonging to their country until their dust becomes a portion of the +soil which they defended. In every Northern graveyard slumber the +victims of this destroying struggle. Many whom you remember playing as +children amidst the clover blossoms of our Northern fields, sleep under +nameless mounds with strange Southern wild flowers blooming over them. +By those wounds of living heroes, by those graves of fallen martyrs, by +the hopes of your children, and the claims of your children's children +yet unborn, in the name of outraged honor, in the interest of violated +sovereignty, for the life of an imperilled nation, for the sake of men +everywhere, and of our common humanity, for the glory of God and the +advancement of his kingdom on earth, your country calls upon you to +stand by her through good report and through evil report, in triumph and +in defeat, until she emerges from the great war of Western civilization, +Queen of the broad continent, Arbitress in the councils of earth's +emancipated peoples." + +It will be remembered that this heart-stirring oration, _The Inevitable +Trial_, from which the above is quoted, was delivered at one of the most +discouraging periods of the war; when Lee was in Pennsylvania, and just +before the capture of Vicksburg. + +Among the other essays and orations in _Pages from an old Volume of +Life_, we find the _Physiology of Walking_, which contains many +interesting facts concerning the human wheel, with its spokes and +felloes. + +"Walking," says Doctor Holmes, "is a perpetual falling with a perpetual +self-recovery. It is a most complex, violent, and perilous operation, +which we divest of its extreme danger only by continual practice from a +very early period of life. We find how complex it is when we attempt to +analyze it, and we see that we never understood it thoroughly until the +time of the instantaneous photograph. We learn how violent it is, when +we walk against a post or a door in the dark. We discover how dangerous +it is when we slip or trip and come down, perhaps breaking or +dislocating our limbs, or overlook the last step of a flight of stairs, +and discover with what headlong violence we have been hurling ourselves +forward. + +"Two curious facts are easily proved. First, a man is shorter when he is +walking than when at rest. We have found a very simple way of showing +this by having a rod or stick placed horizontally, so as to touch the +top of the head forcibly, as we stand under it. In walking rapidly +beneath it, even if the eyes are shut, the top of the head will not even +graze the rod. The other fact is, that one side of a man always tends to +outwalk the other side, so that no person can walk far in a straight +line, if he is blindfolded. _The Seasons_, and _The Human Body and its +Management_, were originally published in the Atlantic Almanac. _Cinders +from the Ashes_ gives some exceedingly interesting reminiscences. + +Richard Henry Dana, the schoolboy, is described by Doctor Holmes as +ruddy, sturdy, quiet and reserved; and of Margaret Fuller he says, +"Sitting on the girls' benches, conspicuous among the schoolgirls of +unlettered origin, by that look which rarely fails to betray hereditary +and congenital culture, was a young person very nearly of my own age. +She came with the reputation of being 'smart,' as we should have called +it; clever, as we say nowadays. Her air to her schoolmates was marked by +a certain stateliness and distance; as if she had other thoughts than +theirs, and was not of them. She was a great student and a great reader +of what she used to call 'náw-véls;' I remember her so well as she +appeared at school and later, that I regret that she had not been +faithfully given to canvas or marble in the day of her best looks. None +know her aspect who have not seen her living. Margaret, as I remember +her at school and afterwards, was tall, fair complexioned, with a +watery, aquamarine lustre in her light eyes, which she used to make +small, as one does who looks at the sunshine. + +"A remarkable point about her was that long, flexile neck, arching and +undulating in strange, sinuous movements, which one who loved her would +compare to those of a swan, and one who loved her not, to those of the +ophidian who tempted our common mother. Her talk was affluent, +magisterial, _de haut en bas_, some would say euphuistic, but surpassing +the talk of women in breadth and audacity. Her face kindled and +reddened and dilated in every feature as she spoke, and, as I once saw +her in a fine storm of indignation at the supposed ill treatment of a +relative, showed itself capable of something resembling what Milton +calls the Viraginian aspect." + +A composition of Margaret's was one day taken up by the boy Oliver. + +"It is a trite remark," she began. + +Alas! the embryo-poet did not know the meaning of the word trite. + +"How could I ever judge Margaret fairly," he exclaims, "after such a +crushing discovery of her superiority?" + +Of his instructors and schoolmates at Andover, Doctor Holmes has given +us numerous pen portraits. The old Academy building had a dreary look to +the homesick boy, but he soon recovered from his "slightly nostalgic" +state, and found not a few congenial spirits in his new surroundings. + +One fine, rosy-faced boy with whom he had a school discussion upon Mary, +Queen of Scots, and for whom he has always cherished a lasting +friendship, is now the well-known Phinehas Barnes. Another little +fellow, with black hair and very black eyes, studying with head between +his hands, and eyes fastened to his book as if reading a will that made +him heir to a million, was the future professor, Greek scholar and Bible +Commentator, Horatio Balch Hackett. One of the masters was the late Rev. +Samuel Horatio Stearns, "an excellent and lovable man," says Doctor +Holmes, "who looked kindly on me, and for whom I always cherished a +sincere regard." Professor Moses Stuart he describes as "tall, lean, +with strong, bold features, a keen, scholarly, accipitrine nose, thin, +expressive lips, and great solemnity and impressiveness of voice and +manner. His air was Roman, his neck long and bare, like Cicero's, and +his toga,--that is, his broadcloth cloak,--was carried on his arm, +whatever might have been the weather, with such a statue-like, rigid +grace that he might have been turned into marble as he stood, and looked +noble by the side of the antiques of the Vatican." Then, there was +Doctor Porter, an invalid, with the prophetic handkerchief bundling his +throat; and Doctor Woods, who looked his creed decidedly, and had the +firm fibre of a theological athlete. But none of the preceptors, it may +be presumed, was so closely watched as the one to whom a dream had come +that he should drop dead when praying. "More than one boy kept his eye +on him during his public devotions, possessed by the same feeling the +man had who followed Van Amburgh about, with the expectation, let us not +say hope, of seeing the lion bite his head off sooner or later." + +In _Mechanism in Thought and Morals_, we find a deal of psychology as +well as science. + +"It is in the moral world," says Doctor Holmes, "that materialism has +worked the strangest confusion. In various forms, under imposing names +and aspects, it has thrust itself into the moral relations, until one +hardly knows where to look for any first principles without upsetting +everything in searching for them. + +"The moral universe includes nothing but the exercise of choice: all +else is machinery. What we can help and what we cannot help are on two +sides of a line which separates the sphere of human responsibility from +that of the Being who has arranged and controls the order of things. + +"The question of the freedom of the will has been an open one, from the +days of Milton's demons in conclave to the noteworthy essay of Mr. +Hazard, our Rhode Island neighbor. It still hangs suspended between the +seemingly exhaustive strongest motive argument and certain residual +convictions. The sense that we are, to a limited extent, +self-determining; the sense of effort in willing; the sense of +responsibility in view of the future, and the verdict of conscience in +review of the past,--all of these are open to the accusation of fallacy; +but they all leave a certain undischarged balance in most minds. We can +invoke the strong arm of the _Deus in machina_, as Mr. Hazard, and Kant +and others, before him have done. Our will may be a primary initiating +cause or force, as unexplainable, as unreducible, as indecomposable, as +impossible if you choose, but as real to our belief as the _oeternitas +a parte ante_. The divine foreknowledge is no more in the way of +delegated choice than the divine omnipotence is in the way of delegated +power. The Infinite can surely slip the cable of the finite if it choose +so to do." + +With outspoken braveness Doctor Holmes rejects "the mechanical doctrine +which makes me," he says, "the slave of outside influences, whether it +work with the logic of Edwards, or the averages of Buckle; whether it +come in the shape of the Greek's destiny, or the Mahometan's fatalism." + +But he claims, too, the right to eliminate all mechanical ideas which +have crowded into the sphere of intelligent choice between right and +wrong. "The pound of flesh," he declares, "I will grant to Nemesis; but +in the name of human nature, not one drop of blood,--not one drop." + +And this leads us to speak of Doctor Holmes' religious views. He +attended King's Chapel, and is classed among the most liberal-minded of +the Unitarian creed. + +When chairman of the Boston Unitarian Festival, in 1877, he gave the +following list of certain theological beliefs that he has always +delighted to combat. + +"May I," he begins, "without committing any one but myself, enumerate a +few of the stumbling blocks which still stand in the way of some who +have many sympathies with what is called the liberal school of thinkers? + +"The notion of sin as a transferable object. As philanthropy has ridded +us of chattel slavery, so philosophy must rid us of chattel sin and all +its logical consequences. + +"The notion that what we call sin is anything else than inevitable, +unless the Deity had seen fit to give every human being a perfect +nature, and develop it by a perfect education. + +"The oversight of the fact that all moral relations between man and his +Maker are reciprocal, and must meet the approval of man's enlightened +conscience before he can render true and heartfelt homage to the power +that called him into being, and is not the greatest obligation to all +eternity on the side of the greatest wisdom and the greatest power? + +"The notion that the Father of mankind is subject to the absolute +control of a certain malignant entity known under the false name of +justice, or subject to any law such as would have made the father of the +prodigal son meet him with an account-book and pack him off to jail, +instead of welcoming him back and treating him to the fatted calf. + +"The notion that useless suffering is in any sense a satisfaction for +sin, and not simply an evil added to a previous one." + +In reviewing the life and the writings of Jonathan Edwards, Doctor +Holmes with his usual fairness and kindly spirit toward all mankind, +declares that the spiritual nature seems to be a natural endowment, like +a musical ear. + +"Those who have no ear for music must be very careful how they speak +about that mysterious world of thrilling vibrations which are idle +noises to them. And so the true saint can be appreciated only by saintly +natures. Yet the least spiritual man can hardly read the remarkable +'Resolutions' of Edwards without a reverence akin to awe for his purity +and elevation. His beliefs and his conduct we need not hesitate to +handle freely. The spiritual nature is no safeguard against error of +doctrine or practice; indeed it may be doubted whether a majority of all +the spiritual natures in the world would be found in Christian +countries. Edwards' system seems, in the light of to-day, to the last +degree barbaric, mechanical, materialistic, pessimistic. If he had lived +a hundred years later, and breathed the air of freedom, he could not +have written with such old-world barbarism as we find in his volcanic +sermons.... + +"There is no sufficient reason for attacking the motives of a man so +saintly in life, so holy in aspirations, so patient, so meek, so +laborious, so thoroughly in earnest in the work to which his life was +given. But after long smothering in the sulphurous atmosphere of his +thought, one cannot help asking, is this,--or anything like this,--the +accepted belief of any considerable part of Protestantism? If so, we +must say with Bacon, 'It were better to have no opinion of God than such +an opinion as is unworthy of him.'" + +In speaking of the old reproach against physicians, that where there +were three of them together there were two atheists, Doctor Holmes +pertinently remarks: "There is, undoubtedly, a strong tendency in the +pursuits of the medical profession to produce disbelief in that figment +of tradition and diseased human imagination which has been installed in +the seat of divinity by the priesthood of cruel and ignorant ages. It is +impossible, or, at least, very difficult, for a physician who has seen +the perpetual efforts of Nature--whose diary is the book he reads +oftenest--to heal wounds, to expel poisons, to do the best that can be +done under the given conditions,--it is very difficult for him to +believe in a world where wounds cannot heal, where opiates cannot give a +respite from pain, where sleep never comes with its sweet oblivion of +suffering, where the art of torture is the only faculty which remains to +the children of that same Father who cares for the falling sparrow. The +Deity has often been pictured as Moloch, and the physician has, no +doubt, frequently repudiated him as a monstrosity. + +"On the other hand, the physician has often been renounced for piety as +well as for his peculiarly professional virtue of charity, led upward by +what he sees the source of all the daily marvels wrought before his own +eyes. So it was that Galen gave utterance to that song of praise which +the sweet singer of Israel need not have been ashamed of; and if this +heathen could be lifted into such a strain of devotion, we need not be +surprised to find so many devout Christian worshippers among the crowd +of medical 'atheists.'" + +In coming back again as a regular contributor to the magazine which +Doctor Holmes was so prominently identified with a quarter of a century +ago, he indulges in a few entertaining reflections. "When I sat down to +write the first paper I sent to the _Atlantic Monthly_," he says, "I +felt somewhat as a maiden of more than mature effloresence may be +supposed to feel as she passes down the broad aisle in her bridal veil +and wealth of orange blossoms. I had written little of late years. I was +at that time older than Goldsmith was when he died, and Goldsmith, as +Doctor Johnson says, was a plant that flowered late. A new generation +had grown up since I had written the verses by which, if remembered at +all, I was best known. I honestly feared that I might prove the +superfluous veteran who has no business behind the footlights. I can as +honestly say that it turned out otherwise. I was most kindly welcomed, +and now I am looking back on that far-off time as the period--I will not +say of youth--for I was close upon the five-barred gate of the +_cinquantaine_, though I had not yet taken the leap--but of marrowy and +vigorous manhood. Those were the days of unaided vision, of acute +hearing, of alert movements, of feelings almost boyish in their +vivacity. It is a long cry from the end of a second quarter of a century +in a man's life to the end of the third quarter. His companions have +fallen all around him, and he finds himself in a newly peopled world. +His mental furnishing looks old-fashioned and faded to the generation +which is crowding about him with its new patterns and fresh colors. +Shall he throw open his apartments to visitors, or is it not wiser to +live on his memories in a decorous privacy, and not risk himself before +the keen young eyes and relentless judgment of the new-comers, who have +grown up in strength and self-reliance while he has been losing force +and confidence. If that feeling came over me a quarter of a century ago, +it is not strange that it comes back upon me now. Having laid down the +burden, which for more than thirty-five years I have carried cheerfully, +I might naturally seek the quiet of my chimney corner, and purr away the +twilight of my life, unheard beyond the circle of my own fireplace. But +when I see what my living contemporaries are doing, I am shamed out of +absolute inertness and silence. The men of my birth year are so +painfully industrious at this very time that one of the same date hardly +dares to be idle. I look across the Atlantic and see Mr. Gladstone, +only four months younger than myself, and standing erect with patriots' +grievances on one shoulder, and Pharaoh's pyramids on the other--an +Atlas whose intervals of repose are paroxysms of learned labor; I listen +to Tennyson, another birth of the same year, filling the air with melody +long after the singing months of life are over; I come nearer home, and +here is my very dear friend and college classmate, so certain to be in +every good movement with voice or pen, or both, that, where two or three +are gathered together for useful ends, if James Freeman Clarke is not +with them, it is because he is busy with a book or a discourse meant for +a larger audience; I glance at the placards on the blank walls that I am +passing, and there I see the colossal head of Barnum, the untiring, +inexhaustible, insuperable, ever-triumphant and jubilant Barnum, who +came to his atmospheric life less than a year before I began to breathe +the fatal mixture, and still wages his Titanic battle with his own past +superlatives. How can one dare to sit down inactive with such examples +before him? One must do something, were it nothing more profitable than +the work of that dear old Penelope, of almost ninety years, whom I so +well remember hemming over and over again the same piece of linen, her +attendant scissors removing each day's work at evening; herself meantime +being kindly nursed in the illusion that she was still the useful martyr +of the household." + +An author, in Doctor Holmes' opinion, should know that the very +characteristics which make him the object of admiration to many, and +endear him to some among them, will render him an object of dislike to a +certain number of individuals of equal, it may be of superior, +intelligence. The converse of all this is very true. + +"There will be individuals--they may be few, they may be many--who will +so instantly recognize, so eagerly accept, so warmly adopt, even so +devoutly idolize, the writer in question, that self-love itself, dulled +as its palate is by the hot spices of praise, draws back overcome by the +burning stimulants of adoration. I was told, not long since, by one of +our most justly admired authoresses, that a correspondent wrote to her +that she had read one of her stories fourteen times in succession." + +There is a deep meaning in these elective affinities. Each personality +is more or less completely the complement of some other. Doctor Holmes +thinks it should never be forgotten by the critic that "every grade of +mental development demands a literature of its own; a little above its +level, that it may be lifted to a higher grade, but not too much above +it, so that it requires too long a stride--a stairway, not a steep wall +to climb. The true critic is not the sharp _captator verborum_; not the +brisk epigrammatist, showing off his own cleverness, always trying to +outflank the author against whom he has arrayed his wits and his +learning. He is a man who knows the real wants of the reading world, and +can prize at their just value the writings which meet those wants." + +There is also another side of the picture. Doctor Holmes does not forget +the trials of authorship. The writer who attains a certain measure of +popularity "will be startled to find himself the object of an +embarrassing devotion, and almost appropriation, by some of his parish +of readers. He will blush at his lonely desk, as he reads the +extravagances of expression which pour over him like the oil which ran +down upon the beard of Aaron, and even down to the skirts of his +garments--an extreme unction which seems hardly desirable. We ought to +have his photograph as he reads one of those frequent missives, oftenest +traced, we may guess, in the delicate, slanting hand which betrays the +slender fingers of the sympathetic sisterhood. + +"A slight sense of the ridiculous at being made so much of qualifies the +placid tolerance with which the rhymester or the essayist sees himself +preferred to the great masters in prose and verse, and reads his name +glowing in a halo of epithets which might belong to Bacon or Milton. We +need not grudge him such pleasure as he may derive from the illusion of +a momentary revery, in which he dreams of himself as clad in royal robes +and exalted among the immortals. The next post will probably bring him +some slip from a newspaper or critical journal, which will strip him of +his regalia, as Thackeray, in one of his illustrations, has disrobed and +denuded the grand monarque. He saw himself but a moment ago a colossal +figure in a drapery of rhetorical purple, ample enough for an Emperor, +as Bernini would clothe him. The image breaker has passed by, belittling +him by comparison, jostling him off his pedestal, levelling his most +prominent feature, or even breaking a whole ink bottle against him as +the indignant moralist did on the figure in the vestibule of the opera +house--the shortest and most effective satire that ever came from that +fountain of approval and commendation. Such are some of the varied +experiences of authorship." + +Out of his literary career as a successful writer, Doctor Holmes was +able to formulate many rules for the self-protection of authors, which +were adopted unanimously at an authors' association which was held in +Washington last September, and the remainder of his "talk" is devoted to +extracts from their proceedings. Appended are a few of them: + +Of visits of strangers to authors. These are not always distinguishable +from each other, and may justly be considered together. The stranger +should send up his card if he has one; if he has none, he should, if +admitted, at once announce himself and his object, without +circumlocution, as thus; "My name is M. or N., from X. or Y. I wish to +see and take the hand of a writer whom I have long admired for his," +etc., etc. Here the author should extend his hand, and reply in +substance as follows: "I am pleased to see you, my dear sir, and very +glad that anything I have written has been a source of pleasure or +profit to you." The visitor has now had what he says he came for, and, +after making a brief polite acknowledgment, should retire, unless, for +special reasons, he is urged to stay longer. + +Of autograph-seekers. The increase in the number of applicants for +autographs is so great that it has become necessary to adopt positive +regulations to protect the author from the exorbitant claims of this +class of virtuosos. The following propositions were adopted without +discussion: + +No author is under any obligation to answer any letter from an unknown +person applying for his autograph. If he sees fit to do so, it is a +gratuitous concession on his part. + +No stranger should ask for more than one autograph. + +No stranger should request an author to copy a poem, or even a verse. He +should remember that he is one of many thousands; that one thousand +fleas are worse than one hornet, and that a mob of mosquitoes will draw +more blood than a single horse leech. + +Every correspondent applying for an autograph should send a card or +blank paper, in a stamped envelope, directed to himself (or herself). If +he will not take the trouble to attend to all this, which he can just as +well as to make the author do it, he must not expect the author to make +good his deficiencies. [Accepted by acclamation]. + +Sending a stamp does not constitute a claim on an author for answer. +[Received with loud applause]. The stamp may be retained by the author, +or, what is better, devoted to the use of some appropriate charity, as +for instance, the asylum for idiots and feeble-minded persons. + +Albums. An album of decent external aspect may, without impropriety, be +offered to an author, with the request that he will write his name +therein. It is not proper, as a general rule, to ask for anything more +than the name. The author may, of course, add a quotation from his +writings, or a sentiment, if so disposed; but this must be considered as +a work of supererogation, and an exceptional manifestation of courtesy. + +Bed-quilt autographs. It should be a source of gratification to an +author to contribute to the soundness of his reader's slumbers, if he +cannot keep him awake by his writings. He should therefore cheerfully +inscribe his name on the scrap of satin or other stuff (provided always +that it be sent him in a stamped and directed envelope), that it may +take its place in the patchwork mosaic for which it is intended. + +Letters of admiration. These may be accepted as genuine, unless they +contain specimens of the writer's own composition, upon which a critical +opinion is requested, in which case they are to be regarded in the same +light as medicated sweetmeats, namely, as meaning more than their looks +imply. Genuine letters of admiration, being usually considered by the +recipient as proofs of good taste and sound judgment on the part of his +unknown correspondent, may be safely left to his decision as to whether +they shall be answered or not. + +The author of _Elsie Venner_ thus excuses himself for opening the budget +of the grievances of authors. "In obtaining and giving to the public +this abstract of the proceedings of the association, I have been +impelled by the same feelings of humanity which led me to join the +Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, believing that the +sufferings of authors are as much entitled to sympathy and relief as +those of the brute creation." + +The birthday of the Emperor of Japan is the principal holiday of the +year among his subjects, and as Saturday, November 3d, 1883, was the +thirty-third anniversary of the birthday of Mutsuhito Tenno, the +reigning Emperor, it was appropriately celebrated by the Japanese +gentlemen in Boston. The Japanese department at the Foreign Exhibition +was closed, and in the evening a banquet was given at the Parker House, +about sixty gentlemen assembling in response to the invitation of Mr. +S.R. Takahashi, chief of the imperial Japanese commission to the Boston +Foreign Exhibition. The entrance to the banquet rooms was decorated with +the Japanese and American colors, and at the head of the hall were +portraits of the Emperor and Empress of Japan, with the colors of that +country between them. The occasion was a very enjoyable one, and was +especially interesting as it was a departure from the custom at ordinary +dinners here, several gentlemen dividing with the presiding officer the +duty of proposing the toasts. One of the most delightful orations of the +evening given by Oliver Wendell Holmes, was as follows: + +"I have heard of 'English' as she is spoke," being taught in ten +lessons, but I never heard that a nation's literature could have justice +done to it in ten minutes. An ancestress of mine--one of my thirty-two +great-great-great-great-grandmothers--a noted poetess in her day, thus +addressed her little brood of children: + + Alas! my birds, you wisdom want + Of perils you are ignorant; + Ofttimes in grass, on trees, in flight, + Sore accidents on you may light; + Oh, to your safety have an eye, + So happy may you live and die. + +"In accepting your kind invitation, I confess that I was ignorant of my +perils. I did not follow the counsel of my grandmamma with the four g's +in having an eye to my own safety. For I fear that if I had dreamed of +being called on to answer for American literature, one of those +'previous engagements,' which crop out so opportunely, would have stood +between me and my present trying position. I had meant, if called upon, +to say a few words about a Japanese youth who studied law in Boston, a +very cultivated and singularly charming young person, who died not very +long after his return to his native country. Some of you may remember +young Enouie--I am not sure that I spell it rightly, and I know that I +cannot pronounce it properly; for from his own lips it was as soft as an +angel's whisper. His intelligence, his delicate breeding, the loveliness +of his character, captivated all who knew him. We loved him, and we +mourned for him as if he had been a child of our own soil. But of him I +must say no more. + +"In speaking of American literature we naturally think first of our +historical efforts. We see that books hold but a small part of American +history. The axe and the ploughshare are the two pens with which our New +World annals have been principally written, with schoolhouses as notes +of interrogation, and steeples as exclamation points of pious adoration +and gratitude. Within half a century the railroad has ruled our broad +page all over, and rewritten the story, with States for new chapters and +cities for paragraphs. This is the kind of history which he who runs may +read, and he must run fast and far if he means to read any considerable +part of it. + +"But we must not forget our political history, perishable in great +measure as to its form, long enduring in its results. This literature is +the index of our progress--in both directions--forward and the contrary. +From the days of Washington and Franklin to the times still fresh in our +memory, from the Declaration of Independence to the proclamation which +enfranchised the colored race, our political literature, with all its +terrible blunders and short-comings, has been, after all, the fairest +expression the world has yet seen of what a free people and a free press +have to say and to show for themselves. + +"But besides 'Congressional Documents' and the like, the terror of +librarians and the delight of paper-makers, we do a good deal of other +printing. We make some books, a good many books, a great many books, so +many that the hyperbole at the end of St. John's gospel would hardly be +an extravagance in speaking of them. And among these are a number of +histories which hold an honorable place on the shelves of all the great +libraries of Christendom. Why should I enumerate them? For history is a +Boston specialty. From the days of Prescott and Ticknor to those of +Motley and Parkman, we have always had an historian or two on hand, as +they used always to have a lion or two in the Tower of London. + +"Next to the historians naturally come the story-tellers and romancers. +The essential difference is--I would not apply the rough side of the +remark to historians like the best of our own, but it is very often the +fact--that history tells lies about real persons and fiction tells truth +through the mouths of unreal ones. England threw open the side doors of +its library to Irving. The continent flung wide its folding doors to +Cooper. Laplace was once asked who was the greatest mathematician of +Germany. 'Pfaff is the greatest,' he answered. 'I thought Gauss was,' +the questioner said. 'You asked me,' rejoined Laplace, 'who was the +greatest mathematician of Germany. Gauss was the greatest mathematician +of Europe.' So, I suppose we might say _The Pilot_ is or was the most +popular book ever written in America, but _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ is the +most popular story ever published in the world. And if _The Heart of Mid +Lothian_ added a new glory of romance to the traditions of Auld Reekie, +_The Scarlet Letter_ did as much for the memories of our own New +England. I need not speak of the living writers, some of whom are among +us, who have changed the old scornful question into 'Who _does not_ read +an American book?' + +"As to poetical literature, I must confess that, except a line or two of +Philip Freneau's, I know little worthy of special remembrance before the +beginning of this century, always excepting, as in duty bound, the +verses of my manifold grandmother. The conditions of the country were +unfavorable to the poetical habit of mind. The voice that broke the +silence was that of Bryant, a clear and smooth baritone, if I may borrow +a musical term, with a gamut of a few notes of a grave and manly +quality. Then came Longfellow, the poet of the fireside, of the library, +of all gentle souls and cultivated tastes, whose Muse breathed a soft +contralto that was melody itself, and Emerson, with notes that reached +an octave higher than any American poet--a singer whose + + Voice fell like a falling star. + +Like that of the bird addressed by Wordsworth-- + + At once far off and near, + +it was a + + Cry + Which made [us] look a thousand ways, + In bush and tree and sky; + +for whether it soared from the earth or dropped from heaven, it was next +to impossible to divine. + +"I will not speak of the living poets of the old or the new generation. +It belongs to the young to give the heartiest welcome to the new brood +of singers. Samuel Rogers said that when he heard a new book praised, he +read an old one. Mr. Emerson, in one of his later essays, advises us +never to read a book that is not a year old. This I will say, that every +month shows us in the magazines, and even in the newspapers, verse that +would have made a reputation in the early days of the _North American +Review_, but which attracts little more notice than a breaking bubble. + +"A great improvement is noticeable in the character of criticism, which +is leaving the hands of the 'general utility' writers and passing into +the hands of experts. The true critic is the last product of literary +civilization. It costs as great an effort to humanize the being known by +that name as it does to make a good church-member of a scalping savage. +Criticism is a noble function, but only so in noble hands. We have just +welcomed Mr. Arnold as its worthy English representative; we could not +secure our creditors more handsomely than we have done by leaving Mr. +Lowell in pledge for our visitor's safe return. + +"One more hopeful mark of literary progress is seen in our cyclopædias, +our periodicals, our newspapers, and I may add our indexes. I would +commend to the attention of our enlightened friends such works as Mr. +Pool's great _Index to Periodical Literature_, Mr. Alibone's _Dictionary +of Authors_, and the _Index Medicus_, now publishing at Washington--a +wonderful achievement of organized industry, still carried on under the +superintendence of Doctor Billings, and well deserving examination by +all scholars, whatever their calling. + +"We have learned so much from our Japanese friends, that we should be +thankful to pay them back something in return. With art such as they +have, they must also have a literature showing the same originality, +grace, facility and simple effectiveness. Let us hope they will carry +away something of our intellectual products, as well as those good +wishes which follow them wherever they show their beautiful works of art +and their pleasant and always welcome faces." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +THE HOME CIRCLE. + + +Doctor Holmes has two sons and one daughter. Oliver Wendell Holmes +Junior, his eldest child, was born in 1841. When a young lad, he +attended the school of Mr. E.S. Dixwell, in Boston, and it was here that +he met his future wife, Miss Fannie Dixwell. In his graduating year at +Harvard College (1861), he joined the Fourth Battalion of Infantry, +commanded by Major Thomas G. Stevenson. The company was at that time +stationed at Fort Independence, Boston Harbor, and it was there that +young Holmes wrote his poem for Class Day. He served three years in the +war, and was wounded first in the breast at Ball's Bluff, and then in +the neck at the Battle of Antietam. + +In Doctor Holmes' _Hunt after the Captain_, we have not only a vivid +picture of war times, but a most touching revelation of fatherly love +and solicitude. The young captain was wounded yet again at Sharpsburgh, +and was afterwards brevetted as Lieutenant-Colonel. During General +Grant's campaign of 1864 he served as aide-de-camp to Brigadier-General +H.G. Wright. After the war he entered the Harvard Law School, and in +1866 received the degree of LL. B. Since then he has practised law in +Boston, and has written many valuable articles upon legal subjects. + +His edition of Kent's _Commentaries on American Law_, to which he +devoted three years of careful labor, has received the highest +encomiums, and his volume on _The Common Law_ forms an indispensable +part of every law student's library. + +In 1882, he was appointed Professor in the Harvard Law School, and a few +weeks later was elected Justice in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. + +At the Lawyers' Banquet, given January 30th, 1883, at the Hotel Vendome, +Honorable William G. Russell thus introduced the father of the +newly-appointed judge: + +"We come now to a many-sided subject, and I know not on which side to +attack him with any hope of capturing him. I might hail him as our poet, +for he was born a poet; they are all born so. If he didn't lisp in +numbers, it was because he spoke plainly at a very early age. I might +hail him as physician, and a long and well-spent life in that profession +would justify it; but I don't believe it will ever be known whether he +has cured more cases of dyspepsia and blues by his poems or his powders +and his pills. I might hail him as professor, and as professor +_emeritus_ he has added a new wreath to his brow. I might hail him as +Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, for there he had a long reign. He will +defend himself with courage, for he never showed the white feather but +once, and that is, that he does not dare to be as funny as he can. A +tough subject, surely, and I must try him on the tender side, the +paternal. I give you the father who went in search of a captain, and, +finding him, presents to us now his son, the judge." + +On rising, Doctor Holmes held up a sheet of paper, and said, "You see +before you" (referring to the paper) "all that you have to fear or +hope. For thirty-five years I have taught anatomy. I have often heard of +the roots of the tongue, but I never found them. The danger of a tongue +let loose you have had opportunity to know before, but the danger of a +scrap of paper like this is so trivial that I hardly need to apologize +for it." + + His Honor's father yet remains, + His proud paternal posture firm in; + But, while his right he still maintains + To wield the household rod and reins, + He bows before the filial ermine. + + What curious tales has life in store, + With all its must-bes and its may-bes! + The sage of eighty years and more + Once crept a nursling on the floor,-- + Kings, conquerors, judges, all were babies. + + The fearless soldier, who has faced + The serried bayonets' gleam appalling, + For nothing save a pin misplaced + The peaceful nursery has disgraced + With hours of unheroic bawling. + + The mighty monarch, whose renown + Fills up the stately page historic, + Has howled to waken half the town, + And finished off by gulping down + His castor oil or paregoric. + + The justice, who, in gown and cap, + Condemns a wretch to strangulation, + Has scratched his nurse and spilled his pap, + And sprawled across his mother's lap + For wholesome law's administration. + + Ah, life has many a reef to shun + Before in port we drop our anchor, + But when its course is nobly run + Look aft! for there the work was done. + Life owes its headway to the spanker! + + Yon seat of justice well might awe + The fairest manhood's half-blown summer; + There Parsons scourged the laggard law, + There reigned and ruled majestic Shaw,-- + What ghosts to hail the last new-comer! + + One cause of fear I faintly name,-- + The dread lest duty's dereliction + Shall give so rarely cause for blame + Our guileless voters will exclaim, + "No need of human jurisdiction!" + + What keeps the doctor's trade alive? + Bad air, bad water; more's the pity! + But lawyers walk where doctors drive, + And starve in streets where surgeons thrive, + Our Boston is so pure a city. + + What call for judge or court, indeed, + When righteousness prevails so through it + Our virtuous car-conductors need + Only a card whereon they read + "Do right; it's naughty not to do it!" + + The whirligig of time goes round, + And changes all things but affection; + One blessed comfort may be found + In heaven's broad statute which has bound + Each household to its head's protection. + + If e'er aggrieved, attacked, accused, + A sire may claim a son's devotion + To shield his innocence abused, + As old Anchises freely used + His offspring's legs for locomotion. + + You smile. You did not come to weep, + Nor I my weakness to be showing; + And these gay stanzas, slight and cheap, + Have served their simple use,--to keep + A father's eyes from overflowing. + +Doctor Holmes' daughter, who bore her mother's name, Amelia Jackson, +married the late John Turner Sargent. In her _Sketches and Reminiscences +of the Radical Club_, we have some pithy remarks of Doctor Holmes'. To +speak without premeditation, he says, on a carefully written essay, made +him feel as he should if, at a chemical lecture, somebody should pass +around a precipitate, and when the mixture had become turbid should +request him to give his opinion concerning it. The fallacies continually +rising in such a discussion from the want of a proper understanding of +terms, always made him feel as if quicksilver had been substituted for +the ordinary silver of speech. The only true way to criticize such an +essay was to take it home, slowly assimilate it, and not talk about it +until it had become a part of one's self. + +Edward, the youngest son of Doctor Holmes, had chosen the same +profession as his brother. + +It was at Mrs. Sargent's home, at Beverly Farms, that Doctor Holmes +passed most of his summers. The pretty, cream-colored house, with its +broad veranda in front, can be easily seen from the station; but to +appreciate the charms of this pleasant country home, one should catch a +glimpse of the cosey interior. + +Robert Rantoul, John T. Morse and Henry Lee were neighbors of Doctor +Holmes at Beverly Farms, and Lucy Larcom's home was not far distant. + +After eighteen years' residence at No. 8 Montgomery Place, Doctor Holmes +moved to 164 Charles street, where he lived about twelve years. His home +in Boston was at No. 296 Beacon street. + +"We die out of houses," says the poet, "just as we die out of our +bodies.... The body has been called the house we live in; the house is +quite as much the body we live in.... The soul of a man has a series of +concentric envelopes around it, like the core of an onion, or the +innermost of a nest of boxes. First, he has his natural garment of flesh +and blood. Then his artificial integuments, with their true skin of +solid stuffs, their cuticle of lighter tissues, and their +variously-tinted pigments. Thirdly, his domicile, be it a single chamber +or a stately mansion. And then the whole visible world, in which Time +buttons him up as in a loose, outside wrapper.... Our houses shape +themselves palpably on our inner and outer nature. See a householder +breaking up and you will be sure of it. There is a shell fish which +builds all manner of smaller shells into the walls of its own. A house +is never a home until we have crusted it with the spoils of a hundred +lives besides those of our own past. See what these are and you can tell +what the occupant is." + +The poet's home on Beacon street well illustrates the above extract. I +shall not soon forget the charming picture that greeted me, one gray +winter day, as I was ushered into the poet's cheerful study. A blazing +wood fire was crackling on the hearth, and the ruddy glow was reflected +now on the stately features of "Dorothy Q.," now on the Copley portrait +of old Doctor Cooper, and now with a peculiar Rembrandt effect upon the +low rows of books, the orderly desk, and the kind, cordial face of the +poet himself. An "Emerson Calendar" was hanging over the mantel, and +after calling my attention to the excellent picture upon it of the old +home at Concord, Doctor Holmes began to talk of his brother poet in +terms of warmest affection. + +[Illustration: Hand written Poem signed by Oliver Wendell Holmes] + +As he afterwards remarked at the Nineteenth Century Club, the difference +between Emerson's poetry and that of others with whom he might naturally +be compared, was that of algebra and arithmetic. The fascination of his +poems was in their spiritual depth and sincerity and their all pervading +symbolism. Emerson's writings in prose and verse were worthy of all +honor and admiration, but his manhood was the noblest of all his high +endowments. A bigot here and there might have avoided meeting him, but +if He who knew what was in men had wandered from door to door in New +England, as of old in Palestine, one of the thresholds which "those +blessed feet" would have crossed would have been that of the lovely and +quiet home of Emerson. + +The view from the broad bay window in Doctor Holmes' study, recalled his +own description: + + Through my north window, in the wintry weather, + My airy oriel on the river shore, + I watch the sea-fowl as they flock together, + Where late the boatman flashed his dripping oar. + + The gull, high floating, like a sloop unladen, + Lets the loose water waft him as it will; + The duck, round-breasted as a rustic maiden, + Paddles and plunges, busy, busy still. + +A microscopical apparatus placed under another window in the study, +reminds the visitor of the "man of science," while the books-- + + A mingled race, the wreck of chance and time + That talk all tongues and breathe of every clime-- + +speak in eloquent numbers of the "man of letters." + +There is the Plato on the lower shelf, with the inscription, Ezra +Stiles, 1766, to which Doctor Holmes alludes in his tribute to the New +England clergy. Here is the hand-lens imported by the Reverend John +Prince, of Salem, and just before us, in the "unpretending row of local +historians," is Jeremy Belknap's _History of New Hampshire_, "in the +pages of which," says Doctor Holmes, "may be found a chapter contributed +in part by the most remarkable man in many respects, among all the older +clergymen,--preacher, lawyer, physician, astronomer, botanist, +entomologist, explorer, colonist, legislator in State and national +governments, and only not seated on the bench of the Supreme Court of a +Territory because he declined the office when Washington offered it to +him. This manifold individual," adds Doctor Holmes, "was the minister of +Hamilton, a pleasant little town in Essex County, Massachusetts, the +Reverend Manasseh Cutler." + +[Illustration: DR. HOLMES' LIBRARY, BEACON ST.] + +Here is the _Aëtius_ found one never-to-be-forgotten rainy day, in that +dingy bookshop in Lyons, and here the vellum-bound _Tulpius_, "my only +reading," says Doctor Holmes, "when imprisoned in quarantine at +Marseilles, so that the two hundred and twenty-eight cases he has +recorded are, many of them, to this day still fresh in my memory." +Here, too, is the _Schenckius_,--"the folio filled with _casus +rariores_, which had strayed in among the rubbish of the bookstall on +the boulevard--and here the noble old _Vesalius_, with its grand +frontispiece not unworthy of Titian, and the fine old _Ambroise Parié_, +long waited for even in Paris and long ago, and the colossal Spigelius, +with his eviscerated beauties, and Dutch Bidloo with its miracles of +fine engraving and bad dissection, and Italian Mascagni, the despair of +all would-be imitators, and pre-Adamite John de Ketam, and antediluvian +_Berengarius Carpensis_," and many other rare volumes, dear to the heart +of every bibliophile. + +Glancing again from the window, I catch a glimpse of the West Boston +Bridge, and recall the poet's description of the "crunching of ice at +the edges of the river as the tide rises and falls, the little cluster +of tent-like screens on the frozen desert, the excitement of watching +the springy hoops, the mystery of drawing up life from silent, unseen +depths." With his opera glass he watches the boys and men, black and +white, fishing over the rails of the bridge "as hopefully as if the +river were full of salmon." At certain seasons, he observes, there will +now and then be captured a youthful and inexperienced codfish, always, +however, of quite trivial dimensions. The fame of the exploit has no +sooner gone abroad than the enthusiasts of the art come flocking down to +the river and cast their lines in side by side, until they look like a +row of harp-strings for number. "That a codfish is once in a while +caught," says Doctor Holmes, "I have asserted to be a fact; but I have +often watched the anglers, and do not remember ever seeing one drawn +from the water, or even any unequivocal symptom of a bite. The spring +sculpin and the flabby, muddy flounder are the common rewards of the +angler's toil. + +The silhouette figures on the white background enliven the winter +landscape, but now the blazing log on the hearthstone rolls over and the +whole study is aglow with light! Truly "winter _is_ a cheerful season to +people who have open fireplaces;" and who will not agree with our +poet-philosopher when he says, "A house without these is like a face +without eyes, and that never smiles. I have seen respectability and +amiability grouped over the air-tight stove; I have seen virtue and +intelligence hovering over the register; but I have never seen true +happiness in a family circle where the faces were not illuminated by the +blaze of an open fireplace." + +A well-known journalist writes as follows of Doctor Holmes "at home." + +"All who pay their respects to the distinguished Autocrat will find the +genial, merry gentleman whose form and kindly greeting all admirers have +anticipated while reading his sparkling poems. He is the perfect essence +of wit and hospitality--courteous, amiable and entertaining to a degree +which is more easily remembered than imparted or described. If the +caller expects to find blue-blood snobbishness at 296 Beacon street, he +will be disappointed. It is one of the most elegant and charming +residences on that broad and fashionable thoroughfare, but far less +pretentious, both inwardly and outwardly, than many of the others. For +an uninterrupted period of forty-seven years, Doctor Holmes has lived in +Boston, and for the last dozen years he has occupied his present +residence on Beacon street. + +"The chief point of attraction in the present residence--for the +visitor as well as the host--is the magnificent and spacious library, +which may be more aptly termed the Autocrat's workshop. It is up one +flight, and seemingly occupies the entire rear half of the whole +building on this floor. It is a very inviting room in every respect, and +from the spacious windows overlooking the broad expanse of the Charles +River, there can be had an extensive view of the surrounding suburbs in +the northerly, eastern and western directions. On a clear day there can +be more or less distinctly described the cities and towns of Cambridge, +Arlington, Medford, Somerville, Malden, Revere, Everett, Chelsea, +Charlestown and East Boston. Even in the picture can be recognized the +lofty tower of the Harvard Memorial Hall, which is but a few steps from +the doctor's birthplace and first home. Arthur Gilman, in his admirable +pen and pencil sketches of the homes of the American poets, makes a +happy and appropriate allusion to the Autocrat's library. 'The ancient +Hebrew,' he says, 'always had a window open toward Jerusalem, the city +about which his most cherished hopes and memories clustered, and this +window gives its owner the pleasure of looking straight to the place of +his birth, and thus of freshening all the happy memories of a successful +life.' + +"In renewing his old-time acquaintance with the _Atlantic_ family +circle, the Autocrat recognized the modern invention of the journalistic +interviewer, and submitted some plans for his regulation, to be +considered by the various local governments. His idea is that the +interviewer is a product of our civilization, one who does for the +living what the undertaker does for the dead, taking such liberties as +he chooses with the subject of his mental and conversational +manipulations, whom he is to arrange for public inspection. 'The +interview system has its legitimate use,' says Doctor Holmes, 'and is +often a convenience to politicians, and may even gratify the vanity and +serve the interests of an author.' He very properly believes, however, +that in its abuse it is an infringement of the liberty of the private +citizen to be ranked with the edicts of the council of ten, the decrees +of the star chamber, the _lettres de cachet_, and the visits of the +Inquisition. The interviewer, if excluded, becomes an enemy, and has the +columns of a newspaper at his service in which to revenge himself. If +admitted, the interviewed is at the mercy of the interviewer's memory, +if he is the best meaning of men; of his accuracy, if he is careless; of +his malevolence, if he is ill-disposed; of his prejudices, if he has +any, and of his sense of propriety, at any rate. + +"Doctor Holmes humorously suggests the following restrictions: 'A +licensed corps of interviewers, to be appointed by the municipal +authorities, each interviewer to wear, in a conspicuous position, a +number and a badge, for which the following emblems and inscriptions are +suggested: Zephyrus, with his lips at the ear of Boreas, who holds a +speaking trumpet, signifying that what is said by the interviewed in a +whisper will be shouted to the world by the interviewer through that +brazen instrument. For mottoes, either of the following: _Fænum halct in +cornu_; _Hunc tu Romane caveto_. No person to be admitted to the corps +of interviewers without a strict preliminary examination. The candidate +to be proved free from color blindness and amblyopia, ocular and mental +strabismus, double refraction of memory, kleptomania, mendacity of more +than average dimensions, and tendency to alcholic endosmosis. His moral +and religious character to be vouched for by three orthodox clergymen of +the same belief, and as many deacons who agree with them and each other. +All reports to be submitted to the interviewed, and the proofs thereof +to be corrected and sanctioned by him before being given to the public. +Until the above provisions are carried out no record of an alleged +interview to be considered as anything more than the untrustworthy +gossip of an irresponsible impersonality.'" + +"What business have young scribblers to send me their verses and ask my +opinion of the stuff?" said Doctor Holmes one day, annoyed by the +officiousness of certain would-be aspirants to literary fame. "They have +no more right to ask than they have to stop me on the street, run out +their tongues, and ask what the matter is with their stomachs, and what +they shall take as a remedy." At another time he made the remark: +"Everybody that writes a book must needs send me a copy. It's very good +of them, of course, but they're not all successful attempts at +bookmaking, and most of them are relegated to my hospital for sick books +up-stairs." + +But once a young writer sent from California a sample of his poetry, and +asked Holmes if it was worth while for him to keep on writing. It was +evident that the doctor was impressed by something decidedly original in +the style of the writer, for he wrote back that he should keep on, by +all means. + +Some time afterward a gentleman called at the home of Professor Holmes +in Boston and asked him if he remembered the incident. "I do, indeed," +replied Holmes. "Well," said his visitor, who was none other than Bret +Harte, "I am the man." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +LOVE OF NATURE. + + +It is city-life, Boston-life, in fact, that forms the fitting frame of +any pen-picture one might draw of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and yet even +his prose writings are full of all a poet's love for country sights and +sounds. Listen, for instance, to this rich word-picture of the opening +spring: "A flock of wild geese wedging their way northward, with +strange, far-off clamor, are the heralds of April; the flowers are +opening fast; the leaves are springing bright green upon the currant +bushes; dark, almost livid, upon the lilacs; the grass is growing apace, +the plants are coming up in the garden beds, and the children are +thinking of May-day.... + +"The birds come pouring in with May. Wrens, brown thrushes, the various +kinds of swallows, orioles, cat-birds, golden robins, bobo'links, +whippoorwills, cuckoos, yellow-birds, hummingbirds, are busy in +establishing their new households. The bumble-bee comes in with his +'mellow, breezy bass,' to swell the song of the busy minstrels. + +"And now June comes in with roses in her hand ... the azalea--wild +honeysuckle--is sweetening the road-sides; the laurels are beginning to +blow, the white lilies are getting ready to open, the fireflies are seen +now and then flitting across the darkness; the katydids, the +grasshoppers, the crickets, make themselves heard; the bull-frogs utter +their tremendous voices, and the full chorus of birds makes the air +vocal with melody." + +How like Thoreau the following passage reads: + +"O, for a huckleberry pasture to wander in, with labyrinths of taller +bushes, with bayberry leaves at hand to pluck and press and smell of, +and sweet fern, its fragrant rival, growing near!... I wonder if others +have noticed what an imitative fruit the blackberry is. I have tasted +the strawberry, the pine-apple, and I do not know how many other flavors +in it--if you think a little, and have read Darwin, and Huxley, perhaps +you will believe that it, and all the fruits it tastes of, may have +come from a common progenitor." + +And there is the poet's beautiful picture of Indian summer. + +"It is the time to be in the woods or on the seashore,--a sweet season +that should be given to lonely walks, to stumbling about in old +churchyards, plucking on the way the aromatic silvery herb everlasting, +and smelling at its dry flower until it etherizes the soul into aimless +reveries outside of space and time. There is little need of painting the +still, warm, misty, dreamy Indian summer in words; there are many states +that have no articulate vocabulary, and are only to be reproduced by +music, and the mood this season produces is of that nature. By and by, +when the white man is thoroughly Indianized (if he can bear the +process), some native Hayden will perhaps turn the Indian summer into +the loveliest _andante_ of the new 'Creation.'" + +And again: "To those who know the Indian summer of our Northern States, +it is needless to describe the influence it exerts on the senses and the +soul. The stillness of the landscape in that beautiful time is as if the +planet were _sleeping_ like a top, before it begins to rock with the +storms of autumn. All natures seem to find themselves more truly in its +light; love grows more tender, religion more spiritual, memory sees +farther back into the past, grief revisits its mossy marbles, the poet +harvests the ripe thoughts which he will tie in sheaves of verse by his +winter fireside." + +At another time, when revisiting the scenes of his old schooldays at +Andover, he gives us the following vivid description of mountain +scenery: + +"Far to the north and west the mountains of New Hampshire lifted their +summits in a long encircling ridge of pale-blue waves. The day was +clear, and every mound and peak traced its outline with perfect +definition against the sky. + +I have been by the seaside now and then, but the sea is constantly +busy with its own affairs, running here and there, listening to +what the winds have to say, and getting angry with them, always +indifferent, often insolent, and ready to do a mischief to those +who seek its companionship. But these still, serene, unchanging +mountains,--Monadnock, Kearsarge,--what memories that name recalls! and +the others, the dateless Pyramids of New England, the eternal monuments +of her ancient race, around which cluster the homes of so many of her +bravest and hardiest children, I can never look at them without feeling +that, vast and remote and awful as they are, there is a kind of inward +heat and muffled throb in their stony cores, that brings them into a +vague sort of sympathy with human hearts. How delightful all those +reminiscences, as he wanders, "the ghost of a boy" by his side, now by +the old elm that held, buried in it by growth, iron rings to keep the +Indians from destroying it with their tomahawks; and now through the old +playground sown with memories of the time when he was young. + +"A kind of romance gilds for me," he says, "the sober tableland of that +cold New England hill where I came a slight, immature boy, in contact +with a world so strange to me, and destined to leave such mingled and +lasting impressions. I looked across the valley to the hillside where +Methuen hung suspended, and dreamed of its wooded seclusion as a village +paradise. I tripped lightly down the long northern slope with _facilis +descensus_ on my lips, and toiled up again, repeating _sed revocare +gradum_. I wandered in the autumnal woods that crown the 'Indian Ridge,' +much wondering at that vast embankment, which we young philosophers +believed with the vulgar to be of aboriginal workmanship, not less +curious, perhaps, since we call it an escar, and refer it to alluvial +agencies. The little Shawsheen was our swimming-school, and the great +Merrimac, the right arm of four toiling cities, was within reach of a +morning stroll." + +Nor does he forget to recall a visit to Haverhill with his room-mate, +when he saw the mighty bridge over the Merrimac that defied the +ice-rafts of the river, and the old meeting-house door with the +bullet-hole in it, through which the minister, Benjamin Rolfe, was shot +by the Indians. "What a vision it was," he exclaims, "when I awoke in +the morning to see the fog on the river seeming as if it wrapped the +towers and spires of a great city! for such was my fancy, and whether it +was a mirage of youth, or a fantastic natural effect, I hate to inquire +too nicely." + +Like all poets, Doctor Holmes had a passionate love for flowers, and +with a delight that is most heartily shared by the sympathetic reader, +he thus recalls the old garden belonging to the gambrel-roofed house in +Cambridge. + +"There were old lilac bushes, at the right of the entrance, and in the +corner at the left that remarkable moral pear-tree, which gave me one of +my first lessons in life. Its fruit never ripened but always rotted at +the core just before it began to grow mellow. It was a vulgar plebeian +specimen, at best, and was set there, no doubt, only to preach its +annual sermon, a sort of 'Dudleian Lecture' by a country preacher of +small parts. But in the northern border was a high-bred Saint Michael +pear-tree, which taught a lesson that all of gentle blood might take to +heart; for its fruit used to get hard and dark, and break into unseemly +cracks, so that when the lord of the harvest came for it, it was like +those rich men's sons we see too often, who have never ripened, but only +rusted, hardened and shrunken. We had peaches, lovely nectarines, and +sweet, white grapes, growing and coming to kindly maturity in those +days; we should hardly expect them now, and yet there is no obvious +change of climate. As for the garden-beds, they were cared for by the +Jonathan or Ephraim of the household, sometimes assisted by one Rule, a +little old Scotch gardener, with a stippled face and a lively temper. +Nothing but old-fashioned flowers in them--hyacinths, pushing their +green beaks through as soon as the snow was gone, or earlier tulips, +coming up in the shape of sugar 'cockles,' or cornucopiæ, one was almost +tempted to look to see whether nature had not packed one of those +two-line 'sentiments,' we remember so well in each of them; peonies, +butting their way bluntly through the loosened earth; flower-de-luces +(so I will call them, not otherwise); lilies; roses, damask, white, +blush, cinnamon (these names served us then); larkspurs, lupins, and +gorgeous holyhocks. + +"With these upper-class plants were blended, in republican fellowship, +the useful vegetables of the working sort;--beets, handsome with +dark-red leaves; carrots, with their elegant filigree foliage, parsnips +that cling to the earth like mandrakes; radishes, illustrations of total +depravity, a prey to every evil underground emissary of the powers of +darkness; onions, never easy until they are out of bed, so to speak, a +communicative and companionable vegetable, with a real genius for soups; +squash vines with their generous fruits, the winter ones that will hang +up 'ag'in the chimbly' by and by--the summer ones, vase like, as +Hawthorne described them, with skins so white and delicate, when they +are yet new-born, that one thinks of little sucking pigs turned +vegetables, like Daphne into a laurel, and then of tender human infancy, +which Charles Lamb's favorite so calls to mind;--these, with melons, +promising as 'first scholars,' but apt to put off ripening until the +frost came and blasted their vines and leaves, as if it had been a +shower of boiling water, were among the customary growths of the +Garden." + +Then follows, in these charming reminiscences, an account of the +reconstruction of the dear old Garden. + +"Consuls Madisonius and Monrovious left the seat of office, and Consuls +Johannes Quincius, and Andreas, and Martinus, and the rest, followed in +their turn, until the good Abraham sat in the curule chair. In the +meantime changes had been going on under our old gambrel roof, and the +Garden had been suffered to relapse slowly into a state of wild nature. +The haughty flower-de-luces, the curled hyacinths, the perfumed roses, +had yielded their place to suckers from locust-trees, to milkweed, +burdock, plantain, sorrel, purslane; the gravel walks, which were to +nature as rents in her green garment, had been gradually darned over +with the million threaded needles of her grasses until nothing was left +to show that a garden had been there. + +"But the Garden still existed in my memory; the walks were all mapped +out there, and the place of every herb and flower was laid down as if on +a chart. + +"By that pattern I reconstructed the Garden, lost for a whole generation +as much as Pompeii was lost, and in the consulate of our good Abraham it +was once more as it had been in the days of my childhood. It was not +much to look upon for a stranger; but when the flowers came up in their +old places, the effect on me was something like what the widow of Nain +may have felt when her dead son rose on his bier and smiled upon her. + +"Nature behaved admirably, and sent me back all the little tokens of her +affection she had kept so long. The same delegates from the underground +fauna ate up my early radishes; I think I should have been disappointed +if they had not. The same buff-colored bugs devoured my roses that I +remembered of old. The aphids and the caterpillar and the squash-bug +were cordial as ever; just as if nothing had happened to produce a +coolness or entire forgetfulness between us. But the butterflies came +back too, and the bees and the birds." + +Says a well-known writer: + +"Though born and reared beneath the shadow of the great city, yet Doctor +Holmes has ever found great delight in spending a portion of each year +in the country. The last few summers he has made his home at Beverly +Farms, but from 1849 to 1856, inclusive, his summer home was in +Pittsfield, in Berkshire County. His recollections of the scenes and +people in that charming town are pleasant and abundant. The villa which +he built was upon a round knoll, commanding a fine view of the whole +circle of Berkshire mountains, and of the Housatonic, winding in its +serpentine way through the fertile meadows and valleys to the sound of +Long Island. Yielding to his own good nature and the soft persuasion of +a committee of Pittsfield ladies, Doctor Holmes once contributed a +couple of poems to a fancy fair which was being held in the town during +his residence there. They do not appear in any of the published +collections, which is the one reason, above all others, why we print +them now. Each of the poems was inclosed in an envelope bearing a motto; +and the right to a second choice, guided by these, was disposed of in a +raffle, to the no small emolument of the objects of the fair. The two +pieces are even to this day represented by at least a square yard of the +quaint ecclesiastical heraldry which illuminates the gorgeous chancel +window of the St. Stephen's church in Pittsfield. The motto of the first +envelope ran thus: + + Faith is the conquering angels' crown; + Who hopes for grace must ask it; + Look shrewdly ere you lay me down; + I'm Portia's leaden casket. + +The following verses were found within: + + Fair lady, whosoe'er thou art, + Turn this poor leaf with tenderest care, + And--hush, oh, hush thy beating heart; + The one thou lovest will be there. + + Alas, not loved by thee alone, + Thine idol ever prone to range; + To-day all thine, to-morrow flown, + Frail thing, that every hour may change. + + Yet, when that truant course is done, + If thy lost wanderer reappear, + Press to thy heart the only one + That nought can make more truly dear. + +Within this paper was a smaller envelope containing a one dollar bill, +and this explanation of the poet's riddle: + + Fair lady, lift thine eyes and tell + If this is not a truthful letter; + This is the (1) thou lovest well, + And nought (0) can make thee love it better (10) + + Though fickle, do not think it strange + That such a friend is worth possessing; + For one that gold can never change + Is Heaven's own dearest earthly blessing. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL. + + +Upon the seventeenth of October, 1883, the centennial anniversary of the +Harvard Medical School, the new building upon the Back Bay was +dedicated. The fine, commodious structure is situated upon the corner of +Boylston and Exeter streets, and is at nearly equal distances from the +Massachusetts General Hospital, the City Hospital, the Boston Dispensary +and the Children's Hospital with their stores of clinical material, +available for the purposes of teaching. Close by, also, are the +Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the museums of the Society of +Natural History and of Fine Arts, and the Medical Library Association. +The building has a frontage of one hundred and twenty-two feet toward +the north on Boylston street, and of ninety feet toward the west on +Exeter street, and its corner position, together with the reservation +of a large open area on the east, will always insure good light and good +air. + +The dedication exercises were divided into two parts, the opening +addresses being given in Huntington Hall, at the Institute of +Technology, and the remainder of the programme in the new building. Upon +the platform, in Huntington Hall, were seated President Eliot, of +Harvard University, the faculty of the Medical School, and numerous +invited guests. Upon the walls just back of the platform, against a +background of maroon-colored drapery, and directly over the head of the +original, hung a portrait of Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes. Beneath +this portrait was a fine marble bust of Professor Henry J. Bigelow, who +was seated beside Doctor Holmes. + +President Eliot opened the exercises with the interesting address which +follows: + +"We are met to celebrate the beginning of the second century of the +Medical School's existence, and the simultaneous completion of its new +building. It is a hundred years since John Warren, Benjamin Waterhouse +and Aaron Dexter were installed as professors of anatomy and surgery, +theory and practice, and _materia medica_ respectively, and without the +aid of collections or hospitals began to lecture in some small, rough +rooms in the basement of Harvard Hall, and in a part of little Holden +Chapel, at Cambridge. From that modest beginning the school has +gradually grown until it counts a staff of forty-seven teachers, ten +professors, six assistant professors, nine instructors, thirteen +clinical instructors, and nine assistants--working in the spacious and +well-equipped building, which we are shortly to inspect, and commanding +every means of instruction and research which laboratories, dispensaries +and hospitals can supply. Out of our present strength and abundance we +look back to the founding of the school and to its slow and painful +development. We bear in our hearts the three generations of teachers who +have served this school with disinterested diligence and zeal. We recall +their unrequited labors, their frequent anxieties and conflicts and +their unfulfilled hopes; we bring to mind the careful plantings and the +tardy harvests, reaped at last, but not by them that sowed. We meet, +indeed, to rejoice in present prosperity and fair prospects, but we +would first salute our predecessors and think with reverence and +gratitude of their toils and sacrifices, the best fruits of which our +generation has inherited. + +"The medical faculty of to-day have strong grounds for satisfaction in +the present state of the school; for they have made great changes in its +general plan and policy, run serious risks, received hearty support from +the profession and the community, and now see their efforts crowned with +substantial success. By doubling the required period of study in each +year of the course, instituting an admission examination, strengthening +the examinations at the end of each year, and establishing a voluntary +fourth year of instruction, which clearly indicates that the real +standard of the faculty cannot be reached in three years, they have +taken step after step to increase their own labors, make the attainment +of the degree more difficult, and diminish the resort of students to the +school. They have deliberately sacrificed numbers in their determination +to improve the quality of the graduates of the school. At the same time +they have successfully carried out an improvement in medical education +which required large expenditures. This improvement is the partial +substitution, by every student, of personal practice in laboratories for +work upon books, and attendance at lectures. The North Grove street +building, erected in 1846-47, contained only one small laboratory for +students, that of anatomy. The new building contains a students' +laboratory for each of the five fundamental subjects--anatomy, +physiology, chemistry, histology and pathology--and that a large part of +the building is devoted to these working rooms. It was a grave question +whether the profession, the community and the young men who year by year +aspire to become physicians and surgeons would support the faculty in +making these improvements. The answer can now be recorded. + +"The school has received by gift and bequest three hundred and twenty +thousand dollars in ten years; it has secured itself in the centre of +the city for many years to come by the timely purchase of a large piece +of land; it has paid about two hundred and twenty thousand dollars for a +spacious, durable and well-arranged building; it has increased its +annual expenditure for salaries of teachers from twenty thousand dollars +in 1871-72, to thirty-six thousand dollars in 1882-83; its receipts have +exceeded its expenses in every year since 1871-72, and its invested +funds now exceed those of 1871 by more than one hundred thousand +dollars. At the same time the school has become a centre of chemical, +physiological, histological and sanitary research, as well as a place +for thorough instruction; its students bring to the school a better +education than ever before; they work longer and harder while in the +school, and leave it prepared, so far as sound training can prepare them +to enter, not the over-crowded lower ranks of the profession, but the +higher, where there is always room. + +"The faculty recognize that the generosity of the community and the +confidence of the students impose upon them reciprocal obligations. They +gladly acknowledge themselves bound to teach with candor and enthusiasm, +to observe and study with diligence that they may teach always better +and better, to illustrate before their students the pure scientific +spirit, and to hold all their attainments and discoveries at the +service of mankind. Certainly the medical faculty have good reason to +ask to-day for the felicitations of the profession and the public. + +"Nevertheless, the governors, teachers, graduates and friends of this +school have no thought of resting contented with its present condition. +Instructed by its past, they have faith in its future. They hope they +know that the best fruits of their labors will be reaped by later +generations. The medical profession is fortunate among the learned +professions in that a fresh and boundless field of unimaginable +fertility spreads out before it. Its conquests to come are infinitely +greater than those already achieved. The great powers of chemistry and +physics, themselves all new, have only just now been effectively +employed in the service of medicine and surgery. The zoölogist, +entomologist, veterinarian and sanitarian have just begun to contribute +effectively to the progress of medicine. + +"The great achievements of this century in medical science and the +healing art are all prophetic. Thus, the measurable deliverance of +mankind from small-pox is an earnest of deliverance from measles, +scarlatina, and typhoid fever. Within forty years anæsthetics and +antiseptics have quadrupled the chances of success in grave surgical +operations and have extended indefinitely the domain of warrantable +surgery; but in value far beyond all the actual benefits which have thus +far accrued to mankind from these discoveries is the clear prophecy they +utter of greater blessing to come. A medical school must needs be always +expecting new wonders. + +"How is medical science to be advanced? First, by the devoted labors of +men, young and old, who give their lives to medical observations, +research and teaching; secondly, by the gradual aggregation in safe +hands of permanent endowments for the promotion of medical science and +of the sciences upon which medicine rests. Neither of these springs of +progress is to fail us here. Modern society produces the devoted student +of science as naturally and inevitably as mediæval society produced the +monk. Enthusiastic devotion to unworldly ends has not diminished; it +only manifests itself in new directions. So, too, benevolence and public +spirit, when diverted by the teachings of both natural and political +science from many of the ancient forms of benevolent activity, have +simply found new and better modes of action. + +"With thankfulness for the past, with reasonable satisfaction in the +present, and with joyful hope in the future, the medical faculty +celebrate this anniversary festival, welcoming their guests, thanking +their benefactors, and exchanging with their colleagues, their students, +and the governing boards mutual congratulations and good wishes as the +school sets bravely out upon its second century." + +At the close of his address President Eliot turned to the large +audience, and said: + +"I have now the pleasure of presenting to you our oldest professor and +our youngest; our man of science, and our man of letters; our teacher +and our friend, Doctor Holmes." + +From the delightful and characteristic address of Doctor Holmes, we are +permitted to give the following extracts: + +"We are in the habit of counting a generation as completed in thirty +years, but two lives cover a whole century by an easy act of memory. I, +who am now addressing you, distinctly remember the Boston practitioner +who walked among the dead after the battle of Bunker Hill, and pointed +out the body of Joseph Warren among the heaps of the slain. Look forward +a little while from that time to the period at which this medical school +was founded. Eight years had passed since John Jeffries was treading the +bloody turf on yonder hillside. The independence of the United States +had just been recognized by Great Britain. The lessons of the war were +fresh in the minds of those who had served as military surgeons. They +knew what anatomical knowledge means to the man called upon to deal with +every form of injury to every organ of the body. They knew what fever +and dysentery are in the camp, and what skill is needed by those who +have to treat the diseases more fatal than the conflicts of the +battlefield. They know also, and too well, how imperfectly taught were +most of those to whom the health of the whole community was +entrusted.... + +"And now I will ask you to take a stride of half a century, from the +year 1783 to the year 1833. Of this last date I can speak from my own +recollection. In April, 1833, I had been more than two years a medical +student attending the winter lectures of this school, and have therefore +a vivid recollection of the professors of that day. I will only briefly +characterize them by their various merits, not so much troubling myself +about what may have been their short-comings. The shadowy procession +moves almost visibly by me as I speak: John Collins Warren, a cool and +skilful operator, a man of unshaken nerves, of determined purpose, of +stern ambition, equipped with a fine library, but remarkable quite as +much for knowledge of the world as for erudition, and keeping a steady +eye on professional and social distinctions, which he attained and +transmitted. + +"James Jackson, a man of serene and clear intelligence, well instructed, +not over book-fed, truthful to the centre, a candid listener to all +opinions; a man who forgot himself in his care for others and his love +for his profession; by common consent recognized as a model of the wise +and good physician. Jacob Bigelow, more learned, far more various in +gifts and acquirements than any of his colleagues; shrewd, inventive, +constructive, questioning, patient in forming opinions, steadfast in +maintaining them; a man of infinite good nature, of ready wit, of a keen +sense of humor, and a fine literary taste; one of the most accomplished +of American physicians; I do not recall the name of one who could be +considered his equal in all respects. Walter Channing, meant by nature +for a man of letters, like his brothers, William Ellery and Edward; +vivacious, full of anecdote, ready to make trial of new remedies, with +the open and receptive intelligence belonging to his name as a +birthright; esteemed in his specialty by those who called on him in +emergencies. The professor of chemistry of that day was pleasant in the +lecture room; rather nervous and excitable, I should say, and +judiciously self-conservative when an explosion was a part of the +programme." + +Speaking of the new building, Doctor Holmes said: + +"You will enter or look into more amphitheatres and lecture-rooms than +you might have thought were called for. But if you knew what it is to +lecture and be lectured to, in a room just emptied of its preceding +audience, you would be thankful that any arrangement should prevent +such an evil. The experimental physiologists tell us that a bird will +live under a bell glass until he has substituted a large amount of +carbonic acid for oxygen in the air of the bell glass. But if another +bird is taken from the open air and put in with the first, the new-comer +speedily dies. So when the class I was lecturing to, was sitting in an +atmosphere once breathed already, after I have seen head after head +gently declining, and one pair of eyes after another emptying themselves +of intelligence, I have said, inaudibly, with the considerate +self-restraint of Musidora's rural lover: + +"'Sleep on, dear youth; this does not mean that you are indolent, or +that I am dull; it is the partial coma of commencing asphyxia.' + +"You will see extensive apartments destined for the practical study of +chemistry and of physiology. But these branches are no longer studied as +of old, by merely listening to lectures. The student must himself +perform the analyses which he used to hear about. He must not be +poisoned at his work, and therefore he will require a spacious and +well-ventilated room to work in. You read but the other day of an +esteemed fellow-citizen who died from inhaling the vapors of a broken +demijohn of a corrosive acid. You will be glad to see that every +precaution is taken to insure the safety and health of our students. + +"Physiology, as now studied, involves the use of much delicate and +complex machinery. You may remember the balance at which Sanctorius sat +at his meals, so that when he had taken in a certain number of ounces +the lightened table and more heavily weighted philosopher gently parted +company. You have heard, perhaps, of Pettenkofer's chamber, by means of +which all the living processes of a human body are made to declare the +total consumption and product during a given period. Food and fuel +supplied; work done. Never was the human body as a machine so +understood, never did it give such an account of itself, as it now does +in the legible handwriting of the cardiograph, the sphygmograph, the +myograph, and other self-registering contrivances, with all of which the +student of to-day is expected to be practically familiar. + +... Among the various apartments destined to special uses one will be +sure to rivet your attention; namely, the Anthropotomic Laboratory, +known to plainer speech as the dissecting room. The most difficult work +of a medical school is the proper teaching of practical anatomy. The +pursuit of that vitally essential branch of professional knowledge has +always been in the face of numerous obstacles. Superstition has arrayed +all her hobgoblins against it. Popular prejudice has made the study +embarrassing and even dangerous to those engaged in it. The surgical +student was prohibited from obtaining the knowledge required in his +profession, and the surgeon was visited with crushing penalties for want +of that necessary knowledge. Nothing is easier than to excite the odium +of the ignorant against this branch of instruction and those who are +engaged in it. It is the duty and interest of all intelligent members of +the community to defend the anatomist and his place of labor against +such appeals to ignorant passion as will interfere with this part of +medical education, above all, against such inflammatory representations +as may be expected to lead to mid-day mobs or midnight incendiarism. + +"The enlightened legislation of Massachusetts has long sanctioned the +practice of dissection, and provided means for supporting the needs of +anatomical instruction, which managed with decent privacy and +discretion, have served the beneficent purpose intended by the wise and +humane law-givers, without doing wrong to those natural sensibilities +which are always to be respected. + +"During the long period in which I have been a professor of anatomy in +this medical school, I have had abundant opportunities of knowing the +zeal, the industry, the intelligence, the good order and propriety with +which this practical department has been carried on. The labors +superintended by the demonstrator and his assistants are in their nature +repulsive, and not free from risk of diseases, though in both these +respects modern chemistry has introduced great ameliorations. The +student is breathing an air which unused senses would find insufferable. +He has tasks to perform which the chambermaid and the stable-boy would +shrink from undertaking. We cannot wonder that the sensitive Rousseau +could not endure the atmosphere of the room in which he had began a +course of anatomical study. But we know that the great painters, Michael +Angelo, Leonardo and Raphael must have witnessed many careful +dissections; and what they endured for art our students can endure for +science and humanity. + +"Among the large number of students who have worked in the department of +which I am speaking during my long term of service--nearly two thousand +are on the catalogue as students--there must have been some who were +thoughtless, careless, unmindful of the proprieties. Something must be +pardoned to the hardening effect of habit. Something must be forgiven to +the light-heartedness of youth, which shows itself in scenes that would +sadden and solemnize the unseasoned visitor. Even youthful womanhood has +been known to forget itself in the midst of solemn surroundings. I well +remember the complaint of Willis, a lover of the gentle sex, and not +likely to have told a lie against a charming young person; I quote from +my rusty memory, but I believe correctly: + + She trifled! ay, that angel maid, + She trifled where the dead was laid. + +"Nor are older persons always so thoughtful and serious in the presence +of mortality as it might be supposed they would show themselves. Some of +us have encountered Congressional committees attending the remains of +distinguished functionaries to their distant place of burial. They +generally bore up well under their bereavement. One might have expected +to find them gathered in silent groups in the parlors of the Continental +Hotel or the Brevoort House; to meet the grief-stricken members of the +party smileless and sobbing as they sadly paced the corridors of +Parker's, before they set off in a mournful and weeping procession. It +was not so; Candor would have to confess that it was far otherwise; +Charity would suggest that Curiosity should withdraw her eye from the +key-hole; Humanity would try to excuse what she could not help +witnessing; and a tear would fall from the blind eye of oblivion and +blot out their hotel bills forever. + +"You need not be surprised, then, if among this large number of young +men there should have been now and then something to find fault with. +Twice in the course of thirty-five years I have had occasion to rebuke +the acts of individual students, once in the presence of the whole +class on the human and manly sympathy of which I could always safely +rely. I have been in the habit of considering myself at liberty to visit +the department I am speaking of, though it had its own officers; I took +a part in drawing up the original regulations which governed the methods +of work; I have often found fault with individuals or small classes for +a want of method and neatness which is too common in all such places. +But in the face of all peccadilloes and of the idle and baseless stories +which have been circulated, I will say, as if from the chair I no longer +occupy, that the management of the difficult, delicate and all important +branch committed to the care of a succession of laborious and +conscientious demonstrators, as I have known it through more than the +third of a century, has been discreet, humane, faithful, and that the +record of that department is most honorable to them and to the classes +they have instructed. + +"But there are better things to think of and to speak of than the false +and foolish stories to which we have been forced to listen. While the +pitiable attempt has been making to excite the feelings of the ignorant +against the school of the university, hundreds of sufferers throughout +Christendom--throughout civilization--have been blessing the name of +Boston and the Harvard Medical School as the source from which relief +has reached them for one of the gravest injuries, and for one of the +most distressing of human maladies. I witnessed many of the experiments +by which the great surgeon who lately filled a chair in Harvard +University, has made the world his debtor. Those poor remains of +mortality of which we have heard so much, have been of more service to +the human race than the souls once within them ever dreamed of +conferring. Doctor Bigelow's repeated and searching investigations into +the anatomy of the hip joint showed him the band which formed the chief +difficulty in reducing dislocations of the thigh. What Sir Astley Cooper +and all the surgeons after him had failed to see, Doctor Bigelow +detected. New rules for reduction of the dislocation were the +consequence, and the terrible pulleys disappeared from the operating +amphitheatre. + +"Still more remarkable are the results obtained by Doctor Bigelow in the +saving of life and the lessening of suffering in the new method of +operation for calculus. By the testimony of those renowned surgeons, Sir +Henry Thompson and Mr. Erichsen, by the award to Doctor Bigelow of a +sexennial prize founded by the Marquis d' Argenteuil, and by general +consent, this innovation is established as one of the great modern +improvements in surgery. I saw the numerous and patient experiments by +which that priceless improvement was effected, and I cannot stop to moan +over a scrap of integument, said to have been made imperishable, when I +remember that for every lifeless body which served for these +experiments, a hundred died or a thousand living fellow creatures have +been saved from unutterable anguish, and many of them from premature +death. + +"You will visit the noble hall soon to be filled with the collections +left by the late Professor John Collins Warren, added to by other +contributors, and to the care and increase of which the late Doctor John +Jackson of precious memory gave many years of his always useful and +laborious life. You may expect to find there a perfect Golgotha of +skulls and a platoon of skeletons open to the sight of all comers. You +will find portions of every human organ. You will see bones softened by +acid and tied in bowknots; other bones burned until they are light as +cork and whiter than ivory, yet still keeping their form; you will see +sets of teeth from the stage of infancy to that of old age, and in every +intermediate condition, exquisitely prepared and mounted; you will see +preparations that once formed portions of living beings now carefully +preserved to show their vessels and nerves; the organ of hearing +exquisitely carved by French artists; you will find specimens of human +integument, showing its constituent parts in different races; among the +rest, that of the Ethiopian, with its cuticle or false skin turned back +to show that God gave him a true skin beneath it as white as our own. +Some of these specimens are injected to show their blood vessels; some +are preserved in alcohol; some are dried. There was formerly a small +scrap, said to be human skin, which had been subjected to the tanning +process, and which was not the least interesting of the series. I have +not seen it for a good while, and it may have disappeared as the cases +might happen to be open while unscrupulous strangers were strolling +through the museum. If it has, the curator will probably ask the next +poor fellow who has his leg cut off, for permission to have a portion of +its integument turned into leather. He would not object, in all +probability, especially if he were promised that a wallet for his pocket +or a slipper for his remaining foot, should be made from it. + +"There is no use in quarrelling with the specimens in a museum because +so many of them once formed a part of human beings. The British +Government paid fifteen thousand pounds for the collection made by John +Hunter, which is full of such relics. The Huntarian Museum is still a +source of pride to every educated citizen in London. Our foreign +visitors have already learned that the Warren Anatomical Museum is one +of the sights worth seeing during their stay among us. Charles Dickens +was greatly interested in looking through its treasures, and that +intelligent and indefatigable hard worker, the Emperor of Brazil, +inspected its wonders with as much curiosity as if he had been a +professor of anatomy. May it ever remain sacred from harm in the noble +hall of which it is about taking possession. If violence, excited by +false outcries, shall ever assail the treasure-house of anthropology, we +may tremble lest its next victim shall be the home of art, and ignorant +passions once aroused, the archives that hold the wealth of literature +perish in a new Alexandrian conflagration. This is not a novel source of +apprehension to the thoughtful. Education, religious, moral, +intellectual, is the only safeguard against so fearful a future. + +"To one of the great interests of society, the education of those who +are to be the guardians of its health, the stately edifice which opens +its doors to us for the first time to-day is devoted. It is a lasting +record of the spirit and confidence of the young men of the medical +profession, who led their elders in the brave enterprise, an enduring +proof of the liberality of the citizens of Boston and of friends beyond +our narrow boundaries, a monument to the memory of those who, a hundred +years ago, added a school of medicine to our honored, cherished, revered +university, and to all who have helped to sustain its usefulness and +dignity through the century just completed. + +"It stands solid and four square among the structures which are the +pride of our New England Venice--our beautiful metropolis, won by +well-directed toil from the marshes and creeks and lagoons which were +our inheritance from nature. The magnificent churches around it let in +the sunshine through windows stained with the pictured legends of +antiquity. The student of nature is content with the white rays that +show her just as she is; and if ever a building was full of light--light +from the north and the south; light from the east and the west; light +from above, which the great concave mirror of sky pours down into +it--this is such an edifice. The halls where Art teaches its lessons and +those where the sister Sciences store their collections, the galleries +that display the treasures of painting, and sculpture, are close enough +for agreeable companionship. It is probable that in due time the Public +Library, with its vast accumulations, will be next door neighbor to the +new domicile of our old and venerated institution. And over all this +region rise the tall landmarks which tell the dwellers in our streets +and the traveller as he approaches that in the home of Science, Arts, +and Letters, the God of our Fathers is never forgotten, but that high +above these shrines of earthly knowledge and beauty, are lifted the +towers and spires which are the symbols of human aspiration ever looking +up to Him, the Eternal, Immortal, Invisible." + +At the conclusion of this noble address, the portrait of Professor +Oliver Wendell Holmes was presented to the Medical School by Doctor +Minot, in the happily-chosen words that follow: + +"Many alumni of the school, together with some of its present students, +have desired that a permanent memorial of their beloved teacher, +Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes, should be placed in the new college +building, in token of their gratitude for the great services which he +has rendered to many generations of his pupils. By his eminent +scientific attainments, his sound method of teaching, his felicity of +illustration, and his untiring devotion to all the duties of his chair, +he inspired those who were so fortunate as to come under his instruction +with the importance of a thorough knowledge of anatomy, the foundation +of medical science. In the name of the alumni and students of this +college, I have the pleasure of presenting to the medical faculty a +portrait of Professor Holmes, painted by Mr. Alexander, to be placed in +the college in remembrance of his invaluable services to Harvard +University, to the medical profession and to the community." + +The bust of Professor Bigelow was then presented to the school by Hon. +Samuel Green, in the following words: + +"The pleasant duty has been assigned me, Mr. President, to present to +you, as the head of the corporation of Harvard College, in behalf of his +many friends, this animated bust of Professor Henry J. Bigelow. The list +of subscribers comprises about fifty names, and includes nearly all the +surgeons of the two great hospitals in this city; several gentlemen not +belonging to the medical profession, but warm personal friends of Doctor +Bigelow; a few ladies who had been his patients; and all the surgical +house pupils who had ever been connected with the Massachusetts General +Hospital during his long term of service at that institution, so far as +they could easily be reached by personal application. The bust is given +on the condition that it shall be placed permanently in the new surgical +lecture room, which corresponds to the scene of Doctor Bigelow's long +labors in the old building. It has been made by the eminent sculptor, +Launt Thompson of New York, and is a most faithful representation of the +distinguished surgeon. It outlines with such accuracy and precision the +features of his face and the pose of his head that nothing is wanted, in +the opinion of his friends, to make it a correct likeness. + +"I need not, in the presence of this audience, name the various steps by +which Doctor Bigelow has reached the high position which is conceded to +him as freely and fully in Europe as it is in America; but I cannot +forbear an allusion to some of his original researches. His mechanism of +the reduction of a dislocated femur by manipulation was a great +discovery in surgical science, and follows as a simple corollary to the +anatomical facts which he has so clearly and minutely demonstrated. His +operation of rapid lithotrity has deprived a painful disease of much of +its terror as well as of its danger. Nor should I overlook on this +occasion his quick and ready discernment of the importance of Doctor +Morton's demonstration of the use of ether as a safe anæsthetic, which +took place at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the autumn of 1846. +The discovery of this greatest boon to the human family since the +invention of printing, was fraught with such immense possibilities that +the world was slow to realize its magnitude; but by the clear foresight +and prudent zeal of Doctor Bigelow, shown in many ways, the day was +hastened when its use became well nigh universal. + +"Doctor Bigelow has filled the chair of surgery in this medical school +during thirty-three years, a period of professional instruction that +rarely falls to the lot of any teacher; and he now leaves it with the +honored title of professor emeritus. During this long term of service he +has taught, through his lectures, probably not fewer than one thousand +eight hundred students, who have graduated at the Harvard Medical +School, and perhaps seven thousand five hundred more who have taken +their degrees elsewhere; and by these thousands of physicians now +scattered throughout the land, those of them who survive, Doctor Bigelow +is remembered as most eminently a practical teacher. Active in his +profession, clear in his instruction, and enthusiastic in his +investigations, he always had the happy faculty of imparting to his +students a kindred spirit and zeal. _Haud inexpertus loquor._" + +The remainder of the exercises took place in the new building. The +dedicatory prayer was offered by Rev. Doctor Peabody, who consecrated +the building "to science, humanity and charity, to Christian tenderness +and love, and to all the ministries that can enrich humanity." + +President Eliot then said: + +"In behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard University, and of +the Medical School, I declare this building to be devoted to medical +science and the art of healing." + +Professor Henry W. Williams, in behalf of the medical faculty, said: + +"Friends of the Harvard Medical School: For a hundred years the medical +faculty of Harvard College have earnestly sought to discover, and +striven faithfully to teach, whatever might exalt the condition, relieve +the woes and prolong the service of those minds and bodies through which +man lives, and moves, and is. Year by year they have seen their horizon +of knowledge extended and their sphere of duty enlarged. But, though +zeal and self-sacrifice have not been wanting, their efforts to be +useful have been continually hindered because of imperfect facilities +and scanty resources. All is changed. In this more wonderful than +Aladdin's palace, risen from the sea,[8] and which has already endured +the wrath and mercy of the flames, we see a fulfilment of our hopes, and +the means and assurance of success. Thanks to generous benefactors, +there will no longer be a lack of room or of appliances for our needs; +our work will go on under fairer auspices, and we can offer to disciples +of the healing art fitter opportunities and ampler aid in their studies. + +"As spokesman of the faculty on this occasion, so full of felicitation +and of promise, I would I could give to their message a host of tongues, +to adequately thank those whose great flood of bounty has thus favored +and endowed us. In occupying this beautiful and convenient structure, we +shall ever feel that the place is dignified by the givers' deed. And we +rejoice the more, because we know that this gift of three hundred +thousand dollars has been bestowed by those who are accustomed to use +their own eyes in their estimation of desert, and that it signifies a +hearty approval of our endeavors, and an intent that medical science, as +it is to be here embodied and taught, shall have a warm and generous +support. + +"In accepting this more than princely gift as a token that the value and +necessity of well-educated physicians to every community is felt and +acknowledged, we hail the privilege of goodly fellowship in which the +donors and ourselves have become co-workers, to the end that blessings +to the whole land may arise and be memorized in this institution; and we +trust that the efforts of the faculty to advance the knowledge, train +the judgment and perfect the skill of those entering our profession will +ever continue to deserve countenance and help. + +Colonel Henry Lee's address was the next to follow: + +Mr. President: Thanks for your invitation to be present on this +interesting occasion--the hundredth anniversary of your medical school +and the dedication of a new building of fair proportions, well adapted +to your wants, as far as a non-professional can judge. You have assigned +to me the honorable task of speaking for the contributors to the +building fund. I little thought, as I used to gaze with awe at that +prim, solitary, impenetrable little building in Mason Street, and with +imaginative companions conjure up the mysteries within, that I should +ever dare to enter and explore its interior; nor have I yet acquired +that relish for morbid specimens which characterized my lamented +kinsman, who devoted so many years to accumulating and illustrating your +pathological collection. It is an ordeal to a layman, Mr. President, +especially to one who has reached the sixth age, to be so forcibly +reminded, as one is here, of the + + last scene of all + That ends this strange, eventful history, + _Sans_ teeth, _sans_ eyes, _sans_ taste, _sans_ everything, + +and it is a further ordeal to assume to speak for others, whose motives +for aiding you I may not adequately set forth. This I can say, that we +are citizens of no mean city; that private frugality and public +liberality have distinguished the inhabitants of this 'Old Town of +Boston,' from the days of the good and wise John Winthrop, whose own +substance was consumed in founding this colony, to the present time. +Down through these two centuries and a half the multiform and +ever-increasing needs of the community have been discovered and +supplied, not by Government, but by patriotic citizens, who have given +of their time and substance to promote the common weal, remembering +'that the body is not one member, but many, and that the members should +have the same care, one for another.' It is this public spirit, +manifested in its heroic form in our civil war, that has made this dear +old Commonwealth what we all know it to be, despite foul slanders. Far +distant be the day when this sense of brotherhood shall be lost. Purple +and fine linen are well, if one can afford them; but let not Dives +forget Lazarus at his gate. + + Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, + Where wealth accumulates, and men decay. + +"Whatever doubts may arise as to some of our benevolent schemes, our +safety and progress rest upon the advancement of sound learning, and we +feel assured that the increased facilities furnished by this ample +building, for acquiring and disseminating knowledge of our fearful and +wonderful frame, will be improved by your brethren. Some of the papers +read before the International Medical College, in London, two years ago, +impressed me deeply with the many wants of the profession. And who are +more likely to have their wants supplied? for the physician is not +regarded here, as in some countries, as the successor to the barber +surgeon, and his fees slipped into his upturned palm as if he were a +mendicant or a menial. Dining with two Englishmen, one an Oxford +professor, the other the brother of a lord, a few years since, I was +surprised to hear their views of the social standing of the medical +profession, and could not help contrasting their position here, where, +if not all autocrats, they are all constitutional, and some of them +hereditary, monarchs, accompanied by honor, love, obedience, troops of +friends. But however ranked, physicians have the same attributes the +world over. I have had occasion to see a good deal of English, French, +German and Italian physicians under very trying circumstances, and have +been touched by their affectionate devotion to their patients. The good +physician is our earliest and our latest friend; he listens to our first +and our last breath; in all times of bodily distress and danger we look +up to him to relieve us. 'Neither the pestilence that walketh in +darkness, nor the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday, deters him.' + + Alike to him is time, or tide, + December's snow or July's pride; + Alike to him is tide, or time, + Moonless midnight, or matin prime. + +"The faithful pursuit of any profession involves sacrifice of self; but +the man who calls no hour his own, who consecrates his days and nights +to suffering humanity, treads close in the footsteps of his Master. No +wonder, then, that the bond between them and their patients is so +strong; no wonder that we respond cheerfully to their call, in gratitude +for what they have, and in sorrow for what they have not, been able to +do to preserve the lives and to promote the health of those dear to us. +And how could money be spent more economically than to promote the +further enlightenment of the medical profession? What better legacy can +we leave our children, and our children's children, than an illumined +medical faculty?" + +After these addresses a reception was given to the subscribers to the +building fund by President Eliot and the faculty of the Medical School. + +In referring to Doctor Holmes' brave, outspoken words, an eminent Boston +clergyman wrote as follows: + +"The only qualification which we have heard of the universal and +enthusiastic appreciation of the sage, the vivacious and the rich +utterance of our admired doctor and foremost man of letters on this +occasion, was in a somewhat regretful feeling that he should have turned +the full power of his humor and of his caustic satire upon the mean and +contemptible effort of an unprincipled demagogue to defame the Harvard +Medical School. We do not sympathize with even this qualified stricture +on the remarks of Doctor Holmes here referred to. True, his address was +an historical one, designed for an historical review of the past of the +institution. But it is also to serve the uses of history for the future, +especially as a record of the aspects of the institution and of the +interest and confidence of our living community in it during the year +marking such a conspicuous event for it as the inauguration of the new +edifice prepared for it by the munificence of those who appreciate its +almost divine offices of mercy and benevolence. And during this very +year, an assault of the most dastardly character has been made upon it +by one who, high in office and with vast power of influence over an +ignorant and easily prejudiced constituency, knows as well as any one +among us the utter and wicked falsity of his allegations. + +"Doctor Holmes was forced to make some recognition of these slanders +addressed to the uninformed, credulous and gullible portion of our +community. He would have been generally censured if he had passed them +by. The only question for him and for a critically judging community +would concern the true spirit and way in which he should recognize them. +We can conceive of no more fitting and effective course than that which +the sagacious doctor followed. The occasion was one in which it was for +him, in defining and greeting the steady advance made during a century +in medical and surgical science among us, to remind his hearers that +those to whom we are indebted for this advancement, have had, with their +own noble, personal devotion and effort, to triumph over and fight their +way against all the prejudices and obstructions which popular ignorance, +prejudice and superstition have engaged to annoy and withstand them. In +scarcely any one of the multiplied interests of average society have +popular weaknesses and follies more mischievously asserted themselves +than in opposition to hospitals and medical schools. When that noble +institution, the Massachusetts General Hospital, was devised, about +three quarters of a century ago, the most besotted folly and suspicion +were engaged against those who planned and fostered it. It was charged +that under the guise of benevolent service for homeless sufferers and +for the victims of accident or special maladies, it was really to be +artfully used for the trial of new medicines and risky experiments on +the poor and humble, that practitioners might have the benefit of the +knowledge thus gained in dealing with their rich patients. Let any one +visit the wards of that institution to-day, or read its annual reports, +noting the thousands of cases of its work of mercy in restoration or +relief of all classes of sufferers, and then recall the asinine abuse +visited upon its projectors. The millions of money which have been +poured into its treasury, mostly from the private benevolence of our own +citizens, is the crown of glory for that institution. An appeal of the +most artful and atrocious sort to this same popular ignorance and +passion has been made this year for purposes which we need not search +the dictionary to characterize with fitting epithets. How could Doctor +Holmes on this great occasion pass it by? How could he have treated the +offence and the offender with a more fitting combination of wit and +scorn? Most happy also was his suggestive allusion to the self mastery +by which practitioners at the dissecting table have to control, in the +interest of their high service, revulsions and shrinkings incident to +disgusting offices unknown even to chambermaids and stable boys. + +"But as Doctor Holmes well said, there are more attractive and +instructive matters to engage our most grateful interest in the occasion +to which he gave such a grand interpretation. The century of medical +history which he sketched with such a naïve and vigorous narrative has +its most suggestive incidents lettered on the walls on the main stairway +of the imposing edifice just opened for use. Little Holden Hall in +Cambridge; the obscure structure on Mason street; the melancholy +building on Grove street, with its tragic history, in which the donor of +its site was turned to a use by no means serviceable to science, make up +the genealogical, architectural ancestry of the new hall. The +development in the material fabric is no inadequate symbol of the +progress in every quality, accomplishment and attainment characteristic +of the advance of the profession in the last hundred years." + +The name of Doctor Holmes will always be so intimately connected with +the Harvard Medical School that we give below a brief sketch of its past +history. + +In the year 1780, the Boston Medical Society voted "that Doctor John +Warren be desired to demonstrate a course of anatomical lectures the +ensuing winter." The course of lectures proved so popular that the +corporation of the college asked Doctor Warren to draw up a plan for a +Medical School in connection with Harvard College. At the commencement +of the school, October 7th, 1783, there were three professors: Doctor +John Warren, who lectured on anatomy and surgery; Doctor Aaron Dexter, +who took the department of chemistry and materia medica; and Doctor +Benjamin Waterhouse, instructor in the theory and practice of medicine. +During the first year of its establishment the attendance was rather +small, consisting of members of the senior class of the college and +those students who could procure the consent of their parents. The name +of the first graduate recorded was that of John Fleet, in 1788, and he +seems to have been the only graduate of that class. + +In 1806, Doctor John Collins Warren, son of Doctor John Warren, was +appointed assistant professor of anatomy and surgery. He proved a most +enthusiastic laborer in behalf of the school and to it he gave his large +anatomical collection, which was considered the most complete in the +country. In his will he bequeathed his body to the interest of science, +and provided that his skeleton be prepared and mounted, to serve the +uses of the demonstrators on anatomy. It was he, also, who took the +first steps that led to the establishment of the Medical School in +Boston. At 49 Marlborough street, he opened a room for the demonstration +of practical anatomy, and here a course of lectures was started in the +autumn of 1810 by Doctors Warren, Jackson, and Waterhouse. + +In 1816, the "Massachusetts Medical College" was formally inaugurated in +a building erected on Mason street by a special grant from the +Commonwealth. At this time the faculty consisted of Doctors Jackson, +Warren, Gorham, Jacob Bigelow and Walter Channing. + +In 1821 the Massachusetts General Hospital on Allan street, was +established; the two institutions have since been intimately connected +as the resources afforded students by the Hospital are here given to +members of the Medical School. + +In 1836, Doctor Jackson resigned his position, and Doctor John Ware, the +assistant professor of theory and practice was appointed in the chair. +Eleven years later Doctor John Collins Warren resigned, having served +the interests of the school for forty-one years. + +In 1847, through the liberality of Doctor George C. Shattuck, Sr., a +professorship of pathological anatomy was established, and Doctor John +Barnard Swett Jackson was appointed to fill the chair. It was during +this year that Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes was chosen Parkman professor +of anatomy and physiology. + +In 1849 Doctor Henry J. Bigelow was appointed to the chair of surgery +left vacant by the resignation of Doctor George Hayward, and in 1854, +Doctor Walter Channing was succeeded by Doctor David Humphreys Storer. +In 1855 Doctor Jacob Bigelow resigned, and was succeeded by Doctor +Edward Hammond Clarke. + +The building on North Grove street, erected by a grant of the State upon +land donated by Doctor George Parkman, was first occupied by the school +in 1846. In this building, which was considered amply commodious at that +time, were stored the Warren Anatomical Museum, the physiological +library founded by George Woodbury Swett, the gifts to the chemical +department by Doctor John Bacon, and the collection of microscopes given +by Doctor Ellis. Since then the number of medical students has +constantly increased and the accommodations becoming inadequate, steps +were taken for the erection of the new building. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[8] The site occupied by the medical college was once covered by the +tides. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +TOKENS OF ESTEEM. + + +Said one of the medical students in Doctor Holmes' last class at +Harvard: + +"We always welcomed Professor Holmes with enthusiastic cheers when he +came into the class room, and his lectures were so brimful of witty +anecdotes that we sometimes forgot it was a lesson in anatomy we had +come to learn. But the instruction--deep, sound and thorough--was there +all the same, and we never left the room without feeling what a fund of +knowledge and what a clear insight upon difficult points in medical +science had been imparted to us through the sparkling medium!" + +The position of Parkman Professor of Anatomy in Harvard University, was +resigned by Doctor Holmes in the autumn of 1882, that he might give his +time more exclusively to literary pursuits. He was immediately appointed +Professor Emeritus by the college, and Doctor Thomas Dwight, a teacher +in the Medical School, succeeded him in the active duties of the chair. + +The last lecture of Doctor Holmes before his students, was delivered in +the anatomical room, on the twenty-eighth of November. As he entered the +room, a storm of applause greeted him, and then as it died away, one of +the students came forward and presented him, in behalf of his last +class, with an exquisite "Loving Cup." On one side of this beautiful +souvenir was the happy quotation from his own writings: "Love bless +thee, joy crown thee, God speed thy career." + +Doctor Holmes was so deeply affected by this delicate token of esteem +that, afterwards, in acknowledging the cup by letter, he said that the +tribute was so unexpected it made him speechless. He was quite sure, +however, that they did not mistake _aphasia_ for _acardia_--his heart +was in its right place, though his tongue forgot its office. + +In the address to his class, the Professor gave an interesting review of +his thirty-five years' connection with the school. Then he referred to +his early college days, and to his studies in Paris, and added many +delightful reminiscences of the famous French savants whose lectures he +attended at that time. A full report of this address may be found in the +_Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, for December 7, 1882. + +This, one of his most interesting essays, is also reprinted in one of +Doctor Holmes' later volumes, entitled _Medical Essays_. + +On the evening of April 12, 1883, a complimentary dinner was given +Doctor Holmes at Delmonico's, by the medical profession of New York +City. The reception opened at about half-past six, and soon after that +hour Doctor Holmes entered the rooms with Doctor Fordyce Barker. The +guests, numbering some two hundred and twenty-five in all, were seated +at six tables, the table of honor occupying the upper end of the room, +and decorated with banks of choice flowers. + +The _menus_ were cleverly arranged in the form of small books bound in +various-colored plush. A dainty design in gilt, representing a scalpel +and pen, surrounded by a laurel wreath, adorned the covers, and inside +was the stanza: + + A few can touch the magic string, + And noisy fame is proud to win them, + Alas, for those that never sing, + But die with all their music in them. + +At the top of the leaf containing the bill of fare were the lines: + + You know your own degree; sit down; at first and last a hearty + welcome. + +at the end: + + Prithee, no more; thou dost talk nothing to me. + +A few minutes before the coffee was brought in, each guest received what +purported to be a telegram from Boston, dated April 1, 1883. The message +read as follows: + + The dinner bell, the dinner bell + Is ringing loud and clear, + Through hill and plain, through street and lane + It echoes far and near. + + I hear the voice! I go, I go! + Prepare your meat and wine; + They little heed their future need + Who pay not when they dine. + --_O.W.H._ + +The back of the despatch was decorated with two pictures; one showing +Doctor Fordyce Barker ringing a dinner bell and brandishing a knife and +fork, the other Doctor Holmes hurrying to answer the bell, with a pile +of books under one arm and a bundle of bones under the other. + +Among the guests present were George William Curtis, Hon. William M. +Evarts, Bishop Clark, Whitelaw Reid, Doctors Post, Emmett, Sayre, +Billing, Vanderpoel Metcalfe, Detmoold Draper, Doremus, Hammond, St. J. +Roosa, Flint, Dana, Peabody, Ranney, Jacobi, Austin, and many others. + +The first toast was as follows: + + The hour's now come; + The very minute bids thee ope thine ear + Obey, and be attentive. + --_The Tempest._ + +After a few brief words of introduction, Doctor Barker called upon +Doctor A.H. Smith to complete the greeting, which he did in the +following happy lines: + + You've heard of the deacon's one hoss shay + Which, finished in Boston the self-same day + That the City of Lisbon went to pot, + Did a century's service, and then was not. + But the record's at fault which says that it burst + Into simply a heap of amorphous dust, + For after the wreck of that wonderful tub + Out of the ruins they saved a hub; + And the hub has since stood for Boston town, + Hub of the universe, note that down. + But an orderly hub as all will own, + Must have something central to turn upon, + And, rubber-cushioned, and true and bright + We have the axle here to-night. + Thrice welcome then to our festal board + The doctor-poet, so doubly stored + With science as well as with native wit, + _Poeta nascitur_, you know, _non fit_, + Skilled to dissect with knife or pen + His subjects dead or living men; + With thought sublime on every page + To swell the veins with virtuous rage, + Or with a syringe to inject them + With sublimate to disinfect them; + To show with demonstrator's art + The complex chambers of the heart, + Or armed with a diviner skill + To make it pulsate at his will; + With generous verse to celebrate + The loaves and fishes of some giver; + And then proceed to demonstrate + The lobes and fissures of the liver; + To soothe the pulses of the brain + With poetry's enchanting strain. + Or to describe to class uproarious + _Pes hippocampi accessorious_; + To nerve with fervor of appeal + The sluggish muscles into steel, + Or, pulling their attachments, show + Whence they arise and where they go; + To fire the eye by wit consummate, + Or draw the aqueous humor from it; + In times of peril give the tone + To public feeling, called backbone, + Or to discuss that question solemn, + The muscles of the spinal column. + And now I close my artless ditty + As per agreement with committee, + And making place for those more able + I leave the subject on the table. + +The toast "Our Guest," was prefaced by the following quotation from +Emerson: + +"One would say here is a man with such an abundance of thought! He is +never dull, never insincere, and has the genius to make the reader care +for all that he cares for." + +As Doctor Holmes rose, the room fairly shook with applause. Without any +prefatory remarks, he then read the following poem: + + Have I deserved your kindness? Nay, my friends; + While the fair banquet its illusion lends, + Let me believe it, though the blood may rush + And to my cheek recall the maiden blush + That o'er it flamed with momentary blaze + When first I heard the honeyed words of praise; + Let me believe it while the roses wear + Their bloom unwithering in the heated air; + Too soon, too soon their glowing leaves must fall, + The laughing echoes leave the silent hall, + Joy drop his garland, turn his empty cup, + And weary labor take his burden up,-- + How weigh that burden they can tell alone + Whose dial marks no moment as their own. + + Am I your creditor? Too well I know + How Friendship pays the debt it does not owe, + Shapes a poor semblance fondly to its mind, + Adds all the virtues that it fails to find, + Adorns with graces to its heart's content, + Borrows from love what nature never lent, + Till what with halo, jewels, gilding, paint, + The veriest sinner deems himself a saint. + Thus while you pay these honors as my due, + I owe my value's larger part to you; + And in the tribute of the hour I see + Not what I am, but what I ought to be. + + Friends of the Muse, to you of right belong + The first staid footsteps of my square-toed song; + Full well I know the strong heroic line + Has lost its fashion since I made it mine; + But there are tricks old singers will not learn, + And this grave measure still must serve my turn, + So the old bird resumes the self-same note + His first young summer wakened in his throat; + The self-same tune the old canary sings, + And all unchanged the bobolink's carol rings; + When the tired songsters of the day are still, + The thrush repeats his long-remembered trill; + Age alters not the crow's persistent caw, + The Yankee's "Haow," the stammering Briton's "Haw;" + And so the hand that takes the lyre for you + Plays the old tune on strings that once were new, + Nor let the rhymester of the hour deride + The straight-backed measure with its stately stride; + It gave the mighty voice of Dryden scope: + It sheathed the steel-bright epigrams of Pope; + In Goldsmith's verse it learned a sweeter strain, + Byron and Campbell wore its clanking chain; + I smile to listen while the critic's scorn + Flouts the proud purple kings have nobly worn; + Bid each new rhymer try his dainty skill + And mould his frozen phrases as he will; + We thank the artist for his neat device-- + The shape is pleasing though the stuff is ice. + + Fashions will change--the new costume allures-- + Unfading still the better type endures; + While the slashed doublet of the cavalier + Gave the old knight the pomp of chanticleer, + Our last-hatched dandy with his glass and stick + Recalls the semblance of a new-born chick + (To match the model he is aiming at + He ought to wear an eggshell for a hat), + Which of these objects would a painter choose, + And which Velasquez or Vandyke refuse? + When your kind summons reached my calm retreat, + Who are the friends, I questioned, I shall meet? + Some in young manhood, shivering with desire + To feel the genial warmth of Fortune's fire-- + Each with his bellows ready in his hand + To puff the flame just waiting to be fanned; + Some heads half-silvered, some with snow-white hair; + A crown ungarnished glistening here and there, + The mimic moonlight gleaming on the scalps + As evening's empress lights the shining Alps. + But count the crowds that throng your festal scenes-- + How few that knew the century in its teens! + + Save for the lingering handful fate befriends, + Life's busy day the Sabbath decade ends; + When that is over, how with what remains + Of Nature's outfit--muscle, nerve and brains? + + Were this a pulpit, I should doubtless preach; + Were this a platform, I should gravely teach; + But to no solemn duties I pretend + In my vocation at the table's end, + So as my answer let me tell instead + What Landlord Porter--rest his soul--once said. + A feast it was that none might scorn to share; + Cambridge and Concord demigods were there-- + And who were they? You know as well as I + The stars long glittering in our Eastern sky-- + The names that blazon our provincial scroll + Ring round the world with Britain's drumbeat roll! + + Good was the dinner, better was the talk; + Some whispered, devious was the homeward walk; + The story came from some reporting spy-- + They lie, those fellows--Oh, how they do lie! + Not ours those foot tracks in the new fallen snow-- + Poets and sages never zigzagged so! + + Now Landlord Porter, grave, concise, severe, + Master, nay, monarch, in his proper sphere, + Though to belles-lettres he pretended not, + Lived close to Harvard, so knew what was what; + And having bards, philosophers and such + To eat his dinner, put the finest touch + His art could teach, those learned mouths to fill + With the best proofs of gustatory skill; + And finding wisdom plenty at his board, + Wit, science, learning, all his guests had stored, + By way of contrast, ventured to produce, + To please their palates, an inviting goose. + + Better it were the company should starve + Than hands unskilled that goose attempt to carve; + None but the master artist shall assail + The bird that turns the mightiest surgeon pale. + + One voice arises from the banquet hall,-- + The landlord answers to the pleading call; + Of stature tall, sublime of port he stands, + His blade and trident gleaming in his hands; + Beneath his glance the strong-knit joints relax + As the weak knees before the headsman's axe. + + And Landlord Porter lifts his glittering knife + As some stout warrior armed for bloody strife; + All eyes are on him; some in whispers ask-- + What man is he who dares this dangerous task? + When, lo! the triumph of consummate art, + With scarce a touch the creature drops apart! + As when the baby in his nurse's lap + Spills on the carpet a dissected map. + + Then the calm sage, the monarch of the lyre, + Critics and men of science all admire, + And one whose wisdom I will not impeach, + Lively, not churlish, somewhat free of speech, + Speaks thus: "Say, master, what of worth is left + In birds like this, of breast and legs bereft?" + + And Landlord Porter, with uplifted eyes, + Smiles on the simple querist, and replies-- + "When from a goose you've taken legs and breast, + Wipe lips, thank God, and leave the poor the rest!" + + Kind friends, sweet friends, I hold it hardly fair + With that same bird your minstrel to compare, + Yet in a certain likeness we agree-- + No wrong to him, and no offence to me; + I take him for the moral he has lent, + My partner--to a limited extent. + + When the stern landlord, whom we all obey, + Has carved from life its seventh great slice away, + Is the poor fragment left in blank collapse + A pauper remnant of unvalued scraps? + I care not much what Solomon has said, + Before his time to nobler pleasures dead; + Poor man! he needed half a hundred lives + With such a babbling wilderness of wives! + But is there nothing that may well employ + Life's winter months--no sunny hour of joy? + While o'er the fields the howling tempests rage, + The prisoned linnet warbles in his cage; + When chill November through the forest blows + The greenhouse shelters the untroubled rose, + Round the high trellis creeping tendrils twine, + And the ripe clusters fill with blameless wine, + We make the vine forget the winter's cold, + But how shall age forget it's growing old? + + Though doing right is better than deceit, + Time is a trickster it is fair to cheat; + The honest watches ticking in your fobs + Tell every minute how the rascal robs. + To clip his forelock and his scythe to hide, + To lay his hour-glass gently on its side, + To slip the cards he marked upon the shelf, + And deal him others you have marked yourself, + If not a virtue, cannot be a sin, + For the old rogue is sure at last to win. + + What does he leave when life is well-nigh spent + To lap its evening in a calm content? + Art, Letters, Science, these at least befriend + Our day's brief remnant to its peaceful end-- + Peaceful for him who shows the setting sun + A record worthy of his Lord's "well done!" + + When he, the Master whom I will not name, + Known to our calling, not unknown to fame, + At life's extremest verge half-conscious lay, + Helpless and sightless, dying day by day, + + His brain, so long with varied wisdom fraught, + Filled with the broken enginery of thought, + A flitting vision often would illume + His darkened world and cheer its deepening gloom,-- + A sunbeam struggling through the long eclipse,-- + And smiles of pleasure play around his lips. + He loved the Art that shapes the dome and spire; + The Roman's page, the ring of Byron's lyre, + And oft, when fitful memory would return + To find some fragment in her broken urn, + Would wake to life some long-forgotten hour, + And lead his thought to Pisa's terraced tower, + Or trace in light before his rayless eye + The dome-crowned Pantheon printed on the sky; + Then while the view his ravished soul absorbs + And lends a glitter to the sightless orbs, + The patient watcher feels the stillness stirred + By the faint murmur of some classic word, + Or the long roll of Harold's lofty rhyme, + "Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime,"-- + Such were the dreams that soothed his couch of pain, + The sweet nepenthe of the worn-out brain. + + Brothers in art, who live for others' needs + In duty's bondage, mercy's gracious deeds, + Of all who toil beneath the circling sun + Whose evening rest than yours more fairly won? + Though many a cloud your struggling morn obscures, + What sunset brings a brighter sky than yours? + + I, who your labors for a while have shared, + New tasks have sought, with new companions fared, + For Nature's servant far too often seen + A loiterer by the waves of Hippocrene; + Yet round the earlier friendship twines the new; + My footsteps wander, but my heart is true, + Nor e'er forgets the living or the dead + Who trod with me the paths where science led. + + How can I tell you, O my loving friends, + What light, what warmth, your joyous welcome lends + To life's late hour? Alas! my song is sung, + Its fading accents falter on my tongue. + Sweet friends, if shrinking in the banquet's blaze, + Your blushing guest must face the breath of praise, + Speak not too well of one who scarce will know + Himself transfigured in its roseate glow; + Say kindly of him what is--chiefly--true, + Remembering always he belongs to you; + Deal with him as a truant, if you will, + But claim him, keep him, call him brother still! + +The next toast was to "The Clergy." + + He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one, exceeding + wise, fair-spoken and persuading. + --_King Henry VIII._ + +Bishop Clark of Rhode Island responded. "We honor," he said, "the high +priesthood of science and art. We honor the man who has brought life and +joy to many weary dwellings, and therefore we extend the right hand of +fellowship to him." When after tracing the lineage of the guest, he +reviewed his life, quoted from his writings, and said in conclusion, +that he stood side by side with Oliver Goldsmith. + +The toast to "The Bar"-- + + Why might that not be the skull + Of a lawyer? Where be his quidet's now? + --_Hamlet._ + +was answered by Hon. Wm. M. Evarts, in a witty and characteristic +address. + +Doctor T. Gaillard Thomas responded to the toast, "The Medical +Profession"-- + + She honors herself in honoring a favorite son,-- + +and George William Curtis followed in an address, answering to the toast +"Literature"-- + + A kind of medicine in itself. + --_Measure for Measure._ + +All factions, he declared, claimed Oliver Wendell Holmes, and all +peoples spoke of him in praise. He then mentioned many of the poet's +songs, reciting a stanza occasionally and commenting on them in a +touching manner. The next toast was "The Press"-- + + But words are things, and a small drop of ink + Falling like dew upon a thought, produces + That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. + --_Byron._ + +This was responded to by Whitelaw Reid in a humorous address in which he +closely connected Doctor Holmes with the profession of journalism. It +was a late hour when the company separated, and the last toast given, +found a hearty, though silent response from all present-- + + Good-night, good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, + That I shall say good-night till it be to-morrow. + --_Romeo and Juliet._ + + * * * * * + +Before closing this long chapter of "honors to Doctor Holmes," we cannot +refrain from giving the following cordial tribute from John Boyle +O'Reilly: + +"Oliver Wendell Holmes:--the wise, the witty, the many ideald, +philosopher, poet, physician, novelist, essayist, professor, but, best +of all, the kind, the warm heart. A man of unexpected tastes, ranging in +all directions from song to science, and from theology to boatracing. +Me met one day on Tremont street an acquaintance fond of athletic +exercise, and he stopped himself with a pathetic little sigh. + +"'Ah, you send me back fifty years,' he said. 'As you walked then with a +swing, you reminded me of an old friend who was dead before you were +born; and he was a good man with his hands, too.' + +"Never was a more healthy, natural, lovable man than Doctor Holmes." + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +IN LATER YEARS. + + +It was not until the spring of 1886 that Doctor Holmes made his second +trip to Europe. A whole half century had elapsed since his return home +from the three years spent abroad when he was completing his medical +studies. + +In this second European tour he was accompanied by his daughter, Mrs. +Sargent; and he gives his own delightful account of it in "One Hundred +Days in Europe," which first appeared as a serial in the _Atlantic +Monthly_, and has since been published in book form, with a charming +dedication to his daughter. "The Sailing of the Autocrat" was celebrated +by T.B. Aldrich in a fine poem, from which we quote a few lines as +embodying the tender love and ardent admiration of the whole American +people:-- + + "O Wind and Wave, be kind to him! + For him may radiant mornings break + From out the bosom of the deep, + And golden noons above him bend, + And fortunate constellations keep + Bright vigils to his journey's end! + + Take him, green Erin, to thy breast! + Keep him, gray London--for a while! + _In him we send thee of our best, + Our wisest word, our blithest smile_-- + Our epigram, alert and pat, + That kills with joy the folly hit-- + Our Yankee Tzar, our Autocrat + Of all the happy realms of wit! + Take him and keep him--but forbear + To keep him more than half a year.... + His presence will be sunshine there, + His absence will be shadow here!" + +We delight to recall with what distinguished honors he was received +abroad from the highest dignitaries of church and state, as well as from +his own literary compeers. It was during this visit in England that the +London _Spectator_ wrote, "No literary American--unless it be Mr. +Lowell, and we should not except even him--occupies precisely the same +place as Doctor Holmes in Englishmen's regard. They have the feeling for +him which they had for Charles Lamb, Charles Dickens, and John Leech, +in which admiration somewhat blends into and is indistinguishable from +affectionateness." + +The Universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge all conferred their +honorary degrees upon him, and he has given us his own inimitable +description of the manner in which he was entertained by Carlyle and by +Tennyson. + +At a club dinner given to him in London, he said to the bishop of +Gloucester: + +"I think we are all unconsciously conscious of each other's brain waves +at times. The fact is that words and even signs are a very poor sort of +language, compared with the direct telegraphy between souls. The mistake +we make is to suppose that the soul is circumscribed and imprisoned by +the body. Now, the truth is, I believe I extend a good way outside my +body. Well, I should say at least three or four feet all round, and so +do you, and it is our extensions that meet. Before words pass or we +shake hands, our souls have exchanged impressions, and they never lie." + +In reply to a toast at the farewell banquet given him in Liverpool by +the Medical Society of London, he said: + +"I cannot do justice to the manner in which I have been everywhere +received. Any phrase of mine would be a most inadequate return for the +months of loving and assiduous attentions through which I have been +living. You need not ask me, therefore, the almost stereotyped question, +how I like England and Scotland. I cannot help loving both, and I only +regret I could not accept the welcome awaiting me from my friends in +warmhearted Ireland." + +Fresh in mind still is the enthusiastic ovation given to our beloved +Autocrat when the hundred days had passed, and "Wind and Wave" brought +safely home again "our wisest word, our blithest smile." + +But grim Death, that had "rained through every roof save his," was soon +to send a cruel shaft into the poet's happy home. On the 6th of +February, 1888, the dear companion and helpmeet of his life for nearly +half a century-- + + "Stole with soft step the shining archway through + And left the past years' dwelling for the new." + +Mrs. Holmes was a remarkably gifted woman, and singularly fitted to be +the wife of a man of genius. She was devoted to her home and family, and +the charm of her sweet womanliness will long be remembered by those who +had the privilege of knowing her intimately. Doctor Holmes has himself +told us that her simple, reticent "I think so," was valued by him as a +far more encouraging sanction for action, than the dogmatic advice of a +more arbitrary adviser. When the Civil War broke out, Mrs. Holmes was +one of the first Boston women to enter actively into the work of the +United States Sanitary Commission. + +"She impressed us all," says one of her fellow workers, "as being so +strong, steady, clear, and firm. There was not one among the whole body +with whom we were so united as with her. And the strange thing about her +was that she really had the executive ability and the clear mind, as +well as the gentle and amiable spirit. She shirked no labor, even of the +most menial, and was one of those who gave up almost all her time to the +work. Her eldest son was at this time in the war, and went through six +battles; and this, although she never complained, was a constantly +harrowing pain to her." + +The younger son of Doctor Holmes, Edward Jackson Holmes, died in 1884, +leaving one son who bears the same name; and in 1889, his only daughter, +Mrs. Sargent, passed away. The aching void left in heart and home by +these sad bereavements was felt still more keenly as, one after another, +the old friends of his youth were laid to rest. + +"I do not think," he said upon one of his last birthdays, "that one of +the companions of my early years, of my boyhood, is left. When a man +reaches my age, and then looks back fifty years, why, even that distance +into the past to such a man leaves a pretty good gap behind it. Half a +century from eighty years leaves a 'gap' of thirty years, and thirty +years are a good many to most men." + +At one of the Saturday Club dinners, when fewer members than usual were +present, Doctor Holmes remarked, + +"This room is full of ghosts to me. I can see so many faces here that +used to be here years ago, and that have since passed from this life. +They are all real to me here, and I think if I were the only living +person at one of these dinners, I could sit here and talk to those I see +about me, and dine pleasantly, even alone." + +Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier and Lowell--all lifelong friends +of Holmes--had already "passed on." To other dearly-loved comrades, +also, the great last summons had come. Ticknor, Prescott, Fields, +Benjamin Pierce, James Freeman Clarke, Francis Parkman--all were gone. + +"I feel," he often said with a sigh, "that I am living in another age +and generation." + +Little, indeed, did the young Oliver realize when he wrote that pathetic +poem, "The Last Leaf," that he was the one of our five great poets +destined to be the "last upon the tree!" + +Upon his eightieth birthday, he remarked, "I have worn well, but you +cannot cheat old age. The difficulty with me now in writing is that I +don't like to start on anything. I always feel that people must be +saying, 'Are you not rash at eighty years of age to write for young +people who think a man old at forty?'" + +But in his delightful series of papers, "Over the Teacups," we mark the +same brilliant flashes of wit, the same keen intuition, the same +warmhearted sympathy with all phases of human nature, that our beloved +Autocrat showed in the Breakfast Table chats. As Doctor Holmes himself +says: + +"In sketching the characters, I have tried to make just the difference +one would naturally find in a breakfast and a tea table set." + +Another volume of poems, "Before the Curfew," and a series of essays +entitled "Our New Portfolio," were published soon after. The last poem +of Doctor Holmes printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_ was written in his +eighty-fourth year and dedicated to the memory of Francis Parkman. Some +of its verses, however, pay a loving tribute also to his old friends +Prescott and Motley: + + "One wrought the record of a royal pair + Who saw the great discoverer's sail unfurled, + Happy his more than regal prize to share, + The spoils, the wonders of the sunset world. + + There, too, he found his theme; upreared anew + Our eyes beheld the vanished Aztec shrines, + And all the silver splendors of Peru + That lured the conqueror to her fatal mines. + + Nor less remembered he who told the tale + Of empire wrested from the strangling sea; + Of Leyden's woe, that turned his readers pale, + The price of unborn freedom yet to be; + + Who taught the new world what the old could teach; + Whose silent hero, peerless as our own, + By deeds that mocked the feeble breath of speech + Called up to life a State without a throne. + + As year by year his tapestry unrolled, + What varied wealth its growing length displayed! + What long processions flamed in cloth of gold! + What stately forms their glowing robes arrayed!" + +Contrasting with Prescott's and Motley's the subject of Parkman's +histories, the poet says, + + "Not such the scenes our later craftsman drew, + Not such the shapes his darker pattern held; + A deeper shadow lent its sombre hue, + A sadder tale his tragic task compelled. + + He told the red man's story; far and wide + He searched the unwritten records of his race; + He sat a listener at the sachem's side, + He tracked the hunter through his wildwood chase. + + * * * * * + + Soon o'er the horizon rose the cloud of strife, + Two proud, strong nations battling for the prize; + Which swarming host should mould a nation's life, + Which royal banner flout the western skies. + + Long raged the conflict; on the crimson sod + Native and alien joined their hosts in vain; + The lilies withered where the lion trod, + Till peace lay panting on the ravaged plain." + +In the extracts given from this fine poem, with its stately, majestic +rhythm, it is plain to see that, even at the age of eighty-four, our +autocrat poet had lost none of the vigor and fire of youth. + +In the closing verses he speaks most tenderly of Parkman's patient, +untiring energy, + + "While through long years his burdening cross he bore," + +and concludes with this fine eulogy: + + "A brave, bright memory! his the stainless shield + No shame defaces and no envy mars! + When our far future's record is unsealed + His name will shine among its morning stars." + +It was in January, 1889, that Doctor Holmes sent to Doctor Richard M. +Hodges, who was at that time president of the Boston Medical Library +Association, the following characteristic letter: + + MY DEAR SIR: + + I have transferred my medical library to the hall of the Boston + Medical Library Association. Please accept it as a gift from its + late president. As there is no provision for its reception, and as + I liked the idea of keeping together the books which had been so + long together, I have provided a new set of shelves in which they + can be properly and conveniently arranged. + + Your very truly, + O.W. HOLMES. + +To show how highly Doctor Holmes valued this library, which consisted of +nine hundred and sixty-eight extremely rare volumes, Doctor Chadwick, +the librarian, said: "All these books have been collected by him in his +fifty years of experience, and it is fitting that we should realize it +is the result of years of labor. He has been ready on every occasion to +deliver addresses on topics having a wide scope. He carried off with +honor three of the four Boylston prizes, and this alone shows the range +of his studies. He has contributed to the funds of the association in +various ways, and now gives us his most valuable library. In this act, +as well as his continuing the position as president of the association +several years after he had relinquished all other connection with the +profession, he has designated our institution as the one in which he +takes the greatest pride; in whose future he has the greatest +confidence." + +In reply, Doctor Holmes then said: + +"The books I have offered the association, and which you have kindly +accepted, constitute my own medical library, with the exception of a few +volumes which, for several reasons, I have retained. It has grown by a +slow process of accretion. The first volume of it was 'Bell's Anatomy,' +and the last was 'Elements of Pharmacy.' The oldest book was written in +1490, and the latest in 1887, so it can be seen that the library covers +the space of four centuries." + +After reviewing the better books of the library, and alluding to the +private library that a practitioner should keep, Doctor Holmes added: +"These books are dear to me; a twig from some one of my nerves runs to +every one of them, and they mark the progress of my study and the +stepping-stones of my professional life. If any of them can be to others +as they have been to me, I am willing to part with them, even if they +are such old and beloved companions." + +Doctor Holmes' warm interest in everything connected with education was +shown most emphatically in one of the last public addresses he +delivered. It was at that memorable reception given at the Vendome, +February 28, 1893, by the Boston publishers to Doctor Holmes and other +authors, and to the members of the National Educational Association. +Mrs. Elizabeth Phelps-Ward, with Mr. Henry O. Houghton and Mr. Edwin +Ginn, gave welcome to the many distinguished guests. + +When Doctor Holmes was called upon to address the large company +assembled, he began: + +"Surely the Autocrat never felt more powerless than he does at this +moment. I meant to come here and say a few almost careless words. I was +saying to myself, 'You know very well what you've got to talk about, and +you can soon say it.' But," and here the Autocrat's bright face grew +serious, "at half-past ten this morning there came to me an elegantly +engraved copper-plate invitation to appear here, with a formality and a +style about it which showed that I had deceived myself in thinking I +could utter a few careless words. There was but one refuge for me, and +that was the old one. I can only hold up a copy of verses," and he waved +the manuscript deprecatingly. + +"But not one word, not one thought of it was in my head before half-past +ten to-day. There are things in literature," and here Dr. Holmes dropped +his voice to a confidential key, "that are christened 'impromptus,' the +authenticity of which I am inclined to doubt. I have the idea that a +good many impromptus have cost their authors many sleepless nights. + +"I shall tell you what I would have spoken about. I should have said, in +the first place, that I have a great sympathy with instructors. I have +been an instructor myself. I was for thirty-five years professor in +Harvard College, and two years before that professor in Dartmouth +College. I enjoyed very much the relations I had with my students in +both places. Many of them have lasted up to the present time, and it is +pleasant for me every now and then to have a bald-headed man come up to +me and tell me he was one of my boys thirty or forty years ago. + +"A great many changes have taken place since that time, but two of them +are especially interesting. One is the sub-division of teaching. There +were six of us who taught the medical graduates of Harvard College +during a considerable part of the time when I was professor there. There +are now seventy. How much better they are taught I do not know. I +presume they are taught well. But a wicked thought came into my head +just now--it is not every animal that has the most legs who crawls the +fastest. It reminds me of the sirloin of beef one day, which was +mince-meat on the second." + +All these pleasantries were given in the Autocrat's happiest manner, +amidst many interruptions of laughter and applause from his audience. + +"I don't mean, however," he added, "to deprecate that which I +accomplished by the sub-division into specialties. What I say is rather +playful than serious. The next point is the education of women, which I +have regarded at a distance, to be sure. But, occasionally visiting +Wellesley and the Cambridge Annex, it has been a great delight to me to +see how the intellects of the fair sex matched with those of the +sterner. I then thought I should say something of the importance of +implanting ideas on all the most important subjects at a very early +period of life, and I was going to recall my theology which came out of +the little primer, and my patriotism which was kindled at the shrine of +Dr. Dwight's 'Columbia, Queen of the World.' But all these things I +would prefer to leave, and what else I would have said I will defer +until the next occasion, I also wish to say here, personally, that it +was most unwillingly that I appeared before an audience like this. I +felt it was, at my age, more becoming that I should be a listener rather +than a speaker." Here he was interrupted by cries of "No! No!" but he +shook his head determinedly, saying, "I am speaking seriously now, +however difficult it may be to do that. These little verses I have +written, and which I am going to read, are really impromptu. They are +poorly scrawled, for my hand was unsteady." + +Then in a clear, strong voice he read: + + "Teachers of teachers! yours the task, + Noblest that noble minds can ask, + High up Aonia's murmurous mount + To watch, to guard the sacred fount + That feeds the stream below. + To guide the hurrying flood that fills + A thousand silvery, rippling rills + In ever widening flow. + + Rich is the harvest from the fields + That bounteous nature kindly yields; + But fairer growths enrich the soil + Ploughed deep by thought and wearied toil, + In learning's broad domain. + And where the leaves, the flowers, the fruits, + Without your watering at the roots + To fill each branching vein? + + Welcome! the author's firmest friends, + Your voice the surest Godspeed lends. + Of you the growing mind demands + The patient care, the guiding hands + Through all the mists of morn. + And knowing well the future's need, + Your prescient wisdom sows the seed + To flower in years unborn." + +It will be remembered that the last time Doctor Holmes appeared in +public to read a poem was on May 28, 1893, when he attended the +celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the reorganization of the +Boston Young Men's Christian Union. The beautiful hymn he wrote for this +occasion is the sweet, simple expression of his own lifelong creed: + + "Our Father! while our hearts unlearn + The creeds that wrong thy name, + Still let our hallowed altars burn + With faith's undying flame. + + Not by the lightning's gleam of wrath + Our souls thy face shall see, + The star of love must light the path + That leads to heaven and thee. + + Help us to read our Master's will + Through every darkening stain + That clouds his sacred image still, + And see him once again, + + The brother man, the pitying friend + Who weeps for human woes, + Whose pleading words of pardon blend + With cries of raging foes. + + If, 'mid the gathering storms of doubt + Our hearts grow faint and cold, + The strength we cannot live without, + Thy love will not withhold. + + Our prayers accept; our sins forgive; + Our youthful zeal renew; + Shape for us holier lives to live, + And nobler work to do!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +LAST DAYS. + + +The eighty-fifth birthday of Doctor Holmes was quietly spent at his +pleasant country home in Beverly. + +"The burden of years sits lightly upon me," he remarked to a friend that +day, "but after fourscore years the encroachments of time make +themselves felt with rapidly increasing progress. The twelfth septennial +period has always seemed to me as one of the natural boundaries of life. +One who has lived to complete his eighty-fourth year has had his full +share, even of an old man's allowance. Whatever is granted over that is +a prodigal indulgence of nature. When one can no longer hear the lark, +when he can no longer recognize the faces he passes on the street, when +he has to watch his steps, when it becomes more and more difficult for +him to recall names, he is reminded at every moment that he must spare +himself, or nature will not spare him the penalties she exacts for +overtaxing his declining powers." + +In spite of these words, that seem prophetic to us now, the +sunny-hearted Autocrat declared he was "eighty-five years _young_" that +day, and all the friends who came with loving gifts and congratulations +fully agreed with him. His conversation sparkled with all the wit of his +younger days, and he talked with animation of his daily walks through +the town, and of his long drives into the country in search of "big +trees." Near the base of "Woodbury's Hill" in Beverly, he had recently +found a mammoth elm that he considered finer than all his other +favorites in Essex county; for, in addition to its great size, the wide +spreading branches were covered with unusually thick rich foliage. + +"I call all trees mine," said the Autocrat, "that I have put my +wedding-ring on--that is, my thirty-foot tape-measure!" + +Having been slightly troubled with writers' cramp, Doctor Holmes was +advised by one of his callers that day to try a typewriter. This remark +brought forth a smile from the man who had moved the people of the world +with his pen; and he said, with a merry laugh, that he did not propose +to forsake an old friend for a new one at that late time in life. + +In speaking of his birthday, Doctor Holmes alluded to the great men who +were born that same year, 1809. + +"Yes," he said, "I was particularly fortunate in being born the same +year with four of the most distinguished men of the age, and I really +feel flattered that it so happened. Now, in England, there were +Tennyson, Darwin, and Gladstone--Gladstone being, I think, four months +younger than myself. That is a most remarkable trio, isn't it? Just +contemplate the greatness of those three men, and then remember that in +the same year Abraham Lincoln was born in this country. Most +remarkable!" And when the visitor added, "You have forgotten to mention +the fifth, doctor; there was also Oliver Wendell Holmes," Doctor Holmes +quickly retorted in his own inimitable way: + +"Oh! that does not count; I 'sneaked in,' as it were!" + +Doctor Holmes remained at his country home in Beverly until late in +September, this last year of his life, and his health seemed steadily to +improve with the bracing autumn weather. + +On his return to the city, however, he had a severe attack of the +asthmatic trouble from which he had suffered all his life. A severe +cold, and the "weight of years" aggravated what seemed at first but a +slight indisposition; and the poet, with his accurate medical knowledge, +realized that the end was not far distant. + +But as he grew weaker and weaker, his sunshiny spirit shone all the +brighter. With playful jests he tried to soothe the sad hearts of his +dear ones, and to make them feel that the pain of parting was the only +sting of death. He seldom, indeed, made any reference to the dark shadow +he felt so near; but one morning, three or four days before his death, +he said to his son: + +"Well, Wendell, what is it? King's Chapel?" + +"Oh, yes, father," said Judge Holmes. + +"Then I am satisfied. That is all I am going to say about it." + +On Sunday morning, October 7th, he seemed so much easier that his +physician and intimate friend, Doctor Charles P. Putnam, went out of +town to make a professional visit, leaving his brother, Doctor James +Putnam, in charge. + +About noon Doctor Holmes had a sudden spasm, and his breathing became so +labored that he asked to be moved into his favorite armchair. + +"That is better, thank you. That rests me more," he said to his son, who +stood beside him. + +These were his last words. Painlessly and peacefully, with all the dear +ones of his home around him, his life flowed away like the ebbing of a +tide. + +To the world outside, the tidings of Doctor Holmes' death, that bright +October day, came with a terrible shock. As late as Thursday of the +preceding week he had been down town, and was intending to be present at +the meeting of the Saturday Morning Club. Not even his nearest friends +realized that the end was so near. + +"It is as if a long accustomed element had gone out of the air!" +exclaimed one Boston citizen. "While Doctor Holmes lived we felt as if +we were still bound by a living tie to the Titanic age of American +literature." + +"The death of Doctor Holmes," said Charles Eliot Norton, "marks the +close of an epoch in American literature. He was the sole survivor of +the five great New England authors, and he has no successor. This group +was a remarkable one. They grew up, as it were, together, and are the +product of our New England life in the first half century. Their +writings were contemporaneous, and they were bound in the closest ties +of friendship. Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes--no other +section of the country can show such a group." + +"Boston without Doctor Holmes!" exclaimed another friend. "What will it +be like? There has been but one 'Autocrat,'--there will never be +another!" + +Yet not only Boston--the whole world mourned the departure of Oliver +Wendell Holmes. Within his domain his genius was imperial, and his +bright cheery nature endeared him to all humanity. + +It seemed fitting that Nature herself should weep on the sad burial day +of one whose life had embodied her sunshine! + +The wind mourned, the rain fell continuously, as loving hands bore into +King's Chapel, upon Wednesday, October 10, all that was mortal of our +famous poet. The simple funeral rites began just at noon. The casket, +upon which rested wreaths of pansies and laurels, was borne up the aisle +to the wailing organ strains of Händel's "Dead March in Saul." Rev. +Edward Everett Hale led the sad procession, reciting in his clear, +sympathetic voice, "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; +he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." + +All the seats upon the middle aisle were reserved and occupied by the +poet's immediate family and intimate friends, members of the +Massachusetts Medical Society, representatives of Harvard College, and +delegations from the numerous other societies of which the poet and +physician was a member. + +A beautiful wreath of laurel hung from the south gallery, marking with +mute eloquence the vacant pew of the dead poet. + +The Chapel was filled with a notable assembly, representing the best +life of Boston--its intellect, culture, and heart. And probably never at +one time had the ancient church held so many venerable personages. Rev. +S.F. Smith, the author of "America," and Rev. Samuel May of Leicester, +the only surviving classmates of Doctor Holmes, were present, in spite +of the inclement weather. Judge Rockwood Hoar, fast nearing the +fourscore milestone, Doctor Bartol, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe--all the great +poet's friends and contemporaries were there to pay their last tribute. + +After the reading of passages from the Bible, and a prayer by Rev. +Edward Everett Hale, a selection from Mendelssohn's "Elijah," "Oh, rest +in the Lord," was sung by Miss Lena Little, followed by a chant, "The +Lord is my Shepherd," and a hymn, "O Paradise," by the choir. + +Then the strains of the "Dead March" again rolled from the organ, and +the funeral procession left the Chapel. + +The services at the grave were attended by only the relatives and most +intimate friends. It was the wish of Doctor Holmes and his family that +he should rest beside his wife in the Jackson lot at Mt. Auburn. It is +in the immediate vicinity of the Holmes' lot, amidst the beautiful oaks +that the poet loved; and only a few yards distant rest Longfellow and +James Russell Lowell. + + * * * * * + +The life of Oliver Wendell Holmes spanned nearly the whole nineteenth +century; and to the very last he kept abreast of the feeling, the +thought, the movement, of the day. He was one of the few men of our +generation who raised the American name in the esteem of the whole +world. + +Comparing Doctor Holmes with his four illustrious contemporaries in +literature, Professor Norton says:-- + +"Emerson was the deepest thinker of them all; Longfellow possessed in a +rare degree the power of felicitous expression, and gave us thoughts +couched in the most beautiful poetry; Whittier was the apostle of +freedom, fearless, and moved by an untiring purpose; Lowell was a man of +versatile genius, as great in the field of poetry as he was in that of +prose. + +"Holmes was one who wrote without effort. His was a ready genius. His +thoughts came unbidden, and he had but to give them expression in words. +Apt, vivacious, animated, pure, happy, he always was at once a wit and a +humorist, but greater in his wit than in his humor. Whatever his +subject, he wrote of it with equal ability, and his books are remarkable +for the variety of topics which he has treated so easily." + +Of all his poems, Doctor Holmes ranked "The Chambered Nautilus" highest. + +"I wrote that poem," he said, "at white heat. When it was finished I +took it to my wife, who was sewing in an adjoining room, and said, 'I +think I have the best poem here that I have ever written.' And I have +never changed my mind about it." + +By universal consent, indeed, "The Chambered Nautilus" is considered the +gem of Doctor Holmes' beautiful lyrics. The poet always kept in his +study specimens of the nautilus shell, cut entirely across, to show the +spiral ascent of its curious inhabitant. He delighted to show these +shells to his visitors; and, as he replaced them on the shelves, he +would often repeat the last stanza of his beautiful poem:-- + + Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, + As the swift seasons roll; + Leave thy low-vaulted past; + Let each new temple, loftier than the last, + Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, + Till thou at length art free, + Leaving thine out-grown shell by life's unresting sea. + +Among the poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes are seven that may truly be +called "Hymns;" and it is well to remember that the test of the use and +value of a hymn is not the occasion for which it was written, but its +adoption into hymnal collections, and its use thereafter. + +"We were singing one of Doctor Holmes' hymns in our church," said Rev. +Minot Savage, "that Sunday morning when the great singer was passing +into the higher choir. + +"Doctor Holmes was manly in his religion, and his songs show the bright +and noble spirit that dominated his life. He was worshipful and +trustful, and always hopeful. He was a firm, even passionate, believer +in an existence after death, and found the ground of his trust in the +dissecting-room. As a scientist he faced everything, and then believed +that the soul was more than the body." + +Of these seven hymns of Doctor Holmes', the familiar one beginning,-- + + Lord of all being, throned afar, + Thy glory flames from star to star, + +the poet appropriately characterized his "Sunday Hymn." It first +appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of December, 1859, and the +"Professor" prefaced it with these words:-- + +"Peace be to all such as may have been vexed by any utterance the pages +have repeated. They will doubtless forget for the moment the difference +in the lines of truth we look at through our human prisms, and join in +singing (inwardly) this hymn to the Source of the Light we all need to +lead us, and the warmth which alone can make us all brothers." + +In the many heartfelt tributes to Doctor Holmes, it is interesting to +note that his spiritual character was appreciated and approved by men +differing from him very widely in religious belief. Indeed, it would be +impossible for any one to hold communion with him through his writings +without growing more kindly, more loving toward his fellow-men, and more +reverent, more filial, towards his Heavenly Father. + +"And personally," remarked an intimate friend, "Doctor Holmes was as +delightful a character as he is in his books. His best thoughts came +full flood, as it were, from a richly stocked mind. His most +characteristic traits were his extreme kindliness and his animation. The +mirth and vivacity which bubble forth from his books was the same which +came spontaneously from his lips in conversation. He was a delightful +companion, and a true friend to those who were so fortunate as to know +him and be known by him." + +Oliver Wendell Holmes taught that life is good and sweet, and worth the +living. There is not in all his writings a single morbid note. The world +is brighter and happier and better for the rare gift of such a life. + +His wit has been the solvent of bigotry. He has done for the religious +thought of the century what Whittier did for the political; and his +bright optimism has pierced many an old-time error with the potency of +the sunbeam. + +"It is clearly seen in the perspective," says Charles Dudley Warner, +"that Doctor Holmes' life gives us the kind of reputation that is of +value to one's native land, and shows us that, after all the parade of +official station and the notoriety of politics and money, those names +only endure in honor and love which are borne by men of high +intellectual and moral qualities. When we sum up all our sources and +achievements, it is to him and his few compeers that we must point for +our distinction." + + * * * * * + +Transcribers notes: + +Maintained original spelling and punctuation. + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes, by E. E. 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E. Brown + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes + +Author: E. E. Brown + +Release Date: October 30, 2011 [EBook #37878] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES *** + + + + +Produced by Tor Martin Kristiansen, Ron Stephens, Carol +Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/002.png" width="500" height="601"alt="" title="OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES." /> +<p class="tdc"><span class="caption">OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.</span></p> +</div> + +<div class="p4" /> + + +<h1> +<small>LIFE OF</small><br /> +<span class="smcap"><big>Oliver Wendell Holmes</big></span></h1> +<div class="p4" /> +<h3>BY<br /> +<big>E.E. BROWN</big></h3> + +<p class="tdc">Author of "<span class="smcap">Life of Garfield," "Life of Washington</span>,"<br /> +"<span class="smcap">From Night to Light," ETC., ETC.</span></p> + +<div class="p6" /> +<p class="tdc">CHICAGO NEW YORK<br /> +<big>THE WERNER COMPANY</big> +</p> + +<div class="p6" /> + +<hr class="r25" /> +<p class="tdc"> +COPYRIGHT 1884<br /> +<span class="smcap">By D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY</span><br /> +<br /></p> +<hr class="r5" /> +<p class="tdc">COPYRIGHT 1895<br /> +<span class="smcap">By THE WERNER COMPANY</span><br /> +<br /></p> +<hr class="r25" /> +<p class="tdc">Holmes<br /> +</p> + + +<div class="p6" /> + +<h1>OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES</h1> + + +<div class="p6" /> + + +<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2> + + + + + + + +<div class="center"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="0" summary="TOC"> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Chap.</span></td><td align="left"> </td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">Page.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">I. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Ancestry</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">9</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">II. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Boyhood</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">20</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">III. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Early Recollections</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">30</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">IV. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Other Reminiscences</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">40</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">V. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Abroad</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">49</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">VI. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Change in the Home</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">60</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">VII. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Professor</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">67</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">VIII. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Lecturer</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">74</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">IX. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Naming the new Magazine</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">83</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">X. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Elsie Venner</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">92</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">XI. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Further Acquaintance</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">107</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">XII. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Favorites of Song</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">114</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">XIII. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Man of Science</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">136</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">XIV. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Holmes Breakfast</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">152</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">XV. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Orations and Essays</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">171</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">XVI. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Home Circle</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">208</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">XVII. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Love of Nature</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">227</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">XVIII. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Harvard Medical School </span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">240</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">XIX. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Tokens of Esteem</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">284</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">XX. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">In Later Years</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">302</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">XXI. </td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Last Days</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">320</a></td></tr> +</table></div> + + +<div class="p6" /> + +<h1><a name="OLIVER_WENDELL_HOLMES" id="OLIVER_WENDELL_HOLMES"></a>OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.</h1> + +<hr class="r5" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2> + +<h4>ANCESTRY.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>IN</big> a quaint old gambrel-roofed house that +once stood on Cambridge Common, Oliver +Wendell Holmes—poet, professor, "beloved +physician"—was born, on the twenty-ninth of +August, 1809. His father, the Rev. Abiel +Holmes, was the pastor of the "First Church" +in Cambridge—</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">That ancient church whose lofty tower,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Beneath the loftier spire,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is shadowed when the sunset hour<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Clothes the tall shaft in fire.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>Here, in Revolutionary times, General Washington +frequently worshiped, and the old homestead +itself was the headquarters of the American +army during the siege of Boston.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p> + +<p>"It was a great happiness," writes the <i>Poet +at the Breakfast-Table</i>, "to have been born in +an old house haunted by such recollections, +with harmless ghosts walking its corridors, with +fields of waving grass and trees and singing +birds, and that vast territory of four or five +acres around it, to give a child the sense that +he was born to a noble principality....</p> + +<p>"The gambrel-roofed house was not one of +those old Tory, Episcopal church-goer's strongholds. +One of its doors opens directly upon +the Green, always called the Common; the +other faces the south, a few steps from it, +over a paved foot-walk on the other side of +which is the miniature front yard, bordered +with lilacs and syringas.</p> + +<p>"The honest mansion makes no pretensions. +Accessible, companionable, holding its hand out +to all—comfortable, respectable, and even in its +way dignified, but not imposing; not a house +for his Majesty's Counsellor, or the Right Reverend +successor of Him who had not where +to lay his head, for something like a hundred +and fifty years it has stood in its lot, and +seen the generations of men come and go like +the leaves of the forest."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p> + +<p>The house was not originally built for a parsonage. +It was first the residence of a well-to-do +tailor, who sold it to Jonathan Hastings, +a prosperous farmer whom the college students +used to call "Yankee Jont.," and whose son +was the college steward in 1775. It was long +known in Cambridge as the "Hastings House," +but about the year 1792 it was sold to Eliphalet +Pearson, the Hebrew Professor at Harvard, +and in 1807 it passed into the hands of the +Rev. Abiel Holmes.</p> + +<p>For forty years the father of Oliver Wendell +Holmes ministered to his Cambridge parish, +revered and loved by all who knew him. +He was a man of marked literary ability, as his +<i>Annals of America</i> shows—"full of learning," +as some one has said, "but never distressing +others by showing how learned he was."</p> + +<p>Said T.W. Higginson, at the Holmes Breakfast:</p> + +<p>"I should like to speak of that most delightful +of sunny old men, the father of Doctor Holmes, +whom I knew and loved when I was a child. +... I was brought up in Cambridge, my +father's house being next door to that of Doctor +Holmes' gambrel-roofed house, and the library<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> +I most enjoyed tumbling about in was the +same in which his infant gambols had first +disturbed the repose of the books. I shall +always remember a certain winter evening, when +we boys were playing before the fire, how the +old man—gray, and gentle, and kindly as any +old German professor, and never complaining +of our loudest gambols—going to the frost-covered +window, sketched with his pen-knife +what seemed a cluster of brambles and a +galaxy of glittering stars, and above that he +wrote, <i>Per aspera ad astra</i>: 'Through difficulties +to the stars.' He explained to us what it +meant, and I have never forgotten that quiet winter +evening and the sweet talk of that old man."</p> + +<p>The good pastor was a graduate of Yale +College, and before coming to Cambridge had +taught at his <i>Alma Mater</i>, and preached in +Georgia. He was the son of Doctor David +Holmes, a physician of Woodstock, Ct., who +had served as captain in the French and Indian +wars, and afterward as surgeon in the Revolutionary +army. The grandfather of Doctor +David Holmes was one of the original settlers +of Woodstock.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p> +<p>The genealogy of the Holmes family of Woodstock +dates from Thomas Holmes, a lawyer of +Gray's Inn, London. In 1686, John Holmes, +one of his descendants, joined a colony from +Roxbury, Mass., and settled in Woodstock, Conn. +His son David married a certain "Bathsheba," +who had a remarkable reputation as nurse and +doctress.</p> + +<p>In the great storm of 1717, when the settlers' +houses were almost buried in the snow, it is +said that she climbed out of an upper-story +window and travelled on snow-shoes through +almost impassable drifts to Dudley, Mass., to +visit a sick woman. The son of this noble +Bathsheba was "Dr. David," the grandfather of +Oliver Wendell Holmes.</p> + +<p>In 1790, Abiel Holmes was married to the +daughter of President Stiles of Yale, who died +without children. His second wife, and the +mother of Oliver Wendell Holmes, was a daughter +of Hon. Oliver Wendell, an eminent lawyer. +He was descended from various Wendells, +Olivers, Quinceys, and Bradstreets—names +that belonged to the best blue blood of New +England—and his wife was Mary Jackson, a +daughter of Dorothy Quincy, the "Dorothy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> +Q." whom Doctor Holmes has immortalized in +his poem. And just here, lest some of my +readers may have forgotten some parts of this +delicious bit of family portraiture, I am tempted +to give the entire poem:</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Grandmother's mother, her age I guess,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thirteen summers or something less;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Girlish bust, but womanly air,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Smooth square forehead, with uprolled hair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lips that lover has never kissed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Taper fingers and slender wrist,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So they painted the little maid.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">On her hand a parrot green<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sits unmoving and broods serene;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hold up the canvas full in view—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Look, there's a rent the light shines through.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dark with a century's fringe of dust,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That was a Redcoat's rapier thrust!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such is the tale the lady old,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dorothy's daughter's daughter told.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Who the painter was none may tell—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One whose best was not over well;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hard and dry, it must be confessed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Flat as a rose that has long been pressed;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet in her cheek the hues are bright,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dainty colors of red and white;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And in her slender shape are seen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hint and promise of stately mien.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[15]<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Look not on her with eyes of scorn—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dorothy Q. was a lady born!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ay, since the galloping Normans came,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">England's annals have known her name;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And still to the three-hilled rebel town<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dear is that ancient name's renown,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For many a civic wreath they won,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The youthful sire and the gray-haired son.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Strange is the gift that I owe to you;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such a gift as never a king<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Save to daughter or son might bring—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All my tenure of heart and hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All my title to house and land;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mother and sister, and child and wife,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And joy and sorrow, and death and life.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">What if a hundred years ago<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Those close-shut lips had answered, no,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When forth the tremulous question came<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That cost the maiden her Norman name;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And under the folds that look so still<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Should I be I, or would it be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One tenth another to nine tenths me?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Soft is the breath of a maiden's yes;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not the light gossamer stirs with less;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But never a cable that holds so fast,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through all the battles of wave and blast,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And never an echo of speech or song<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That lives in the babbling air so long!<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[16]<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There were tones in the voice that whispered then<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You may hear to-day in a hundred men.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O lady and lover, how faint and far<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Your images hover, and here we are,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Solid and stirring in flesh and bone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Edward's and Dorothy's—all their own—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A goodly record for time to show<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of a syllable spoken so long ago!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the tender whisper that bade me live?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">It shall be a blessing, my little maid,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I will heal the stab of the Redcoat's blade,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And gild with a rhyme your household name,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So you shall smile on us, brave and bright,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As first you greeted the morning's light,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And live untroubled by woes and fears,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through a second youth of a hundred years.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>This Dorothy Quincy, it is interesting to +note, was the aunt of a second Dorothy +Quincy, who married Governor Hancock. The +Wendells were of Dutch descent.</p> + +<p>Evert Jansen Wendell, who came from East +Friesland in 1645, was the original settler in Albany. +From the church records, we find that +he was the <i>Regerendo Dijaken</i> in 1656, and +upon one of the windows of the old Dutch church<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> +in Albany, the arms of the Wendells—a ship +riding at two anchors—were represented in +stained glass. Very little is known of these early +ancestors, but the name is still an influential +one among the old Knickerbocker families.</p> + +<p>Early in the eighteenth century, Abraham +and Jacob Wendell left their Albany home and +came to Boston. It is said that Jacob (the +great-grandfather of Oliver Wendell Holmes) fell +in love with his future wife, the daughter of +Doctor James Oliver, when she was only nine +years of age. Seeing her at play, he was so +impressed by her beauty and grace that, like +the Jacob of old, he willingly waited the flight +of years. Twelve children blessed this happy +union, and the youngest daughter married William +Phillips, the first mayor of Boston, and the +father of Wendell Phillips.</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"> +<span class="i5">Fair cousin, Wendell P.,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noi">says Doctor Holmes in his Phi Beta Kappa +poem of 1881:</p> + +<div class="poemblock2"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Our ancestors were dwellers beside the Zuyder Zee;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Both Grotius and Erasmus were countrymen of we,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And Vondel was our namesake, though he spelt it with a v.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p> + +<p>Jacob Wendell became, eventually, one of the +richest merchants of Boston; was a member of +the City Council and colonel of the Boston +regiment. His son, Oliver (the grandfather of +Doctor Holmes), was born in 1733, and after +his graduation at Harvard, in 1753, he went +into business with his father. He still continued +his studies, however, and preferring a professional +life to that of a business man, he afterwards +graduated at the Law School, was admitted to +the bar, and soon after appointed Judge of Probate +for Suffolk County. In Drake's <i>Old Landmarks +of Boston</i>, we find that Judge Wendell +was a selectman during the siege of Boston, and +was commissioned by General Washington to +raise a company of men to watch the British +after the evacuation, so that no spies might pass +between the two armies.</p> + +<p>The original Bradstreet was Simon, the old +Charter Governor, who married Governor Dudley's +daughter Anne.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> This accomplished lady, +the first New England poetess, and frequently +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>called by her contemporaries "The Tenth Muse," +was Doctor Holmes' grandmother's great-great-grandmother.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> + +<p>With such an ancestry, Oliver Wendell Holmes +surely fulfils all the conditions of "a man of family," +and who will not readily agree with the +<i>Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table</i>, when he writes +as follows:</p> + +<p>"I go for the man with the family portraits +against the one with the twenty-five cent +daguerreotype, unless I find out that the last is +the better of the two. I go for the man that +inherits family traditions and the cumulative +humanities of at least four or five generations. +Above all things, as a child, he should have +tumbled about in a library. All men are afraid +of books that have not handled them from +infancy."</p> + + +<div class="p6" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2> + +<h4>BOYHOOD.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>IN</big> a curious little almanac for 1809 may +still be seen against the date of August +29, the simple record, "Son b." Twice before +had good Parson Holmes recorded in similar +manner the births of his children, for Oliver +Wendell, who bore his grandfather's name, was +his third child; but this was the first time he +could write "son."</p> + +<p>A few years later another son came—the +"brother John" whose wit and talents have +gladdened so many hearts—and, last of all, +another daughter came to brighten the family +circle for a few brief years.</p> + +<p>The little Oliver was a bright, sunny-tempered +child, highly imaginative and extremely sensitive. +Speaking of his childhood in after years, +and of certain superstitious fancies that always +clung to him, he says:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I tell you it was not so pleasant for a little +boy of impressible nature to go up to bed in +an old gambrel-roofed house, with untenanted, +locked upper chambers, and a most ghostly +garret; ... There was a dark store-room, +too, on looking through the keyhole of which +I could dimly see a heap of chairs and tables +and other four-footed things, which seemed to +me to have rushed in there frightened, and in +their fright to have huddled together and climbed +up on each other's backs—as the people did +in that awful crush where so many were killed +at the execution of Holloway and Haggerty. +Then the lady's portrait up-stairs with the sword-thrusts +through it—marks of the British officers' +rapiers—and the tall mirror in which +they used to look at their red coats—confound +them for smashing its mate!—and the deep, +cunningly-wrought arm-chair in which Lord Percy +used to sit while his hair was dressing; he +was a gentleman, and always had it covered +with a large <i>peignoir</i> to save the silk covering +my grandmother embroidered. Then the little +room down-stairs from which went the orders +to throw up a bank of earth on the hill yonder +where you may now observe a granite obe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>lisk, the +study in my father's time, but in those +days the council-chamber of armed men, sometimes +filled with soldiers. Come with me, and +I will show you the 'dents' left by the butts +of their muskets all over the floor. With all these +suggestive objects round me, aided by the wild +stories those awful country boys that came to live +in our service brought with them—of contracts +written in blood and left out over night not to +be found the next morning (removed by the +Evil One who takes his nightly round among +our dwellings, and filed away for future use), +of dreams coming true, of death-signs, of apparitions, +no wonder that my imagination got excited, +and I was liable to superstitious fancies."</p> + +<p>What some of these fancies were, he tells +us elsewhere:</p> + +<p>"I was afraid of ships. Why, I could never +tell. The masts looked frightfully tall, but they +were not so tall as the steeple of our old yellow +meeting-house. At any rate, I used to hide +my eyes from the sloops and schooners that +were wont to lie at the end of the bridge, and +I confess that traces of this undefined terror +lasted very long. One other source of alarm +had a still more fearful significance. There was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> +a great wooden hand, a glovemaker's sign, which +used to swing and creak in the blast as it hung +from a pillar before a certain shop a mile or +two outside of the city. Oh, the dreadful hand! +Always hanging there ready to catch up a little +boy who would come home to supper no more, +nor yet to bed, whose porringer would be laid +away empty thenceforth, and his half-worn shoes +wait until his small brother grew to fit them.</p> + +<p>"As for all manner of superstitious observances, +I used once to think I must have been peculiar +in having such a list of them, but I +now believe that half the children of the same +age go through the same experiences. No +Roman soothsayer ever had such a catalogue +of omens as I found in the sibylline leaves of +my childhood. That trick of throwing a stone +at a tree and attaching some mighty issue to +hitting or missing, which you will find mentioned +in one or more biographies, I well +remember. Stepping on or over certain particular +things or spots—Doctor Johnson's special +weakness—I got the habit of at a very early +age.</p> + +<p>"With these follies mingled sweet delusions +which I loved so well I would not outgrow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> +them, even when it required a voluntary effort +to put a momentary trust in them. Here is +one which I cannot help telling you.</p> + +<p>"The firing of the great guns at the Navy +Yard is easily heard at the place where I was +born and lived. 'There is a ship of war come +in,' they used to say, when they heard them. +Of course I supposed that such vessels came +in unexpectedly, after indefinite years of absence, +suddenly as falling stones, and that the great +guns roared in their astonishment and delight +at the sight of the old war-ship splitting the +bay with her cut-water. Now, the sloop-of-war +the <i>Wasp</i>, Captain Blakely, after gloriously +capturing the <i>Reindeer</i> and the <i>Avon</i>, had +disappeared from the face of the ocean, and +was supposed to be lost. But there was no +proof of it, and of course for a time, hopes +were entertained that she might be heard from. +Long after the last real chance had utterly +vanished, I pleased myself with the fond illusion +that somewhere on the waste of waters +she was still floating, and there were <i>years</i> +during which I never heard the sound of the +great guns booming inland from the Navy Yard +without saying to myself, 'the <i>Wasp</i> has come!'<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> +and almost thinking I could see her as she +rolled in, crumpling the waters before her, +weather-beaten, barnacled, with shattered spars +and threadbare canvas, welcomed by the shouts +and tears of thousands. This was one of those +dreams that I mused and never told. Let +me make a clean breast of it now, and say, +that, so late as to have outgrown childhood, +perhaps to have got far on towards manhood, +when the roar of the cannon has struck +suddenly on my ear, I have started with a +thrill of vague expectation and tremulous +delight, and the long unspoken words have articulated +themselves in the mind's dumb whisper, +<i>The Wasp has come!</i></p> + +<p>"Yes; children believe plenty of queer things. +I suppose all of you have had the pocket-book +fever when you were little? What do I mean? +Why, ripping up old pocket-books in the firm +belief that bank-bills to an immense amount +were hidden in them. So, too, you must all +remember some splendid unfulfilled promise of +somebody or other, which fed you with hopes +perhaps for years, and which left a blank in +your life which nothing has ever filled up. +O.T. quitted our household carrying with him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> +the passionate regrets of the more youthful +members. He was an ingenious youngster; +wrote wonderful copies, and carved the two +initials given above with great skill on all +available surfaces. I thought, by the way, they +were all gone, but the other day, I found them +on a certain door. How it surprised me to +find them so near the ground! I had thought +the boy of no trivial dimensions. Well, O.T., +when he went, made a solemn promise to two +of us. I was to have a ship, and the other +a martin house (last syllable pronounced as in +the word <i>tin</i>). Neither ever came; but oh! how +many and many a time I have stolen to the +corner—the cars pass close by it at this time—and +looked up that long avenue, thinking +that he must be coming now, almost sure as +I turned to look northward that there he would +be, trudging toward me, the ship in one hand +and the mar<i>tin</i> house in the other!"</p> + +<p>At an early age the merry, restless little +fellow was sent to a neighboring school, kept +by Ma'am Prentiss, a good, motherly old dame, +who ruled her little flock, not with a scourge +of birches, but with a long willow rod that +reached quite across the schoolroom, "remind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>ing,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> +rather than chastening." Among her pupils +was Alfred Lee, afterwards the beloved Bishop +of Delaware.</p> + +<p>"It is by little things," says the Autocrat, +"that we know ourselves; a soul would very +probably mistake itself for another, when once +disembodied, were it not for individual experiences +which differ from those of others only in +details seemingly trivial. All of us have been +thirsty thousands of times, and felt with Pindar, +that water was the best of things. I alone, +as I think, of all mankind, remember one particular +pailful of water, flavored with the white-pine +of which the pail was made, and the +brown mug out of which one Edmund, a red-faced +and curly-haired boy, was averred to have +bitten a fragment in his haste to drink; it +being then high summer, and little full-blooded +boys feeling very warm and porous in the low +studded schoolroom where Dame Prentiss, dead +and gone, ruled over young children. Thirst +belongs to humanity everywhere, in all ages, +but that white-pine pail and that brown mug +belong to me in particular."</p> + +<p>The next school to which the Cambridge pas<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>tor +sent his little son was kept by William +Biglow, a man of considerable scholarship and +much native wit. Five years were spent at +a school in Cambridgeport, which was kept +by several successive teachers, and it was here, +as schoolmates, that Oliver Wendell Holmes +first met Margaret Fuller and Richard Henry +Dana.</p> + +<p>"I was moderately studious," says Doctor +Holmes, "and very fond of reading stories, which +I sometimes did in school hours. I was fond +also of whispering, and my desk bore sad witness +to my passion for whittling. For these +misdemeanors I sometimes had a visitation from +the ferule, and once when a Gunter's scale +was used for this purpose, it flew to pieces as +it came down on my palm."<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p> + +<p>It was about this time, doubtless, that the +<i>Autocrat</i> learned that important fact about the +"hat."</p> + +<p>"I was once equipped," he says, "in a hat +of Leghorn straw, having a brim of much wider +dimensions than were usual at that time, and +sent to school in that portion of my native +town which lies nearest to the metropolis. On +my way I was met by a 'Port-Chuck,' as we +used to call the young gentlemen of that locality, +and the following dialogue ensued:</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p> +<p>"<i>The Port-Chuck</i>: 'Hullo, you sir, joo know +th' wus goin' to be a race to-morrah?'</p> + +<p>"<i>Myself</i>: 'No. Who's goin' to run, 'n' wher' +'s't goin' to be?'</p> + +<p>"<i>The Port-Chuck</i>: 'Squire Mico 'n' Doctor +Williams, round the brim o' your hat.'</p> + +<p>"These two much-respected gentlemen being +the oldest inhabitants at that time, and the +alleged race-course being out of the question, +the Port-Chuck also winking and thrusting his +tongue into his cheek, I perceived that I had +been trifled with, and the effect has been to +make me sensitive and observant respecting +this article ever since. The hat is the vulnerable +point of the artificial integument."</p> + + + +<div class="p6" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2> + +<h4>EARLY RECOLLECTIONS.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>OF</big> the boyhood of Doctor Holmes we have +many delightful glimpses.</p> + +<p>"Like other boys in the country," he tells +us, "I had my patch of ground to which in +the springtime I intrusted the seeds furnished +me with a confident trust in their resurrection +and glorification in the better world of summer. +But I soon found that my lines had fallen in +a place where a vegetable growth had to run +the gauntlet of as many foes and trials as a +Christian pilgrim. Flowers would not blow; +daffodils perished like criminals in their condemned +caps, without their petals ever seeing +daylight; roses were disfigured with monstrous +protrusions through their very centres, something +that looked like a second bud pushing +through the middle of the corolla; lettuces and +cabbages would not head; radishes knotted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> +themselves until they looked like centenarians' +fringes; and on every stem, on every leaf, and +both sides of it, and at the root of everything +that grew, was a professional specialist in the +shape of grub, caterpillar, aphis, or other expert, +whose business it was to devour that particular +part, and help murder the whole attempt at vegetation.... +Yet Nature is never wholly +unkind. Economical as she was in my unparadised +Eden, hard as it was to make some of +my floral houris unveil, still the damask roses +sweetened the June breezes, the bladed and +plumed flower-de-luces unfolded their close-wrapped +cones, and larkspurs, and lupins, lady's delights—plebeian +manifestations of the pansy—self-sowing +marigolds, hollyhocks; the forest flowers +of two seasons, and the perennial lilacs and +syringas, all whispered to the winds blowing +over them that some caressing presence was +around me.</p> + +<p>"Beyond the garden was the field, a vast +domain of four acres or thereabouts by the measurement +of after years, bordered to the north +by a fathomless chasm—the ditch the base-ball +players of the present era jump over; on the +east by unexplored territory; on the south by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> +a barren enclosure, where the red sorrel proclaimed +liberty and equality under its <i>drapeau +rouge</i>, and succeeded in establishing a vegetable +commune where all were alike, poor, mean, sour, +and uninteresting; and on the west by the Common, +not then disgraced by jealous enclosures +which make it look like a cattle-market.</p> + +<p>"Beyond, as I looked round, were the colleges, +the meeting-house, the little square market-house, +long vanished, the burial ground +where the dead presidents stretched their weary +bones under epitaphs stretched out at as full +length as their subjects; the pretty church +where the gouty Tories used to kneel on their +hassocks, the district schoolhouse, and hard by +it Ma'am Hancock's cottage, never so called in +those days, but rather 'ten-footer'; then +houses scattered near and far, open spaces, the +shadowy elms, round hilltops in the distance, +and over all the great bowl of the sky. Mind +you, this was the <span class="smcap">WORLD</span>, as I first knew it; +<i>terra veteribus cognita</i>, as Mr. Arrowsmith would +have called it, if he had mapped the universe +of my infancy."</p> + +<p>"When I was of smallest dimensions," he +says at another time, "and wont to ride impacted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> +between the knees of fond parental pair, we +would sometimes cross the bridge to the next +village town and stop opposite a low, brown, +gambrel-roofed cottage. Out of it would come +one Sally, sister of its swarthy tenant, swarthy +herself, shady-lipped, sad-voiced, and bending +over her flower bed, would gather a 'posy,' +as she called it, for the little boy. Sally lies +in the churchyard, with a slab of blue slate at +her head, lichen-crusted, and leaning a little +within the last few years. Cottage, garden-bed, +posies, grenadier-like rows of seeding-onions—stateliest +of vegetables—all are gone, but the +breath of a marigold brings them all back to +me."</p> + +<p>Of Cambridge at this time, James Russell +Lowell, in his <i>Fireside Travels</i>, tells us: "It +was still a country village with its own habits +and traditions, not yet feeling too strongly the +force of suburban gravitation. Approaching it +from the west, by what was then called the +New Road, you would pause on the brow of +Symond's Hill to enjoy a view singularly soothing +and placid. In front of you lay the town, +tufted with elms, lindens, and horse-chestnuts, +which had seen Massachusetts a colony, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> +were fortunately unable to emigrate with the +Tories by whom, or by whose fathers they were +planted. Over it rose the noisy belfry of the +College, the square, brown tower of the Episcopal +Church, and the slim yellow spire of the +parish meeting-house. On your right the Charles +slipped smoothly through green and purple salt +meadows, darkened here and there with the +blossoming black grass as with a stranded cloud-shadow. +To your left upon the Old Road you +saw some half-dozen dignified old houses of the +colonial time, all comfortably fronting southward.... +We called it 'the Village' then, +and it was essentially an English village—quiet, +unspeculative, without enterprise, sufficing to +itself, and only showing such differences from +the original type as the public school and the +system of town government might superinduce. +A few houses, chiefly old, stood around the +bare common, with ample elbow-room, and old +women, capped and spectacled, still peered +through the same windows from which they had +watched Lord Percy's artillery rumble by to +Lexington, or caught a glimpse of the handsome +Virginia general who had come to wield +our homespun Saxon chivalry. The hooks were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> +to be seen from which had swung the hammocks +of Burgoyne's captive red-coats. If memory +does not deceive me, women still washed +clothes in the town spring, clear as that of +Bandusia. One coach sufficed for all the travel +to the metropolis. Commencement had not +ceased to be the great holiday of the Boston +commonwealth, and a fitting one it was. The +students (scholars they were called then) wore +their sober uniform, not ostentatiously distinctive, +or capable of rousing democratic envy; and +the old lines of caste were blurred rather than +rubbed out, as servitor was softened into beneficiary. +Was it possible for us in those days +to conceive of a greater potentate than the +president of the University, in his square doctor's +cap, that still filially recalled Oxford and +Cambridge?"</p> + +<p>The father of Oliver Wendell Holmes was a +Calvanist, not indeed of the severest cast, but +still strictly "orthodox" in all his religious +views, and when Oliver, his elder son, was fifteen +years of age, he sent him to the Phillips +Academy in Andover, thinking that the religious +atmosphere there was less heretical than +at Phillips Academy, Exeter, where Arminian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> +tendencies were just beginning to show themselves.</p> + +<p>"I have some recollections of Andover, pleasant +and other," says Doctor Holmes. "I wonder +if the old Seminary clock strikes as slowly +as it used to. My room-mate thought, when +he first came, it was the bell tolling deaths, +and people's ages, as they do in the country. +He swore (ministers' sons get so familiar with +good words that they are apt to handle them +carelessly), that the children were dying by the +dozen of all ages, from one to twelve, and ran +off next day in recess when it began to strike +eleven, but was caught before the clock got +through striking. At the foot of the hill, +down in town, is, or was, a tidy old elm, which +was said to have been hooped with iron to protect +it from Indian tomahawks (<i>Credab Hahnucmannus</i>), +and to have grown round its hoops +and buried them in its wood."</p> + +<p>The extreme conscientiousness of the boy is +strikingly depicted in the following revelation:</p> + +<p>"The first unequivocal act of wrong that has +left its trace in my memory was this: refusing +a small favor asked of me—nothing more than +telling what had happened at school one morn<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>ing. +No matter who asked it; but there were +circumstances which saddened and awed me. I +had no heart to speak; I faltered some miserable, +perhaps petulant excuse, stole away, and +the first battle of life was lost.</p> + +<p>"What remorse followed I need not tell. +Then and there to the best of my knowledge, +I first consciously took Sin by the hand and +turned my back on Duty. Time has led me +to look upon my offence more leniently; I do +not believe it or any other childish wrong is +infinite, as some have pretended, but infinitely +finite. Yet, if I had but won that first battle!"</p> + +<p>And what a charming picture he gives us +of the peaceful, hallowing influences about him +in that quiet old parsonage!</p> + +<p>"The Puritan 'Sabbath,' as everybody knows, +began at 'sundown' on Saturday evening. To +such observances of it I was born and bred. +As the large, round disk of day declined, a +stillness, a solemnity, a somewhat melancholy +hush came over us all. It was time for work +to cease, and for playthings to be put away. +The world of active life passed into the shadow +of an eclipse, not to emerge until the sun +should sink again beneath the horizon.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p> + +<p>"It was in the stillness of the world without +and of the soul within that the pulsating lullaby +of the evening crickets used to make +itself most distinctly heard—so that I well +remember I used to think that the purring of +these little creatures, which mingled with the +batrachian hymns from the neighboring swamps, +<i>was peculiar to Saturday evenings</i>. I don't +know that anything could give a clearer idea +of the quieting and subduing effect of the old +habit of observance of what was considered +holy time, than this strange, childish fancy."</p> + +<p>Had all the clergymen who visited the parsonage +been as true to their profession as his +own dear father, the thoughtful, impressible boy +might, very possibly, have devoted his brilliant +talents to the ministry. "It was a real delight," +he says, "to have one of those good, hearty, +happy, benignant old clergymen pass the Sunday +with us, and I can remember one whose advent +made the day feel almost like 'Thanksgiving.' +But now and then would come along a clerical +visitor with a sad face and a wailing voice, +which sounded exactly as if somebody must be +lying dead up-stairs, who took no interest in +us children, except a painful one, as being in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> +bad way with our cheery looks, and did more +to unchristianize us with his woebegone ways +than all his sermons were like to accomplish in +the other direction. I remember one in particular +who twitted me so with my blessings as +a Christian child, and whined so to me about +the naked black children, that he did more in +that one day to make me a heathen than he +had ever done in a month to make a Christian +out of an infant Hottentot. I might have +been a minister myself for aught I know, if +this clergyman had not looked and talked so +like an undertaker."</p> + +<p>An exercise written while at Andover, shows at +what an early age he attempted versification. It +is a translation from the first book of Virgil's +Æneid, and reads as smoothly as any lines of +Pope. The following extract shows the angry god +giving his orders to Zephyrus and Eurus:</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Is this your glory in a noble line,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To leave your confines and to ravage mine?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Whom I—but let these troubled waves subside—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Another tempest and I'll quell your pride!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Go bear our message to your master's ear,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That wide as ocean I am despot here;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Let him sit monarch in his barren caves!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I wield the trident and control the waves.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + + + +<div class="p6" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2> + +<h4>OTHER REMINISCENCES.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>IN</big> his vacations the inquiring mind of the +young student had made "strange acquaintances" +in a certain book infirmary up in the +attic of the gambrel-roofed house.</p> + +<p>"<i>The Negro Plot at New York</i>," he says, +"helped to implant a feeling in me which it +took Mr. Garrison a good many years to root +out. <i>Thinks I to myself</i>, an old novel which +has been attributed to a famous statesman, introduced +me to a world of fiction which was +not represented on the shelves of the library +proper, unless perhaps by <i>Caelebs in search of +a Wife</i>, or allegories of the bitter tonic class."</p> + +<p>Then there was an old, old Latin alchemy +book, with the manuscript annotations of some +ancient Rosicrucian, "In the pages of which," he +says, "I had a vague notion that I might find +the mighty secret of the <i>Lapis Philosophorum</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> +otherwise called Chaos, the Dragon, the Green +Lion, the <i>Quinta Essentia</i>, the Soap of Sages, +the vinegar of Heavenly Grace, the Egg, the +Old Man, the Sun, the Moon, and by all manner +of odd <i>aliases</i>, as I am assured by the +plethoric little book before me, in parchment +covers browned like a meerschaum with the +smoke of furnaces, and the thumbing of dead +gold-seekers, and the fingering of bony-handed +book-misers, and the long intervals of dusty +slumber on the shelves of the <i>bonquiniste</i>."</p> + +<p>"I have never lost my taste for alchemy," +he adds, "since I first got hold of the <i>Palladium +Spagyricum</i> of Peter John Faber, and sought—in +vain, it is true—through its pages for a +clear, intelligible, and practical statement of how +I could turn my lead sinkers and the weights +of the tall kitchen clock into good yellow gold +specific gravity, 19.2, and exchangeable for whatever +I then wanted, and for many more things +than I was then aware of.</p> + +<p>"One of the greatest pleasures of childhood +is found in the mysteries which it hides from +the scepticism of the elders, and works up into +small mythologies of its own. I have seen all +this played over again in adult life, the same<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> +delightful bewilderment of semi-emotional belief +in listening to the gaseous promises of this or +that fantastic system, that I found in the pleasing +mirages conjured up for me by the ragged +old volume I used to pore over in the southeast +attic chamber."</p> + +<p>There are other reminiscences of these days +that show us not only the outward surroundings, +but the inner workings of the boy's mind.</p> + +<p>"The great Destroyer," he says, "had come +near me, but never so as to be distinctly seen +and remembered during my tender years. There +flits dimly before me the image of a little girl +whose name even I have forgotten, a schoolmate +whom we missed one day, and were told that +she had died. But what death was I never +had any very distinct idea until one day I +climbed the low stone-wall of the old burial +ground and mingled with a group that were +looking into a very deep, long, narrow hole, +dug down through the green sod, down through +the brown loam, down through the yellow gravel, +and there at the bottom was an oblong red +box, and a still, sharp, white face of a young +man seen through an opening at one end of it.</p> + +<p>"When the lid was closed, and the gravel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> +and stones rattled down pell-mell, and the woman +in black who was crying and wringing her +hands went off with the other mourners, and +left him, then I felt that I had seen Death, +and should never forget him."</p> + +<p>There were certain sounds too, he tells us, +that had "a mysterious suggestiveness" to him. +One was the "creaking of the woodsleds, bringing +their loads of oak and walnut from the +country, as the slow-swinging oxen trailed them +along over the complaining snow in the cold, +brown light of early morning. Lying in bed +and listening to their dreary music had a +pleasure in it akin to the Lucretian luxury, or +that which Byron speaks of as to be enjoyed +in looking on at a battle by one 'who hath +no friend, no brother there.'</p> + +<p>"Yes, and there was still another sound +which mingled its solemn cadences with the +waking and sleeping dreams of my boyhood. +It was heard only at times, a deep, muffled +roar, which rose and fell, not loud, but vast; +a whistling boy would have drowned it for his +next neighbor, but it must have been heard +over the space of a hundred square miles. I +used to wonder what this might be. Could it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> +be the roar of the thousand wheels and the ten +thousand footsteps jarring and trampling along +the stones of the neighboring city? That would +be continuous; but this, as I have said, rose +and fell in regular rhythm. I remember being +told, and I suppose this to have been the true +solution, that it was the sound of the waves +after a high wind breaking on the long beaches +many miles distant."</p> + +<p>After a year's study at Andover, he was +fully prepared to enter Harvard University.</p> + +<p>In the Charlestown Navy Yard, at this time, +was the old frigate <i>Constitution</i>, which the +government purposed to break up as unfit for +service, thoughtless of the desecration:</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">There was an hour when patriots dared profane<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The mast that Britain strove to bow in vain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And one, who listened to the tale of shame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose heart still answered to that sacred name,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose eye still followed o'er his country's tides<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy glorious flag, our brave <i>Old Ironsides!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"> yon lone attic, on a summer's morn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thus mocked the spoilers with his schoolboy scorn:<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Long has it waved on high,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And many an eye has danced to see<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That banner in the sky;<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"> [45]<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Beneath it rung the battle shout,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And burst the cannon's roar;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The meteor of the ocean air<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shall sweep the clouds no more!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where knelt the vanquished foe,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And waves were white below,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">No more shall feel the victor's tread,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or know the conquered knee;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The harpies of the shore shall pluck<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The eagle of the sea.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Oh, better that her shattered hulk<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Should sink beneath the wave;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Her thunders shook the mighty deep,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And there should be her grave;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Nail to the mast her holy flag,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Set every thread-bare sail,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And give her to the god of storms<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The lightning and the gale!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +</div></div></div> + +<p>This stirring poem—the first to make him +known—was written by Oliver Wendell Holmes +in 1830, "with a pencil in the White Chamber +<i>Stans pede in uno</i>, pretty nearly," and was +published in the Boston <i>Advertiser</i>. From these +columns it was extensively copied by other +newspapers throughout the country, and handbills +containing the verses were circulated in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> +Washington. The eloquent, patriotic outburst +not only brought instant fame to the young +poet, but so thoroughly aroused the heart of +the people that the grand old vessel was saved +from destruction.</p> + +<p>The "schoolboy" had already entered Harvard +College, and among his classmates in that +famous class of 1829, were Benjamin R. Curtis, +afterwards Judge of the Supreme Court, James +Freeman Clarke, Chandler Robbins, Samuel F. +Smith (the author of "My country, 'tis of +thee"), G.T. Bigelow (Judge of the Supreme +Court of Massachusetts), G.T. Davis, and Benjamin +Pierce.</p> + +<p>In the class just below him (1830) was +Charles Sumner; and his cousin, Wendell Phillips, +with John Lothrop Motley, entered Harvard +during his Junior year. George Ticknor +was one of his instructors, and Josiah Quincy +became president of the college before he graduated.</p> + +<p>Throughout his whole college course Oliver +Wendell Holmes maintained an excellent rank +in scholarship. He was a frequent contributor +to the college periodicals, and delivered several +poems upon a variety of subjects. One of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> +these was given before the "Hasty Pudding +Club," and another entitled "Forgotten Days," +at an "Exhibition." He was the class poet; +was called upon to write the poem at Commencement, +and was one of the sixteen chosen +into the Phi Beta Kappa Society.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p> + +<p>After his graduation, he studied law one year +in the Dane Law School of Harvard College. It +was at this time that <i>The Collegian</i>, a periodical +published by a number of the Harvard +under-graduates, was started at Cambridge. To +this paper the young law student sent numerous +anonymous contributions, among them "Evening, +by a Tailor," "The Height of the Ridiculous," +"The Meeting of the Dryads," and "The +Spectre Pig." A brilliant little journal it must +have been with Holmes' inimitable outbursts of +wit, "Lochfast's" (William H. Simmons) translations +from Schiller, and the numerous pen +thrusts from John O. Sargent, Robert Habersham +and Theodore William Snow, who wrote +under the respective signatures of "Charles +Sherry," "Mr. Airy" and "Geoffery La +Touche." Young Motley, too, was an occasional +contributor to <i>The Collegian</i>, and his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>brother-in-law, Park Benjamin, joined Holmes +and Epes Sargent, in 1833, in writing a gift +book called "The Harbinger," the profits of +which were given to Dr. Howe's Asylum for +the blind.</p> + + + +<div class="p6" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2> + +<h4>ABROAD.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>AFTER</big> a year's study of law, during which +time the Muses were constantly tempting +him to "pen a stanza when he should engross," +young Holmes determined to take up the study +of medicine, which was much more congenial +to his tastes than the formulas of Coke and +Blackstone. Doctor James Jackson and his +associates were his instructors for the following +two years and a half; and then before taking +his degree of M.D., he spent three years +in Europe, perfecting his studies in the hospitals +and lecture-rooms of Paris and Edinburgh.</p> + +<p>Of this European tour, we find occasional +allusions scattered throughout his writings. +Listen, for instance, to this grand description +of Salisbury Cathedral:</p> + +<p>"It was the first cathedral we ever saw, +and none has ever so impressed us since.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> +Vast, simple, awful in dimensions and height, +just beginning to grow tall at the point where +our proudest steeples taper out, it fills the +whole soul, pervades the vast landscape over +which it reigns, and, like Niagara and the Alps, +abolishes that five or six foot personality in +the beholder which is fostered by keeping +company with the little life of the day in its +little dwellings. In the Alps your voice is as +the piping of a cricket. Under the sheet of +Niagara the beating of your heart seems too +trivial a movement to take reckoning of. In +the buttressed hollow of one of these paleozoic +cathedrals you are ashamed of your ribs, and +blush for the exiguous pillars of bone on which +your breathing structure reposes.... These +old cathedrals are beyond all comparison, what +are best worth seeing of man's handiwork +in Europe."</p> + +<p>"Lively emotions very commonly do not +strike us full in front, but obliquely from the +side," he says at another time. "A scene or +incident in <i>undress</i> often affects us more than +one in full costume."</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Is this the mighty ocean?—is this all?<br /> +</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p> + +<p>Says the Princess in Gebir. The rush that +should have flooded my soul in the Coliseum +did not come. But walking one day in the +fields about the city, I stumbled over a fragment +of broken masonry, and lo! the World's +Mistress in her stone girdle—<i>alta mænia +Romæ</i>—rose before me, and whitened my +cheek with her pale shadow, as never before or +since.</p> + +<p>"I used very often, when coming home +from my morning's work at one of the public +institutions of Paris, to stop in at the dear old +church of St. Etienne du Mont. The tomb of +St. Genevieve, surrounded by burning candles +and votive tablets was there; there was a +noble organ with carved figures; the pulpit +was borne on the oaken shoulders of a stooping +Samson; and there was a marvellous staircase, +like a coil of lace. These things I +mention from memory, but not all of them together +impressed me so much as an inscription +on a small slab of marble fixed in one of the +walls. It told how this Church of St. Stephen +was repaired and beautified in the 16**, and +how during the celebration of its re-opening, +two girls of the parish (<i>filles de la paroisse</i>),<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> +fell from the gallery, carrying a part of the +balustrade with them, to the pavement, but by +miracle escaped uninjured. Two young girls, +nameless, but real presences to my imagination, +as much as when they came fluttering +down on the tiles with a cry that outscreamed +the sharpest treble in the <i>Te Deum</i>. All the +crowd gone but these two <i>filles de la paroisse</i>—gone +as utterly as the dresses they wore, as +the shoes that were on their feet, as the bread +and meat that were in the market on that +day.</p> + +<p>"Not the great historical events, but the +personal incidents that call up single sharp pictures +of some human being in its pang of +struggle, reach us most nearly. I remember the +platform at Berne, over the parapet of which +Theobald Weinzäpfli's restive horse sprang with +him and landed him more than a hundred feet +beneath in the lower town, not dead, but sorely +broken, and no longer a wild youth, but God's +servant from that day forward. I have forgotten +the famous bears and all else. I remember the +Percy lion on the bridge over the little river +at Alnwick—the leaden lion with his tail stretched +out straight like a pump-handle—and why?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> +Because of the story of the village boy who +must fain bestride the leaden tail, standing out +over the water—which breaking, he dropped +into the stream far below, and was taken out +an idiot for the rest of his life."</p> + +<p>Again he says: "I once ascended the spire +of Strasburg Cathedral, which is the highest, +I think, in Europe. It is a shaft of stone +filigree-work, frightfully open, so that the guide +puts his arms behind you to keep you from +falling. To climb it is a noonday nightmare, +and to think of having climbed it crisps all +the fifty-six joints of one's twenty digits. While +I was on it, 'pinnacled dim in the intense +inane,' a strong wind was blowing, and I felt +sure that the spire was rocking. It swayed +back and forward like a stalk of rye, or a +cat-o'-nine tails (bulrush) with a bobolink on +it. I mentioned it to the guide, and he said +that the spire did really swing back and forward, +I think he said some feet.</p> + +<p>"Keep any line of knowledge ten years and +some other line will intersect it. Long after +I was hunting out a paper of Dumeril's in an +old journal—the '<i>Magazin Encyclopédique</i>'—for +<i>l'an troiséme</i> (1795), when I stumbled upon a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> +brief article on the vibrations of the spire of +Strasburg Cathedral. A man can shake it so the +movement shall be shown in a vessel of water +nearly seventy feet below the summit, and +higher up the vibration is like that of an +earthquake. I have seen one of those wretched +wooden spires with which we very shabbily finish +some of our stone churches (thinking that +the lidless blue eye of heaven cannot tell the +counterfeit we try to pass on it), swinging like +a reed in a wind, but one would hardly think +of such a thing happening in a stone spire."</p> + +<p>Nor does he forget that dear little child he +saw and heard in a French hospital. "Between +two and three years old. Fell out of her chair +and snapped both thigh-bones. Lying in bed, +patient, gentle. Rough students round her, +some in white aprons, looking fearfully businesslike; +but the child placid, perfectly still. I +spoke to her, and the blessed little creature +answered me in a voice of such heavenly sweetness, +with that reedy thrill in it which you +have heard in the thrush's even-song, that I +hear it at this moment. '<i>C'est tout comme unserin</i>,' +said the French student at my side."</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/054.jpg" width="600" height="416" alt="" title="The Birthplace of Oliver Wendell Holmes." /> +<span class="caption smcap">The Birthplace of Oliver Wendell Holmes.</span> +</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p> +<div class="p2" /> +<p>The ruins of a Roman aqueduct he describes +in another place, and now and then some incident +that happened in England or Scotland, +may be found among his writings; but when, +after three years' absence, he returns to Cambridge +and delivers his poem before the "Phi +Beta Kappa Society," he begs his classmates to—</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Ask no garlands sought beyond the tide,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But take the leaflets gathered at your side.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>How affectionately his thoughts turned homeward +is strikingly shown in the very first lines +of the poem:</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Scenes of my youth! awake its slumbering fire!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ye winds of memory, sweep the silent lyre!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ray of the past, if yet thou canst appear,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Break through the clouds of Fancy's waning year;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Chase from her breast the thin autumnal snow,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">If leaf or blossom still is fresh below!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Long have I wandered; the returning tide<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Brought back an exile to his cradle's side;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And as my bark her time-worn flag unrolled<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To greet the land-breeze with its faded fold,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">So, in remembrance of my boyhood's time,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I lift these ensigns of neglected rhyme;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">O more than blest, that all my wanderings through,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My anchor falls where first my pennons flew!<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>And read yet again in another place this loving +tribute to the home of his childhood:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p> + +<p>"To what small things our memory and our +affections attach themselves! I remember when +I was a child that one of the girls planted +some Star of Bethlehem bulbs in the southwest +corner of our front yard. Well, I left the paternal +roof and wandered in other lands, and +learned to think in the words of strange people. +But after many years, as I looked in the +little front yard again, it occurred to me that +there used to be some Stars of Bethlehem in the +southwest corner. The grass was tall there, and +the blade of the plant is very much like grass, +only thicker and glossier.</p> + +<p>"Even as Tully parted the briers and brambles +when he hunted for the sphere-containing cylinder +that marked the grave of Archimedes, +so did I comb the grass with my fingers for +my monumental memorial flower. Nature had +stored my keepsake tenderly in her bosom. The +glossy, faintly-streaked blades were there; they +are there still, though they never flower, darkened +as they are by the shade of the elms +and rooted in the matted turf.</p> + +<p>"Our hearts are held down to our homes by +innumerable fibres, trivial as that I have just +recalled; but Gulliver was fixed to the soil,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> +you remember, by pinning his head a hair at +a time. Even a stone, with a whitish band +crossing it, belonging to the pavement of the +back yard, insisted on becoming one of the +talismans of memory.</p> + +<p>"This intersusception of the ideas of inanimate +objects, and their faithful storing away +among the sentiments, are curiously prefigured +in the material structure of the thinking centre +itself. In the very core of the brain, in the +part where Des Cartes placed the soul, is a +small mineral deposit of grape-like masses of +crystalline matter.</p> + +<p>"But the plants that come up every year +in the same place, like the Stars of Bethlehem, +of all the lesser objects, give me the +liveliest home-feeling."</p> + +<p>To return to the Phi Beta Kappa poem, +modestly termed by the author "A Metrical +Essay," it is interesting to note Lowell's hearty +appreciation of it in his <i>Fable for Critics</i>:</p> + +<div class="poemblock2"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">There's <i>Holmes</i>, who is matchless among you for wit,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A Leyden jar always full-charged, from which flit<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The electrical tingles of hit after hit.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In long poems 'tis painful sometimes, and invites<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A thought of the way the new telegraph writes,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spitefully,<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[58]<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As if you got more than you'd title to rightfully.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And you find yourself hoping its wild father Lightning<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Would flame in for a second and give you a fright'ning.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He has perfect sway of what I call a sham metre,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But many admire it, the English pentameter,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With less nerve, swing and fire, in the same kind of verse.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor e'er achieved aught in 't so worthy of praise<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As the tribute of Holmes to the grand <i>Marseillaise</i>.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">You went crazy last year over Bulwer's <i>New Simon</i>;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Why, if B., to the day of his dying should rhyme on,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He could ne'er reach the best point and vigor of Holmes!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satyric<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That are trodden upon, are your own or your foes.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>This tribute of Holmes to the grand Marseillaise +is indeed one of the finest passages in a +poem abounding in point and vigor, as well as in +fancy and feeling. Who can read these stirring +lines without a sympathetic thrill for the watching, +weeping Rouget de l'Isle, composing in one +night both music and words of the nameless +song?</p> + +<div class="poemblock2"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">The city slept beneath the moonbeam's glance,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Her white walls gleaming through the vines of France,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And all was hushed save where the footsteps fell<br /></span> +<span class="i1">On some high tower, of midnight sentinel.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[59]<br /></span> + +<span class="i1">But one still watched; no self-encircled woes<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Chased from his lids the angel of repose;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">He watched, he wept, for thoughts of bitter years<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Bowed his dark lashes, wet with burning tears;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">His country's sufferings and her children's shame<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Streamed o'er his memory like a forest's flame,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Each treasured insult, each remembered wrong,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Rolled through his heart and kindled into song;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">His taper faded; and the morning gales<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Swept through the world the war song of Marseilles!<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>In this same Phi Beta Kappa poem may be +found that beautiful pastoral, <i>The Cambridge +Churchyard</i>, and</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span style="margin-left: 8em;">Since the lyric dress</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Relieves the statelier with its sprightliness,<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p class="noi">the stirring verses on <i>Old Ironsides</i> are here +repeated. Said one who heard young Holmes +deliver this poem in the college church:</p> + +<p>"Extremely youthful in his appearance, bubbling +over with the mingled humor and pathos that +have always marked his poetry, and sparkling +with the coruscations of his peculiar genius, he +delivered the poem with a clear, ringing enunciation +which imparted to the hearers his own enjoyment +of his thoughts and expressions."</p> + + + +<div class="p6" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2> + +<h4>CHANGE IN THE HOME.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>IN</big> 1836, Oliver Wendell Holmes took his +degree of M.D. The following year was +made sadly memorable to the happy family at +the parsonage by the death of the beloved +father. He had reached his threescore years +and ten, but still seemed so vigorous in mind and +body that neither his family nor the parish were +prepared for the sad event. Mary and Ann, +the two eldest daughters, were already married; +the one to Usher Parson, M.D., the other to +Honorable Charles Wentworth Upham. Sarah, +the youngest, had died in early childhood, and +only Oliver Wendell and his brother John +remained of the once large family at the +parsonage. Mrs. Holmes still continued to +reside with her two sons in the old gambrel-roofed +house which her father, Judge Oliver +Wendell, had bought for her at the time of +her marriage.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span></p> + +<p>The <i>Poet at the Breakfast-Table</i> thus describes +the delightful old dwelling now used as one +of the College buildings:</p> + +<p>"The worst of a modern stylish mansion is, +that it has no place for ghosts.... Now the +old house had wainscots behind which the mice +were always scampering, and squeaking, and +rattling down the plaster, and enacting family +scenes and parlor theatricals. It had a cellar +where the cold slug clung to the walls and the +misanthropic spider withdrew from the garish +day; where the green mould loved to grow, +and the long, white, potato-shoots went feeling +along the floor if happily they might find the +daylight; it had great brick pillars, always in a +cold sweat with holding up the burden they +had been aching under day and night for a century +and more; it had sepulchral arches closed by +rough doors that hung on hinges rotten with +rust, behind which doors, if there was not a +heap of bones connected with a mysterious +disappearance of long ago, there well might +have been, for it was just the place to look for +them.</p> + +<p>"Let us look at the garret as I can reproduce +it from memory. It has a flooring of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> +lath, with ridges of mortar squeezed up between +them, which if you tread on you will go to—the +Lord have mercy on you! where will you +go to?—the same being crossed by narrow +bridges of boards, on which you may put your +feet, but with fear and trembling.</p> + +<p>"Above you and around you are beams and +joists, on some of which you may see, when +the light is let in, the marks of the conchoidal +clippings of the broadaxes, showing the rude +way in which the timber was shaped, as it came, +full of sap, from the neighboring forest. It is +a realm of darkness and thick dust, and shroudlike +cobwebs and dead things they wrap in their +gray folds. For a garret is like a seashore, +where wrecks are thrown up and slowly go to +pieces. There is the cradle which the old man +you just remember was rocked in; there is the +ruin of the bedstead he died on; that ugly +slanting contrivance used to be put under his +pillow in the days when his breath came hard; +there is his old chair with both arms gone, +symbol of the desolate time when he had nothing +earthly left to lean on; there is the large +wooden reel which the blear-eyed old deacon +sent the minister's lady, who thanked him gra<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>ciously, +and twirled it smilingly, and in fitting +season bowed it out decently to the limbo of +troublesome conveniences. And there are old +leather portmanteaus, like stranded porpoises, +their mouths gaping in gaunt hunger for the +food with which they used to be gorged to +bulging repletion; and the empty churn with +its idle dasher which the Nancys and Phebes, +who have left their comfortable places to the +Bridgets and Norahs, used to handle to good +purpose; and the brown, shaky old spinningwheel, +which was running, it may be, in the +days when they were hanging the Salem +witches.</p> + +<p>"Under the dark and haunted garret were +attic chambers which themselves had histories.... +The rooms of the second story, +the chambers of birth and death, are sacred +to silent memories.</p> + +<p>"Let us go down to the ground floor. I +retain my doubts about those dents on the +floor of the right-hand room, the study of +successive occupants, said to have been made +by the butts of the Continental militia's firelocks, +but this was the cause the story told +me in childhood, laid them to. That military<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> +consultations were held in that room when the +house was General Ward's headquarters, that +the Provincial generals and colonels and other +men of war there planned the movement which +ended in the fortifying of Bunker's Hill, that +Warren slept in the house the night before the +battle, that President Langdon went forth from +the western door and prayed for God's blessing +on the men just setting forth on their +bloody expedition—all these things have been +told, and perhaps none of them need be +doubted....</p> + +<p>"In the days of my earliest remembrance, a +row of tall Lombardy poplars mounted guard +on the western side of the old mansion. +Whether like the cypress, these trees suggest +the idea of the funeral torch or the monumental +spire, whether their tremulous leaves +make us afraid by sympathy with their nervous +thrills, whether the faint balsamic smell of their +leaves and their closely swathed limbs have in +them vague hints of dead Pharaohs stiffened +in their cerements, I will not guess; but they +always seemed to me to give an air of sepulchral +sadness to the house before which they +stood sentries.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Not so with the row of elms you may see +leading up towards the western entrance. I +think the patriarch of them all went over in +the great gale of 1815; I know I used to +shake the youngest of them with my hands, +stout as it is now, with a trunk that would +defy the bully of Crotona, or the strong man +whose <i>liaison</i> with the Lady Delilah proved +so disastrous.</p> + +<p>"The College plain would be nothing without +its elms. As the long hair of a woman is a +glory to her, so are these green tresses that +bank themselves against the sky in thick clustered +masses, the ornament and the pride of +the classic green....</p> + +<p>"There is a row of elms just in front of the +old house on the south. When I was a child +the one at the southwest corner was struck by +lightning, and one of its limbs and a long +ribbon of bark torn away. The tree never fully +recovered its symmetry and vigor, and forty +years and more afterwards a second thunderbolt +crashed upon it and set its heart on fire, +like those of the lost souls in the Hall of +Eblis. Heaven had twice blasted it, and the +axe finished what the lightning had begun."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Ah me!" he exclaims at another time, +"what strains of unwritten verse pulsate through +my soul when I open a certain closet in the +ancient house where I was born! On its +shelves used to lie bundles of sweet marjoram +and pennyroyal and lavender and mint and3 +catnip; there apples were stored until their +seeds should grow black, which happy period +there were sharp little milk teeth always ready +to anticipate; there peaches lay in the dark, +thinking of the sunshine they had lost, until, +like the hearts of saints that dream of heaven +in their sorrow, they grew fragrant as the +breath of angels. The odorous echo of a score +of dead summers lingers yet in those dim +recesses."</p> + + + +<div class="p6" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2> + +<h4>THE PROFESSOR.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>IN</big> 1839, Doctor Holmes was appointed Professor +of Anatomy and Physiology in Dartmouth +College, and pleasantly describes in <i>The Professor</i>, +his "Autumnal sojourn by the Connecticut, +where it comes loitering down from its +mountain fastnesses like a great lord swallowing +up the small proprietary rivulets very quietly +as it goes." The little country tavern where +he stayed while delivering his lectures, he calls +"that caravansary on the banks of the stream +where Ledyard launched his log canoe, and the +jovial old Colonel used to lead the Commencement +processions." And what a charming description +this of the little town of Hanover, "where +blue Ascutney looked down from the far distance +and the 'hills of Beulah' rolled up the +opposite horizon in soft, climbing masses, so +suggestive of the Pilgrim's Heavenward Path<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> +that he (the Professor) used to look through +his old 'Dollond' to see if the Shining Ones +were not within range of sight—sweet visions, +sweetest in those Sunday walks which carried +him by the peaceful common, through the solemn +village lying in cataleptic stillness under +the shadow of the rod of Moses, to the terminus +of his harmless stroll, the spreading beech-tree."</p> + +<p>In 1840, Doctor Holmes was married to Amelia +Lee Jackson, a daughter of Hon. Charles Jackson, +formerly judge of the Supreme Court of +Massachusetts. The first home of the young +couple was at No. 8, Montgomery Place, the +house at the left-hand side of the court, and +next the farther corner. Here Doctor Holmes +resided for about eighteen years,<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> and here all +his children were born.</p> + +<p>"When he entered that door, two shadows +glided over the threshold; five lingered in the +doorway when he passed through it for the +last time, and one of the shadows was claimed +by its owner to be longer than his own. +What changes he saw in that quiet place! +Death rained through every roof but his; +children came into life, grew to maturity, wedded, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>faded away, threw themselves away; the whole +drama of life was played in that stock company's +theatre of a dozen houses, one of which was +his, and no deep sorrow or severe calamity ever +entered his dwelling in that little court where +he lived in gay loneliness so long."</p> + +<p>In order to devote himself more strictly to +his practice in Boston, Doctor Holmes resigned +his professorship at Dartmouth College soon +after his marriage. During the summer months, +however, he delivered lectures before the Berkshire +Medical School at Pittsfield, Mass., and +established his summer residence "up among +those hills that shut in the amber-flowing Housatonic, +in the home overlooking the winding +stream and the smooth, flat meadow; looked +down upon by wild hills where the tracks of +bears and catamounts may yet sometimes be +seen upon the winter snow—a home," he adds, +"where seven blessed summers were passed +which stand in memory like the seven golden +candlesticks in the beatific vision of the holy +dreamer."</p> + +<p>The township of Pontoosuc, now Pittsfield, including +some twenty-four thousand acres, was +bought by Doctor Holmes' great-grandfather, Jacob<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> +Wendell, about the year 1734. It was on a +small part of this large possession that "Canoe +Place," the pleasant summer home of Doctor +Holmes, was built.</p> + +<p>Hawthorne was then living at Lenox, which +is only a few miles from Pittsfield, and in his +contribution to Lowell's magazine, <i>The Pioneer</i>, +in 1843, he describes in his <i>Hall of Fantasy</i>, the +poets he saw "talking in groups, with a liveliness +of expression, or ready smile, and a light, +intellectual laughter which showed how rapidly +the shafts of wit were glancing to and fro among +them. In the most vivacious of these," he adds, +"I recognized Holmes."</p> + +<p>Beside Hawthorne, there was Herman Melville, +Miss Sedgwick and Fanny Kemble near by +on those "maple-shadowed plains of Berkshire," +while Bryant and Ellery Channing not unfrequently +joined the brilliant circle in their summer +trips to the Stockbridge hills.</p> + +<p>In the Boston home of Doctor Holmes, John +Lothrop Motley was a welcome visitor—a man +whose "generous sympathies with popular liberty +no homage paid to his genius by the class whose +admiring welcome is most seductive to scholars +could ever spoil." Both young men were mem<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>bers +of the Massachusetts Historical Society, +and after the death of Motley, Holmes became +his biographer.</p> + +<p>Charles Sumner formed another of this pleasant +literary coterie, and is described by Doctor +Holmes, after a short acquaintance, as "an amiable, +blameless young man; pleasant, affable and +cheerful." Years after, when Sumner was assaulted +in the Senate, Doctor Holmes, at a public +dinner in Boston, denounced in strong language, +the shameful outrage as an assault not only upon +the man, but upon the Union.</p> + +<p>At the Berkshire festivals, the poet was often +called upon to furnish a song, and brimful of +wit and wisdom they always were, though often +composed upon the spur of the moment. Here +is a part of one of them:</p> + +<div class="poemblock2"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Come back to your mother, ye children, for shame,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Who have wandered like truants, for riches or fame!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With a smile on her face, and a sprig in her cap,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">She calls you to feast from her bountiful lap.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Come out from your alleys, your courts, and your lanes,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And breathe, like young eagles, the air of our plains,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Take a whiff from our fields, and your excellent wives<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Will declare it's all nonsense insuring your lives.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[72]<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> + +<span class="i2">Come you of the law, who can talk, if you please,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till the Man in the Moon will declare it's a cheese,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And leave 'the old lady that never tell lies,'<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To sleep with her handkerchief over her eyes.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Ye healers of men, for a moment decline<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">While you shut up your turnpike, your neighbors can go<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The old roundabout road, to the regions below.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">You clerk, on whose ears are a couple of pens,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And whose head is an anthill of units and tens,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Though Plato denies you, we welcome you still<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As a featherless biped, in spite of your quill.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Poor drudge of the city! how happy he feels<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With the burrs on his legs and the grass at his heels!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No <i>dodger</i> behind, his bandannas to share,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No constable grumbling "You mustn't walk there!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">In yonder green meadow, to memory dear,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He slaps a mosquito and brushes a tear;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The dewdrops hang round him on blossoms and shoots,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He breathes but one sigh for his youth and his boots.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">There stands the old schoolhouse, hard by the old church<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That tree at its side had the flavor of birch;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">O sweet were the days of his juvenile tricks,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Though the prairie of youth had so many "big licks."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">By the side of yon river he weeps and he slumps,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The boots fill with water as if they were pumps;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till, sated with rapture, he steals to his bed,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With a glow in his heart, and a cold in his head.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[73]<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>At the annual dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa +Society, in 1843, Doctor Holmes read the fine +poem entitled <i>Terpsichore</i>.</p> + +<p>Three years later he delivered <i>Urania, A +Rhyme Lesson</i> before the Boston Mercantile +Library Association. "To save a question that +is sometimes put," remarks the poet, "it is +proper to say that in naming these two poems +after two of the Muses, nothing more was intended +than a suggestion of their general character +and aim."</p> + + + +<div class="p6" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2> + +<h4>THE LECTURER.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>WHEN</big> Doctor Warren gave up the Parkman +professorship at Harvard, in 1847, +Doctor Holmes was appointed to take his place +as Professor of Anatomy and Physiology. For +eight months of the year, four lectures are +delivered each week in this department of the +college, and yet Doctor Holmes still found time +"between whiles," to attend to his Boston practice, +and to write many charming poems and +essays. He also entered the lyceum arena, "an +original American contrivance," as Theodore +Parker describes it in 1857, "for educating the +people. The world has nothing like it. In it +are combined the best things of the Church: +i.e., the preaching; and of the College: +i.e., the informing thought, with some of the +fun of the theatre. Besides, it gives the rural +districts a chance to see the men they read +about—to see the lions—for the lecturer is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> +also a show to the eyes. For ten years past +six or eight of the most progressive minds in +America have been lecturing fifty or a hundred +times a year."</p> + +<p>Among the many subjects that Doctor Holmes +touched upon in these lyceum lectures was a +fine, witty, and remarkably just criticism on +the <i>English Poets of the Nineteenth Century</i>. +What a pity that Oscar Wilde and his brother +poets of this later day could not have the benefit +of just such a clear, microscopic analysis! +What the Autocrat himself thought of these +lecturing tours through the country we have in +his own words:</p> + +<p>"I have played the part of 'Poor Gentleman' +before many audiences," he says; "more, I trust, +than I shall ever face again. I did not wear +a stage costume, nor a wig, nor mustaches of +burnt cork; but I was placarded and announced +as a public performer, and at the proper hour +I came forward with the ballet-dancer's smile +upon my countenance, and made my bow and +acted my part. I have seen my name stuck up +in letters so big that I was ashamed to show +myself in the place by daylight. I have gone +to a town with a sober literary essay in my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> +pocket, and seen myself everywhere announced +as the most desperate of <i>buffos</i>. I have been +through as many hardships as Ulysses in the +exercise of my histrionic vocation. I have +sometimes felt as if I were a wandering spirit, +and this great, unchanging multivertebrate which +I faced night after night was one ever-listening +animal, which writhed along after me wherever +I fled, and coiled at my feet every evening +turning up to me the same sleepless eyes which +I thought I had closed with my last drowsy +incantation."</p> + +<p>Of his audiences he writes again as follows:</p> + +<p>"Two lyceum assemblies, of five hundred each, +are so nearly alike, that they are absolutely +undistinguishable in many cases by any definite +mark, and there is nothing but the place and +time by which one can tell the 'remarkably +intelligent audience' of a town in New York +or Ohio from one in any New England town +of similar size. Of course, if any principle of +selection has come in, as in those special associations +of young men which are common in +cities, it deranges the uniformity of the assemblage. +But let there be no such interfering +circumstances, and one knows pretty well even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> +the look the audience will have, before he goes +in. Front seats, a few old folks—shiny-headed—slant +up best ear toward the speaker—drop +off asleep after a while, when the air begins +to get a little narcotic with carbonic acid. +Bright women's faces, young and middle-aged, +a little behind these, but toward the front—(pick +out the best, and lecture mainly to that). +Here and there a countenance, sharp and +scholarlike, and a dozen pretty female ones +sprinkled about. An indefinite number of pairs +of young people—happy, but not always very +attentive. Boys in the background more or less +quiet. Dull faces here, there—in how many +places! I don't say dull <i>people</i>, but faces without +a ray of sympathy or a movement of +expression. They are what kill the lecturer. +These negative faces with their vacuous eyes +and stony lineaments pump and suck the warm +soul out of him;—that is the chief reason why +lecturers grow so pale before the season is over.</p> + +<p>"Out of all these inevitable elements the +audience is generated—a great compound vertebrate, +as much like fifty others you have seen +as any two mammals of the same species are +like each other."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Pretty nigh killed himself," says the good +landlady, "goin' about lecterin' two or three +winters, talking in cold country lyceums—as he +used to say—goin' home to cold parlors and +bein' treated to cold apples and cold water, and +then goin' up into a cold bed in a cold +chamber, and comin' home next mornin' with +a cold in his head as bad as the horse distemper. +Then he'd look kind of sorry for havin' +said it, and tell how kind some of the good +women was to him; how one spread an eiderdown +comforter for him, and another fixed up +somethin' hot for him after the lectur, and +another one said, 'There now, you smoke that +cigar of yours after the lectur, jest as if you +was at home,' and if they'd all been like that, +he'd have gone on lecturing forever, but, as it +was, he had got pooty nigh enough of it, and +preferred a nateral death to puttin' himself out +of the world by such violent means as lecturin'."</p> + +<p>To these graphic pictures of the "lyceum +lecturer" we would add one more which was +given by Mr. J.W. Harper, at the Holmes +Breakfast.</p> + +<p>"I well remember," he said, "the first time<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> +I saw Doctor Holmes. It was long ago; not +as our Autocrat expresses it, 'in the year +eighteen hundred and ever so few;' nor, as +Thackeray has it, 'when the present century +was in its teens.' It was just after the close +of the last half century, and on a cold winter's +afternoon, when the sun was fast setting behind +the then ungilded dome of the State House, +and it was in old Bromfield street. It was not +in the Bromfield Street Methodist Church, nor +in the contiguous Methodist inn, known as the +Bromfield House, which, for many years, might +have been the convenient resort of good Methodist +elders, and of the peripatetic presiding +elders, who were called by the genial Bishop +Wainwright, the 'bob-tailed bishops' of their +flocks and districts.... I was in the large +stable adjoining the Bromfield House, endeavoring +to secure a sleigh, when there entered a +gentleman apparently of my own age. He came +in quickly, and with impatience demanded the +immediate production of a team and sleigh, +which, though ordered for him, had somehow +been forgotten. The new-comer, it was evident, +was not to be trifled with. There was no nonsense +about him, and I was not surprised,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> +when, a few years later, I learned that he had +become an Autocrat.</p> + +<p>"On that particular night he had a long drive +before him, for he was to lecture at Newburyport, +or Nantasket, or Nantucket, or some other +then unannexed suburb of Boston. I doubt if +the horse survived the drive, and I am quite +sure he is not now living. But the driver lives, +and the young New Yorker who then admired +him, and would fain have driven with him on +that cold winter night, has since, in common +with thousands of other New Yorkers, been filled +with grateful admiration for what that driver has +done for literature, and for the happiness and +improvement of the world."</p> + +<p>In 1838 Doctor Holmes wrote the <i>Boylston +Prize Dissertation</i>, and in 1842, <i>Homœopothy and +its kindred Delusions</i>. The Boylston prizes +were established in 1803, by Ward Nicholas +Boylston. Doctor Holmes gained three of these +prizes, and the <i>Dissertations</i>, one of which was +upon Intermittent Fever, were published together +in book form in 1838.</p> + +<p>When, in February of the same year (1842), +the young men of Boston gave a dinner to +Charles Dickens, Doctor Holmes welcomed the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> +distinguished visitor in the following beautiful +song:</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">The stars their early vigils keep,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The silent hours are near,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">When drooping eyes forget to weep—<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Yet still we linger here;<br /></span> +<span class="i3">And what—the passing churl may ask—<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Can claim such wondrous power,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">That Toil forgets his wonted task,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And Love his promised hour?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">The Irish harp no longer thrills,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Or breathes a fainter tone;<br /></span> +<span class="i3">The clarion blast from Scotland's hills<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Alas! no more is blown.<br /></span> +<span class="i3">And Passion's burning lip bewails<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Her Harold's wasted fire,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Still lingering o'er the dust that veils<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The Lord of England's lyre.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">But grieve not o'er its broken strings,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Nor think its soul hath died,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">While yet the lark at heaven's gate sings,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">As once o'er Avon's side;—<br /></span> +<span class="i3">While gentle summer sheds her bloom,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And dewy blossoms wave,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Alike o'er Juliet's storied tomb<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And Nelly's nameless grave.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">Thou glorious island of the sea!<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Though wide the wasting flood<br /></span> +<span class="i3">That parts our distant land from thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">We claim thy generous blood.<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Nor o'er thy far horizon springs<br /></span> +<span class="i4">One hallowed star of fame.<br /></span> +<span class="i3">But kindles, like an angel's wings,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Our western skies in flame!<br /></span> +</div> +</div></div> + +<div class="p6" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2> + +<h4>NAMING THE NEW MAGAZINE.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>IN</big> the year 1857, Mr. Phillips, of the firm of +Phillips & Sampson, undertook the publication +in Boston, of a new literary magazine. +They were fortunate in securing James Russell +Lowell as editor, and one condition he made +upon accepting the office was, that his friend, +Doctor Holmes, should be one of the chief +contributors.</p> + +<p>It was the latter, also, who was called upon +to name the new magazine. Thus was the +<i>Atlantic Monthly</i> launched upon the great sea +of literature—a periodical that has never lost +its first high prestige.</p> + +<p>When Doctor Holmes sat down to write his +first article for the new magazine, he remembered +that some twenty-five years before, he +had begun a series of papers for a certain <i>New +England Magazine</i>, published in Boston, by J. +T. & E. Buckingham, with the title of <i>Autocrat</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> +<i>of the Breakfast-Table</i>. Curious, as he says, to +try the experiment of shaking the same bough +again and finding out if the ripe fruit were +better or worse than the early wind-falls, he +took the same title for his new articles.</p> + +<p>"The man is father to the boy that was," he +adds, "and I am my own son, as it seems to +me, in those papers of the <i>New England Magazine</i>."</p> + +<p>To show the reader some family traits of this +"young autocrat," we quote from these earlier +articles the following fine extracts:</p> + +<p>"When I feel inclined to read poetry, I take +down my dictionary. The poetry of words is +quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The +author may arrange the gems effectively, but +their shape and lustre have been given by the +attrition of ages. Bring me the finest simile +from the whole range of imaginative writing, and +I will show you a single word which conveys +a more profound, a more accurate, and a more +eloquent analogy.</p> + +<p>"Once on a time, a notion was started that +if all the people in the world would shout at +once, it might be heard in the moon. So the +projectors agreed it should be done in just ten<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> +years. Some thousand shiploads of chronometers +were distributed to the selectmen and other +great folks of all the different nations. For a +year beforehand, nothing else was talked about +but the awful noise that was to be made on +the great occasion. When the time came everybody +had their ears so wide open to hear the +universal ejaculation of boo—the word agreed +upon—that nobody spoke except a deaf man +in one of the Fejee Islands, and a woman in +Pekin, so that the world was never so still +since the creation."</p> + +<p>At the close of the year when the twelve +numbers of <i>The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table</i> +were completed in the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i> and +published in book form, the <i>British Review</i> +wrote of the illustrious author as follows:</p> + +<p>"Oliver Wendell Holmes has been long +known in this country as the author of some +poems written in stately classic verse, abounding +in happy thoughts and bright bird-peeps of +fancy, such as this, for example:</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">The punch-bowl's sounding depths were stirred,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Its silver cherubs smiling as they heard.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>And this first glint of spring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">The spendthrift Crocus, bursting through the mould,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Naked and shivering with his cup of gold.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +</div></div></div> + +<p>He is also known as the writer of many pieces +which wear a serious look until they break out +into a laugh at the end, perhaps in the last +line, as with those on <i>Lending a Punch Bowl</i>, +a cunning way of the writer's; just as the knot +is tied in the whip cord at the end of the +lash to enhance the smack.</p> + +<p>"But neither of these kinds of verse prepared +us for anything so good, so sustained, so +national, and yet so akin to our finest humorists, +as <i>The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table</i>; +a very delightful book—a handy book for the +breakfast table. A book to conjure up a cosey +winter picture of a ruddy fire and singing +kettle, soft hearth-rug, warm slippers, and easy +chair; a musical chime of cups and saucers, +fragrance of tea and toast within, and those +flowers of frost fading on the windows without +as though old Winter just looked in, but his +cold breath was melted, and so he passed by. +A book to possess two copies of; one to be +read and marked, thumbed and dog-eared; and +one to stand up in its pride of place with the +rest on the shelves, all ranged in shining rows,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> +as dear old friends, and not merely as nodding +acquaintances.</p> + +<p>"Not at all like that ponderous and overbearing +autocrat, Doctor Johnson, is our Yankee +friend. He has more of Goldsmith's sweetness +and lovability. He is as true a lover of elegance +and high bred grace, dainty fancies, and +all pleasurable things, as was Leigh Hunt; he +has more wordly sense without the moral languor; +but there is the same boy-heart beating +in a manly breast, beneath the poet's singing +robe. For he is a poet as well as a humorist. +Indeed, although this book is written in prose, +it is full of poetry, with the 'beaded bubbles' +of humor dancing up through the true hippocrene +and 'winking at the brim' with a winning +look of invitation shining in their merry +eyes.</p> + +<p>"The humor and the poetry of the book do +not lie in tangible nuggets for extraction, but +they are there; they pervade it from beginning +to end. We cannot spoon out the sparkles of +sunshine as they shimmer on the wavelets of +water; but they are there, moving in all their +golden life and evanescent grace.</p> + +<p>"Holmes may not be so recognizably national<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> +as Lowell; his prominent characteristics are not +so exceptionally Yankee; the traits are not so +peculiar as those delineated in the <i>Biglow Papers</i>. +But he is national. One of the most hopeful +literary signs of this book is its quiet nationality. +The writer has made no straining and +gasping efforts after that which is striking and +peculiar, which has always been the bane of +youth, whether in nations or individuals. He +has been content to take the common, homespun, +everyday humanity that he found ready +to hand—people who do congregate around the +breakfast table of an American boarding-house; +and out of this material he has wrought with +a vivid touch and truth of portraiture, and won +the most legitimate triumph of a genuine +book....</p> + +<p>"Holmes has the pleasantest possible way of +saying things that many people don't like to +hear. His tonics are bitter and bland. He +does not spare the various foibles and vices of +his countrymen and women. But it is done so +good-naturedly, or with a sly puff of diamond +dust in the eyes of the victims, who don't see +the joke which is so apparent to us. As good +old Isaak Walton advises respecting the worm,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> +he impales them tenderly as though he loved +them."</p> + +<div class="p2" /> + +<p>How vividly every personage around that +delightful "Breakfast-Table" is photographed +upon the reader's mind! Can you not see the +dear "Old Gentleman" just opposite the "Autocrat," +as he suddenly surprises the company by +repeating a beautiful hymn he learned in childhood? +And the pale sweet "Schoolmistress" +in her modest mourning dress? no wonder the +eyes of the Autocrat frequently wandered to +that part of the table and certain remarks are +addressed to her alone! To tell the truth, we +can't help falling in love with her ourselves! +What a fine foil to this "soft-voiced little +woman," is the landlady's daughter—that "tender-eyed +blonde, with her long ringlets, cameo +pin, gold pencil-case on a chain, locket, bracelet, +album, autograph book, and accordion—who +says 'Yes?' when you tell her anything, and +reads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus Cobb Junior, +while her mother makes the puddings!" Then +there is the "poor relation" from the +country—"a somewhat more than middle-aged +female, with parchment forehead and a dry little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> +frizette shingling it, a sallow neck with a necklace +of gold beads, and a black dress too rusty +for recent grief." Can you not hear the very +tones of her high-pitched voice as she remarks +that "Buckwheat is skerce and high."</p> + +<p>"The Professor" under chloroform—"the +young man whom they call John," appropriating +the three peaches in illustration of the +Autocrat's metaphysics—the boy, Benjamin +Franklin, poring over his French exercises—the +Poet, who had to leave town when the +anniversaries came round—and the divinity +student whose head the Autocrat tries occasionally, +"as housewives try eggs," all these +are so real to the reader that he can but feel +they were something more than imaginary characters +to the writer.</p> + +<p>Among the poems that close each number +of the <i>Autocrat</i>, are some of the finest in our +language. <i>The Chambered Nautilus</i>, <i>The Living +Temple</i>, <i>The Voiceless</i>, and <i>The Two Armies</i>, are +full of inspiring thought and deep pathos, while +<i>The Deacon's Masterpiece</i>, <i>Parson Turell's Legacy</i>, +<i>The Old Man's Dream</i>, and <i>Contentment</i>, sparkle +with the Autocrat's own peculiar humor.</p> + +<p>"When we think of the familiar confidences +of the Autocrat," says Underwood, "we might<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> +liken him to Montaigne. But when the parallel +is being considered, we come upon passages so +full of tingling hits or of rollicking fun, that we +are sure we are mistaken, and that he resembles +no one so much as Sidney Smith. But presently +he sounds the depths of our consciousness, +explores the concealed channels of feeling, +flashes the light of genius upon our half-acknowledged +thoughts, and we see that this +is what neither the great Gascon nor the hearty +and jovial Englishman could have attempted, ... +when the world forgets the sallies +that have set tables in a roar, and even the +lyrics that have set a nation's heart on fire, +Holmes' picture of the ship of pearl will +preserve his name forever."</p> + +<div class="p6" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2> + +<h4>ELSIE VENNER.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>THE</big> <i>Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table</i> was +followed in 1859 by <i>The Professor</i>, a +series of similar essays, in which we are introduced +to "Iris" and "Little Boston," and +begin to realize Doctor Holmes' inimitable +skill in dramatic effect as well as in character +painting. <i>The Story of Iris</i> has been printed +by itself in Rossiter Johnson's <i>Little Classics</i>, +and reads like an exquisite prose poem; but +after all, we like best to follow the delicate +thread of narrative just as the professor himself +has introduced it—a dainty aria whose +harmony runs under and over and all through +the deep philosophy and sparkling table talk +of the book.</p> + +<p>It prepares us, too, for <i>Elsie Venner</i>, the +"Professor's Story"—a novel whose weird +conception holds us spell-bound from beginning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> +to end, in spite of the sadness—"the pity of +it." At the very first introduction to Elsie +we have a hint of the strange hereditary +curse that throws its blight over her whole +nature:</p> + +<p>"Who and what is that," asks the new +master, "sitting a little apart there—that +strange, wild-looking girl?"</p> + +<p>The lady teacher's face changed; one would +have said she was frightened or troubled. She +looked at the girl doubtfully, as if she might +hear the master's question and its answer. +But the girl did not look up; she was winding +a gold chain about her wrist, and then +uncoiling it, as if in a kind of reverie.</p> + +<p>Miss Dailey drew close to the master and +placed her hand so as to hide her lips.</p> + +<p>"Don't look at her as if we were talking +about her," she whispered softly, "that is Elsie +Venner."</p> + +<p>The more we read of her, the more her sad +beauty fascinates us.</p> + +<p>"She looked as if she might hate, but could +not love. She hardly smiled at anything, spoke +rarely, but seemed to feel that her natural +power of expression lay all in her bright eyes,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> +the force of which so many had felt, but none +perhaps had tried to explain to themselves. +A person accustomed to watch the faces of +those who were ailing in body or mind, and +to search in every line and tint for some +underlying source of disorder, could hardly help +analyzing the impression such a face produced +upon him. The light of those beautiful eyes +was like the lustre of ice; in all her features +there was nothing of that human warmth which +shows that sympathy has reached the soul +beneath the mask of flesh it wears. The look +was that of remoteness, of utter isolation. +There was in its stony apathy the pathos +which we find in the blind who show no film +or speck over the organs of sight; for Nature +had meant her to be lovely, and left out +nothing but love."</p> + +<p>The mother of Elsie, some months before the +birth of her child, had been bitten by a rattlesnake. +The instant use of powerful antidotes +seemed to arrest the fatal poison, but death +ensued a few weeks after the birth of her +little girl.</p> + +<p>"There was something not human looking +out of Elsie's eyes.... There were two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> +warring principles in that superb organization +and proud soul. One made her a woman, +with all a woman's powers and longings. The +other chilled all the currents of outlets for her +emotions. It made her tearless and mute, +when another woman would have wept and +pleaded. And it infused into her soul something—it +was cruel to call it malice—which +was still and watchful and dangerous—which +waited its opportunity, and then shot like an +arrow from its bow out of the coil of brooding +premeditation."</p> + +<p>But the cloud—"the ante-natal impression +which had mingled an alien element in Elsie's +nature"—is mercifully lifted just before her +death.</p> + +<p>She had fallen into a light slumber, and +when she awoke and looked up into her +father's face, she seemed to realize his tenderness +and affection as never before.</p> + +<p>"Elsie dear," he said, "we were thinking +how much your expression was, sometimes, like +that of your sweet mother. If you could but +have seen her so as to remember her!"</p> + +<p>The tender look and tone, the yearning of +the daughter's heart for the mother she had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> +never seen, save only with the unfixed, undistinguishable +eyes of earliest infancy, perhaps +the understanding that she might soon rejoin +her in another state of being,—all came upon +her with a sudden overflow of feeling which +broke through all the barriers between her +heart and her eyes, and Elsie wept. It seemed +to her father as if the malign influence—evil +spirit it might almost be called—which had +pervaded her being, had at least been driven +forth or exorcised, and that these tears were +at once the sign and pledge of her redeemed +nature. But now she was to be soothed and +not excited. After her tears she slept again, +and the look her face wore was peaceful as +never before.</p> + +<p>While "Elsie Venner" is a purely imaginary +conception, the author tells us that after beginning +the story he received the most striking +confirmation of the possibility of the +existence of such a character. The reader is +awakened to new views of human responsibility +in the perusal of Elsie's life, and with +good old pastor Honeywood learns a lesson of +patience with his fellow creatures in their inborn +peculiarities and of charity in judging<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> +what seem to him wilful faults of character.</p> + +<p>The Professor's story while centring the interest +upon Elsie, gives numerous side glances +of New England village life; and old Sophy, +Helen Darley, Silas Peckham, Bernard Langdon, +Dick Venner, and the good Doctor are +portrayed in vivid colors. There is a deal of +psychology throughout the book, and not a +little theology—good wholesome theology too, +as the following brief extract shows:</p> + +<p>"The good minister was as kind-hearted as +if he had never groped in the dust and ashes +of those cruel old abstractions which have +killed out so much of the world's life and +happiness. 'With the heart man believeth unto +righteousness;' a man's love is the measure +of his fitness for good or bad company here +or elsewhere. Men are tattooed with their +special beliefs like so many South Sea Islanders; +but a real human heart, with divine +love in it, beats with the same glow under +all the patterns of all earth's thousand tribes!"</p> + +<p>The pathos of poor Elsie's story is relieved +now and then by humorous descriptions of +country manners and customs. The Sprowles' +party and the Widow Rowen's "tea-fight"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> +give a vein of light comedy that rests the sympathetic +reader as a sudden merry smile upon +a grave and troubled face.</p> + +<p><i>The Guardian Angel</i>, the second novel of +Doctor Holmes, was not published until 1867, +but it is interesting to compare the two +stories, for there is a strong family likeness +between them. Both show the power of inherited +tendencies, though Myrtle Hazard, the +heroine of <i>The Guardian Angel</i>, has no alien +element in her blood like that which tormented +poor Elsie. With Myrtle "it was as when +several grafts, bearing fruit that ripens at different +times, are growing upon the same +stock. Her earlier impulses may have been +derived directly from her father and mother, +but various ancestors came uppermost in their +time before the absolute and total result of +their several forces had found its equilibrium +in the character by which she was to be +known as an individual. These inherited impulses +were therefore many, conflicting, some +of them dangerous. The World, the Flesh, +and the Devil held mortgages on her life before +its deed was put in her hands; but +sweet and gracious influences were also born<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> +with her; and the battle of life was to be +fought between them, God helping her in her +need, and her own free choice siding with one +or the other."</p> + +<p>The scene opens in a quiet New England +village which is roused from its usual lethargy +by the startling announcement in the weekly +paper of a lost child. This is none other than +the little orphan, Myrtle Hazard, who after a +few dreary years in the dismal Wither's homestead, +escapes by night in her little boat, is +rescued by a young student from a frightful +death at the rapids, and brought back to her +distressed Aunt Silence by good old Byles +Gridley—the true "Guardian Angel" of her +life.</p> + +<p>When old Doctor Hurlbut "ninety-two, very +deaf, very feeble, yet a wise counsellor in +doubtful and difficult cases," comes to prescribe +for the young girl, he says to his son:</p> + +<p>"I've seen that look on another face of the +same blood—it's a great many years ago, and +she was dead before you were born, my boy,—but +I've seen that look, and it meant trouble +then, and I'm afraid it means trouble now. I +see some danger of a brain fever. And if she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> +doesn't have that, then look out for some hysteric +fits that will make mischief.... +I've been through it all before in that same +house. Live folks are only dead folks warmed +over. I can see 'em all in that girl's face.—Handsome +Judith to begin with. And that +queer woman, the Deacon's mother—there's +where she gets that hystericky look. Yes, and +the black-eyed woman with the Indian blood +in her—look out for that—look out for that.</p> + +<p>... Four generations—four generations, +man and wife—yes, five generations before +this Hazard child I've looked on with these +old eyes. And it seems to me that I can see +something of almost every one of 'em in this +child's face—it's the forehead of this one, and +it's the eyes of that one, and it's that other's +mouth, and the look that I remember in +another, and when she speaks, why, I've heard +that same voice before—yes, yes—as long +ago as when I was first married."</p> + +<p>Aside from the interest of the story there is +a strange fascination in tracing the development +of these various ancestral traits.</p> + +<p>"This body in which we journey across the +isthmus between the two oceans is not a pri<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>vate +carriage, but an omnibus," says old Byles +Gridley in his <i>Thoughts on the Universe</i>—dead +book that was destined to so grand a +resurrection! Surely no one can deny the successive +development of inherited bodily aspects +and habitudes, and the same thing happens, the +author avers, "in the mental and moral nature, +though the latter may be less obvious to common +observation."</p> + +<p><i>The Guardian Angel</i> while a deep study +of the Reflex Function in its higher sphere, is +not without its lighter, more mirthful side. Says +<i>The London News</i>, "the story is exceedingly +humorous and comic in the less serious chapters. +There is no such minor poet in the +whole range of fiction as the immortal Gifted +Hopkins. In the character of Hopkins all the +foibles and vanities of the literary nature are +exemplified in the most mirthful manner. If +Doctor Holmes has more characters like Gifted +Hopkins in his mind, the hilarity of two continents +is not in much danger of being extinguished."</p> + +<p>Here is a glimpse of the young poet when +racked with jealousy:</p> + +<p>"He retired pensive from the interview, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> +flinging himself at his desk, attempted wreaking +his thoughts upon expression, to borrow +the language of one of his brother bards, in a +passionate lyric which he began thus:</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Another's!</span><br /></span> +<span class="i2">Another's! O the pang, the smart!<br /></span> +<span class="i2"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fate owes to Love a deathless grudge—</span><br /></span> +<span class="i2">The barbed fang has rent a heart<br /></span> +<span class="i2"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Which—which—</span><br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p class="noi">judge—judge—no, not judge. Budge, drudge, +fudge—what a disgusting language English +is! Nothing fit to couple with such a word as +grudge! And an impassioned moment arrested +in full flow, stopped short, corked up, for want +of a paltry rhyme! Judge—budge—drudge +nudge—oh!—smudge—misery!—fudge. In +vain—futile—no use—all up for to-night!'"</p> + +<p>The next day the dejected poet "wandered +about with a dreadfully disconsolate look upon +his countenance. He showed a falling-off in +his appetite at tea-time, which surprised and +disturbed his mother.... The most +touching evidence of his unhappiness—whether +intentional on the result of accident was not +evident—was a <i>broken heart</i>, which he left +upon his plate, the meaning of which was as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> +plain as anything in the language of flowers. +His thoughts were gloomy, running a good +deal on the more picturesque and impressive +methods of bidding a voluntary farewell to a +world which had allured him with visions of +beauty only to snatch them from his impassioned +gaze. His mother saw something of this, and got +from him a few disjointed words, which led her +to lock up the clothes-line and hide her late husband's +razors—an affectionate, yet perhaps unnecessary +precaution, for self-elimination contemplated +from this point of view by those who have the +natural outlet of verse to relieve them is rarely +followed by a casualty. It may be considered +as implying a more than average chance for +longevity; as those who meditate an imposing +finish naturally save themselves for it, and are +therefore careful of their health until the time +comes, and this is apt to be indefinitely postponed +so long as there is a poem to write or +a proof to be corrected."</p> + +<p>Gifted Hopkins survives the ordeal, and completes +his volume of poems, <i>Blossoms of the +Soul</i>. Good old master Gridley, who foresees +what the end will be, offers to accompany the +young poet in his visit to the city publisher.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> +What a world of pathos there is in the fond +mother's preparations for the momentous journey: +She brings down from the garret "a +capacious trunk, of solid wood, but covered +with leather, and adorned with brass-headed +nails, by the cunning disposition of which, also, +the paternal initials stood out on the rounded +lid, in the most conspicuous manner. It was +his father's trunk, and the first thing that +went into it, as the widow lifted the cover, +and the smothering shut-up smell struck an old +chord of associations, was a single tear-drop. +How well she remembered the time when she +first unpacked it for her young husband, and +the white shirt bosoms showed their snowy +plaits! O dear, dear!</p> + +<p>"But women decant their affections, sweet +and sound, out of the old bottles into the new +ones—off from the lees of the past generation, +clear and bright, into the clean vessels +just made ready to receive it. Gifted Hopkins +was his mother's idol, and no wonder. She +had not only the common attachment of a +parent for him, as her offspring, but she felt +that her race was to be rendered illustrious by +his genius, and thought proudly of the time<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> +when some future biographer would mention +her own humble name, to be held in lasting +remembrance as that of the mother of Hopkins."</p> + +<p>The description of the various articles that +went into the trunk is humorous enough.</p> + +<p>"Best clothes and common clothes, thick +clothes and thin clothes, flannels and linens, +socks and collars, with handkerchiefs enough to +keep the pickpockets busy for a week, with a +paper of gingerbread and some lozenges for +gastralgia, and 'hot drops,' and ruled paper to +write letters on, and a little Bible and a phial +with <i>hiera piera</i>, and another with paregoric, +and another with 'camphire' for sprains and +bruises. Gifted went forth equipped for every +climate from the tropic to the pole, and armed +against every malady from ague to zoster."</p> + +<p>The poet's interview with the publisher is +one of the best things in the book, but to be +thoroughly enjoyed, it must be read entire.</p> + +<p>The genial, kindly nature of Doctor Holmes +is strikingly shown throughout the whole volume. +Good, quaint Byles Gridley endears himself more +and more to the reader, Gifted Hopkins finds +in his heart's choice an appreciative, admiring +audience of at least one, Cyprian Eveleth and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> +young Doctor Hurlbut are most happily disposed +of, Clement Lindsay receives his reward, Myrtle +Hazard emerges from the conflict of mingled +lives in her blood with the dross of her nature +burned away, aunt Silence throws off her melancholy, +Miss Cynthia Badlam repents of her evil +manœuvrings and dies "with the comfortable +assurance that she is going to a better world," +the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker learns to +appreciate his patient wife—even Murray +Bradshaw, the acknowledged villain of the book, +is not without a few redeeming traits, and we +close the volume with a sense of hearty goodwill +and fervent charity toward all mankind.</p> + + +<div class="p6" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2> + +<h4>FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>BETWEEN</big> the writing of <i>Elsie Venner</i> +and <i>The Guardian Angel</i>, Doctor Holmes +wrote a number of essays for the <i>Atlantic +Monthly</i>, some of which were afterwards collected +in the volume entitled <i>Soundings from +the Atlantic</i>.</p> + +<p><i>Currents and Counter-currents</i> was published +in 1861, and <i>Border-lines of Knowledge</i> in 1862. +The two latter books deal with scientific subjects, +but are written in such an attractive +style that they have been extremely popular +not only with students but with the whole +reading public. <i>Songs in many Keys</i>, a volume +of poems dedicated to his mother, was published +by Doctor Holmes in 1862. <i>Mechanism +in Thoughts and Morals</i> appeared in 1871, the +same year that <i>The Poet at the Breakfast-Table</i> +was running as a serial in the <i>Atlantic</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> +<i>Monthly</i>, and numerous stray poems were also +written in this prolific decade. In 1872 the +poet's breakfast talk was published in book +form. It is interesting to compare these three +volumes—The Autocrat, the Professor, and the +Poet. As a series they are as necessary to +one another as the three strands of a cable, +and yet each volume is, in a certain way, +completed in itself. Where in the whole range +of the English language, or indeed, of any +language, will you find such an overflow of +spontaneous wit and humor? While in no +sense a story or even a narrative, the breakfast +talk is enlivened by wonderfully life-like characters. +We can easily imagine ourselves sitting +beside them at the social table, and just as it +is in real life, these chance acquaintances touch +us at different points, awaken various degrees +of interest, and are at all times quite distinct +from the observer's own individuality.</p> + +<p>There is not a page without its sparkle of +humor, and nugget of sound philosophy beneath, +which the reader appropriates to himself in a +delightfully unconscious manner—for the time +being, it is he who is the Autocrat, the Professor, +the Poet! As some one has truly said,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> +"It is our thoughts which Doctor Holmes +speaks; it is our humor to which he gives +expression; it is the pictures of our own +fancy that he clothes in words, and shows us +what we ourselves thought, and only lacked +the means of expressing. We never realized +until he taught us by his magic power over +us, how much each of us had of genius and +invention and expression."</p> + +<p>Each book has its little romance, and the +"Poet" introduces a poor gentlewoman whose +story interests us quite as much as does +that of the two lovers.</p> + +<p>"In a little chamber," he says, "into which +a small thread of sunshine finds its way for +half an hour or so every day during a month +or six weeks of the spring or autumn, at all +other times obliged to content itself with +ungilded daylight, lives this boarder, whom, +without wronging any others of our company, +I may call, as she is very generally called in +the household, the Lady....</p> + +<p>"From an aspect of dignified but undisguised +economy which showed itself in her dress as +well as in her limited quarters, I suspected a +story of shipwrecked fortune, and determined to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> +question our Landlady. That worthy woman +was delighted to tell the history of her most +distinguished boarder. She was, as I had supposed, +a gentlewoman whom a change of circumstances +had brought down from her high +estate.—Did I know the Goldenrod family?—Of +course I did.—Well, the lady was first +cousin to Mrs. Midas Goldenrod. She had +been here in her carriage to call upon her—not +very often.—Were her rich relations kind +and helpful to her?—Well, yes; at least they +made her presents now and then. Three or +four years ago they sent her a silver waiter, +and every Christmas they sent her a bouquet—it +must cost as much as five dollars, the Landlady +thought.</p> + +<p>"And how did the Lady receive these valuable +and useful things?</p> + +<p>"Every Christmas she got out the silver +waiter and borrowed a glass tumbler and filled +it with water, and put the bouquet in it and +set it on the waiter. It smelt sweet enough +and looked pretty for a day or two, but the +Landlady thought it wouldn't have hurt 'em +if they'd sent a piece of goods for a dress, or +at least a pocket handkercher or two, or some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>thing +or other that she could 'a' made use +of....</p> + +<p>"What did she do?—Why, she read, and +she drew pictures, and she did needlework +patterns, and played on an old harp she had; +the gilt was mostly off, but it sounded very +sweet, and she sung to it, sometimes, those old +songs that used to be in fashion twenty or +thirty years ago, with words to 'em that folks +could understand....</p> + +<p>"Poor Lady! She seems to me like a picture +that has fallen face downward on the dusty +floor. The picture never was as needful as a +window or a door, but it was pleasant to see +it in its place, and it would be pleasant to see +it there again, and I for one, should be thankful +to have the Lady restored by some turn of fortune +to the position from which she has been so +cruelly cast down."</p> + +<p>Before the Poet closes his breakfast talk, the +poor Lady has, through the efforts of another +boarder, the Register of Deeds, recovered her +property. Mrs. Midas Goldenrod makes frequent +and longer calls—"the very moment her relative, +the Lady of our breakfast table, began to +find herself in a streak of sunshine she came<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> +forward with a lighted candle to show her +which way her path lay before her.</p> + +<p>"The Lady saw all this, how plainly, how painfully! +yet she exercised a true charity for +the weakness of her relative. Sensible people +have as much consideration for the frailties of +the rich as for those of the poor.</p> + +<p>"The Lady that's been so long with me is +going to a house of her own," said the Landlady, +"one she has bought back again, for it +used to belong to her folks. It's a beautiful +house, and the sun shines in at the front windows +all day long. She's going to be wealthy +again, but it doesn't make any difference in +her ways. I've had boarders complain when I +was doing as well as I knowed how for them, +but I never heerd a word from her that wasn't +as pleasant as if she'd been talking to the Governor's +lady."</p> + +<p>The strange little man, denominated "Scarabee," +who had grown to look so much like +the beetles he studied; the "Member of the +House" with his Down East phrases; the little +"Scheherazade" who furnishes a new story +each week for the newspapers;—the good looking, +rosy-cheeked salesman "of very polite man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>ners, +only a little more brisk than the approved +style of carriage permits, as one in the habit +of springing with a certain alacrity at the call of +a customer;" the good old Master of Arts who +makes so many sage remarks;—the young +Astronomer with his heart confessions in the +<i>Wind-clouds and Star-drifts</i>—all these are new +acquaintances whom we are loth to part with, +when the Landlady announces her intention of +giving up the famous boarding-house, and the +Poet drops the curtain. Would that the Old +Master could yet be induced to give to the +public those "notes and reflections and new +suggestions" of his marvellous "interleaved volume!"</p> + + +<div class="p6" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2> + +<h4>FAVORITES OF SONG.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>WHEN</big> we come to consider Doctor Holmes +on the poet side of his many-sided nature, +his own words at the famous Breakfast-Table +are vividly brought to mind:</p> + +<p>"The works of other men live, but their +personality dies out of their labors; the poet, +who reproduces himself in his creation, as no +other artist does or can, goes down to posterity +with all his personality blended with whatever +is imperishable in his song.... +A single lyric is enough, if one can only find +in his soul and finish in his intellect one of +those jewels fit to sparkle on the stretched +forefinger of all time."</p> + +<p>In the poems of Doctor Holmes we are quite +sure there are many just such lyrics that the +world will not willingly let die. <i>The Last Leaf, +The Voiceless, The Chambered Nautilus, The</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> +<i>Two Armies, The Old Man's Dream, Under +the Violets, Dorothy Q.</i>—but where shall we +stop in the long enumeration of popular favorites +like these?</p> + +<p>Oliver Wendell Holmes touches the heart as +well as the intellect, and that aside from his +power as a humorist, is one great secret of +his success.</p> + +<p>Listen, for instance, to this exquisite bit:</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Yes, dear departed, cherished days<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Could Memory's hand restore<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Your Morning light, your evening rays<br /></span> +<span class="i3">From Time's gray urn once more,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Then might this restless heart be still,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">This straining eye might close,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And Hope her fainting pinions fold,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">While the fair phantoms rose.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">But, like a child in ocean's arms,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">We strive against the stream,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Each moment farther from the shore<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Where life's young fountains gleam;—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Each moment fainter wave the fields,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">And wider rolls the sea;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The mist grows dark,—the sun goes down,—<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Day breaks,—and where are we?<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>And what a dainty touch is given to this +<i>Song of the Sun-Worshipper's Daughter</i>!<span class="pagenum">[116]</span></p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Kiss mine eyelids, beauteous Morn<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Blushing into life new born!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Send me violets for my hair<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And thy russet robe to wear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thy ring of rosiest hue<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Set in drops of diamond dew!<br /></span> + +<p class="noi">* * * * * * *</p> + +<span class="i0">Kiss my lips, thou Lord of light,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Kiss my lips a soft good-night!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Westward sinks thy golden car;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Leave me but the evening star<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And my solace that shall be<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Borrowing all its light from thee.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>And where will you find a more pathetic +picture than that of the old musician in <i>The Silent +Melody</i>?</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Bring me my broken harp, he said;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">We both are wrecks—but as ye will—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though all its ringing tones have fled,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Their echoes linger round it still;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">It had some golden strings, I know,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But that was long—how long!—ago.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I cannot see its tarnished gold;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">I cannot hear its vanished tone;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Scarce can my trembling fingers hold<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The pillared frame so long their own;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">We both are wrecks—a while ago<br /></span> +<span class="i2">It had some silver strings, I know.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[117]<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> + +<span class="i0">But on them Time too long has played<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The solemn strain that knows no change,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And where of old my fingers strayed<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The chords they find are new and strange—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yes; iron strings—I know—I know—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">We both are wrecks of long ago.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>With pitying smiles the broken harp is +brought to him. Not a single string remains.</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But see! like children overjoyed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His fingers rambling through the void!<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>They gather softly around the old musician.</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Rapt in his tuneful trance he seems;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His fingers move; but not a sound!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A silence like the song of dreams....<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"There! ye have heard the air," he cries,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"That brought the tears from Marian's eyes!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +</div></div></div> + +<p>The poem closes with these fine stanzas:</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ah, smile not at his fond conceit,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Nor deem his fancy wrought in vain;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To him the unreal sounds are sweet,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">No discord mars the silent strain<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Scored on life's latest, starlit page<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The voiceless melody of age.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sweet are the lips of all that sing,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">When Nature's music breathes unsought,<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[118]<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But never yet could voice or string<br /></span> +<span class="i1">So truly shape our tenderest thought,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As when by life's decaying fire<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our fingers sweep the stringless lyre!<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>Though entirely different in style, <i>Bill and +Joe</i> is another of those heart-reaching, tear-starting +poems.</p> + +<p>Listen, for instance, to these few verses:</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Come, dear old comrade, you and I<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Will steal an hour from days gone by;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The shining days when life was new,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And all was bright with morning dew,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The lusty days of long ago<br /></span> +<span class="i1">When you were Bill and I was Joe.<br /></span> +<p>* * * * * * *</p> + + +<span class="i1">You've won the judge's ermined robe,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">You've taught your name to half the globe,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">You've sung mankind a deathless strain;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">You've made the dead past live again;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The world may call you what it will,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But you and I are Joe and Bill.<br /></span> +<p>* * * * * * *</p> + + + +<span class="i1">How Bill forgets his hour of pride,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">While Joe sits smiling at his side;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">How Joe, in spite of time's disguise<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Finds the old schoolmate in his eyes,—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Those calm, stern eyes that melt and fill,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">As Joe looks fondly up at Bill.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[119]<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> + +<span class="i1">Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">A fitful tongue of leaping flame;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That lifts a pinch of mortal dust;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">A few swift years and who can show<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">The weary idol takes his stand,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Holds out his bruised and aching hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">While gaping thousands come and go,—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">How vain it seems, his empty show!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Till all at once his pulses thrill:<br /></span> +<span class="i1">'Tis poor old Joe's God bless you, Bill!<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>The earlier poems of Doctor Holmes are +frequently written in the favorite measures of +Pope and Hood. This is not at all strange +when we remember that in the boyhood of +Doctor Holmes these two poets were the most +popular of all the English bards. In his later +poems, however, we find an endless variety of +rhythms, and the careful reader will notice in +every instance, a wonderful adaptation of the +various poetical forms to the particular thought +the poet wishes to convey.</p> + +<p>How well Doctor Holmes understands the +"mechanism" of verse may be seen from his +<i>Physiology of Versification and the Harmonies +of Organic and Animal Life</i>, a valuable article<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> +published in the <i>Boston Medical and Surgical +Journal</i> of January 7, 1875.</p> + +<p>"Respiration," he says, "has an intimate relation +to the structure of metrical compositions, and +the reason why octosyllabic verse is so easy to +read aloud is because it follows more exactly +than any other measure the natural rhythm of +the respiration....</p> + +<p>"The ten syllable, or heroic line has a peculiar +majesty from the very fact that its pronunciation +requires a longer respiration than is ordinary.</p> + +<p>"The cæsura, it is true, comes in at irregular +intervals and serves as a breathing place, but +its management requires care in reading, and +entirely breaks up the natural rhythm of breathing. +The reason why the 'common metre' of +our hymn books and the fourteen syllable line +of Chapman's Homer is such easy reading is +because of the short alternate lines of six and +eight syllables. One of the most irksome of all +measures is the twelve-syllable line in which +Drayton's Polyolbion is written. While the fourteen +syllable line can be easily divided in half +in reading, the twelve syllable one is too much +for one expiration and not enough for two, and +for this reason has been avoided by poets.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p> + +<p>"There is, however, the personal equation to be +taken into account. A person of quiet temperament +and ample chest may habitually breathe but +fourteen times in a minute, and the heroic measure +will therefore be very easy reading to him; a narrow-chested, +nervous person, on the contrary, who +breathes oftener than twenty times a minute, may +prefer the seven-syllable verse, like that of Dyer's +<i>Grongar Hill</i>, to the heroic measure, and quick-breathing +children will recite Mother Goose melodies +with delight, when long metres would weary +and distract them.</p> + +<p>"Nothing in poetry or in vocal music is widely +popular that is not calculated with strict reference +to the respiratory function. All the early ballad +poetry shows how instinctively the reciters accommodated +their rhythm to their breathing: <i>Chevy +Chace</i>, or <i>The Babes in the Wood</i> may be taken +as an example for verse. <i>God save the King</i>, +which has a compass of some half a dozen notes, +and takes one expiration, economically used, to each +line, may be referred to as the musical illustration.</p> + +<p>"The unconscious adaptation of voluntary life to +the organic rhythm is perhaps a more pervading +fact than we have been in the habit of considering +it. One can hardly doubt that Spenser breathed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> +habitually more slowly than Prior, and that Anacreon +had a quicker respiration than Homer. And +this difference, which we conjecture from their +rhythmical instincts, if our conjecture is true, +probably, almost certainly, characterized all their +vital movements."</p> + +<p>So much for the bare <i>vehicle</i> of verse, +but the poet himself, as Doctor Holmes says in +his review of "Exotics," is a medium, a clairvoyant. +"The will is first called in requisition to exclude +interfering outward impressions and alien trains of +thought. After a certain time the second state or +adjustment of the poet's double consciousness (for +he has two states, just as the somnambulists have) +sets up its own automatic movement, with its special +trains of ideas and feelings in the thinking and +emotional centres. As soon as the fine frenzy, or +<i>quasi</i> trance-state, is fairly established, the consciousness +watches the torrent of thoughts and +arrests the ones wanted, singly with their fitting +expression, or in groups of fortunate sequences +which he cannot better by after treatment. As the +poetical vocabulary is limited, and its plasticity +lends itself only to certain moulds, the mind works +under great difficulty, at least until it has acquired +by practice such handling of language that every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> +possibility of rhythm or rhyme offers itself actually +or potentially to the clairvoyant perception simultaneously +with the thought it is to embody. Thus +poetical composition is the most intense, the most +exciting, and therefore the most exhausting of mental +exercises. It is exciting because its mental +states are a series of revelations and surprises; intense +on account of the double strain upon the +attention. The poet is not the same man who +seated himself an hour ago at his desk with the +dust-cart and the gutter, or the duck-pond and the +hay-stack, and the barnyard fowls beneath his window. +He is in the forest with the song-birds; he +is on the mountain-top with the eagles. He sat +down in rusty broadcloth, he is arrayed in the +imperial purple of his singing robes. Let him +alone, now, if you are wise, for you might as well +have pushed the arm that was finishing the smile +of a Madonna, or laid a veil before a train that had +a queen on board, as thrust your untimely question +on this half-cataleptic child of the Muse, who +hardly knows whether he is in the body or out of +the body. And do not wonder if, when the fit is +over, he is in some respects like one who is recovering +after an excess of the baser stimulants."</p> + +<p>As a writer of humorous poetry, it is safe to say<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> +that Oliver Wendell Holmes is without a peer.</p> + +<p><i>The Height of the Ridiculous</i>, <i>The September +Gale</i>, <i>The Hot Season</i>, <i>The Deacon's Master-piece</i>, +<i>Nux Postcoenatica</i>, <i>The Stethoscope Song</i>, how +many a "cobweb" have they shaken from the +tired brain!</p> + +<p>And where in the whole range of humorous +literature will you find a more delightful morsel +than the "<i>Parting Word</i>," that follows?—</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">I must leave thee, lady sweet!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Months shall waste before we meet;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Winds are fair and sails are spread,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Anchors leave their ocean bed;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Ere this shining day grows dark,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Skies shall guide my shoreless bark;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Through thy tears, O lady mine,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Read thy lover's parting line.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">When the first sad sun shall set,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thou shalt tear thy locks of jet;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">When the morning star shall rise<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thou shalt wake with weeping eyes;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">When the second sun goes down<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thou more tranquil shalt be grown,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Taught too well that wild despair<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Dims thine eyes, and spoils thy hair.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">All the first unquiet week<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thou shalt wear a smileless cheek;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In the first month's second half<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[125]<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thou shalt once attempt to laugh;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Then in <i>Pickwick</i> thou shalt dip,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Lightly puckering round the lip,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Till at last, in sorrow's spite,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Samuel makes thee laugh outright.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">While the first seven mornings last,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Round thy chamber bolted fast<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Many a youth shall fume and pout,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">"Hang the girl, she's always out!"<br /></span> +<span class="i1">While the second week goes round,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Vainly shall they sing and pound;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">When the third week shall begin,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">"Martha, let the creature in!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Now once more the flattering throng<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Round thee flock with smile and song,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But thy lips unweaned as yet,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Lisp, "O, how can I forget!"<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Men and devils both contrive<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Traps for catching girls alive;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Eve was duped, and Helen kissed,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">How, O how can you resist?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">First, be careful of your fan,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Trust it not to youth or man;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Love has filled a pirate's sail<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Often with its perfumed gale.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Mind your kerchief most of all,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Fingers touch when kerchiefs fall;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Shorter ell than mercers clip<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Is the space from hand to lip.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[126]<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> + +<span class="i1">Trust not such as talk in tropes<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Full of pistols, daggers, ropes;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">All the hemp that Russia bears<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Scarce would answer lovers' prayers;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Never thread was spun so fine,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Never spider stretched the line,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Would not hold the lovers true<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That would really swing for you.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Fiercely some shall storm and swear,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Beating breasts in black despair;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Others murmur with a sigh<br /></span> +<span class="i1">You must melt or they will die;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Painted words on empty lies,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Grubs with wings like butterflies;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Let them die, and welcome, too;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Pray what better could they do?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Fare thee well, if years efface<br /></span> +<span class="i1">From thy heart love's burning trace,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Keep, O keep that hallowed seat<br /></span> +<span class="i1">From the tread of vulgar feet;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">If the blue lips of the sea<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Wait with icy kiss for me,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Let not thine forget that vow,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Sealed how often, love, as now!<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>In his <i>Mechanism in Thought and Morals</i>, Doctor +Holmes reveals one of the secrets of humorous +writing. "The poet," he says, "sits down to his +desk with an odd conceit in his brain; and pre<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>sently +his eyes filled with tears, his thought slides +into the minor key, and his heart is full of sad and +plaintive melodies. Or he goes to his work, saying—</p> + +<p>"'To-night I would have tears;' and before he +rises from his table he has written a burlesque, +such as he might think fit to send to one of the +comic papers, if these were not so commonly +cemeteries of hilarity interspersed with cenotaphs +of wit and humor. These strange hysterics of the +intelligence which make us pass from weeping to +laughter, and from laughter back again to weeping, +must be familiar to every impressible nature; and +all this is as automatic, involuntary, as entirely self-evolved +by a hidden, organic process, as are the +changing moods of the laughing and crying woman. +The poet always recognizes a dictation <i>ab extra</i>; +and we hardly think it a figure of speech when we +talk of his inspiration."</p> + +<p>Of Doctor Holmes' inimitable <i>vers d'occasion</i> we +select the following:</p> + +<p>At the reception given to Harriet Beecher +Stowe on her seventieth birthday, at Governor +Claflin's beautiful summer residence in Newtonville, +Doctor Holmes read the following witty +and characteristic poem:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">If every tongue that speaks her praise<br /></span> +<span class="i1">For whom I shape my tinkling phrase<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Were summoned to the table,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The vocal chorus that would meet<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Of mingling accents harsh or sweet<br /></span> +<span class="i1">From every land and tribe would beat<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The polyglots of Babel.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">High Dutchman and Low Dutchman, too,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The Russian serf, the Polish Jew,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Arab, Armenian and Mantchoo<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Would shout, "We know the lady."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Know her! Who knows not Uncle Tom<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And her he learned his gospel from<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Has never heard of Moses;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Full well the brave black hand we know<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That gave to freedom's grasp the hoe<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That killed the weed that used to grow<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Among the Southern roses.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">When Archimedes, long ago,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Spoke out so grandly "<i>dos pou sto</i>,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Give me a place to stand on,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">I'll move your planet for you, now,"<br /></span> +<span class="i1">He little dreamed or fancied how<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The <i>sto</i> at last should find its <i>pou</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2">For woman's faith to land on.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[129]<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> + +<span class="i1">Her lever was the wand of art,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Her fulcrum was the human heart<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Whence all unfailing aid is;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">She moved the earth! its thunders pealed,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Its mountains shook, its temples reeled,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The blood-red fountains were unsealed,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And Moloch sunk to Hades.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">All through the conflict, up and down<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Marched Uncle Tom and Old John Brown,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">One ghost, one form ideal,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And which was false and which was true.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And which was mightier of the two,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The wisest sibyl never knew,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For both alike were real.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Sister, the holy maid does well<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Who counts her beads in convent cell,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where pale devotion lingers;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But she who serves the sufferer's needs,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Whose prayers are spelt in loving deeds<br /></span> +<span class="i1">May trust the Lord will count her beads<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As well as human fingers.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">When Truth herself was Slavery's slave<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thy hand the prisoned suppliant gave<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The rainbow wings of fiction.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And Truth who soared descends to-day<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Bearing an angel's wreath away,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Its lilies at thy feet to lay<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With heaven's own benediction.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span></p> + +<p>The following poem was read by Doctor +Holmes at the Unitarian Festival, June 2, +1882.</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">The waves upbuild the wasting shore:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where mountains towered the billows sweep:<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Yet still their borrowed spoils restore<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And raise new empires from the deep.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">So, while the floods of thought lay waste<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The old domain of chartered creeds,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The heaven-appointed tides will haste<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To shape new homes for human needs.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Be ours to mark with hearts unchilled<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The change an outworn age deplores;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The legend sinks, but Faith shall build<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A fairer throne on new-found shores,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The star shall glow in western skies,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That shone o'er Bethlehem's hallowed shrine,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And once again the temple rise<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That crowned the rock of Palestine.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Not when the wondering shepherds bowed<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Did angels sing their latest song,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Nor yet to Israel's kneeling crowd<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Did heaven's one sacred dome belong—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Let priest and prophet have their dues,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The Levite counts but half a man,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Whose proud "salvation of the Jews"<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shuts out the good Samaritan!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Though scattered far the flock may stray,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His own the shepherd still shall claim,—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The saints who never learned to pray,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The friends who never spoke his name.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[131]<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Dear Master, while we hear thy voice,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That says, "The truth shall make you free,"<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thy servant still, by loving choice,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">O keep us faithful unto Thee!<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>Doctor Holmes being unable to attend the +annual reunion of the Harvard Club in New +York City, February 21, 1882, sent the following +letter and sonnet which were read at +the banquet:</p> + +<blockquote><p class="p2"> +<span class="smcap"><big>Dear Brothers Alumni</big></span>:<br /> +</p> + +<p>As I am obliged to deny myself the pleasure +of being with you, I do not feel at liberty +to ask many minutes of your time and +attention. I have compressed into the limits +of a sonnet the feelings I am sure we all +share that, besides the roof that shelters us +we have need of some wider house where we +can visit and find ourselves in a more extended +circle of sympathy than the narrow +ring of a family, and nowhere can we seek a +truer and purer bond of fellowship than under +the benignant smile of our <i>Alma Mater</i>. Let +me thank you for the kindness which has signified +to me that I should be welcome at your +festival.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p> + +<p>In all the rewards of a literary life none +is more precious than the kindly recognition +of those who have clung to the heart +of the same nursing mother, and will always +flee to each other in the widest distances of +space, and let us hope in those unbounded +realms in which we may not utterly forget +our earthly pilgrimage and its dear companions.</p> + +<p class="tdr"> +Very sincerely yours, <br /> + +<span class="smcap"><big>Oliver Wendell Holmes</big></span>.<br /> +</p></blockquote> + +<h3>SONNET.</h3> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Yes, home is sweet! and yet we needs must sigh,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Restless until our longing souls have found<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Some realm beyond the fireside's narrow bound,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Where slippered ease and sleepy comfort lie,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Some fair ideal form that cannot die,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">By age dismantled and by change uncrowned,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Else life creeps circling in the self-same round,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And the low ceiling hides the lofty sky.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Ah, then to thee our truant hearts return,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dear mother, Alma, Casta—spotless, kind!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thy sacred walls a larger home we find,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And still for thee thy wandering children yearn,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">While with undying fires thine altars burn,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where all our holiest memories rest enshrined.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p> + + +<h3>POEM READ BY DOCTOR HOLMES AT THE WHITTIER<br /> +CELEBRATION.</h3> + +<div class="poemblock2"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">I believe that the copies of verses I've spun,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Like Scheherazade's tales, are a thousand and one,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">You remember the story—those mornings in bed—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">'Twas the turn of a copper—a tale or a head.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">A doom like Scheherazade's falls upon me<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In a mandate as stern as the Sultan's decree;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">I'm a florist in verse, and what <i>would</i> people say<br /></span> +<span class="i1">If I came to a banquet without my bouquet?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">It is trying, no doubt, when the company knows<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Just the look and the smell of each lily and rose,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The green of each leaf in the sprigs that I bring,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And the shape of the bunch and the knot of the string.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Yes, 'the style is the man,' and the nib of one's pen<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Makes the same mark at twenty, and threescore and ten;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">It is so in all matters, if truth may be told;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Let one look at the cast he can tell you the mould.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">How we all know each other! No use in disguise;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Through the holes in the mask comes the flash of the eyes;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">We can tell by his—somewhat—each one of our tribe,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">As we know the old hat which we cannot describe.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Though in Hebrew, in Sanscrit, in Choctaw, you write,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Sweet singer who gave us the Voices of Night,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Though in buskin or slipper your song may be shod,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Or the velvety verse that Evangeline trod.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="pagenum">[134]<br /></span> +<span class="i1">We shall say, 'You can't cheat us—we know it is you—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">There is one voice like that, but there cannot be two.<br /></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Maëstro</i>, whose chant like the dulcimer rings;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And the woods will be hushed when the nightingale sings.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">And he, so serene, so majestic, so true,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Whose temple hypæthral the planets shine through,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Let us catch but five words from that mystical pen<br /></span> +<span class="i1">We should know our one sage from all children of men.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">And he whose bright image no distance can dim,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Through a hundred disguises we can't mistake him,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Whose play is all earnest, whose wit is the edge<br /></span> +<span class="i1">(With a beetle behind) of a sham-splitting wedge.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Do you know whom we send you, Hidalgos of Spain?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Do you know your old friends when you see them again?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Hosea was Sancho! you Dons of Madrid,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But Sancho that wielded the lance of the Cid!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">And the wood-thrush of Essex—you know whom I mean,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Whose song echoes round us when he sits unseen,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Whose heart-throbs of verse through our memories thrill<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Like a breath from the wood, like a breeze from the hill.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">So fervid, so simple, so loving, so pure,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">We hear but one strain and our verdict is sure—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thee cannot elude us—no further we search—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">'Tis Holy George Herbert cut loose from his church!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">We think it the voice of a cherub that sings—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Alas! we remember that angels have wings—<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[135]<br /></span> +<span class="i1">What story is this of the day of his birth?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Let him live to a hundred! we want him on earth!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">One life has been paid him (in gold) by the sun;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">One account has been squared and another begun;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But he never will die if he lingers below<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Till we've paid him in love half the balance we owe!<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + + +<div class="p6" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2> + +<h4>THE MAN OF SCIENCE.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>"WHAT</big> decided me," says Doctor Holmes, +"to give up Law and apply myself to Medicine, +I can hardly say, but I had from the first looked +upon my law studies as an experiment. At any +rate, I made the change, and soon found myself introduced +to new scenes and new companionships.</p> + +<p>"I can scarcely credit my memory when I recall +the first impressions produced upon me by sights +afterwards become so familiar that they could no +more disturb a pulse-beat than the commonest of +every-day experiences. The skeleton, hung aloft +like a gibbeted criminal, looked grimly at me as I +entered the room devoted to the students of the +school I had joined, just as the fleshless figure of +Time, with the hour-glass and scythe, used to glare +upon me in my childhood from the <i>New England +Primer</i>. The white faces in the beds at the Hospital +found their reflection in my own cheeks which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> +lost their color as I looked upon them. All this +had to pass away in a little time; I had chosen my +profession, and must meet all its aspects until they +lost their power over my sensibility....</p> + +<p>"After attending two courses of lectures in the +School of the University, I went to Europe to continue +my studies. I can hardly believe my own +memory when I recall the old practitioners and +professors who were still going round the hospitals +when I mingled with the train of students in the +École de Médicine."</p> + +<p>Of the famous Baron Boyer, author of a nine-volumed +book on surgery, Doctor Holmes says, "I +never saw him do more than look as if he wanted +to cut a good collop out of a patient he was examining." +Baron Larrey, the favorite surgeon of Napoleon, +he describes as a short, square, substantial +man, with iron-gray hair, red face, and white apron. +To go round the Hotel des Invalides with Larrey +was to live over the campaign of Napoleon, to look +on the sun of Austerlitz, to hear the cannon of +Marengo, to struggle through the icy waters of the +Beresina, to shiver in the snows of the Russian +retreat, and to gaze through the battle smoke upon +the last charge of the red lancers on the redder +field of Waterloo.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span></p> + +<p>Then there was Baron Dupuytren, "<i>ce grand +homme de lautre côté de la rivièrè</i>,—with his high, +full-doomed head and oracular utterances; Lisfrance, +the great drawer of blood and hewer of +members; Velpeau, who, coming to Paris in wooden +shoes, and starving, almost, at first, raised himself +to great eminence as surgeon and author; Broussais, +the knotty-featured, savage old man who reminded +one of a volcano, which had well-nigh used +up its fire and brimstone, and Gabriel Audral, +the rapid, fluent, fervid and imaginative speaker.</p> + +<p>"The object of our reverence, however, I +might almost say idolatry," adds Doctor Holmes, +"was Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis, a tall, +rather spare, dignified personage, of serene and +grave aspect, but with a pleasant smile and +kindly voice for the student with whom he +came into personal relations.</p> + +<p>"If I summed up the lessons of Louis in +two expressions, they would be these: First, always +make sure that you form a distinct and clear +idea of the matter you are considering. Second, +always avoid vague approximations where +exact estimates are possible....</p> + +<p>"Yes, as I say, I look back on the long hours of +the many days I spent in the wards and in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> +the autopsy room of La Pitié, where Louis was +one of the attending physicians—yes, Louis +did a great work for practical medicine. Modest +in the presence of nature, fearless in the +face of authority, unwearying in the pursuit of +truth, he was a man whom any student might +be happy and proud to claim as his teacher +and his friend. And yet, as I look back on +the days when I followed his teachings, I feel +that I gave myself up too exclusively to his +methods of thought and study. There is one +part of their business that certain medical practitioners +are too apt to forget; namely, that +what they should most of all try to do is to +ward off disease, to alleviate suffering, to preserve +life, or at least to prolong it if possible. +It is not of the slightest interest to the patient +to know whether three or three and a quarter +inches of his lungs are hepatized. His mind +is not occupied with thinking of the curious +problems which are to be solved by his own +autopsy, whether this or that strand of the +spinal marrow is the seat of this or that form +of degeneration. He wants something to relieve +his pain, to mitigate the anguish of +dyspnæa, to bring back motion and sensibility<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> +to the dead limb, to still the tortures of neuralgia. +What is it to him that you can localize +and name by some uncouth term, the disease +which you could not prevent and which +you can not cure? an old woman who knows +how to make a poultice and how to put it +on, and does it <i>tuto</i>, <i>cito</i>, <i>jucunde</i>, just when +and where it is wanted, is better—a thousand +times better in many cases—than a staring +pathologist who explores and thumps and doubts +and guesses and tells his patient he will be +better to-morrow, and so goes home to tumble +his books over and make out a diagnosis.</p> + +<p>"But in those days I, like most of my fellow students, +was thinking much more of 'science' than +of practical medicine, and I believe if we had not +clung so closely to the skirts of Louis, and had +followed some of the courses of men like Rousseau,—therapeutists, +who gave special attention to +curative methods, and not chiefly to diagnosis—it +would have been better for me and others. One +thing, at any rate, we did learn in the wards of +Louis. We learned that a very large proportion of +diseases get well of themselves, without any special +medication—the great fact formulated, enforced +and popularized by Doctor Jacob Bigelow."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span></p> + +<p>It is well known that Doctor Holmes detests the +habit of drugging practised by so many physicians +of the "old school," and in his address before the +Massachusetts Medical Society, entitled Currents +and Counter Currents in Medical Science, he +makes a severe attack upon the inordinate use of +medicines.</p> + +<p>"What is the honest truth," he says at another +time, "about the medical art? By far the largest +number of diseases which physicians are called to +treat will get well at any rate, even in spite of reasonably +bad treatment. Of the other fraction, a +certain number will inevitably die, whatever is +done: there remains a small margin of cases where +the life of the patient depends on the skill of the +physician. Drugs now and then save life; they +often shorten disease and remove symptoms; but +they are second in importance to food, air, temperature, +and the other hygienic influences. That was +a shrewd trick of Alexander's physician on the occasion +of his attack after bathing. He asked three +days to prepare his medicine. Time is the great +physician as well as the great consoler. Sensible +men in all ages have trusted most to nature."</p> + +<p>Of quacks and other humbugs, Doctor Holmes +had an undisguised, wholesome contempt.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Shall we try," he says, "the medicines advertised +with the certificates of justices of the peace, of +clergymen, or even members of Congress? Certainly, +it may be answered, any one of them which +makes a good case for itself. But the difficulty is, +that the whole class of commercial remedies are +shown by long experience, with the rarest exceptions, +to be very sovereign cures for empty pockets, +and of no peculiar efficacy for anything else. You +may be well assured that if any really convincing +evidence was brought forward in behalf of the most +vulgar nostrum, the chemists would go at once to +work to analyze it, the physiologists to experiment +with it, and the young doctors would all be trying +it on their own bodies, if not on their patients. But +we do not think it worth while, as a general rule, to +send a Cheap Jack's gilt chains and lockets to be +tested for gold. We know they are made to sell, +and so with the pills and potions.... +Think how rapidly any real discovery is appropriated +and comes into universal use. Take anæsthetics, +take the use of bromide of potassium, and +see how easily they obtained acceptance. If you +are disposed to think any of the fancy systems has +brought forward any new remedy of value which +the medical profession has been slow to accept,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> +ask any fancy practitioner to name it. Let him +name one,—the best his system claims,—not +a hundred, but one. A single new, efficient, +trustworthy remedy which the medical profession +can test as they are ready to test +before any scientific tribunal, opium, quinine, +ether, the bromide of potassium. There is no +such remedy on which any of the fancy practitioners +dare stake his reputation. If there +were, it would long ago have been accepted, +though it had been flowers of brimstone from +the borders of Styx or Cocytus."</p> + +<p>Homœopathy is classed by Doctor Holmes among +such "Kindred Delusions" as the Royal Cure for +the King's Evil, the Weapon Ointment, the +Sympathetic Powder, the Tar-water mania of +Bishop Berkeley, and the Metallic Tractors, or +Perkinsism.</p> + +<p>In making a direct attack upon the pretentions +of Homœopathy, Doctor Holmes declares +at the outset that he shall treat it not by +ridicule, but by argument; with great freedom, +but with good temper and in peaceable language.</p> + +<p><i>Similia similibus curantur.</i> Like cures like, +is one of the fundamental principles of Homœ<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>opathy, +and "improbable though it may seem +to some," says Doctor Holmes with his usual impartial +fairness, "there is no essential absurdity +involved in the proposition that diseases yield +to remedies capable of producing like symptoms. +There are, on the other hand, some analogies +which lend a degree of plausibility to the statement. +There are well-ascertained facts, known +from the earliest periods of medicine, showing that +under certain circumstances, the very medicine +which from its known effects, one would expect +to aggravate the disease, may contribute +to its relief. I may be permitted to allude, +in the most general way, to the case in which +the spontaneous efforts of an over-tasked stomach +are quieted by the agency of a drug +which that organ refuses to entertain upon any +terms. But that <i>every</i> cure ever performed by +medicine should have been founded upon this +principle, although without the knowledge of a +physician, that the Homœopathy axiom is, as +Hahnemann asserts, "the <i>sole</i> law of nature in +therapeutics," a law of which nothing more than +a transient glimpse ever presented itself to the +innumerable host of medical observers, is a dogma +of such sweeping extent and pregnant nov<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>elty, +that it demands a corresponding breath +and depth of unquestionable facts to cover its +vast pretensions."</p> + +<p>Among the many facts of which great use +has been made by the Homœopathists, is that +found in the precept given for the treatment +of parts which have been frozen, by friction +with snow, etc.</p> + +<p>"But," says Doctor Holmes, "we deceive +ourselves by names, if we suppose the frozen +part to be treated by cold, and not by heat. +The snow may even be actually <i>warmer</i> than +the part to which it is applied. But even if it +were at the same temperature when applied, +it never did and never could do the least good +to a frozen part, except as a mode of regulating +the application of what? of <i>heat</i>. But the +heat must be applied <i>gradually</i>, just as food +must be given a little at a time to those perishing +with hunger. If the patient were +brought into a warm room, heat would be applied +<i>very rapidly</i>, were not something interposed +to prevent this, and allow its gradual +admission. Snow or iced water is exactly what +is wanted; it is not cold to the part; it is +very possibly warm, on the contrary, for these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> +terms are relative, and if it does not melt and +let the heat in, or is not taken away, the part +will remain frozen up until doomsday. Now +the treatment of a frozen limb by heat, in +large or small quantities, is not Homœopathy."</p> + +<p>Another supposed illustration of the Homœopathic +law is the alleged successful management +of burns, by holding them to the fire. "This +is a popular mode of treating those burns which +are of too little consequence to require any +more efficacious remedy, and would inevitably +get well of themselves, without any trouble +being bestowed upon them. It produces a most +acute pain in the part, which is followed by +some loss of sensibility, as happens with the eye +after exposure to strong light, and the ear +after being subjected to very intense sounds. +This is all it is capable of doing, and all further +notions of its efficacy must be attributed +merely to the vulgar love of paradox. If this +example affords any comfort to the Homœopathist, +it seems as cruel to deprive him of it +as it would be to convince the mistress of the +smoke-jack or the flatiron that the fire does +not literally draw the fire out, which is her +hypothesis.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But if it were true that frost-bites were +cured by cold and burns by heat, it would be +subversive, so far as it went, of the great +principle of Homœopathy. For you will remember +that this principle is that <i>Like</i> cures +<i>Like</i>, and not that <i>Same</i> cures <i>Same</i>; that +there is <i>resemblance</i> and not <i>identity</i> between +the symptoms of the disease and those produced +by the drug which cures it, and none +have been readier to insist upon this distinction +than the Homœopathists themselves. For +if <i>Same</i> cures <i>Same</i>, then every poison must +be its own antidote,—which is neither a part +of their theory nor their so-called experience. +They have been asked often enough, why it +was that arsenic could not cure the mischief +which arsenic had caused, and why the infectious +cause of small-pox did not remedy the +disease it had produced, and then they were +ready enough to see the distinction I have +pointed out. "O no! it was not the hair of +the same dog, but only of one very much like +him!"</p> + +<p>The belief in and employment of the "Infinitesimal +doses," Doctor Holmes handles with +the same fairness and acumen; but the absurd<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> +idea affirmed by Hahnemann that Psora is the +cause of the great majority of chronic diseases, +he treats as it deserves, with unqualified contempt.</p> + +<p>In conclusion, he says, "As one humble +member of a profession which for more than +two thousand years has devoted itself to the +pursuit of the best earthly interests of mankind +always assailed and insulted from without +by such as are ignorant of its infinite perplexities +and labors, always striving in unequal +contest with the hundred armed giants who +walk in the noonday and sleep not in the +midnight, yet still toiling not merely for itself +and the present moment, but for the race +and the future, I have lifted up my voice +against this lifeless delusion, rolling its shapeless +bulk into the path of a noble science it +is too weak to strike or to injure."</p> + +<p>Upon the contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, +Doctor Holmes wrote an able treatise some +forty years ago. This was reprinted with some +additions, in 1855, and in an introductory note +which accompanies the still later addition (1883), +Doctor Holmes says, "The subject of this Paper +has the same profound interest for me at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> +present moment as it had when I was first +collecting the terrible evidence out of which, +as it seems to me, the commonest exercise of +reason could not help shaping the truth it +involved. It is not merely on account of the +bearing of the question—if there is a question—on +all that is most sacred in human life +and happiness that the subject cannot lose its +interest. It is because it seems evident that +a fair statement of the facts must produce +its proportion of well-constituted and unprejudiced +minds."</p> + +<p>The essay, a most valuable one, is republished +without the change of a word or syllable, as +the author upon reviewing finds that it anticipates +and eliminates those secondary questions +which cannot be for a moment entertained +until the one great point of fact is peremptorily +settled.</p> + +<p>There are but very few subjects, indeed, in +medical science, that Doctor Holmes has not +investigated, and investigated, too, most thoroughly....</p> + +<p>In his article on "Reflex Vision," published in +Volume IV. of the Proceedings of the American +Academy, will be found a very interesting ac<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>count +of his experiments in optics. One, indeed, +that will both interest and instruct.</p> + +<p>To him, as is well known, we are indebted +for numerous improvements in the stereoscope; +and in microscopes also, he has done some +original and important work.</p> + +<p>Said an admirer of Doctor Holmes in +referring to his career as a medical professor:</p> + +<p>"He always makes people attentive, and I +have been told that there is no professor whom +the students so much like to listen to. In one +of his books he says that every one of us is +three persons, and I think that if the statement +is true in regard to ordinary men and +women, Doctor Holmes himself is at least half +a dozen persons. He lectures so well on +anatomy that his students never suspect him +to be a poet, and he writes verses so well +that most people do not suspect him of being +an authority among scientific men. Though he +illustrates his medical lectures by quotations of +the most appropriate and interesting sort, from +a wonderful variety of authors, he has never +been known to refer to his own writings in +that way."</p> + +<p>In celebrating the silver anniversary year of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> +his wedding with the Muse of the monthlies—meaning +his reappearance in the <i>Atlantic</i>—he +observed that during the larger part of his +absence, his time had been in a great measure +occupied with other duties. "I never forgot +the advice of Coleridge," he said, "that +a literary man should have a regular calling. +I may say, in passing, that I have often given +the advice to others, and too often wished that +I could supplement it with the words, "And +confine himself to it.'"</p> + + +<div class="p6" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2> + +<h4>THE HOLMES BREAKFAST.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>AS</big> the seventieth birthday of Doctor +Holmes drew near, the publishers of +the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i> resolved to give a "Breakfast" +in his honor. The twenty-ninth of August, +1879, was, of course, the true anniversary, but +knowing it would be difficult to bring together +at that season of the year the friends and literary +associates of Doctor Holmes, Mr. Houghton +decided to postpone the invitations until the +thirteenth of November. Upon that day a brilliant +company assembled at noon in the spacious +parlors of the Hotel Brunswick, in Boston.</p> + +<p>Doctor Holmes and his daughter, Mrs. Sargent, +received the guests, who numbered in all +about one hundred. Mrs. Harriet Beecher +Stowe, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Ralph Waldo +Emerson and John G. Whittier assisted in this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> +ceremony, and after a couple of hours spent in +sparkling converse, the company adjourned to +the dining-room, where a sumptuous "Breakfast" +was served to the "Autocrat" and his +friends.</p> + +<p>At the six tables were seated writers of +eminence in every department of literature. +Grace was said by the Rev. Phillips Brooks, +D.D., and after the cloth was removed, Mr. +H.O. Houghton introduced the guest of the +day in a few happily-chosen words.</p> + +<p>The company then rose and drank the health +of the poet, after which Doctor Holmes read +the following beautiful poem:</p> + + +<h3>THE IRON GATE.</h3> + +<div class="poemblock2"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Where is the patriarch you are kindly greeting?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Not unfamiliar to my ear his name,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Not yet unknown to many a joyous meeting<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In days long vanished,—is he still the same,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Or changed by years forgotten and forgetting,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech and thought,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Still o'er the sad, degenerate present fretting,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where all goes wrong and nothing as it ought?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Old age, the gray-beard! Well, indeed, I know him,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shrunk, tottering, bent, of aches and ills the prey;<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[154]<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In sermon, story, fable, picture, poem,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Oft have I met him from my earliest day.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">In my old Æsop, toiling with his bundle,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His load of sticks,—politely asking Death,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Who comes when called for,—would he lug or trundle<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His fagot for him?—he was scant of breath.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">And sad "Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher,"<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Has he not stamped the image on my soul,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In that last chapter, where the worn-out Teacher<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sighs o'er the loosened cord, the broken bowl?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Yes, long, indeed, I've known him at a distance,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And now my lifted door-latch shows him here;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">I take his shrivelled hand without resistance,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And find him smiling as his step draws near.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">What though of gilded baubles he bereaves us,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dear to the heart of youth, to manhood's prime,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Think of the calm he brings, the wealth he leaves us,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The hoarded spoils, the legacies of time!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Altars once flaming, still with incense fragrant,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Passion's uneasy nurslings rocked asleep,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Hope's anchor faster, wild desire less vagrant,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Life's flow less noisy, but the stream how deep!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Still as the silver cord gets worn and slender,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Its lightened task-work tugs with lessening strain,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Hands get more helpful, voices grown more tender,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Soothe with their softened tones the slumberous brain.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[155]<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> + +<span class="i1">Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embers<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That warm its creeping life-blood till the last.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Dear to its heart is every loving token<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That comes unbidden ere its pulse grows cold,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Ere the last lingering ties of life are broken,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Its labors ended, and its story told.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Ah, while around us rosy youth rejoices,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For us the sorrow-laden breezes sigh,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And through the chorus of its jocund voices<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Throbs the sharp note of misery's hopeless cry.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">As on the gauzy wings of fancy flying<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From some far orb I track our watery sphere,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Home of the struggling, suffering, doubting, dying,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The silvered globule seems a glistening tear.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">But Nature lends her mirror of illusion<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To win from saddening scenes our age-dimmed eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And misty day-dreams blend in sweet confusion<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The wintery landscape and the summer skies.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">So when the iron portal shuts behind us,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And life forgets us in its noise and whirl,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Visions that shunned the glaring noonday find us,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And glimmering starlight shows the gates of pearl.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">I come not here your morning hour to sadden<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[156]<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A limping pilgrim leaning on his staff,—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">I, who have never deemed it sin to gladden<br /></span> +<span class="i2">This vale of sorrows with a wholesome laugh.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">If word of mine another's gloom has brightened,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Through my dumb lips the heaven-sent message came;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">If hand of mine another's task has lightened,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">It felt the guidance that it dares not claim.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">But, O my gentle sisters, O my brothers,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">These thick-sown snow-flakes hint of toil's release;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">These feebler pulses bid me leave to others<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The tasks once welcome; evening asks for peace.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Time claims his tribute; silence now is golden;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Let me not vex the too long suffering lyre;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Though to your love untiring still beholden,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The curfew tells me—cover up the fire.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">And now with grateful smile and accents cheerful,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And warmer heart than look or word can tell,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In simplest phrase—these traitorous eyes are tearful—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thanks, Brothers, Sisters,—Children, and farewell!<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>After the reading of the poem, the following +reminiscence from Doctor Holmes' pen, was +read by Mr. Houghton:—</p> + +<p>"The establishment of the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i> +was due to the liberal enterprise of the then +flourishing firm of Phillips & Sampson. Mr. +Phillips, more especially, was most active and +sanguine. The publishers were fortunate enough<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> +to secure the services of Mr. Lowell as editor. +Mr. Lowell had a fancy that I could be useful +as a contributor, and woke me from a kind +of literary lethargy in which I was half slumbering, +to call me to active service. Remembering +some crude contributions of mine to an +old magazine, it occurred to me that their title +might serve for some fresh papers, and so I +sat down and wrote off what came into my +head under the title <i>The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table</i>. +This series of papers was not the +result of an express premeditation, but was, as +I may say, dipped from the running stream of +my thoughts. Its very kind reception encouraged +me, and you know the consequences, +which have lasted from that day to this.</p> + +<p>"But what I want especially to say here is, +that I owe the impulse which started my second +growth, to the urgent hint of my friend Mr. +Lowell, and that you have him to thank, not +only for his own noble contributions to our +literature, but for the spur which moved me +to action, to which you owe any pleasure I +may have given, and I am indebted for the +crowning happiness of this occasion. His +absence I most deeply regret for your and my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> +own sake, while I congratulate the country to +which in his eminent station he is devoting +his services."</p> + +<p>As Mr. Whittier had been obliged to leave +the company before this, Mr. James T. Fields +read his fine poem entitled "Our Autocrat," +from which we quote the last verses:</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">What shapes and fancies, grave or gay,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Before us at his bidding come!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The Treadmill tramp, the "One Hoss Shay,"<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The dumb despair of Elsie's doom!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">The tale of Aris and the Maid,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The plea for lips that cannot speak,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The holy kiss that Iris laid<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On Little Boston's pallid cheek!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Long may he live to sing for us<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His sweetest songs at evening time,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And like his Chambered Nautilus<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To holier heights of beauty climb!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Though now unnumbered guests surround<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The table that he rules at will,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Its Autocrat, however crowned,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is but our friend and comrade still.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">The world may keep his honored name,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The wealth of all his varied powers;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">A stronger claim has love than fame<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And he himself is only ours!<br /></span> +</div></div></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p> + +<p>Mr W.D. Howells then took the chair and +was introduced to the company as the representative +of the "mythical editor."</p> + +<p>In his remarks, Mr. Howells paid the following +tribute to the Autocrat:</p> + +<p>"The fact is known to you all, and I will +not insist upon it, but it was Oliver Wendell +Holmes who not only named, but who made +the <i>Atlantic</i>. How did he do this? Oh, very +simply! He merely invented a new kind of +literature, something so beautiful and rare and +fine that while you were trying to determine +its character as monologue or colloquy, prose +or poetry, philosophy or humor, it was gradually +penetrating your consciousness with a +sense that the best of all these had been fused +in one—a perfect form, an exquisite wisdom, +an unsurpassable grace. This, and much more +than any poor words of mine can say, was +the Autocrat, followed by the Professor, and +then by the Poet, at the same Breakfast-Table. +We pledge him by all these names to-day, +not only with the wine in our cups, but with +the pride and love in our hearts, where we +have enshrined him immortally young, in spite +of the birthdays that come and go, and where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> +we defy the future that lies in wait for our +precious things, to know his quality better, or +value his genius more highly than we."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Julia Ward Howe was then called upon +to respond to the toast, "The girls we have +<i>not</i> left behind us," and after a few words in +reply, she read a fine poem in honor of the +illustrious guest.</p> + +<p>Charles Dudley Warner was then introduced, +and after a short speech, read a poem by H. +H., "To Oliver Wendell Holmes, on his seventieth +birthday." In these charming lines almost every +poem of Doctor Holmes is mentioned with rare +tact and skill.</p> + +<p>At the close of the poem, President Eliot of +Harvard, rose and said:</p> + +<p>"It seems to me that it is my duty to +remind all these poets, essayists and story-tellers +who are gathered here, that the main work of +our friend's life has been of an altogether different +nature. I know him as the professor of +anatomy and physiology in the Medical School +of Harvard University for the last thirty-two +years, and I know him to-day as one of the +most active and hard-working of our lecturers. +Some of you gentlemen, I observe, are lecturers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> +by profession, at least during the winter months. +Doctor Holmes delivers four lectures every +week for eight months of the year. I am sure +the lecturers by profession will understand that +this task requires an extraordinary amount of +mental and physical vigor. And I congratulate +our friend on the weekly demonstration of that +vigor which he gives in our medical school. +Most of you have perhaps the impression that +Doctor Holmes chiefly enjoys a pretty couplet, +a beautiful verse, an elegant sentence. It has +fallen to me to observe that he has other +great enjoyments. I never heard any other +mortal exhibit such enthusiasm over an elegant +dissection. And perhaps you think it is the +pen with which Doctor Holmes is chiefly +skilful. I assure you that he is equally skilful +with scalpel and with microscope. And I think +that none of us can understand the meaning +and scope of Doctor Holmes' writing, unless +we have observed that the daily work of his +life has been to study and teach a natural +science, the noble science of anatomy. It is +his to know with absolute exactness the form +of every bone in this wonderful body of ours, +the course of every artery, and vein, and nerve,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> +the form and function of every muscle, and +not only to know it, but to describe it with +a fascinating precision and enthusiasm. When +I read his writings I find the traces of this +life-work of his on every page. There are +three thousand men scattered through New +England at this moment who will remember +Doctor Holmes through their lives, and transmit +to their children the memory of him, as student +and teacher of exact science. And let us honor +him to-day, not forgetting—they can never be +forgotten—his poems and essays, as a noble +representative of the profession of the scientific +student and teacher."</p> + +<p>Mr. S.L. Clemens (Mark Twain) followed +President Eliot.</p> + +<p>"I would have travelled," he began, "a much +greater distance than I have come to witness +the paying of honors to Doctor Holmes, for +my feeling toward him has always been one +of peculiar warmth. When one receives a letter +from a great man for the first time in +his life, it is a large event to him, as all of +you know by your own experience. Well, the +first great man who ever wrote me a letter +was our guest—Oliver Wendell Holmes. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> +was also the first great literary man I ever +stole anything from, and that is how I came +to write to him and he to me. When my +first book was new, a friend of mine said, +'The dedication is very neat.' 'Yes,' I said, 'I +thought it was.' My friend said, 'I always admired +it even before I saw it in <i>The Innocents +Abroad</i>.' I naturally said, 'What do you +mean? Where did you ever see it before?' +'Well, I saw it some years ago, as Doctor +Holmes' dedication to his <i>Songs in Many Keys</i>.' +Of course my first impulse was to prepare +this man's remains for burial, but upon reflection +I said I would reprieve him for a moment +or two and give him a chance to prove +his assertion if he could. We stepped into a +bookstore and he did prove it. I had really +stolen that dedication almost word for word. +I could not imagine how this curious thing +happened, for I knew one thing for a dead +certainty—that a certain amount of pride +always goes along with a teaspoonful of brains, +and that this pride protects a man from +deliberately stealing other people's ideas. That +is what a teaspoonful of brains will do for a +man, and admirers had often told me I had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> +nearly a basketful, though they were rather +reserved as to the size of the basket. However, +I thought the thing out and solved the +mystery. Two years before I had been laid up +a couple of weeks in the Sandwich Islands, +and had read and re-read Doctor Holmes's +poems till my mental reservoir was filled with +them to the brim. The dedication lay on top +and handy, so by and by I unconsciously +stole it. Perhaps I unconsciously stole the +rest of the volume, too, for many people have +told me that my book was pretty poetical in +one way or another. Well, of course I wrote +Doctor Holmes and told him I hadn't meant +to steal, and he wrote back and said in the +kindest way that it was all right and no +harm done; and added that he believed we +all unconsciously worked over ideas gathered in +reading and hearing, imagining they were +original with ourselves. He stated a truth +and did it in such a pleasant way, and salved +over my sore spot so gently and so healingly +that I was rather glad I had committed the +crime, for the sake of the letter. I afterward +called on him and told him to make perfectly +free with any ideas of mine that struck him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> +as being good protoplasm for poetry. He +could see by that that there wasn't anything +mean about me; so we got along right from +the start.</p> + +<p>"I have met Doctor Holmes many times +since; and lately he said—however, I am +wandering away from the one thing which I +got on my feet to do, that is, to make my +compliments to you, my fellow-teachers of the +great public, and likewise to say I am right +glad to see that Doctor Holmes is still in +his prime and full of generous life; and as +age is not determined by years, but by trouble +and by infirmities of mind and body, I hope it +may be a very long time yet before any one +can truthfully say, 'He is growing old.'"</p> + +<p>Mr. Howells then introduced Mr. J.W. +Harper of New York, who gave in his remarks +a delightful pen portrait of Doctor +Holmes, the lyceum lecturer, which we have +elsewhere quoted. Mr. E.C. Stedman followed +Mr. Harper with a brief speech and graceful +poem. Mr. T.B. Aldrich spoke of the "inexhaustible +kindness of Doctor Holmes to his +younger brothers in literature," and Mr. William +Winter paid his tribute to the honored<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> +guest by "The Chieftain," a poem which he +named for the occasion <i>Hearts and Holmes</i>.</p> + +<p>Mr. J.T. Trowbridge then read a poem entitled +"Filling an Order," in which Nature compounds +for Miss Columbia "three geniuses A 1.," to +grace her favorite city. She concludes her mixture +as follows:</p> + +<div class="poemblock3"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Says she, "The fault I'm well aware, with genius is the presence<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Of altogether too much clay with quite too little essence,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And sluggish atoms that obstruct the spiritual solution;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">So now instead of spoiling these by over-much dilution<br /></span> +<span class="i1">With their fine elements I'll make a single rare phenomenon,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And of three common geniuses concoct a most uncommon one,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">So that the world shall smile to see a soul so universal,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Such poesy and pleasantry, packed in so small a parcel.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">So said, so done; the three in one she wrapped, and stuck the label<br /></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Poet, Professor, Autocrat of Wit's own Breakfast-Table.</i>"<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + + +<p class="p2">C.P. Cranch then read a fine sonnet, and Colonel +T.W. Higginson followed with felicitous +remarks, a portion of which referring to the +father of Doctor Holmes we have quoted elsewhere +in the book.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span></p> + +<p>Letters of regrets were then read from R. +B. Hayes, John Holmes, the poet's brother, +George William Curtis and George Bancroft.</p> + +<p>Among others unable to be present, but who +sent regrets, were Rebecca Harding Davis, +Carl Schurz, Edwin P. Whipple, Noah Porter, +George Ripley, Henry Watterson, George H. +Boker, Frances Hodgson Burnett, L. Maria +Child, Gail Hamilton, Parke Godwin, Donald +G. Mitchell, John J. Piatt, Richard Grant +White, D.C. Gilman, J.W. DeForest, Frederick +Douglass, J.G. Holland, George W. Childs, John +Hay and W.W. Story.</p> + +<p>Mr. James T. Fields was obliged to fulfil a lecture +engagement soon after the speaking began, +else he would have read the following fairy +tale:—</p> + + + +<p class="p2">Once upon a time a company of good-natured +fairies assembled for a summer moonlight dance +on a green lawn in front of a certain picturesque +old house in Cambridge. They had +come out for a midnight lark, and as their +twinkling feet flew about among the musical +dewdrops they were suddenly interrupted by the +well-known figure of the village doctor, which,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> +emerging from the old mansion, rapidly made +its way homeward.</p> + +<p>"Another new mortal has alighted on our happy +planet," whispered a fairy gossip to her near +companion.</p> + +<p>"Evidently so," replied the tiny creature, smiling +good-naturedly on the doctor's footprints in +the grass.</p> + +<p>"That is the minister's house," said another +small personage, with a wink of satisfaction.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps it is a boy," ejaculated Fairy Number +One.</p> + +<p>"I <i>know</i> it is a boy!" said Fairy Number +Two. I read it in the Doctor's face when the +moon lighted up his countenance as he shut +the door so softly behind him.</p> + +<p>"It <i>is</i> a boy!" responded the Fairy Queen, +who always knew everything, and that settled +the question.</p> + +<p>"If that is the case," cried all the fairies at +once, "let us try what magic still remains to us +in this busy, bustling New England. Let us +make that child's life a happy and a famous +one if we can."</p> + +<p>"Agreed," replied the queen; "and I will +lead off with a substantial gift to the little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> +new-comer. I will crown him with Cheerfulness, +a sunny temperament, brimming over with mirth +and happiness."</p> + +<p>"And I will second your Majesty's gift to the +little man," said a sweet-voiced creature, "and +tender him the ever-abiding gift of Song. He +shall be a perpetual minstrel to gladden the +hearts of all his fellow-mortals."</p> + +<p>"And I," said another, "will shower upon him +the subtle power of Pathos and Romance, and +he shall take unto himself the spell of a sorcerer +whenever he chooses to scatter abroad +his wise and beautiful fancies."</p> + +<p>"And I," said a very astute-looking fairy, +"will touch his lips with Persuasion; he shall +be a teacher of knowledge, and the divine gift +of eloquence shall be at his command, to uplift +and instruct the people."</p> + +<p>"And I," said a quaint, energetic little body, +"will endow him with a passionate desire to +help forward the less favored sons and daughters +of earth, who are struggling for recognition +and success in their various avocations."</p> + +<p>"And I," said a motherly-looking, amiable +fairy, "will see that in due time he finds the best +among women for his companionship, a helpmeet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> +indeed, whose life shall be happily bound up in +<i>his</i> life."</p> + +<p>"Do give me a chance," cried a beautiful +young fairy "and I will answer for his children, +that they may be worthy of their father, +and all a mother's heart may pray that Heaven +will vouchsafe to her."</p> + +<p>And after seventy years have rolled away +into space, the same fairies assembled on the +same lawn at the same season of the year, to +compare notes with reference to their now famous +<i>protégé</i>. And they declared that their magic +had been thoroughly successful, and that their +charms had all worked without a single flaw.</p> + +<p>Then they took hands, and dancing slowly +around the time-honored mansion, sang this +roundelay, framed in the words of their own +beloved poet:—</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Strength to his hours of manly toil!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Peace to his star-lit dreams!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">He loves alike the furrowed soil,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The music-haunted streams!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Sweet smiles to keep forever bright<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The sunshine on his lips,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And faith that sees the ring of light<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Round Nature's last eclipse!<br /></span> +</div></div></div> +<div class="p6" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2> + +<h4>ORATIONS AND ESSAYS.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>IN</big> <i>Pages from an old Volume of Life</i>, +one of the latest books published by Doctor +Holmes, we have a collection of most delightful +orations and essays. Some of them we +recognize as old, familiar friends. "Bread and +the Newspaper," for instance, recalls vividly +those sad, terribly earnest days when the civil +war was rending not only our land but our +hearts. Something to eat, and the daily papers +to read—these we must have, no matter what +else we had to give up!</p> + +<p>War taught us, as nothing else could, what +we really were. It exalted our manhood and +our womanhood, and showed us our substantial +human qualities for a long time kept out of +sight, it may be, by the spirit of commerce, +the love of art, science, or literature. Those +who had called Doctor Holmes "an aristocrat,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> +"a Tory," forgot all their bitter feelings when +he said, "We are finding out that not only +'patriotism is eloquence,' but that heroism is +gentility. All ranks are wonderfully equalized +under the fire of a masked battery. The plain +artisan, or the rough fireman, who faces the +lead and iron like a man, is the truest representative +we can show of the heroes of Crécy +and Agincourt. And if one of our fine gentlemen +puts off his straw-colored kids and stands +by the other, shoulder to shoulder, or leads +him on to the attack, he is as honorable in +our eyes and in theirs as if he were ill-dressed +and his hands were soiled with labor.</p> + +<p>In <i>The Inevitable Trial</i>, an oration delivered +on the 4th of July, 1863, before the +City Authorities of Boston, Doctor Holmes +who had been falsely classed among the enemies +of the Anti-slavery movement, spoke as +follows:—</p> + +<p>"Long before the accents of our famous +statesmen resounded in the halls of the Capitol, +long before the <i>Liberator</i> opened its batteries, +the controversy now working itself out +by trial of battle was foreseen and predicted. +Washington warned his countrymen of the dan<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>ger +of sectional divisions, well knowing the line +of clearage that ran through the seemingly +solid fabric. Jefferson foreshadowed the judgment +to fall upon the land for its sins against +a just God. Andrew Jackson announced a +quarter of a century beforehand that the next +pretext of revolution would be slavery. De +Tocqueville recognized with that penetrating insight +which analyzed our institutions and conditions +so keenly, that the Union was to be +endangered by slavery not through its interests, +but through the change of character it was +bringing about in the people of the two sections, +the same fatal change which George +Mason, more than half a century before, had +declared to be the most pernicious effect of the +system, adding the solemn warning, now fearfully +justifying itself in the sight of his descendants, +that 'by an inevitable chain of causes +and effects, Providence punishes national sins by +national calamities.'</p> + +<p>"The Virginian romancer pictured the far-off +scenes of the conflict which he saw approaching +as the prophets of Israel painted the coming +woes of Jerusalem, and the strong iconoclast of +Boston announced the very year when the cur<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>tain +should rise on the yet unopened drama.</p> + +<p>"The wise men of the past, and the shrewd +men of our own time, who warned us of the +calamities in store for our nation, never doubted +what was the cause which was to produce first +alienation and finally rupture. The descendants +of the men, 'daily exercised in tyranny,' the +'petty tyrants,' as their own leading statesmen +called them long ago, came at length to +love the institution which their fathers had +condemned while they tolerated. It is the fearful +realization of that vision of the poet where +the lost angels snuff up with eager nostrils +the sulphurous emanations of the bottomless +abyss,—so have their natures become changed +by long breathing the atmosphere of the realm +of darkness."</p> + +<p>In this same grand oration occur also these +eloquent words:—</p> + +<p>"Whether we know it or not, whether we +mean it or not, we cannot help fighting against +the system that has proved the source of all +those miseries which the author of the Declaration +of Independence trembled to anticipate. +And this ought to make us willing to do and +to suffer cheerfully. There were Holy Wars of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> +old, in which it was glory enough to die; wars +in which the one aim was to rescue the sepulchre +of Christ from the hands of infidels. +The sepulchre of Christ is not in Palestine! +He rose from that burial-place more than eighteen +hundred years ago. He is crucified wherever +his brothers are slain without cause; he +lies buried wherever man, made in his Maker's +image, is entombed in ignorance lest he should +learn the rights which his Divine Master gave +him! This is our Holy War, and we must +bring to it all the power with which he fought +against the Almighty before he was cast from +heaven."</p> + +<p>In his <i>Hunt after the Captain</i>, we realize +how near the "dull dead ghastliness of War" +came to the fond father's heart as he sought +his wounded hero through those dreary hospital +wards! He knew of what he spake when appealing +so eloquently to his fellow-patriots:—</p> + +<p>"Sons and daughters of New England, men +and women of the North, brothers and sisters +in the bond of the American Union, you have +among you the scarred and wasted soldiers +who have shed their blood for your temporal +salvation. They bore your nation's emblems<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> +bravely through the fire and smoke of the battle-field; +nay, their own bodies are starred with +bullet-wounds and striped with sabre-cuts, as +if to mark them as belonging to their country +until their dust becomes a portion of the soil +which they defended. In every Northern graveyard +slumber the victims of this destroying +struggle. Many whom you remember playing +as children amidst the clover blossoms of our +Northern fields, sleep under nameless mounds +with strange Southern wild flowers blooming +over them. By those wounds of living heroes, +by those graves of fallen martyrs, by the hopes +of your children, and the claims of your children's +children yet unborn, in the name of +outraged honor, in the interest of violated sovereignty, +for the life of an imperilled nation, +for the sake of men everywhere, and of our +common humanity, for the glory of God and +the advancement of his kingdom on earth, your +country calls upon you to stand by her through +good report and through evil report, in triumph +and in defeat, until she emerges from the great +war of Western civilization, Queen of the broad +continent, Arbitress in the councils of earth's +emancipated peoples."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span></p> + +<p>It will be remembered that this heart-stirring +oration, <i>The Inevitable Trial</i>, from which the +above is quoted, was delivered at one of the +most discouraging periods of the war; when +Lee was in Pennsylvania, and just before the +capture of Vicksburg.</p> + +<p>Among the other essays and orations in +<i>Pages from an old Volume of Life</i>, we find +the <i>Physiology of Walking</i>, which contains +many interesting facts concerning the human +wheel, with its spokes and felloes.</p> + +<p>"Walking," says Doctor Holmes, "is a perpetual +falling with a perpetual self-recovery. +It is a most complex, violent, and perilous +operation, which we divest of its extreme danger +only by continual practice from a very +early period of life. We find how complex +it is when we attempt to analyze it, and we +see that we never understood it thoroughly +until the time of the instantaneous photograph. +We learn how violent it is, when we walk +against a post or a door in the dark. We discover +how dangerous it is when we slip or +trip and come down, perhaps breaking or dislocating +our limbs, or overlook the last step +of a flight of stairs, and discover with what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> +headlong violence we have been hurling ourselves +forward.</p> + +<p>"Two curious facts are easily proved. First, +a man is shorter when he is walking than +when at rest. We have found a very simple +way of showing this by having a rod or stick +placed horizontally, so as to touch the top of +the head forcibly, as we stand under it. In +walking rapidly beneath it, even if the eyes +are shut, the top of the head will not even +graze the rod. The other fact is, that one +side of a man always tends to outwalk the +other side, so that no person can walk far in +a straight line, if he is blindfolded. <i>The Seasons</i>, +and <i>The Human Body and its Management</i>, +were originally published in the Atlantic Almanac. +<i>Cinders from the Ashes</i> gives some +exceedingly interesting reminiscences.</p> + +<p>Richard Henry Dana, the schoolboy, is +described by Doctor Holmes as ruddy, sturdy, +quiet and reserved; and of Margaret Fuller he +says, "Sitting on the girls' benches, conspicuous +among the schoolgirls of unlettered origin, +by that look which rarely fails to betray +hereditary and congenital culture, was a young +person very nearly of my own age. She came<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> +with the reputation of being 'smart,' as we should +have called it; clever, as we say nowadays. +Her air to her schoolmates was marked by +a certain stateliness and distance; as if she +had other thoughts than theirs, and was not +of them. She was a great student and a great +reader of what she used to call 'náw-véls;' I +remember her so well as she appeared at school +and later, that I regret that she had not been +faithfully given to canvas or marble in the day +of her best looks. None know her aspect +who have not seen her living. Margaret, as I +remember her at school and afterwards, was +tall, fair complexioned, with a watery, aquamarine +lustre in her light eyes, which she used +to make small, as one does who looks at the +sunshine.</p> + +<p>"A remarkable point about her was that long, +flexile neck, arching and undulating in strange, +sinuous movements, which one who loved her +would compare to those of a swan, and one +who loved her not, to those of the ophidian +who tempted our common mother. Her talk +was affluent, magisterial, <i>de haut en bas</i>, some +would say euphuistic, but surpassing the talk +of women in breadth and audacity. Her face<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> +kindled and reddened and dilated in every feature +as she spoke, and, as I once saw her in +a fine storm of indignation at the supposed +ill treatment of a relative, showed itself capable +of something resembling what Milton calls the +Viraginian aspect."</p> + +<p>A composition of Margaret's was one day +taken up by the boy Oliver.</p> + +<p>"It is a trite remark," she began.</p> + +<p>Alas! the embryo-poet did not know the +meaning of the word trite.</p> + +<p>"How could I ever judge Margaret fairly," +he exclaims, "after such a crushing discovery +of her superiority?"</p> + +<p>Of his instructors and schoolmates at Andover, +Doctor Holmes has given us numerous pen +portraits. The old Academy building had a +dreary look to the homesick boy, but he soon +recovered from his "slightly nostalgic" state, +and found not a few congenial spirits in his +new surroundings.</p> + +<p>One fine, rosy-faced boy with whom he had +a school discussion upon Mary, Queen of Scots, +and for whom he has always cherished a lasting +friendship, is now the well-known Phinehas +Barnes. Another little fellow, with black hair<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> +and very black eyes, studying with head between +his hands, and eyes fastened to his +book as if reading a will that made him heir +to a million, was the future professor, Greek +scholar and Bible Commentator, Horatio Balch +Hackett. One of the masters was the late +Rev. Samuel Horatio Stearns, "an excellent and +lovable man," says Doctor Holmes, "who looked +kindly on me, and for whom I always cherished +a sincere regard." Professor Moses Stuart he +describes as "tall, lean, with strong, bold features, +a keen, scholarly, accipitrine nose, thin, +expressive lips, and great solemnity and impressiveness +of voice and manner. His air was +Roman, his neck long and bare, like Cicero's, and +his toga,—that is, his broadcloth cloak,—was +carried on his arm, whatever might have been +the weather, with such a statue-like, rigid grace +that he might have been turned into marble +as he stood, and looked noble by the side of +the antiques of the Vatican." Then, there was +Doctor Porter, an invalid, with the prophetic +handkerchief bundling his throat; and Doctor +Woods, who looked his creed decidedly, and +had the firm fibre of a theological athlete. But +none of the preceptors, it may be presumed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> +was so closely watched as the one to whom +a dream had come that he should drop dead +when praying. "More than one boy kept his +eye on him during his public devotions, possessed +by the same feeling the man had who +followed Van Amburgh about, with the expectation, +let us not say hope, of seeing the lion +bite his head off sooner or later."</p> + +<p>In <i>Mechanism in Thought and Morals</i>, we +find a deal of psychology as well as science.</p> + +<p>"It is in the moral world," says Doctor Holmes, +"that materialism has worked the strangest +confusion. In various forms, under imposing +names and aspects, it has thrust itself into +the moral relations, until one hardly knows +where to look for any first principles without +upsetting everything in searching for them.</p> + +<p>"The moral universe includes nothing but +the exercise of choice: all else is machinery. +What we can help and what we cannot +help are on two sides of a line which separates +the sphere of human responsibility from +that of the Being who has arranged and controls +the order of things.</p> + +<p>"The question of the freedom of the will has +been an open one, from the days of Milton's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> +demons in conclave to the noteworthy essay +of Mr. Hazard, our Rhode Island neighbor. +It still hangs suspended between the seemingly +exhaustive strongest motive argument +and certain residual convictions. The sense +that we are, to a limited extent, self-determining; +the sense of effort in willing; the sense +of responsibility in view of the future, and +the verdict of conscience in review of the past,—all +of these are open to the accusation of +fallacy; but they all leave a certain undischarged +balance in most minds. We can invoke +the strong arm of the <i>Deus in machina</i>, as +Mr. Hazard, and Kant and others, before him +have done. Our will may be a primary initiating +cause or force, as unexplainable, as unreducible, +as indecomposable, as impossible if +you choose, but as real to our belief as the +<i>œternitas a parte ante</i>. The divine foreknowledge +is no more in the way of delegated choice +than the divine omnipotence is in the way of +delegated power. The Infinite can surely slip +the cable of the finite if it choose so to do."</p> + +<p>With outspoken braveness Doctor Holmes +rejects "the mechanical doctrine which makes +me," he says, "the slave of outside influences,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> +whether it work with the logic of Edwards, +or the averages of Buckle; whether it come +in the shape of the Greek's destiny, or the +Mahometan's fatalism."</p> + +<p>But he claims, too, the right to eliminate +all mechanical ideas which have crowded into +the sphere of intelligent choice between right +and wrong. "The pound of flesh," he declares, +"I will grant to Nemesis; but in the name +of human nature, not one drop of blood,—not +one drop."</p> + +<p>And this leads us to speak of Doctor +Holmes' religious views. He attended King's +Chapel, and is classed among the most liberal-minded +of the Unitarian creed.</p> + +<p>When chairman of the Boston Unitarian +Festival, in 1877, he gave the following list +of certain theological beliefs that he has always +delighted to combat.</p> + +<p>"May I," he begins, "without committing +any one but myself, enumerate a few of the +stumbling blocks which still stand in the way +of some who have many sympathies with what +is called the liberal school of thinkers?</p> + +<p>"The notion of sin as a transferable object. +As philanthropy has ridded us of chattel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> +slavery, so philosophy must rid us of chattel +sin and all its logical consequences.</p> + +<p>"The notion that what we call sin is anything +else than inevitable, unless the Deity +had seen fit to give every human being a +perfect nature, and develop it by a perfect +education.</p> + +<p>"The oversight of the fact that all moral +relations between man and his Maker are reciprocal, +and must meet the approval of man's +enlightened conscience before he can render +true and heartfelt homage to the power that +called him into being, and is not the greatest +obligation to all eternity on the side of +the greatest wisdom and the greatest power?</p> + +<p>"The notion that the Father of mankind is +subject to the absolute control of a certain +malignant entity known under the false name +of justice, or subject to any law such as +would have made the father of the prodigal +son meet him with an account-book and pack +him off to jail, instead of welcoming him back +and treating him to the fatted calf.</p> + +<p>"The notion that useless suffering is in any +sense a satisfaction for sin, and not simply an +evil added to a previous one."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span></p> + +<p>In reviewing the life and the writings of +Jonathan Edwards, Doctor Holmes with his +usual fairness and kindly spirit toward all mankind, +declares that the spiritual nature seems +to be a natural endowment, like a musical ear.</p> + +<p>"Those who have no ear for music must be +very careful how they speak about that mysterious +world of thrilling vibrations which are +idle noises to them. And so the true saint +can be appreciated only by saintly natures. +Yet the least spiritual man can hardly read +the remarkable 'Resolutions' of Edwards without +a reverence akin to awe for his purity and +elevation. His beliefs and his conduct we need +not hesitate to handle freely. The spiritual +nature is no safeguard against error of doctrine +or practice; indeed it may be doubted +whether a majority of all the spiritual natures in +the world would be found in Christian countries. +Edwards' system seems, in the light of +to-day, to the last degree barbaric, mechanical, +materialistic, pessimistic. If he had lived a +hundred years later, and breathed the air of +freedom, he could not have written with such +old-world barbarism as we find in his volcanic +sermons....</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span></p> + +<p>"There is no sufficient reason for attacking +the motives of a man so saintly in life, so +holy in aspirations, so patient, so meek, so laborious, +so thoroughly in earnest in the work +to which his life was given. But after long +smothering in the sulphurous atmosphere of +his thought, one cannot help asking, is this,—or +anything like this,—the accepted belief of +any considerable part of Protestantism? If so, +we must say with Bacon, 'It were better to +have no opinion of God than such an opinion +as is unworthy of him.'"</p> + +<p>In speaking of the old reproach against physicians, +that where there were three of them together +there were two atheists, Doctor Holmes +pertinently remarks: "There is, undoubtedly, a +strong tendency in the pursuits of the medical +profession to produce disbelief in that figment of +tradition and diseased human imagination which +has been installed in the seat of divinity by +the priesthood of cruel and ignorant ages. It is +impossible, or, at least, very difficult, for a physician +who has seen the perpetual efforts of Nature—whose +diary is the book he reads oftenest—to +heal wounds, to expel poisons, to do the best that +can be done under the given conditions,—it is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> +very difficult for him to believe in a world where +wounds cannot heal, where opiates cannot give +a respite from pain, where sleep never comes +with its sweet oblivion of suffering, where +the art of torture is the only faculty which remains +to the children of that same Father who +cares for the falling sparrow. The Deity has +often been pictured as Moloch, and the physician +has, no doubt, frequently repudiated him as a +monstrosity.</p> + +<p>"On the other hand, the physician has often +been renounced for piety as well as for his peculiarly +professional virtue of charity, led upward by +what he sees the source of all the daily marvels +wrought before his own eyes. So it was +that Galen gave utterance to that song of praise +which the sweet singer of Israel need not have +been ashamed of; and if this heathen could be +lifted into such a strain of devotion, we need not +be surprised to find so many devout Christian +worshippers among the crowd of medical 'atheists.'"</p> + +<p>In coming back again as a regular contributor +to the magazine which Doctor Holmes was +so prominently identified with a quarter of a +century ago, he indulges in a few entertaining<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> +reflections. "When I sat down to write the +first paper I sent to the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>," +he says, "I felt somewhat as a maiden of +more than mature effloresence may be supposed +to feel as she passes down the broad aisle in +her bridal veil and wealth of orange blossoms. +I had written little of late years. I was at +that time older than Goldsmith was when he +died, and Goldsmith, as Doctor Johnson says, +was a plant that flowered late. A new generation +had grown up since I had written the +verses by which, if remembered at all, I was +best known. I honestly feared that I might +prove the superfluous veteran who has no business +behind the footlights. I can as honestly +say that it turned out otherwise. I was most +kindly welcomed, and now I am looking back +on that far-off time as the period—I will not +say of youth—for I was close upon the five-barred +gate of the <i>cinquantaine</i>, though I had +not yet taken the leap—but of marrowy and +vigorous manhood. Those were the days of +unaided vision, of acute hearing, of alert movements, +of feelings almost boyish in their vivacity. +It is a long cry from the end of a second +quarter of a century in a man's life to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> +end of the third quarter. His companions have +fallen all around him, and he finds himself in +a newly peopled world. His mental furnishing +looks old-fashioned and faded to the generation +which is crowding about him with its new +patterns and fresh colors. Shall he throw open +his apartments to visitors, or is it not wiser +to live on his memories in a decorous privacy, +and not risk himself before the keen young +eyes and relentless judgment of the new-comers, +who have grown up in strength and self-reliance +while he has been losing force and confidence. +If that feeling came over me a quarter +of a century ago, it is not strange that it +comes back upon me now. Having laid down +the burden, which for more than thirty-five +years I have carried cheerfully, I might naturally +seek the quiet of my chimney corner, and +purr away the twilight of my life, unheard +beyond the circle of my own fireplace. But +when I see what my living contemporaries are +doing, I am shamed out of absolute inertness +and silence. The men of my birth year are +so painfully industrious at this very time that +one of the same date hardly dares to be idle. +I look across the Atlantic and see Mr. Glad<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>stone, +only four months younger than myself, +and standing erect with patriots' grievances on +one shoulder, and Pharaoh's pyramids on the +other—an Atlas whose intervals of repose are +paroxysms of learned labor; I listen to Tennyson, +another birth of the same year, filling the +air with melody long after the singing months +of life are over; I come nearer home, and +here is my very dear friend and college classmate, +so certain to be in every good movement +with voice or pen, or both, that, where +two or three are gathered together for useful +ends, if James Freeman Clarke is not with +them, it is because he is busy with a book or +a discourse meant for a larger audience; I +glance at the placards on the blank walls that +I am passing, and there I see the colossal +head of Barnum, the untiring, inexhaustible, +insuperable, ever-triumphant and jubilant Barnum, +who came to his atmospheric life less +than a year before I began to breathe the +fatal mixture, and still wages his Titanic +battle with his own past superlatives. How +can one dare to sit down inactive with such +examples before him? One must do something,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> +were it nothing more profitable than the work +of that dear old Penelope, of almost ninety +years, whom I so well remember hemming +over and over again the same piece of linen, +her attendant scissors removing each day's work +at evening; herself meantime being kindly +nursed in the illusion that she was still the +useful martyr of the household."</p> + +<p>An author, in Doctor Holmes' opinion, should +know that the very characteristics which make +him the object of admiration to many, and +endear him to some among them, will render +him an object of dislike to a certain number +of individuals of equal, it may be of superior, +intelligence. The converse of all this is very +true.</p> + +<p>"There will be individuals—they may be few, +they may be many—who will so instantly +recognize, so eagerly accept, so warmly adopt, +even so devoutly idolize, the writer in question, +that self-love itself, dulled as its palate is by +the hot spices of praise, draws back overcome +by the burning stimulants of adoration. I was +told, not long since, by one of our most justly +admired authoresses, that a correspondent wrote<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> +to her that she had read one of her stories +fourteen times in succession."</p> + +<p>There is a deep meaning in these elective +affinities. Each personality is more or less +completely the complement of some other. +Doctor Holmes thinks it should never be forgotten +by the critic that "every grade of +mental development demands a literature of its +own; a little above its level, that it may be +lifted to a higher grade, but not too much +above it, so that it requires too long a stride—a +stairway, not a steep wall to climb. The +true critic is not the sharp <i>captator verborum</i>; +not the brisk epigrammatist, showing off his +own cleverness, always trying to outflank the +author against whom he has arrayed his wits +and his learning. He is a man who knows +the real wants of the reading world, and can +prize at their just value the writings which +meet those wants."</p> + +<p>There is also another side of the picture. +Doctor Holmes does not forget the trials of +authorship. The writer who attains a certain +measure of popularity "will be startled to find +himself the object of an embarrassing devotion, +and almost appropriation, by some of his parish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> +of readers. He will blush at his lonely desk, +as he reads the extravagances of expression +which pour over him like the oil which ran +down upon the beard of Aaron, and even down +to the skirts of his garments—an extreme +unction which seems hardly desirable. We +ought to have his photograph as he reads one +of those frequent missives, oftenest traced, we +may guess, in the delicate, slanting hand which +betrays the slender fingers of the sympathetic +sisterhood.</p> + +<p>"A slight sense of the ridiculous at being +made so much of qualifies the placid tolerance +with which the rhymester or the essayist +sees himself preferred to the great masters +in prose and verse, and reads his name glowing +in a halo of epithets which might belong +to Bacon or Milton. We need not grudge +him such pleasure as he may derive from the +illusion of a momentary revery, in which he +dreams of himself as clad in royal robes and +exalted among the immortals. The next post +will probably bring him some slip from a +newspaper or critical journal, which will strip +him of his regalia, as Thackeray, in one of +his illustrations, has disrobed and denuded the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> +grand monarque. He saw himself but a +moment ago a colossal figure in a drapery of +rhetorical purple, ample enough for an Emperor, +as Bernini would clothe him. The +image breaker has passed by, belittling him +by comparison, jostling him off his pedestal, +levelling his most prominent feature, or even +breaking a whole ink bottle against him as +the indignant moralist did on the figure in the +vestibule of the opera house—the shortest +and most effective satire that ever came from +that fountain of approval and commendation. +Such are some of the varied experiences of +authorship."</p> + +<p>Out of his literary career as a successful +writer, Doctor Holmes was able to formulate +many rules for the self-protection of +authors, which were adopted unanimously at +an authors' association which was held in +Washington last September, and the remainder +of his "talk" is devoted to extracts from their +proceedings. Appended are a few of them:</p> + +<p>Of visits of strangers to authors. These +are not always distinguishable from each +other, and may justly be considered together. +The stranger should send up his card if he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> +has one; if he has none, he should, if admitted, +at once announce himself and his +object, without circumlocution, as thus; "My +name is M. or N., from X. or Y. I wish to +see and take the hand of a writer whom I +have long admired for his," etc., etc. Here +the author should extend his hand, and reply in +substance as follows: "I am pleased to see +you, my dear sir, and very glad that anything +I have written has been a source of +pleasure or profit to you." The visitor has +now had what he says he came for, and, after +making a brief polite acknowledgment, should +retire, unless, for special reasons, he is urged +to stay longer.</p> + +<p>Of autograph-seekers. The increase in the +number of applicants for autographs is so great +that it has become necessary to adopt positive +regulations to protect the author from the exorbitant +claims of this class of virtuosos. The +following propositions were adopted without discussion:</p> + +<p>No author is under any obligation to answer +any letter from an unknown person applying +for his autograph. If he sees fit to do so, it +is a gratuitous concession on his part.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span></p> + +<p>No stranger should ask for more than one +autograph.</p> + +<p>No stranger should request an author to +copy a poem, or even a verse. He should +remember that he is one of many thousands; +that one thousand fleas are worse than one +hornet, and that a mob of mosquitoes will +draw more blood than a single horse leech.</p> + +<p>Every correspondent applying for an autograph +should send a card or blank paper, in +a stamped envelope, directed to himself (or +herself). If he will not take the trouble to +attend to all this, which he can just as well +as to make the author do it, he must not +expect the author to make good his deficiencies. +[Accepted by acclamation].</p> + +<p>Sending a stamp does not constitute a claim +on an author for answer. [Received with loud +applause]. The stamp may be retained by the +author, or, what is better, devoted to the use +of some appropriate charity, as for instance, +the asylum for idiots and feeble-minded persons.</p> + +<p>Albums. An album of decent external aspect +may, without impropriety, be offered +to an author, with the request that he will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> +write his name therein. It is not proper, as +a general rule, to ask for anything more +than the name. The author may, of course, +add a quotation from his writings, or a sentiment, +if so disposed; but this must be considered +as a work of supererogation, and an +exceptional manifestation of courtesy.</p> + +<p>Bed-quilt autographs. It should be a source +of gratification to an author to contribute to +the soundness of his reader's slumbers, if he +cannot keep him awake by his writings. He +should therefore cheerfully inscribe his name +on the scrap of satin or other stuff (provided +always that it be sent him in a stamped and +directed envelope), that it may take its place +in the patchwork mosaic for which it is intended.</p> + +<p>Letters of admiration. These may be accepted +as genuine, unless they contain specimens +of the writer's own composition, upon +which a critical opinion is requested, in which +case they are to be regarded in the same +light as medicated sweetmeats, namely, as +meaning more than their looks imply. Genuine +letters of admiration, being usually considered +by the recipient as proofs of good<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> +taste and sound judgment on the part of his +unknown correspondent, may be safely left to +his decision as to whether they shall be answered +or not.</p> + +<p>The author of <i>Elsie Venner</i> thus excuses +himself for opening the budget of the grievances +of authors. "In obtaining and giving to +the public this abstract of the proceedings of +the association, I have been impelled by the +same feelings of humanity which led me to +join the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty +to Animals, believing that the sufferings of +authors are as much entitled to sympathy and +relief as those of the brute creation."</p> + +<p>The birthday of the Emperor of Japan is the +principal holiday of the year among his subjects, +and as Saturday, November 3d, 1883, was +the thirty-third anniversary of the birthday of +Mutsuhito Tenno, the reigning Emperor, it was +appropriately celebrated by the Japanese gentlemen +in Boston. The Japanese department +at the Foreign Exhibition was closed, and in +the evening a banquet was given at the Parker +House, about sixty gentlemen assembling +in response to the invitation of Mr. S.R. +Takahashi, chief of the imperial Japanese com<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>mission +to the Boston Foreign Exhibition. +The entrance to the banquet rooms was decorated +with the Japanese and American colors, +and at the head of the hall were portraits of +the Emperor and Empress of Japan, with the +colors of that country between them. The +occasion was a very enjoyable one, and was +especially interesting as it was a departure from +the custom at ordinary dinners here, several +gentlemen dividing with the presiding officer +the duty of proposing the toasts. One of the +most delightful orations of the evening given +by Oliver Wendell Holmes, was as follows:</p> + +<p>"I have heard of 'English' as she is spoke," +being taught in ten lessons, but I never heard +that a nation's literature could have justice +done to it in ten minutes. An ancestress of +mine—one of my thirty-two great-great-great-great-grandmothers—a +noted poetess in her +day, thus addressed her little brood of children:</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Alas! my birds, you wisdom want<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Of perils you are ignorant;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Ofttimes in grass, on trees, in flight,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Sore accidents on you may light;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Oh, to your safety have an eye,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">So happy may you live and die.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span></p> + +<p>"In accepting your kind invitation, I confess +that I was ignorant of my perils. I did not +follow the counsel of my grandmamma with +the four g's in having an eye to my own +safety. For I fear that if I had dreamed of +being called on to answer for American literature, +one of those 'previous engagements,' +which crop out so opportunely, would have +stood between me and my present trying position. +I had meant, if called upon, to say a +few words about a Japanese youth who studied +law in Boston, a very cultivated and singularly +charming young person, who died not +very long after his return to his native country. +Some of you may remember young Enouie—I +am not sure that I spell it rightly, and I +know that I cannot pronounce it properly; for +from his own lips it was as soft as an angel's +whisper. His intelligence, his delicate breeding, +the loveliness of his character, captivated all +who knew him. We loved him, and we mourned +for him as if he had been a child of our own +soil. But of him I must say no more.</p> + +<p>"In speaking of American literature we naturally +think first of our historical efforts. We +see that books hold but a small part of Amer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>ican +history. The axe and the ploughshare are +the two pens with which our New World +annals have been principally written, with +schoolhouses as notes of interrogation, and +steeples as exclamation points of pious adoration +and gratitude. Within half a century the +railroad has ruled our broad page all over, and +rewritten the story, with States for new chapters +and cities for paragraphs. This is the +kind of history which he who runs may read, +and he must run fast and far if he means to +read any considerable part of it.</p> + +<p>"But we must not forget our political history, +perishable in great measure as to its form, +long enduring in its results. This literature is +the index of our progress—in both directions—forward +and the contrary. From the days +of Washington and Franklin to the times +still fresh in our memory, from the Declaration +of Independence to the proclamation which +enfranchised the colored race, our political literature, +with all its terrible blunders and +short-comings, has been, after all, the fairest +expression the world has yet seen of what a +free people and a free press have to say and +to show for themselves.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But besides 'Congressional Documents' and +the like, the terror of librarians and the delight +of paper-makers, we do a good deal of +other printing. We make some books, a good +many books, a great many books, so many +that the hyperbole at the end of St. John's +gospel would hardly be an extravagance in +speaking of them. And among these are a +number of histories which hold an honorable +place on the shelves of all the great libraries +of Christendom. Why should I enumerate +them? For history is a Boston specialty. +From the days of Prescott and Ticknor to +those of Motley and Parkman, we have always +had an historian or two on hand, as +they used always to have a lion or two in +the Tower of London.</p> + +<p>"Next to the historians naturally come the +story-tellers and romancers. The essential difference +is—I would not apply the rough +side of the remark to historians like the best +of our own, but it is very often the fact—that +history tells lies about real persons and +fiction tells truth through the mouths of unreal +ones. England threw open the side doors +of its library to Irving. The continent flung<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> +wide its folding doors to Cooper. Laplace +was once asked who was the greatest mathematician +of Germany. 'Pfaff is the greatest,' +he answered. 'I thought Gauss was,' the +questioner said. 'You asked me,' rejoined +Laplace, 'who was the greatest mathematician +of Germany. Gauss was the greatest mathematician +of Europe.' So, I suppose we might +say <i>The Pilot</i> is or was the most popular +book ever written in America, but <i>Uncle Tom's +Cabin</i> is the most popular story ever published +in the world. And if <i>The Heart of +Mid Lothian</i> added a new glory of romance +to the traditions of Auld Reekie, <i>The Scarlet +Letter</i> did as much for the memories of our +own New England. I need not speak of the +living writers, some of whom are among us, +who have changed the old scornful question +into 'Who <i>does not</i> read an American +book?'</p> + +<p>"As to poetical literature, I must confess +that, except a line or two of Philip Freneau's, I +know little worthy of special remembrance before +the beginning of this century, always +excepting, as in duty bound, the verses of +my manifold grandmother. The conditions of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> +the country were unfavorable to the poetical +habit of mind. The voice that broke the +silence was that of Bryant, a clear and smooth +baritone, if I may borrow a musical term, +with a gamut of a few notes of a grave and +manly quality. Then came Longfellow, the +poet of the fireside, of the library, of all gentle +souls and cultivated tastes, whose Muse breathed +a soft contralto that was melody itself, and +Emerson, with notes that reached an octave +higher than any American poet—a singer +whose</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1"> Voice fell like a falling star.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>Like that of the bird addressed by Wordsworth—</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">At once far off and near,<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p class="noi">it was a</p> + +<div class="poemblock2"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span style="margin-left: 12em;">Cry<br /></span></span> +<span class="i1">Which made [us] look a thousand ways,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In bush and tree and sky;<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p class="noi">for whether it soared from the earth or dropped +from heaven, it was next to impossible to +divine.</p> + +<p>"I will not speak of the living poets of the +old or the new generation. It belongs to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> +young to give the heartiest welcome to the +new brood of singers. Samuel Rogers said +that when he heard a new book praised, he +read an old one. Mr. Emerson, in one of his +later essays, advises us never to read a book +that is not a year old. This I will say, that +every month shows us in the magazines, and +even in the newspapers, verse that would +have made a reputation in the early days of +the <i>North American Review</i>, but which attracts +little more notice than a breaking bubble.</p> + +<p>"A great improvement is noticeable in the +character of criticism, which is leaving the +hands of the 'general utility' writers and +passing into the hands of experts. The true +critic is the last product of literary civilization. +It costs as great an effort to humanize +the being known by that name as it does +to make a good church-member of a scalping +savage. Criticism is a noble function, but +only so in noble hands. We have just welcomed +Mr. Arnold as its worthy English representative; +we could not secure our creditors +more handsomely than we have done by leaving +Mr. Lowell in pledge for our visitor's safe +return.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span></p> + +<p>"One more hopeful mark of literary progress +is seen in our cyclopædias, our periodicals, +our newspapers, and I may add our indexes. +I would commend to the attention of our +enlightened friends such works as Mr. Pool's +great <i>Index to Periodical Literature</i>, Mr. Alibone's +<i>Dictionary of Authors</i>, and the <i>Index +Medicus</i>, now publishing at Washington—a +wonderful achievement of organized industry, +still carried on under the superintendence of +Doctor Billings, and well deserving examination +by all scholars, whatever their calling.</p> + +<p>"We have learned so much from our Japanese +friends, that we should be thankful to pay +them back something in return. With art such +as they have, they must also have a literature +showing the same originality, grace, facility and +simple effectiveness. Let us hope they will +carry away something of our intellectual products, +as well as those good wishes which +follow them wherever they show their beautiful +works of art and their pleasant and always +welcome faces."</p><div class="p6" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2> + +<h4>THE HOME CIRCLE.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>DOCTOR</big> Holmes has two sons and one +daughter. Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior, +his eldest child, was born in 1841. When a young +lad, he attended the school of Mr. E.S. Dixwell, +in Boston, and it was here that he met his +future wife, Miss Fannie Dixwell. In his graduating +year at Harvard College (1861), he +joined the Fourth Battalion of Infantry, +commanded by Major Thomas G. Stevenson. +The company was at that time stationed +at Fort Independence, Boston Harbor, and it +was there that young Holmes wrote his poem +for Class Day. He served three years in the +war, and was wounded first in the breast at +Ball's Bluff, and then in the neck at the Battle +of Antietam.</p> + +<p>In Doctor Holmes' <i>Hunt after the Captain</i>, +we have not only a vivid picture of war times,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> +but a most touching revelation of fatherly love +and solicitude. The young captain was wounded +yet again at Sharpsburgh, and was afterwards +brevetted as Lieutenant-Colonel. During +General Grant's campaign of 1864 he served as +aide-de-camp to Brigadier-General H.G. Wright. +After the war he entered the Harvard Law +School, and in 1866 received the degree of +LL. B. Since then he has practised law in +Boston, and has written many valuable articles +upon legal subjects.</p> + +<p>His edition of Kent's <i>Commentaries on American +Law</i>, to which he devoted three years of +careful labor, has received the highest encomiums, +and his volume on <i>The Common Law</i> forms +an indispensable part of every law student's +library.</p> + +<p>In 1882, he was appointed Professor in the +Harvard Law School, and a few weeks later +was elected Justice in the Supreme Court of +Massachusetts.</p> + +<p>At the Lawyers' Banquet, given January 30th, +1883, at the Hotel Vendome, Honorable William +G. Russell thus introduced the father of +the newly-appointed judge:</p> + +<p>"We come now to a many-sided subject, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> +I know not on which side to attack him with +any hope of capturing him. I might hail him +as our poet, for he was born a poet; they are +all born so. If he didn't lisp in numbers, it +was because he spoke plainly at a very early +age. I might hail him as physician, and a +long and well-spent life in that profession would +justify it; but I don't believe it will ever be +known whether he has cured more cases of +dyspepsia and blues by his poems or his powders +and his pills. I might hail him as professor, +and as professor <i>emeritus</i> he has added +a new wreath to his brow. I might hail him +as Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, for there +he had a long reign. He will defend himself +with courage, for he never showed the +white feather but once, and that is, that he +does not dare to be as funny as he can. A +tough subject, surely, and I must try him on +the tender side, the paternal. I give you the +father who went in search of a captain, and, +finding him, presents to us now his son, the +judge."</p> + +<p>On rising, Doctor Holmes held up a sheet +of paper, and said, "You see before you" (referring +to the paper) "all that you have to fear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> +or hope. For thirty-five years I have taught +anatomy. I have often heard of the roots of +the tongue, but I never found them. The danger +of a tongue let loose you have had opportunity +to know before, but the danger of a +scrap of paper like this is so trivial that I +hardly need to apologize for it."</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">His Honor's father yet remains,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His proud paternal posture firm in;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But, while his right he still maintains<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To wield the household rod and reins,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He bows before the filial ermine.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">What curious tales has life in store,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With all its must-bes and its may-bes!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The sage of eighty years and more<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Once crept a nursling on the floor,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Kings, conquerors, judges, all were babies.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">The fearless soldier, who has faced<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The serried bayonets' gleam appalling,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">For nothing save a pin misplaced<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The peaceful nursery has disgraced<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With hours of unheroic bawling.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">The mighty monarch, whose renown<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fills up the stately page historic,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Has howled to waken half the town,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And finished off by gulping down<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His castor oil or paregoric.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[212]<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">The justice, who, in gown and cap,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Condemns a wretch to strangulation,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Has scratched his nurse and spilled his pap,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And sprawled across his mother's lap<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For wholesome law's administration.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Ah, life has many a reef to shun<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Before in port we drop our anchor,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But when its course is nobly run<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Look aft! for there the work was done.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Life owes its headway to the spanker!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Yon seat of justice well might awe<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The fairest manhood's half-blown summer;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">There Parsons scourged the laggard law,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">There reigned and ruled majestic Shaw,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">What ghosts to hail the last new-comer!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">One cause of fear I faintly name,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The dread lest duty's dereliction<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Shall give so rarely cause for blame<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Our guileless voters will exclaim,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">"No need of human jurisdiction!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">What keeps the doctor's trade alive?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Bad air, bad water; more's the pity!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But lawyers walk where doctors drive,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And starve in streets where surgeons thrive,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our Boston is so pure a city.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">What call for judge or court, indeed,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">When righteousness prevails so through it<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Our virtuous car-conductors need<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Only a card whereon they read<br /></span> +<span class="i2">"Do right; it's naughty not to do it!"<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[213]<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">The whirligig of time goes round,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And changes all things but affection;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">One blessed comfort may be found<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In heaven's broad statute which has bound<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Each household to its head's protection.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">If e'er aggrieved, attacked, accused,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A sire may claim a son's devotion<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To shield his innocence abused,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">As old Anchises freely used<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His offspring's legs for locomotion.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">You smile. You did not come to weep,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor I my weakness to be showing;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And these gay stanzas, slight and cheap,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Have served their simple use,—to keep<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A father's eyes from overflowing.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>Doctor Holmes' daughter, who bore her +mother's name, Amelia Jackson, married the +late John Turner Sargent. In her <i>Sketches +and Reminiscences of the Radical Club</i>, we have +some pithy remarks of Doctor Holmes'. To +speak without premeditation, he says, on a +carefully written essay, made him feel as he +should if, at a chemical lecture, somebody should +pass around a precipitate, and when the mixture +had become turbid should request him to +give his opinion concerning it. The fallacies +continually rising in such a discussion from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> +the want of a proper understanding of terms, +always made him feel as if quicksilver had +been substituted for the ordinary silver of +speech. The only true way to criticize such +an essay was to take it home, slowly assimilate +it, and not talk about it until it had become +a part of one's self.</p> + +<p>Edward, the youngest son of Doctor Holmes, +had chosen the same profession as his brother.</p> + +<p>It was at Mrs. Sargent's home, at Beverly +Farms, that Doctor Holmes passed most of his +summers. The pretty, cream-colored house, +with its broad veranda in front, can be easily +seen from the station; but to appreciate the +charms of this pleasant country home, one should +catch a glimpse of the cosey interior.</p> + +<p>Robert Rantoul, John T. Morse and Henry +Lee were neighbors of Doctor Holmes at Beverly +Farms, and Lucy Larcom's home was not +far distant.</p> + +<p>After eighteen years' residence at No. 8 +Montgomery Place, Doctor Holmes moved to +164 Charles street, where he lived about twelve +years. His home in Boston was at No. 296 +Beacon street.</p> + +<p>"We die out of houses," says the poet,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> +"just as we die out of our bodies.... +The body has been called the house we live +in; the house is quite as much the body we +live in.... The soul of a man has a +series of concentric envelopes around it, like +the core of an onion, or the innermost of a +nest of boxes. First, he has his natural garment +of flesh and blood. Then his artificial +integuments, with their true skin of solid stuffs, +their cuticle of lighter tissues, and their variously-tinted +pigments. Thirdly, his domicile, be +it a single chamber or a stately mansion. +And then the whole visible world, in which +Time buttons him up as in a loose, outside +wrapper.... Our houses shape themselves +palpably on our inner and outer nature. +See a householder breaking up and you will +be sure of it. There is a shell fish which +builds all manner of smaller shells into the +walls of its own. A house is never a home +until we have crusted it with the spoils of a +hundred lives besides those of our own past. +See what these are and you can tell what the +occupant is."</p> + +<p>The poet's home on Beacon street well illustrates +the above extract. I shall not soon forget<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> +the charming picture that greeted me, one gray +winter day, as I was ushered into the poet's +cheerful study. A blazing wood fire was crackling +on the hearth, and the ruddy glow was +reflected now on the stately features of "Dorothy +Q.," now on the Copley portrait of old Doctor +Cooper, and now with a peculiar Rembrandt +effect upon the low rows of books, the orderly +desk, and the kind, cordial face of the poet +himself. An "Emerson Calendar" was hanging +over the mantel, and after calling my attention +to the excellent picture upon it of the old +home at Concord, Doctor Holmes began to +talk of his brother poet in terms of warmest +affection.</p> + +<p>As he afterwards remarked at the Nineteenth +Century Club, the difference between Emerson's +poetry and that of others with whom he +might naturally be compared, was that of algebra +and arithmetic. The fascination of his +poems was in their spiritual depth and sincerity +and their all pervading symbolism. Emerson's +writings in prose and verse were worthy +of all honor and admiration, but his manhood +was the noblest of all his high endowments. +A bigot here and there might have avoided +meeting him, but if He who knew what was +in men had wandered from door to door in +New England, as of old in Palestine, one of +the thresholds which "those blessed feet" +would have crossed would have been that of +the lovely and quiet home of Emerson.</p> + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 660px;"> +<img src="images/218.png" width="660" height="284" alt="<p>Hand written Poem signed by Oliver Wendell Holmes</p>" title="Hand written Poem signed by Oliver Wendell Holmes" /> +<span class="caption">Hand written Poem signed by Oliver Wendell Holmes</span> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span></p> + + + +<p class="p2">The view from the broad bay window in Doctor +Holmes' study, recalled his own description:</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Through my north window, in the wintry weather,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My airy oriel on the river shore,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">I watch the sea-fowl as they flock together,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where late the boatman flashed his dripping oar.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">The gull, high floating, like a sloop unladen,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Lets the loose water waft him as it will;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The duck, round-breasted as a rustic maiden,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Paddles and plunges, busy, busy still.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>A microscopical apparatus placed under another +window in the study, reminds the +visitor of the "man of science," while the +books—</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">A mingled race, the wreck of chance and time<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That talk all tongues and breathe of every clime—<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p class="noi">speak in eloquent numbers of the "man of +letters."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span></p> + +<p>There is the Plato on the lower shelf, with the +inscription, Ezra Stiles, 1766, to which Doctor +Holmes alludes in his tribute to the New England +clergy. Here is the hand-lens imported by the +Reverend John Prince, of Salem, and just before +us, in the "unpretending row of local historians," +is Jeremy Belknap's <i>History of New Hampshire</i>, +"in the pages of which," says Doctor Holmes, +"may be found a chapter contributed in part +by the most remarkable man in many respects, +among all the older clergymen,—preacher, lawyer, +physician, astronomer, botanist, entomologist, +explorer, colonist, legislator in State and national +governments, and only not seated on the bench +of the Supreme Court of a Territory because he +declined the office when Washington offered it +to him. This manifold individual," adds Doctor +Holmes, "was the minister of Hamilton, a pleasant +little town in Essex County, Massachusetts, +the Reverend Manasseh Cutler."</p> + +<div class="p2" /> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 603px;"> +<img src="images/218g.jpg" width="603" height="635" alt="" title="Dr. Holmes' Library" /> +<span class="caption"><span class="smcap">Dr. Holmes' Library, Beacon St.</span></span> +</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p> + +<p class="p2">Here is the <i>Aëtius</i> found one never-to-be-forgotten +rainy day, in that dingy bookshop in +Lyons, and here the vellum-bound <i>Tulpius</i>, "my +only reading," says Doctor Holmes, "when imprisoned +in quarantine at Marseilles, so that the +two hundred and twenty-eight cases he has +recorded are, many of them, to this day still +fresh in my memory." Here, too, is the <i>Schenckius</i>,—"the +folio filled with <i>casus rariores</i>, which +had strayed in among the rubbish of the bookstall +on the boulevard—and here the noble old +<i>Vesalius</i>, with its grand frontispiece not unworthy +of Titian, and the fine old <i>Ambroise Parié</i>, long +waited for even in Paris and long ago, and the +colossal Spigelius, with his eviscerated beauties, +and Dutch Bidloo with its miracles of fine +engraving and bad dissection, and Italian Mascagni, +the despair of all would-be imitators, and +pre-Adamite John de Ketam, and antediluvian +<i>Berengarius Carpensis</i>," and many other rare +volumes, dear to the heart of every bibliophile.</p> + +<p>Glancing again from the window, I catch a +glimpse of the West Boston Bridge, and recall +the poet's description of the "crunching of ice +at the edges of the river as the tide rises and +falls, the little cluster of tent-like screens on +the frozen desert, the excitement of watching +the springy hoops, the mystery of drawing up +life from silent, unseen depths." With his opera +glass he watches the boys and men, black and +white, fishing over the rails of the bridge "as +hopefully as if the river were full of salmon."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> +At certain seasons, he observes, there will +now and then be captured a youthful and inexperienced +codfish, always, however, of quite trivial +dimensions. The fame of the exploit has no +sooner gone abroad than the enthusiasts of the +art come flocking down to the river and cast +their lines in side by side, until they look like a +row of harp-strings for number. "That a codfish +is once in a while caught," says Doctor Holmes, +"I have asserted to be a fact; but I have +often watched the anglers, and do not remember +ever seeing one drawn from the water, or even +any unequivocal symptom of a bite. The +spring sculpin and the flabby, muddy flounder +are the common rewards of the angler's toil.</p> + +<p>The silhouette figures on the white background +enliven the winter landscape, but now +the blazing log on the hearthstone rolls over +and the whole study is aglow with light! Truly +"winter <i>is</i> a cheerful season to people who have +open fireplaces;" and who will not agree with +our poet-philosopher when he says, "A house +without these is like a face without eyes, and +that never smiles. I have seen respectability +and amiability grouped over the air-tight stove; +I have seen virtue and intelligence hovering<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> +over the register; but I have never seen true +happiness in a family circle where the faces +were not illuminated by the blaze of an open +fireplace."</p> + +<p>A well-known journalist writes as follows of +Doctor Holmes "at home."</p> + +<p>"All who pay their respects to the distinguished +Autocrat will find the genial, merry +gentleman whose form and kindly greeting all +admirers have anticipated while reading his +sparkling poems. He is the perfect essence of +wit and hospitality—courteous, amiable and +entertaining to a degree which is more easily +remembered than imparted or described. If +the caller expects to find blue-blood snobbishness +at 296 Beacon street, he will be disappointed. +It is one of the most elegant and +charming residences on that broad and fashionable +thoroughfare, but far less pretentious, both +inwardly and outwardly, than many of the +others. For an uninterrupted period of forty-seven +years, Doctor Holmes has lived in +Boston, and for the last dozen years he has +occupied his present residence on Beacon +street.</p> + +<p>"The chief point of attraction in the present<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> +residence—for the visitor as well as the host—is +the magnificent and spacious library, which +may be more aptly termed the Autocrat's workshop. +It is up one flight, and seemingly occupies +the entire rear half of the whole building +on this floor. It is a very inviting room +in every respect, and from the spacious windows +overlooking the broad expanse of the +Charles River, there can be had an extensive +view of the surrounding suburbs in the northerly, +eastern and western directions. On a +clear day there can be more or less distinctly +described the cities and towns of Cambridge, +Arlington, Medford, Somerville, Malden, Revere, +Everett, Chelsea, Charlestown and East Boston. +Even in the picture can be recognized the +lofty tower of the Harvard Memorial Hall, +which is but a few steps from the doctor's +birthplace and first home. Arthur Gilman, in +his admirable pen and pencil sketches of the +homes of the American poets, makes a happy +and appropriate allusion to the Autocrat's library. +'The ancient Hebrew,' he says, 'always had a +window open toward Jerusalem, the city about +which his most cherished hopes and memories +clustered, and this window gives its owner the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> +pleasure of looking straight to the place of +his birth, and thus of freshening all the happy +memories of a successful life.'</p> + +<p>"In renewing his old-time acquaintance with +the <i>Atlantic</i> family circle, the Autocrat recognized +the modern invention of the journalistic +interviewer, and submitted some plans for his +regulation, to be considered by the various +local governments. His idea is that the interviewer +is a product of our civilization, one +who does for the living what the undertaker +does for the dead, taking such liberties as he +chooses with the subject of his mental and +conversational manipulations, whom he is to +arrange for public inspection. 'The interview +system has its legitimate use,' says Doctor +Holmes, 'and is often a convenience to politicians, +and may even gratify the vanity and +serve the interests of an author.' He very +properly believes, however, that in its abuse it +is an infringement of the liberty of the private +citizen to be ranked with the edicts of the +council of ten, the decrees of the star chamber, +the <i>lettres de cachet</i>, and the visits of +the Inquisition. The interviewer, if excluded, +becomes an enemy, and has the columns of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> +newspaper at his service in which to revenge +himself. If admitted, the interviewed is at the +mercy of the interviewer's memory, if he is +the best meaning of men; of his accuracy, if +he is careless; of his malevolence, if he is +ill-disposed; of his prejudices, if he has any, +and of his sense of propriety, at any rate.</p> + +<p>"Doctor Holmes humorously suggests the following +restrictions: 'A licensed corps of interviewers, +to be appointed by the municipal +authorities, each interviewer to wear, in a +conspicuous position, a number and a badge, +for which the following emblems and inscriptions +are suggested: Zephyrus, with his lips +at the ear of Boreas, who holds a speaking +trumpet, signifying that what is said by the +interviewed in a whisper will be shouted to the +world by the interviewer through that brazen +instrument. For mottoes, either of the following: +<i>Fænum halct in cornu</i>; <i>Hunc tu Romane +caveto</i>. No person to be admitted to the +corps of interviewers without a strict preliminary +examination. The candidate to be +proved free from color blindness and amblyopia, +ocular and mental strabismus, double +refraction of memory, kleptomania, mendacity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> +of more than average dimensions, and tendency +to alcholic endosmosis. His moral and +religious character to be vouched for by three +orthodox clergymen of the same belief, and +as many deacons who agree with them and +each other. All reports to be submitted to +the interviewed, and the proofs thereof to be +corrected and sanctioned by him before being +given to the public. Until the above provisions +are carried out no record of an alleged +interview to be considered as anything more +than the untrustworthy gossip of an irresponsible +impersonality.'"</p> + +<p>"What business have young scribblers to +send me their verses and ask my opinion of +the stuff?" said Doctor Holmes one day, +annoyed by the officiousness of certain would-be +aspirants to literary fame. "They have +no more right to ask than they have to +stop me on the street, run out their tongues, +and ask what the matter is with their +stomachs, and what they shall take as a +remedy." At another time he made the remark: +"Everybody that writes a book must +needs send me a copy. It's very good +of them, of course, but they're not all suc<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>cessful +attempts at bookmaking, and most of +them are relegated to my hospital for sick +books up-stairs."</p> + +<p>But once a young writer sent from California +a sample of his poetry, and asked +Holmes if it was worth while for him to +keep on writing. It was evident that the +doctor was impressed by something decidedly +original in the style of the writer, for he +wrote back that he should keep on, by all +means.</p> + +<p>Some time afterward a gentleman called at +the home of Professor Holmes in Boston and +asked him if he remembered the incident. +"I do, indeed," replied Holmes. "Well," said +his visitor, who was none other than Bret +Harte, "I am the man."</p><div class="p6" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2> + +<h4>LOVE OF NATURE.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>IT</big> is city-life, Boston-life, in fact, that forms +the fitting frame of any pen-picture one +might draw of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and yet +even his prose writings are full of all a poet's +love for country sights and sounds. Listen, for +instance, to this rich word-picture of the opening +spring: "A flock of wild geese wedging their +way northward, with strange, far-off clamor, are +the heralds of April; the flowers are opening +fast; the leaves are springing bright green upon +the currant bushes; dark, almost livid, upon the +lilacs; the grass is growing apace, the plants +are coming up in the garden beds, and the children +are thinking of May-day....</p> + +<p>"The birds come pouring in with May. +Wrens, brown thrushes, the various kinds of swallows, +orioles, cat-birds, golden robins, bobo'links, +whippoorwills, cuckoos, yellow-birds, humming<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>birds, +are busy in establishing their new households. +The bumble-bee comes in with his 'mellow, +breezy bass,' to swell the song of the busy +minstrels.</p> + +<p>"And now June comes in with roses in her +hand ... the azalea—wild honeysuckle—is +sweetening the road-sides; the laurels are +beginning to blow, the white lilies are getting +ready to open, the fireflies are seen now and +then flitting across the darkness; the katydids, +the grasshoppers, the crickets, make themselves +heard; the bull-frogs utter their tremendous +voices, and the full chorus of birds makes the +air vocal with melody."</p> + +<p>How like Thoreau the following passage +reads:</p> + +<p>"O, for a huckleberry pasture to wander in, +with labyrinths of taller bushes, with bayberry +leaves at hand to pluck and press and smell of, +and sweet fern, its fragrant rival, growing near!... +I wonder if others have noticed what +an imitative fruit the blackberry is. I have tasted +the strawberry, the pine-apple, and I do not know +how many other flavors in it—if you think a little, +and have read Darwin, and Huxley, perhaps +you will believe that it, and all the fruits it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span> +tastes of, may have come from a common progenitor."</p> + +<p>And there is the poet's beautiful picture of +Indian summer.</p> + +<p>"It is the time to be in the woods or on +the seashore,—a sweet season that should be +given to lonely walks, to stumbling about in old +churchyards, plucking on the way the aromatic +silvery herb everlasting, and smelling at its dry +flower until it etherizes the soul into aimless reveries +outside of space and time. There is little +need of painting the still, warm, misty, dreamy +Indian summer in words; there are many states +that have no articulate vocabulary, and are only +to be reproduced by music, and the mood this +season produces is of that nature. By and by, +when the white man is thoroughly Indianized +(if he can bear the process), some native Hayden +will perhaps turn the Indian summer into +the loveliest <i>andante</i> of the new 'Creation.'"</p> + +<p>And again: "To those who know the Indian +summer of our Northern States, it is needless to +describe the influence it exerts on the senses +and the soul. The stillness of the landscape +in that beautiful time is as if the planet were +<i>sleeping</i> like a top, before it begins to rock with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> +the storms of autumn. All natures seem to find +themselves more truly in its light; love grows +more tender, religion more spiritual, memory +sees farther back into the past, grief revisits its +mossy marbles, the poet harvests the ripe +thoughts which he will tie in sheaves of verse +by his winter fireside."</p> + +<p>At another time, when revisiting the scenes of +his old schooldays at Andover, he gives us the +following vivid description of mountain scenery:</p> + +<p>"Far to the north and west the mountains of +New Hampshire lifted their summits in a long +encircling ridge of pale-blue waves. The day +was clear, and every mound and peak traced its +outline with perfect definition against the sky.</p> + +<p>I have been by the seaside now and +then, but the sea is constantly busy with its +own affairs, running here and there, listening to +what the winds have to say, and getting angry +with them, always indifferent, often insolent, and +ready to do a mischief to those who seek its +companionship. But these still, serene, unchanging +mountains,—Monadnock, Kearsarge,—what +memories that name recalls! and the others, the +dateless Pyramids of New England, the eternal +monuments of her ancient race, around which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> +cluster the homes of so many of her bravest +and hardiest children, I can never look at them +without feeling that, vast and remote and awful +as they are, there is a kind of inward heat and +muffled throb in their stony cores, that brings +them into a vague sort of sympathy with human +hearts. How delightful all those reminiscences, +as he wanders, "the ghost of a boy" by his side, +now by the old elm that held, buried in it by +growth, iron rings to keep the Indians from destroying +it with their tomahawks; and now +through the old playground sown with memories +of the time when he was young.</p> + +<p>"A kind of romance gilds for me," he says, +"the sober tableland of that cold New England +hill where I came a slight, immature boy, in +contact with a world so strange to me, and destined +to leave such mingled and lasting impressions. +I looked across the valley to the hillside +where Methuen hung suspended, and dreamed of +its wooded seclusion as a village paradise. I +tripped lightly down the long northern slope +with <i>facilis descensus</i> on my lips, and toiled up +again, repeating <i>sed revocare gradum</i>. I wandered +in the autumnal woods that crown the +'Indian Ridge,' much wondering at that vast<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> +embankment, which we young philosophers believed +with the vulgar to be of aboriginal workmanship, +not less curious, perhaps, since we call +it an escar, and refer it to alluvial agencies. +The little Shawsheen was our swimming-school, +and the great Merrimac, the right arm of four +toiling cities, was within reach of a morning +stroll."</p> + +<p>Nor does he forget to recall a visit to Haverhill +with his room-mate, when he saw the mighty +bridge over the Merrimac that defied the ice-rafts +of the river, and the old meeting-house +door with the bullet-hole in it, through which +the minister, Benjamin Rolfe, was shot by the +Indians. "What a vision it was," he exclaims, +"when I awoke in the morning to see the fog on +the river seeming as if it wrapped the towers +and spires of a great city! for such was my fancy, +and whether it was a mirage of youth, or a fantastic +natural effect, I hate to inquire too nicely."</p> + +<p>Like all poets, Doctor Holmes had a passionate +love for flowers, and with a delight that is most +heartily shared by the sympathetic reader, he +thus recalls the old garden belonging to the gambrel-roofed +house in Cambridge.</p> + +<p>"There were old lilac bushes, at the right of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> +the entrance, and in the corner at the left that +remarkable moral pear-tree, which gave me one +of my first lessons in life. Its fruit never ripened +but always rotted at the core just before it began +to grow mellow. It was a vulgar plebeian specimen, +at best, and was set there, no doubt, only to +preach its annual sermon, a sort of 'Dudleian Lecture' +by a country preacher of small parts. But +in the northern border was a high-bred Saint +Michael pear-tree, which taught a lesson that all of +gentle blood might take to heart; for its fruit used +to get hard and dark, and break into unseemly +cracks, so that when the lord of the harvest came +for it, it was like those rich men's sons we see +too often, who have never ripened, but only +rusted, hardened and shrunken. We had +peaches, lovely nectarines, and sweet, white +grapes, growing and coming to kindly maturity +in those days; we should hardly expect them +now, and yet there is no obvious change of climate. +As for the garden-beds, they were cared +for by the Jonathan or Ephraim of the household, +sometimes assisted by one Rule, a little old +Scotch gardener, with a stippled face and a lively +temper. Nothing but old-fashioned flowers in +them—hyacinths, pushing their green beaks<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> +through as soon as the snow was gone, or earlier +tulips, coming up in the shape of sugar 'cockles,' +or cornucopiæ, one was almost tempted to +look to see whether nature had not packed +one of those two-line 'sentiments,' we remember +so well in each of them; peonies, butting +their way bluntly through the loosened +earth; flower-de-luces (so I will call them, not +otherwise); lilies; roses, damask, white, blush, +cinnamon (these names served us then); larkspurs, +lupins, and gorgeous holyhocks.</p> + +<p>"With these upper-class plants were blended, +in republican fellowship, the useful vegetables of +the working sort;—beets, handsome with +dark-red leaves; carrots, with their elegant +filigree foliage, parsnips that cling to the earth +like mandrakes; radishes, illustrations of total +depravity, a prey to every evil underground +emissary of the powers of darkness; onions, +never easy until they are out of bed, so to +speak, a communicative and companionable vegetable, +with a real genius for soups; squash +vines with their generous fruits, the winter ones +that will hang up 'ag'in the chimbly' by and +by—the summer ones, vase like, as Hawthorne +described them, with skins so white<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> +and delicate, when they are yet new-born, that +one thinks of little sucking pigs turned vegetables, +like Daphne into a laurel, and then +of tender human infancy, which Charles Lamb's +favorite so calls to mind;—these, with melons, +promising as 'first scholars,' but apt to put +off ripening until the frost came and blasted +their vines and leaves, as if it had been a +shower of boiling water, were among the customary +growths of the Garden."</p> + +<p>Then follows, in these charming reminiscences, +an account of the reconstruction of the dear +old Garden.</p> + +<p>"Consuls Madisonius and Monrovious left the +seat of office, and Consuls Johannes Quincius, and +Andreas, and Martinus, and the rest, followed +in their turn, until the good Abraham sat in +the curule chair. In the meantime changes +had been going on under our old gambrel roof, +and the Garden had been suffered to relapse +slowly into a state of wild nature. The +haughty flower-de-luces, the curled hyacinths, +the perfumed roses, had yielded their place to +suckers from locust-trees, to milkweed, burdock, +plantain, sorrel, purslane; the gravel walks, +which were to nature as rents in her green<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> +garment, had been gradually darned over with +the million threaded needles of her grasses until +nothing was left to show that a garden had +been there.</p> + +<p>"But the Garden still existed in my memory; +the walks were all mapped out there, +and the place of every herb and flower was +laid down as if on a chart.</p> + +<p>"By that pattern I reconstructed the Garden, +lost for a whole generation as much as +Pompeii was lost, and in the consulate of our +good Abraham it was once more as it had +been in the days of my childhood. It was +not much to look upon for a stranger; but +when the flowers came up in their old places, +the effect on me was something like what +the widow of Nain may have felt when her +dead son rose on his bier and smiled upon +her.</p> + +<p>"Nature behaved admirably, and sent me +back all the little tokens of her affection she +had kept so long. The same delegates from +the underground fauna ate up my early radishes; +I think I should have been disappointed +if they had not. The same buff-colored +bugs devoured my roses that I remembered of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> +old. The aphids and the caterpillar and the +squash-bug were cordial as ever; just as if +nothing had happened to produce a coolness +or entire forgetfulness between us. But the +butterflies came back too, and the bees and +the birds."</p> + +<p>Says a well-known writer:</p> + +<p>"Though born and reared beneath the shadow +of the great city, yet Doctor Holmes has ever +found great delight in spending a portion of +each year in the country. The last few summers +he has made his home at Beverly Farms, +but from 1849 to 1856, inclusive, his summer +home was in Pittsfield, in Berkshire County. +His recollections of the scenes and people in +that charming town are pleasant and abundant. +The villa which he built was upon a round +knoll, commanding a fine view of the whole +circle of Berkshire mountains, and of the Housatonic, +winding in its serpentine way through +the fertile meadows and valleys to the sound +of Long Island. Yielding to his own good +nature and the soft persuasion of a committee +of Pittsfield ladies, Doctor Holmes once contributed +a couple of poems to a fancy fair +which was being held in the town during his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> +residence there. They do not appear in any +of the published collections, which is the one +reason, above all others, why we print them +now. Each of the poems was inclosed in an +envelope bearing a motto; and the right to a +second choice, guided by these, was disposed +of in a raffle, to the no small emolument of +the objects of the fair. The two pieces are +even to this day represented by at least a +square yard of the quaint ecclesiastical heraldry +which illuminates the gorgeous chancel +window of the St. Stephen's church in Pittsfield. +The motto of the first envelope ran thus:</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Faith is the conquering angels' crown;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Who hopes for grace must ask it;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Look shrewdly ere you lay me down;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I'm Portia's leaden casket.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>The following verses were found within:</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Fair lady, whosoe'er thou art,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Turn this poor leaf with tenderest care,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And—hush, oh, hush thy beating heart;<br /></span> +<span class="i3">The one thou lovest will be there.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Alas, not loved by thee alone,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Thine idol ever prone to range;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To-day all thine, to-morrow flown,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Frail thing, that every hour may change.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[239]<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> + +<span class="i2">Yet, when that truant course is done,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">If thy lost wanderer reappear,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Press to thy heart the only one<br /></span> +<span class="i3">That nought can make more truly dear.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>Within this paper was a smaller envelope +containing a one dollar bill, and this explanation +of the poet's riddle:</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Fair lady, lift thine eyes and tell<br /></span> +<span class="i2">If this is not a truthful letter;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">This is the (1) thou lovest well,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And nought (0) can make thee love it better (10)<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Though fickle, do not think it strange<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That such a friend is worth possessing;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">For one that gold can never change<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is Heaven's own dearest earthly blessing.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> +<div class="p6" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2> + +<h4>THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>UPON</big> the seventeenth of October, 1883, the +centennial anniversary of the Harvard +Medical School, the new building upon the +Back Bay was dedicated. The fine, commodious +structure is situated upon the corner +of Boylston and Exeter streets, and is at +nearly equal distances from the Massachusetts +General Hospital, the City Hospital, the Boston +Dispensary and the Children's Hospital +with their stores of clinical material, available +for the purposes of teaching. Close by, also, +are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, +the museums of the Society of Natural History +and of Fine Arts, and the Medical Library +Association. The building has a frontage +of one hundred and twenty-two feet +toward the north on Boylston street, and of +ninety feet toward the west on Exeter street,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> +and its corner position, together with the +reservation of a large open area on the east, +will always insure good light and good air.</p> + +<p>The dedication exercises were divided into +two parts, the opening addresses being given +in Huntington Hall, at the Institute of Technology, +and the remainder of the programme +in the new building. Upon the platform, in +Huntington Hall, were seated President Eliot, +of Harvard University, the faculty of the +Medical School, and numerous invited guests. +Upon the walls just back of the platform, +against a background of maroon-colored drapery, +and directly over the head of the original, +hung a portrait of Professor Oliver Wendell +Holmes. Beneath this portrait was a fine +marble bust of Professor Henry J. Bigelow, +who was seated beside Doctor Holmes.</p> + +<p>President Eliot opened the exercises with +the interesting address which follows:</p> + +<p>"We are met to celebrate the beginning of +the second century of the Medical School's +existence, and the simultaneous completion of +its new building. It is a hundred years since +John Warren, Benjamin Waterhouse and Aaron +Dexter were installed as professors of anatomy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> +and surgery, theory and practice, and <i>materia +medica</i> respectively, and without the aid of +collections or hospitals began to lecture in +some small, rough rooms in the basement of +Harvard Hall, and in a part of little Holden +Chapel, at Cambridge. From that modest +beginning the school has gradually grown until +it counts a staff of forty-seven teachers, ten +professors, six assistant professors, nine instructors, +thirteen clinical instructors, and +nine assistants—working in the spacious and +well-equipped building, which we are shortly +to inspect, and commanding every means of +instruction and research which laboratories, +dispensaries and hospitals can supply. Out +of our present strength and abundance we +look back to the founding of the school +and to its slow and painful development. We +bear in our hearts the three generations of +teachers who have served this school with +disinterested diligence and zeal. We recall +their unrequited labors, their frequent anxieties +and conflicts and their unfulfilled hopes; we +bring to mind the careful plantings and the +tardy harvests, reaped at last, but not by +them that sowed. We meet, indeed, to rejoice<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> +in present prosperity and fair prospects, but +we would first salute our predecessors and +think with reverence and gratitude of their +toils and sacrifices, the best fruits of which our +generation has inherited.</p> + +<p>"The medical faculty of to-day have strong +grounds for satisfaction in the present state of +the school; for they have made great changes +in its general plan and policy, run serious +risks, received hearty support from the profession +and the community, and now see their +efforts crowned with substantial success. By +doubling the required period of study in each +year of the course, instituting an admission +examination, strengthening the examinations at +the end of each year, and establishing a +voluntary fourth year of instruction, which +clearly indicates that the real standard of the +faculty cannot be reached in three years, they +have taken step after step to increase their +own labors, make the attainment of the degree +more difficult, and diminish the resort of +students to the school. They have deliberately +sacrificed numbers in their determination to +improve the quality of the graduates of the +school. At the same time they have success<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>fully +carried out an improvement in medical +education which required large expenditures. +This improvement is the partial substitution, +by every student, of personal practice in laboratories +for work upon books, and attendance +at lectures. The North Grove street building, +erected in 1846-47, contained only one small +laboratory for students, that of anatomy. The +new building contains a students' laboratory +for each of the five fundamental subjects—anatomy, +physiology, chemistry, histology and +pathology—and that a large part of the +building is devoted to these working rooms. +It was a grave question whether the profession, +the community and the young men who +year by year aspire to become physicians and +surgeons would support the faculty in making +these improvements. The answer can now be +recorded.</p> + +<p>"The school has received by gift and bequest +three hundred and twenty thousand dollars in +ten years; it has secured itself in the centre +of the city for many years to come by the +timely purchase of a large piece of land; it +has paid about two hundred and twenty thousand +dollars for a spacious, durable and well-arranged<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span> +building; it has increased its annual expenditure +for salaries of teachers from twenty thousand +dollars in 1871-72, to thirty-six thousand +dollars in 1882-83; its receipts have exceeded +its expenses in every year since 1871-72, and +its invested funds now exceed those of 1871 +by more than one hundred thousand dollars. +At the same time the school has become a +centre of chemical, physiological, histological +and sanitary research, as well as a place for +thorough instruction; its students bring to the +school a better education than ever before; they +work longer and harder while in the school, +and leave it prepared, so far as sound training +can prepare them to enter, not the over-crowded +lower ranks of the profession, but the higher, +where there is always room.</p> + +<p>"The faculty recognize that the generosity of +the community and the confidence of the +students impose upon them reciprocal obligations. +They gladly acknowledge themselves +bound to teach with candor and enthusiasm, +to observe and study with diligence that they +may teach always better and better, to illustrate +before their students the pure scientific +spirit, and to hold all their attainments and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> +discoveries at the service of mankind. Certainly +the medical faculty have good reason to ask +to-day for the felicitations of the profession and +the public.</p> + +<p>"Nevertheless, the governors, teachers, graduates +and friends of this school have no thought +of resting contented with its present condition. +Instructed by its past, they have faith in its +future. They hope they know that the best +fruits of their labors will be reaped by later +generations. The medical profession is fortunate +among the learned professions in that a fresh +and boundless field of unimaginable fertility +spreads out before it. Its conquests to come +are infinitely greater than those already achieved. +The great powers of chemistry and physics, +themselves all new, have only just now been +effectively employed in the service of medicine +and surgery. The zoölogist, entomologist, veterinarian +and sanitarian have just begun to +contribute effectively to the progress of medicine.</p> + +<p>"The great achievements of this century in +medical science and the healing art are all +prophetic. Thus, the measurable deliverance +of mankind from small-pox is an earnest of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span> +deliverance from measles, scarlatina, and typhoid +fever. Within forty years anæsthetics and +antiseptics have quadrupled the chances of +success in grave surgical operations and have +extended indefinitely the domain of warrantable +surgery; but in value far beyond all the +actual benefits which have thus far accrued +to mankind from these discoveries is the clear +prophecy they utter of greater blessing to +come. A medical school must needs be always +expecting new wonders.</p> + +<p>"How is medical science to be advanced? +First, by the devoted labors of men, young +and old, who give their lives to medical observations, +research and teaching; secondly, by +the gradual aggregation in safe hands of permanent +endowments for the promotion of +medical science and of the sciences upon which +medicine rests. Neither of these springs of +progress is to fail us here. Modern society +produces the devoted student of science as +naturally and inevitably as mediæval society +produced the monk. Enthusiastic devotion to +unworldly ends has not diminished; it only +manifests itself in new directions. So, too, +benevolence and public spirit, when diverted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> +by the teachings of both natural and political +science from many of the ancient forms of +benevolent activity, have simply found new and +better modes of action.</p> + +<p>"With thankfulness for the past, with reasonable +satisfaction in the present, and with joyful +hope in the future, the medical faculty +celebrate this anniversary festival, welcoming +their guests, thanking their benefactors, and +exchanging with their colleagues, their students, +and the governing boards mutual congratulations +and good wishes as the school sets +bravely out upon its second century."</p> + +<p>At the close of his address President Eliot +turned to the large audience, and said:</p> + +<p>"I have now the pleasure of presenting to +you our oldest professor and our youngest; +our man of science, and our man of letters; +our teacher and our friend, Doctor Holmes."</p> + +<p>From the delightful and characteristic address +of Doctor Holmes, we are permitted to give +the following extracts:</p> + +<p>"We are in the habit of counting a generation +as completed in thirty years, but two +lives cover a whole century by an easy act +of memory. I, who am now addressing you,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span> +distinctly remember the Boston practitioner +who walked among the dead after the battle of +Bunker Hill, and pointed out the body of +Joseph Warren among the heaps of the slain. +Look forward a little while from that time +to the period at which this medical school +was founded. Eight years had passed since +John Jeffries was treading the bloody turf on +yonder hillside. The independence of the +United States had just been recognized by +Great Britain. The lessons of the war +were fresh in the minds of those who had +served as military surgeons. They knew what +anatomical knowledge means to the man called +upon to deal with every form of injury to +every organ of the body. They knew what +fever and dysentery are in the camp, and +what skill is needed by those who have to +treat the diseases more fatal than the conflicts +of the battlefield. They know also, and too +well, how imperfectly taught were most of +those to whom the health of the whole community +was entrusted....</p> + +<p>"And now I will ask you to take a stride of +half a century, from the year 1783 to the year +1833. Of this last date I can speak from my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> +own recollection. In April, 1833, I had been +more than two years a medical student attending +the winter lectures of this school, and +have therefore a vivid recollection of the professors +of that day. I will only briefly characterize +them by their various merits, not so +much troubling myself about what may have +been their short-comings. The shadowy procession +moves almost visibly by me as I +speak: John Collins Warren, a cool and skilful +operator, a man of unshaken nerves, of +determined purpose, of stern ambition, equipped +with a fine library, but remarkable quite as +much for knowledge of the world as for +erudition, and keeping a steady eye on professional +and social distinctions, which he +attained and transmitted.</p> + +<p>"James Jackson, a man of serene and clear +intelligence, well instructed, not over book-fed, +truthful to the centre, a candid listener to all +opinions; a man who forgot himself in his +care for others and his love for his profession; +by common consent recognized as a model of +the wise and good physician. Jacob Bigelow, +more learned, far more various in gifts and +acquirements than any of his colleagues; shrewd,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> +inventive, constructive, questioning, patient in +forming opinions, steadfast in maintaining them; +a man of infinite good nature, of ready wit, +of a keen sense of humor, and a fine literary +taste; one of the most accomplished of American +physicians; I do not recall the name of +one who could be considered his equal in all +respects. Walter Channing, meant by nature +for a man of letters, like his brothers, William +Ellery and Edward; vivacious, full of anecdote, +ready to make trial of new remedies, with +the open and receptive intelligence belonging +to his name as a birthright; esteemed in his +specialty by those who called on him in +emergencies. The professor of chemistry of that +day was pleasant in the lecture room; rather +nervous and excitable, I should say, and judiciously +self-conservative when an explosion was +a part of the programme."</p> + +<p>Speaking of the new building, Doctor Holmes +said:</p> + +<p>"You will enter or look into more amphitheatres +and lecture-rooms than you might have +thought were called for. But if you knew +what it is to lecture and be lectured to, in +a room just emptied of its preceding audience,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> +you would be thankful that any arrangement +should prevent such an evil. The experimental +physiologists tell us that a bird will live under +a bell glass until he has substituted a large +amount of carbonic acid for oxygen in the air +of the bell glass. But if another bird is taken +from the open air and put in with the first, +the new-comer speedily dies. So when the +class I was lecturing to, was sitting in an +atmosphere once breathed already, after I have +seen head after head gently declining, and one +pair of eyes after another emptying themselves +of intelligence, I have said, inaudibly, with the considerate +self-restraint of Musidora's rural lover:</p> + +<p>"'Sleep on, dear youth; this does not mean +that you are indolent, or that I am dull; it +is the partial coma of commencing asphyxia.'</p> + +<p>"You will see extensive apartments destined +for the practical study of chemistry and of +physiology. But these branches are no longer +studied as of old, by merely listening to lectures. +The student must himself perform the +analyses which he used to hear about. He +must not be poisoned at his work, and therefore +he will require a spacious and well-ventilated +room to work in. You read but the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> +other day of an esteemed fellow-citizen who +died from inhaling the vapors of a broken +demijohn of a corrosive acid. You will be glad +to see that every precaution is taken to insure +the safety and health of our students.</p> + +<p>"Physiology, as now studied, involves the use +of much delicate and complex machinery. +You may remember the balance at which +Sanctorius sat at his meals, so that when he +had taken in a certain number of ounces the +lightened table and more heavily weighted +philosopher gently parted company. You have +heard, perhaps, of Pettenkofer's chamber, by +means of which all the living processes of a +human body are made to declare the total +consumption and product during a given period. +Food and fuel supplied; work done. Never +was the human body as a machine so understood, +never did it give such an account of +itself, as it now does in the legible handwriting +of the cardiograph, the sphygmograph, +the myograph, and other self-registering contrivances, +with all of which the student of to-day +is expected to be practically familiar.</p> + +<p>... Among +the various apartments destined to special<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> +uses one will be sure to rivet your attention; +namely, the Anthropotomic Laboratory, known +to plainer speech as the dissecting room. The +most difficult work of a medical school is the +proper teaching of practical anatomy. The +pursuit of that vitally essential branch of professional +knowledge has always been in the +face of numerous obstacles. Superstition has +arrayed all her hobgoblins against it. Popular +prejudice has made the study embarrassing and +even dangerous to those engaged in it. The +surgical student was prohibited from obtaining +the knowledge required in his profession, and +the surgeon was visited with crushing penalties +for want of that necessary knowledge. +Nothing is easier than to excite the odium +of the ignorant against this branch of instruction +and those who are engaged in it. +It is the duty and interest of all intelligent +members of the community to defend the +anatomist and his place of labor against such +appeals to ignorant passion as will interfere +with this part of medical education, above all, +against such inflammatory representations as +may be expected to lead to mid-day mobs or +midnight incendiarism.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span></p> + +<p>"The enlightened legislation of Massachusetts +has long sanctioned the practice of dissection, +and provided means for supporting the needs +of anatomical instruction, which managed with +decent privacy and discretion, have served the +beneficent purpose intended by the wise and +humane law-givers, without doing wrong to +those natural sensibilities which are always to +be respected.</p> + +<p>"During the long period in which I have +been a professor of anatomy in this medical +school, I have had abundant opportunities of +knowing the zeal, the industry, the intelligence, +the good order and propriety with which +this practical department has been carried on. +The labors superintended by the demonstrator +and his assistants are in their nature repulsive, +and not free from risk of diseases, though in +both these respects modern chemistry has +introduced great ameliorations. The student +is breathing an air which unused senses would +find insufferable. He has tasks to perform +which the chambermaid and the stable-boy +would shrink from undertaking. We cannot +wonder that the sensitive Rousseau could not +endure the atmosphere of the room in which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> +he had began a course of anatomical study. +But we know that the great painters, Michael +Angelo, Leonardo and Raphael must have witnessed +many careful dissections; and what they +endured for art our students can endure for +science and humanity.</p> + +<p>"Among the large number of students who +have worked in the department of which I am +speaking during my long term of service—nearly +two thousand are on the catalogue as +students—there must have been some who +were thoughtless, careless, unmindful of the +proprieties. Something must be pardoned to +the hardening effect of habit. Something must +be forgiven to the light-heartedness of youth, +which shows itself in scenes that would sadden +and solemnize the unseasoned visitor. Even +youthful womanhood has been known to forget +itself in the midst of solemn surroundings. I +well remember the complaint of Willis, a lover +of the gentle sex, and not likely to have told +a lie against a charming young person; I quote +from my rusty memory, but I believe correctly:</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">She trifled! ay, that angel maid,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She trifled where the dead was laid.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Nor are older persons always so thoughtful +and serious in the presence of mortality as it +might be supposed they would show themselves. +Some of us have encountered Congressional +committees attending the remains of +distinguished functionaries to their distant place +of burial. They generally bore up well under +their bereavement. One might have expected +to find them gathered in silent groups in the +parlors of the Continental Hotel or the Brevoort +House; to meet the grief-stricken members of +the party smileless and sobbing as they sadly +paced the corridors of Parker's, before they set +off in a mournful and weeping procession. It +was not so; Candor would have to confess +that it was far otherwise; Charity would suggest +that Curiosity should withdraw her eye +from the key-hole; Humanity would try to +excuse what she could not help witnessing; +and a tear would fall from the blind eye of +oblivion and blot out their hotel bills forever.</p> + +<p>"You need not be surprised, then, if among +this large number of young men there should +have been now and then something to find +fault with. Twice in the course of thirty-five +years I have had occasion to rebuke the acts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> +of individual students, once in the presence of +the whole class on the human and manly sympathy +of which I could always safely rely. I +have been in the habit of considering myself +at liberty to visit the department I am speaking +of, though it had its own officers; I took a +part in drawing up the original regulations +which governed the methods of work; I have +often found fault with individuals or small +classes for a want of method and neatness +which is too common in all such places. But +in the face of all peccadilloes and of the idle +and baseless stories which have been circulated, +I will say, as if from the chair I no longer +occupy, that the management of the difficult, +delicate and all important branch committed to +the care of a succession of laborious and conscientious +demonstrators, as I have known it +through more than the third of a century, has +been discreet, humane, faithful, and that the +record of that department is most honorable to +them and to the classes they have instructed.</p> + +<p>"But there are better things to think of and +to speak of than the false and foolish stories +to which we have been forced to listen. +While the pitiable attempt has been making to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> +excite the feelings of the ignorant against the +school of the university, hundreds of sufferers +throughout Christendom—throughout civilization—have +been blessing the name of Boston +and the Harvard Medical School as the source +from which relief has reached them for one +of the gravest injuries, and for one of the +most distressing of human maladies. I witnessed +many of the experiments by which the +great surgeon who lately filled a chair in Harvard +University, has made the world his debtor. +Those poor remains of mortality of which we +have heard so much, have been of more service +to the human race than the souls once +within them ever dreamed of conferring. Doctor +Bigelow's repeated and searching investigations +into the anatomy of the hip joint showed +him the band which formed the chief difficulty +in reducing dislocations of the thigh. What +Sir Astley Cooper and all the surgeons after +him had failed to see, Doctor Bigelow detected. +New rules for reduction of the dislocation were +the consequence, and the terrible pulleys disappeared +from the operating amphitheatre.</p> + +<p>"Still more remarkable are the results obtained +by Doctor Bigelow in the saving of life and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span> +lessening of suffering in the new method of operation +for calculus. By the testimony of those +renowned surgeons, Sir Henry Thompson and +Mr. Erichsen, by the award to Doctor Bigelow +of a sexennial prize founded by the Marquis d' +Argenteuil, and by general consent, this innovation +is established as one of the great +modern improvements in surgery. I saw the +numerous and patient experiments by which +that priceless improvement was effected, and I +cannot stop to moan over a scrap of integument, +said to have been made imperishable, when I +remember that for every lifeless body which +served for these experiments, a hundred died +or a thousand living fellow creatures have been +saved from unutterable anguish, and many of +them from premature death.</p> + +<p>"You will visit the noble hall soon to be filled +with the collections left by the late Professor +John Collins Warren, added to by other contributors, +and to the care and increase of which +the late Doctor John Jackson of precious memory +gave many years of his always useful and +laborious life. You may expect to find there +a perfect Golgotha of skulls and a platoon of +skeletons open to the sight of all comers. You<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> +will find portions of every human organ. You +will see bones softened by acid and tied in +bowknots; other bones burned until they are +light as cork and whiter than ivory, yet still +keeping their form; you will see sets of teeth +from the stage of infancy to that of old age, +and in every intermediate condition, exquisitely +prepared and mounted; you will see preparations +that once formed portions of living beings now +carefully preserved to show their vessels and +nerves; the organ of hearing exquisitely carved +by French artists; you will find specimens of +human integument, showing its constituent parts +in different races; among the rest, that of the +Ethiopian, with its cuticle or false skin turned +back to show that God gave him a true skin +beneath it as white as our own. Some of these +specimens are injected to show their blood +vessels; some are preserved in alcohol; some +are dried. There was formerly a small scrap, +said to be human skin, which had been subjected +to the tanning process, and which was not the +least interesting of the series. I have not seen +it for a good while, and it may have disappeared +as the cases might happen to be open while +unscrupulous strangers were strolling through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> +the museum. If it has, the curator will probably +ask the next poor fellow who has his leg cut +off, for permission to have a portion of its integument +turned into leather. He would not +object, in all probability, especially if he were +promised that a wallet for his pocket or a slipper +for his remaining foot, should be made +from it.</p> + +<p>"There is no use in quarrelling with the +specimens in a museum because so many of +them once formed a part of human beings. The +British Government paid fifteen thousand pounds +for the collection made by John Hunter, which +is full of such relics. The Huntarian Museum +is still a source of pride to every educated citizen +in London. Our foreign visitors have +already learned that the Warren Anatomical +Museum is one of the sights worth seeing during +their stay among us. Charles Dickens was +greatly interested in looking through its treasures, +and that intelligent and indefatigable hard +worker, the Emperor of Brazil, inspected its +wonders with as much curiosity as if he had +been a professor of anatomy. May it ever remain +sacred from harm in the noble hall of +which it is about taking possession. If vio<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>lence, +excited by false outcries, shall ever +assail the treasure-house of anthropology, we +may tremble lest its next victim shall be the +home of art, and ignorant passions once aroused, +the archives that hold the wealth of literature +perish in a new Alexandrian conflagration. +This is not a novel source of apprehension to +the thoughtful. Education, religious, moral, intellectual, +is the only safeguard against so fearful +a future.</p> + +<p>"To one of the great interests of society, the +education of those who are to be the guardians +of its health, the stately edifice which opens +its doors to us for the first time to-day is +devoted. It is a lasting record of the spirit +and confidence of the young men of the medical +profession, who led their elders in the +brave enterprise, an enduring proof of the +liberality of the citizens of Boston and of friends +beyond our narrow boundaries, a monument to +the memory of those who, a hundred years +ago, added a school of medicine to our honored, +cherished, revered university, and to all +who have helped to sustain its usefulness and +dignity through the century just completed.</p> + +<p>"It stands solid and four square among the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> +structures which are the pride of our New +England Venice—our beautiful metropolis, won +by well-directed toil from the marshes and +creeks and lagoons which were our inheritance +from nature. The magnificent churches around +it let in the sunshine through windows stained +with the pictured legends of antiquity. The +student of nature is content with the white +rays that show her just as she is; and if ever +a building was full of light—light from the +north and the south; light from the east and +the west; light from above, which the great +concave mirror of sky pours down into it—this +is such an edifice. The halls where Art +teaches its lessons and those where the sister +Sciences store their collections, the galleries +that display the treasures of painting, and sculpture, +are close enough for agreeable companionship. +It is probable that in due time the +Public Library, with its vast accumulations, will +be next door neighbor to the new domicile of +our old and venerated institution. And over +all this region rise the tall landmarks which +tell the dwellers in our streets and the traveller +as he approaches that in the home of +Science, Arts, and Letters, the God of our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> +Fathers is never forgotten, but that high above +these shrines of earthly knowledge and beauty, +are lifted the towers and spires which are the +symbols of human aspiration ever looking up +to Him, the Eternal, Immortal, Invisible."</p> + +<p>At the conclusion of this noble address, the +portrait of Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes +was presented to the Medical School by Doctor +Minot, in the happily-chosen words that follow:</p> + +<p>"Many alumni of the school, together with +some of its present students, have desired that +a permanent memorial of their beloved teacher, +Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes, should be +placed in the new college building, in token of +their gratitude for the great services which he +has rendered to many generations of his pupils. +By his eminent scientific attainments, his sound +method of teaching, his felicity of illustration, +and his untiring devotion to all the duties of +his chair, he inspired those who were so fortunate +as to come under his instruction with +the importance of a thorough knowledge of +anatomy, the foundation of medical science. +In the name of the alumni and students of +this college, I have the pleasure of presenting +to the medical faculty a portrait of Professor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> +Holmes, painted by Mr. Alexander, to be placed +in the college in remembrance of his invaluable +services to Harvard University, to the medical +profession and to the community."</p> + +<p>The bust of Professor Bigelow was then +presented to the school by Hon. Samuel Green, +in the following words:</p> + +<p>"The pleasant duty has been assigned me, +Mr. President, to present to you, as the head +of the corporation of Harvard College, in behalf +of his many friends, this animated bust of +Professor Henry J. Bigelow. The list of subscribers +comprises about fifty names, and +includes nearly all the surgeons of the two +great hospitals in this city; several gentlemen +not belonging to the medical profession, but +warm personal friends of Doctor Bigelow; a +few ladies who had been his patients; and +all the surgical house pupils who had ever been +connected with the Massachusetts General +Hospital during his long term of service at that +institution, so far as they could easily be reached +by personal application. The bust is given on +the condition that it shall be placed permanently +in the new surgical lecture room, which corresponds +to the scene of Doctor Bigelow's long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> +labors in the old building. It has been made +by the eminent sculptor, Launt Thompson of +New York, and is a most faithful representation +of the distinguished surgeon. It outlines +with such accuracy and precision the features +of his face and the pose of his head that nothing +is wanted, in the opinion of his friends, to +make it a correct likeness.</p> + +<p>"I need not, in the presence of this audience, +name the various steps by which Doctor +Bigelow has reached the high position which is +conceded to him as freely and fully in Europe +as it is in America; but I cannot forbear an +allusion to some of his original researches. His +mechanism of the reduction of a dislocated +femur by manipulation was a great discovery +in surgical science, and follows as a simple +corollary to the anatomical facts which he has +so clearly and minutely demonstrated. His +operation of rapid lithotrity has deprived a +painful disease of much of its terror as well as +of its danger. Nor should I overlook on this +occasion his quick and ready discernment of +the importance of Doctor Morton's demonstration +of the use of ether as a safe anæsthetic, +which took place at the Massachusetts General<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> +Hospital in the autumn of 1846. The discovery +of this greatest boon to the human family +since the invention of printing, was fraught +with such immense possibilities that the +world was slow to realize its magnitude; but +by the clear foresight and prudent zeal of +Doctor Bigelow, shown in many ways, the day +was hastened when its use became well nigh +universal.</p> + +<p>"Doctor Bigelow has filled the chair of surgery +in this medical school during thirty-three years, +a period of professional instruction that rarely +falls to the lot of any teacher; and he now +leaves it with the honored title of professor +emeritus. During this long term of service +he has taught, through his lectures, probably +not fewer than one thousand eight hundred students, +who have graduated at the Harvard +Medical School, and perhaps seven thousand five +hundred more who have taken their degrees elsewhere; +and by these thousands of physicians +now scattered throughout the land, those of +them who survive, Doctor Bigelow is remembered +as most eminently a practical teacher. +Active in his profession, clear in his instruction, +and enthusiastic in his investigations, he always<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> +had the happy faculty of imparting to his +students a kindred spirit and zeal. <i>Haud +inexpertus loquor.</i>"</p> + +<p>The remainder of the exercises took place +in the new building. The dedicatory prayer +was offered by Rev. Doctor Peabody, who consecrated +the building "to science, humanity and +charity, to Christian tenderness and love, and +to all the ministries that can enrich humanity."</p> + +<p>President Eliot then said:</p> + +<p>"In behalf of the President and Fellows of +Harvard University, and of the Medical School, +I declare this building to be devoted to medical +science and the art of healing."</p> + +<p>Professor Henry W. Williams, in behalf of +the medical faculty, said:</p> + +<p>"Friends of the Harvard Medical School: +For a hundred years the medical faculty of +Harvard College have earnestly sought to discover, +and striven faithfully to teach, whatever +might exalt the condition, relieve the woes and +prolong the service of those minds and bodies +through which man lives, and moves, and is. +Year by year they have seen their horizon of +knowledge extended and their sphere of duty +enlarged. But, though zeal and self-sacrifice<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> +have not been wanting, their efforts to be useful +have been continually hindered because of +imperfect facilities and scanty resources. All +is changed. In this more wonderful than Aladdin's +palace, risen from the sea,<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> and which +has already endured the wrath and mercy of +the flames, we see a fulfilment of our hopes, +and the means and assurance of success. +Thanks to generous benefactors, there will no +longer be a lack of room or of appliances for +our needs; our work will go on under fairer +auspices, and we can offer to disciples of the +healing art fitter opportunities and ampler aid +in their studies.</p> + +<p>"As spokesman of the faculty on this occasion, +so full of felicitation and of promise, I would +I could give to their message a host of tongues, +to adequately thank those whose great flood of +bounty has thus favored and endowed us. In +occupying this beautiful and convenient structure, +we shall ever feel that the place is dignified +by the givers' deed. And we rejoice +the more, because we know that this gift of +three hundred thousand dollars has been bestowed +by those who are accustomed to use their own +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>eyes in their estimation of desert, and that it +signifies a hearty approval of our endeavors, +and an intent that medical science, as it is to +be here embodied and taught, shall have a +warm and generous support.</p> + +<p>"In accepting this more than princely gift as +a token that the value and necessity of well-educated +physicians to every community is felt +and acknowledged, we hail the privilege of +goodly fellowship in which the donors and ourselves +have become co-workers, to the end that +blessings to the whole land may arise and be +memorized in this institution; and we trust +that the efforts of the faculty to advance the +knowledge, train the judgment and perfect the +skill of those entering our profession will ever +continue to deserve countenance and help.</p> + +<p>Colonel Henry Lee's address was the next to +follow:</p> + +<p>Mr. President: Thanks for your invitation +to be present on this interesting occasion—the +hundredth anniversary of your medical +school and the dedication of a new building +of fair proportions, well adapted to your wants, +as far as a non-professional can judge. You +have assigned to me the honorable task of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span> +speaking for the contributors to the building +fund. I little thought, as I used to gaze with +awe at that prim, solitary, impenetrable little +building in Mason Street, and with imaginative +companions conjure up the mysteries within, +that I should ever dare to enter and explore +its interior; nor have I yet acquired that relish +for morbid specimens which characterized my +lamented kinsman, who devoted so many years +to accumulating and illustrating your pathological +collection. It is an ordeal to a layman, +Mr. President, especially to one who has reached +the sixth age, to be so forcibly reminded, as +one is here, of the</p> + +<div class="poemblock"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">last scene of all<br /></span></span> +<span class="i0">That ends this strange, eventful history,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"> <i>sans</i> eyes, <i>sans</i> taste, <i>sans</i> everything,<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p class="noi">and it is a further ordeal to assume to speak +for others, whose motives for aiding you I +may not adequately set forth. This I can +say, that we are citizens of no mean city; +that private frugality and public liberality have +distinguished the inhabitants of this 'Old +Town of Boston,' from the days of the good +and wise John Winthrop, whose own sub<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>stance +was consumed in founding this colony, +to the present time. Down through these two +centuries and a half the multiform and ever-increasing +needs of the community have been +discovered and supplied, not by Government, +but by patriotic citizens, who have given of +their time and substance to promote the common +weal, remembering 'that the body is not +one member, but many, and that the members +should have the same care, one for another.' +It is this public spirit, manifested in its heroic +form in our civil war, that has made this +dear old Commonwealth what we all know it +to be, despite foul slanders. Far distant be +the day when this sense of brotherhood shall +be lost. Purple and fine linen are well, if one +can afford them; but let not Dives forget +Lazarus at his gate.</p> + + +<div class="poemblock"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>"Whatever doubts may arise as to some of +our benevolent schemes, our safety and progress +rest upon the advancement of sound +learning, and we feel assured that the increased +facilities furnished by this ample building, for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> +acquiring and disseminating knowledge of our +fearful and wonderful frame, will be improved +by your brethren. Some of the papers read +before the International Medical College, in +London, two years ago, impressed me deeply +with the many wants of the profession. And +who are more likely to have their wants supplied? +for the physician is not regarded here, +as in some countries, as the successor to the +barber surgeon, and his fees slipped into his +upturned palm as if he were a mendicant or a +menial. Dining with two Englishmen, one an +Oxford professor, the other the brother of a +lord, a few years since, I was surprised to +hear their views of the social standing of the +medical profession, and could not help contrasting +their position here, where, if not all +autocrats, they are all constitutional, and some +of them hereditary, monarchs, accompanied by +honor, love, obedience, troops of friends. But +however ranked, physicians have the same attributes +the world over. I have had occasion +to see a good deal of English, French, German +and Italian physicians under very trying +circumstances, and have been touched by their +affectionate devotion to their patients. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> +good physician is our earliest and our latest +friend; he listens to our first and our last +breath; in all times of bodily distress and +danger we look up to him to relieve us. +'Neither the pestilence that walketh in darkness, +nor the sickness that destroyeth in the +noonday, deters him.'</p> + + +<div class="poemblock"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Alike to him is time, or tide,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">December's snow or July's pride;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Alike to him is tide, or time,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Moonless midnight, or matin prime.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>"The faithful pursuit of any profession involves +sacrifice of self; but the man who calls +no hour his own, who consecrates his days +and nights to suffering humanity, treads close +in the footsteps of his Master. No wonder, +then, that the bond between them and their +patients is so strong; no wonder that we +respond cheerfully to their call, in gratitude +for what they have, and in sorrow for what +they have not, been able to do to preserve +the lives and to promote the health of those +dear to us. And how could money be spent +more economically than to promote the further +enlightenment of the medical profession? What<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> +better legacy can we leave our children, and +our children's children, than an illumined +medical faculty?"</p> + +<p>After these addresses a reception was given +to the subscribers to the building fund by +President Eliot and the faculty of the Medical +School.</p> + +<p>In referring to Doctor Holmes' brave, outspoken +words, an eminent Boston clergyman +wrote as follows:</p> + +<p>"The only qualification which we have heard +of the universal and enthusiastic appreciation +of the sage, the vivacious and the rich utterance +of our admired doctor and foremost man +of letters on this occasion, was in a somewhat +regretful feeling that he should have turned +the full power of his humor and of his caustic +satire upon the mean and contemptible effort +of an unprincipled demagogue to defame the +Harvard Medical School. We do not sympathize +with even this qualified stricture on the +remarks of Doctor Holmes here referred to. +True, his address was an historical one, designed +for an historical review of the past of the +institution. But it is also to serve the uses of +history for the future, especially as a record<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> +of the aspects of the institution and of the +interest and confidence of our living community +in it during the year marking such a +conspicuous event for it as the inauguration of +the new edifice prepared for it by the munificence +of those who appreciate its almost divine +offices of mercy and benevolence. And during +this very year, an assault of the most dastardly +character has been made upon it by one who, +high in office and with vast power of influence +over an ignorant and easily prejudiced constituency, +knows as well as any one among us +the utter and wicked falsity of his allegations.</p> + +<p>"Doctor Holmes was forced to make some +recognition of these slanders addressed to the +uninformed, credulous and gullible portion of +our community. He would have been generally +censured if he had passed them by. The only +question for him and for a critically judging +community would concern the true spirit and +way in which he should recognize them. We +can conceive of no more fitting and effective +course than that which the sagacious doctor +followed. The occasion was one in which it +was for him, in defining and greeting the steady +advance made during a century in medical and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> +surgical science among us, to remind his hearers +that those to whom we are indebted for this +advancement, have had, with their own noble, +personal devotion and effort, to triumph over +and fight their way against all the prejudices +and obstructions which popular ignorance, prejudice +and superstition have engaged to annoy +and withstand them. In scarcely any one +of the multiplied interests of average society +have popular weaknesses and follies more mischievously +asserted themselves than in opposition +to hospitals and medical schools. When +that noble institution, the Massachusetts General +Hospital, was devised, about three quarters +of a century ago, the most besotted folly +and suspicion were engaged against those who +planned and fostered it. It was charged that +under the guise of benevolent service for homeless +sufferers and for the victims of accident +or special maladies, it was really to be artfully +used for the trial of new medicines and risky +experiments on the poor and humble, that +practitioners might have the benefit of the +knowledge thus gained in dealing with their +rich patients. Let any one visit the wards of +that institution to-day, or read its annual reports,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span> +noting the thousands of cases of its work of +mercy in restoration or relief of all classes +of sufferers, and then recall the asinine abuse +visited upon its projectors. The millions of +money which have been poured into its treasury, +mostly from the private benevolence of +our own citizens, is the crown of glory for +that institution. An appeal of the most artful +and atrocious sort to this same popular ignorance +and passion has been made this year for +purposes which we need not search the dictionary +to characterize with fitting epithets. +How could Doctor Holmes on this great occasion +pass it by? How could he have treated +the offence and the offender with a more fitting +combination of wit and scorn? Most +happy also was his suggestive allusion to the +self mastery by which practitioners at the +dissecting table have to control, in the interest +of their high service, revulsions and shrinkings +incident to disgusting offices unknown even to +chambermaids and stable boys.</p> + +<p>"But as Doctor Holmes well said, there +are more attractive and instructive matters to +engage our most grateful interest in the occasion +to which he gave such a grand inter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>pretation. +The century of medical history which +he sketched with such a naïve and vigorous +narrative has its most suggestive incidents +lettered on the walls on the main stairway of +the imposing edifice just opened for use. +Little Holden Hall in Cambridge; the obscure +structure on Mason street; the melancholy +building on Grove street, with its tragic history, +in which the donor of its site was turned to +a use by no means serviceable to science, +make up the genealogical, architectural ancestry +of the new hall. The development in the +material fabric is no inadequate symbol of the +progress in every quality, accomplishment and +attainment characteristic of the advance of the +profession in the last hundred years."</p> + +<p>The name of Doctor Holmes will always be +so intimately connected with the Harvard +Medical School that we give below a brief +sketch of its past history.</p> + +<p>In the year 1780, the Boston Medical Society +voted "that Doctor John Warren be desired +to demonstrate a course of anatomical lectures +the ensuing winter." The course of lectures +proved so popular that the corporation of the +college asked Doctor Warren to draw up a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span> +plan for a Medical School in connection with +Harvard College. At the commencement of +the school, October 7th, 1783, there were three +professors: Doctor John Warren, who lectured +on anatomy and surgery; Doctor Aaron Dexter, +who took the department of chemistry and +materia medica; and Doctor Benjamin Waterhouse, +instructor in the theory and practice +of medicine. During the first year of its +establishment the attendance was rather small, +consisting of members of the senior class of +the college and those students who could procure +the consent of their parents. The name +of the first graduate recorded was that of John +Fleet, in 1788, and he seems to have been +the only graduate of that class.</p> + +<p>In 1806, Doctor John Collins Warren, son +of Doctor John Warren, was appointed assistant +professor of anatomy and surgery. He +proved a most enthusiastic laborer in behalf of +the school and to it he gave his large anatomical +collection, which was considered the most +complete in the country. In his will he bequeathed +his body to the interest of science, +and provided that his skeleton be prepared and +mounted, to serve the uses of the demonstra<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>tors +on anatomy. It was he, also, who took +the first steps that led to the establishment of +the Medical School in Boston. At 49 Marlborough +street, he opened a room for the demonstration +of practical anatomy, and here a course +of lectures was started in the autumn of 1810 +by Doctors Warren, Jackson, and Waterhouse.</p> + +<p>In 1816, the "Massachusetts Medical College" +was formally inaugurated in a building erected +on Mason street by a special grant from the +Commonwealth. At this time the faculty consisted +of Doctors Jackson, Warren, Gorham, +Jacob Bigelow and Walter Channing.</p> + +<p>In 1821 the Massachusetts General Hospital +on Allan street, was established; the two institutions +have since been intimately connected as +the resources afforded students by the Hospital +are here given to members of the Medical School.</p> + +<p>In 1836, Doctor Jackson resigned his position, +and Doctor John Ware, the assistant +professor of theory and practice was appointed +in the chair. Eleven years later Doctor John +Collins Warren resigned, having served the interests +of the school for forty-one years.</p> + +<p>In 1847, through the liberality of Doctor +George C. Shattuck, Sr., a professorship of patho<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>logical +anatomy was established, and Doctor +John Barnard Swett Jackson was appointed to +fill the chair. It was during this year that +Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes was chosen +Parkman professor of anatomy and physiology.</p> + +<p>In 1849 Doctor Henry J. Bigelow was appointed +to the chair of surgery left vacant by +the resignation of Doctor George Hayward, and +in 1854, Doctor Walter Channing was succeeded +by Doctor David Humphreys Storer. In 1855 +Doctor Jacob Bigelow resigned, and was succeeded +by Doctor Edward Hammond Clarke.</p> + +<p>The building on North Grove street, erected +by a grant of the State upon land donated by +Doctor George Parkman, was first occupied by +the school in 1846. In this building, which +was considered amply commodious at that +time, were stored the Warren Anatomical +Museum, the physiological library founded by +George Woodbury Swett, the gifts to the +chemical department by Doctor John Bacon, +and the collection of microscopes given by +Doctor Ellis. Since then the number of medical +students has constantly increased and the +accommodations becoming inadequate, steps were +taken for the erection of the new building.</p><div class="p6" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2> + + +<h4>TOKENS OF ESTEEM.</h4> + +<p class="noi"><big>SAID</big> one of the medical students in Doctor +Holmes' last class at Harvard:</p> + +<p>"We always welcomed Professor Holmes with +enthusiastic cheers when he came into the +class room, and his lectures were so brimful of +witty anecdotes that we sometimes forgot it +was a lesson in anatomy we had come to +learn. But the instruction—deep, sound and +thorough—was there all the same, and we +never left the room without feeling what a +fund of knowledge and what a clear insight +upon difficult points in medical science had been +imparted to us through the sparkling medium!"</p> + +<p>The position of Parkman Professor of Anatomy +in Harvard University, was resigned by +Doctor Holmes in the autumn of 1882, that he +might give his time more exclusively to literary pursuits. +He was immediately appointed Professor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> +Emeritus by the college, and Doctor Thomas +Dwight, a teacher in the Medical School, succeeded +him in the active duties of the chair.</p> + +<p>The last lecture of Doctor Holmes before +his students, was delivered in the anatomical +room, on the twenty-eighth of November. As +he entered the room, a storm of applause +greeted him, and then as it died away, one +of the students came forward and presented +him, in behalf of his last class, with an exquisite +"Loving Cup." On one side of this +beautiful souvenir was the happy quotation +from his own writings: "Love bless thee, joy +crown thee, God speed thy career."</p> + +<p>Doctor Holmes was so deeply affected by +this delicate token of esteem that, afterwards, +in acknowledging the cup by letter, he said +that the tribute was so unexpected it made +him speechless. He was quite sure, however, +that they did not mistake <i>aphasia</i> for <i>acardia</i>—his +heart was in its right place, though his +tongue forgot its office.</p> + +<p>In the address to his class, the Professor +gave an interesting review of his thirty-five +years' connection with the school. Then he +referred to his early college days, and to his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span> +studies in Paris, and added many delightful +reminiscences of the famous French savants +whose lectures he attended at that time. A +full report of this address may be found in +the <i>Boston Medical and Surgical Journal</i>, for +December 7, 1882.</p> + +<p>This, one of his most interesting essays, is +also reprinted in one of Doctor Holmes' later +volumes, entitled <i>Medical Essays</i>.</p> + +<p>On the evening of April 12, 1883, a complimentary +dinner was given Doctor Holmes +at Delmonico's, by the medical profession of +New York City. The reception opened at about +half-past six, and soon after that hour Doctor +Holmes entered the rooms with Doctor Fordyce +Barker. The guests, numbering some two hundred +and twenty-five in all, were seated at six +tables, the table of honor occupying the upper +end of the room, and decorated with banks of +choice flowers.</p> + +<p>The <i>menus</i> were cleverly arranged in the +form of small books bound in various-colored +plush. A dainty design in gilt, representing +a scalpel and pen, surrounded by a laurel +wreath, adorned the covers, and inside was the +stanza:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span></p> + + +<div class="poemblock"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A few can touch the magic string,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And noisy fame is proud to win them,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Alas, for those that never sing,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But die with all their music in them.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>At the top of the leaf containing the bill of fare were the lines:</p> + + +<blockquote><p class="tdc">You know your own degree; sit down; at first and last +a hearty welcome.</p></blockquote> + +<p class="noi">at the end:</p> + +<blockquote><p class="tdc"> +Prithee, no more; thou dost talk nothing to me. +</p></blockquote> + +<p>A few minutes before the coffee was brought +in, each guest received what purported to be a +telegram from Boston, dated April 1, 1883. +The message read as follows:</p> + + +<div class="poemblock"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The dinner bell, the dinner bell<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Is ringing loud and clear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through hill and plain, through street and lane<br /></span> +<span class="i1">It echoes far and near.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I hear the voice! I go, I go!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Prepare your meat and wine;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They little heed their future need<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Who pay not when they dine.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span style="margin-left: 14em;">—<i>O.W.H.</i><br /></span></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>The back of the despatch was decorated with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span> +two pictures; one showing Doctor Fordyce +Barker ringing a dinner bell and brandishing a +knife and fork, the other Doctor Holmes +hurrying to answer the bell, with a pile of +books under one arm and a bundle of bones +under the other.</p> + +<p>Among the guests present were George William +Curtis, Hon. William M. Evarts, Bishop +Clark, Whitelaw Reid, Doctors Post, Emmett, +Sayre, Billing, Vanderpoel Metcalfe, Detmoold +Draper, Doremus, Hammond, St. J. Roosa, +Flint, Dana, Peabody, Ranney, Jacobi, Austin, +and many others.</p> + +<p>The first toast was as follows:</p> + + +<div class="poemblock1"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">The hour's now come;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The very minute bids thee ope thine ear<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Obey, and be attentive.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span style="margin-left: 13em;">—<i>The Tempest.</i><br /></span></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +</div></div></div> + +<p>After a few brief words of introduction, Doctor +Barker called upon Doctor A.H. Smith +to complete the greeting, which he did in the +following happy lines:</p> + + +<div class="poemblock"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">You've heard of the deacon's one hoss shay<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which, finished in Boston the self-same day<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That the City of Lisbon went to pot,<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[289]<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Did a century's service, and then was not.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But the record's at fault which says that it burst<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Into simply a heap of amorphous dust,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For after the wreck of that wonderful tub<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Out of the ruins they saved a hub;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the hub has since stood for Boston town,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hub of the universe, note that down.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But an orderly hub as all will own,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Must have something central to turn upon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, rubber-cushioned, and true and bright<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We have the axle here to-night.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thrice welcome then to our festal board<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The doctor-poet, so doubly stored<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With science as well as with native wit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Poeta nascitur</i>, you know, <i>non fit</i>,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">led to dissect with knife or pen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His subjects dead or living men;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With thought sublime on every page<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To swell the veins with virtuous rage,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or with a syringe to inject them<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With sublimate to disinfect them;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To show with demonstrator's art<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The complex chambers of the heart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or armed with a diviner skill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To make it pulsate at his will;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With generous verse to celebrate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The loaves and fishes of some giver;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And then proceed to demonstrate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The lobes and fissures of the liver;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To soothe the pulses of the brain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With poetry's enchanting strain.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or to describe to class uproarious<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[290]<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Pes hippocampi accessorious</i>;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">erve with fervor of appeal<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sluggish muscles into steel,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or, pulling their attachments, show<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whence they arise and where they go;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To fire the eye by wit consummate,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or draw the aqueous humor from it;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In times of peril give the tone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To public feeling, called backbone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or to discuss that question solemn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The muscles of the spinal column.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And now I close my artless ditty<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As per agreement with committee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And making place for those more able<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I leave the subject on the table.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>The toast "Our Guest," was prefaced by +the following quotation from Emerson:</p> + +<p>"One would say here is a man with such +an abundance of thought! He is never dull, +never insincere, and has the genius to make +the reader care for all that he cares for."</p> + +<p>As Doctor Holmes rose, the room fairly +shook with applause. Without any prefatory +remarks, he then read the following poem:</p> + + +<div class="poemblock1"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Have I deserved your kindness? Nay, my friends;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While the fair banquet its illusion lends,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let me believe it, though the blood may rush<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And to my cheek recall the maiden blush<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[291]<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That o'er it flamed with momentary blaze<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When first I heard the honeyed words of praise;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let me believe it while the roses wear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their bloom unwithering in the heated air;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Too soon, too soon their glowing leaves must fall,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The laughing echoes leave the silent hall,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Joy drop his garland, turn his empty cup,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And weary labor take his burden up,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How weigh that burden they can tell alone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose dial marks no moment as their own.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Am I your creditor? Too well I know<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How Friendship pays the debt it does not owe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shapes a poor semblance fondly to its mind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Adds all the virtues that it fails to find,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Adorns with graces to its heart's content,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Borrows from love what nature never lent,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till what with halo, jewels, gilding, paint,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The veriest sinner deems himself a saint.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thus while you pay these honors as my due,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I owe my value's larger part to you;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And in the tribute of the hour I see<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not what I am, but what I ought to be.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Friends of the Muse, to you of right belong<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The first staid footsteps of my square-toed song;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Full well I know the strong heroic line<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has lost its fashion since I made it mine;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But there are tricks old singers will not learn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And this grave measure still must serve my turn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So the old bird resumes the self-same note<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His first young summer wakened in his throat;<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[292]<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The self-same tune the old canary sings,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all unchanged the bobolink's carol rings;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the tired songsters of the day are still,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The thrush repeats his long-remembered trill;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Age alters not the crow's persistent caw,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Yankee's "Haow," the stammering Briton's "Haw;"<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And so the hand that takes the lyre for you<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Plays the old tune on strings that once were new,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor let the rhymester of the hour deride<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The straight-backed measure with its stately stride;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It gave the mighty voice of Dryden scope:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It sheathed the steel-bright epigrams of Pope;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In Goldsmith's verse it learned a sweeter strain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Byron and Campbell wore its clanking chain;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I smile to listen while the critic's scorn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Flouts the proud purple kings have nobly worn;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bid each new rhymer try his dainty skill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And mould his frozen phrases as he will;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We thank the artist for his neat device—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The shape is pleasing though the stuff is ice.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Fashions will change—the new costume allures—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unfading still the better type endures;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While the slashed doublet of the cavalier<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gave the old knight the pomp of chanticleer,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our last-hatched dandy with his glass and stick<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Recalls the semblance of a new-born chick<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(To match the model he is aiming at<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He ought to wear an eggshell for a hat),<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which of these objects would a painter choose,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And which Velasquez or Vandyke refuse?<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[293]<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When your kind summons reached my calm retreat,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who are the friends, I questioned, I shall meet?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some in young manhood, shivering with desire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To feel the genial warmth of Fortune's fire—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each with his bellows ready in his hand<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To puff the flame just waiting to be fanned;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some heads half-silvered, some with snow-white hair;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A crown ungarnished glistening here and there,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The mimic moonlight gleaming on the scalps<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As evening's empress lights the shining Alps.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But count the crowds that throng your festal scenes—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How few that knew the century in its teens!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Save for the lingering handful fate befriends,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Life's busy day the Sabbath decade ends;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When that is over, how with what remains<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of Nature's outfit—muscle, nerve and brains?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Were this a pulpit, I should doubtless preach;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Were this a platform, I should gravely teach;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But to no solemn duties I pretend<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In my vocation at the table's end,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So as my answer let me tell instead<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What Landlord Porter—rest his soul—once said.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A feast it was that none might scorn to share;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cambridge and Concord demigods were there—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And who were they? You know as well as I<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The stars long glittering in our Eastern sky—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The names that blazon our provincial scroll<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ring round the world with Britain's drumbeat roll!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Good was the dinner, better was the talk;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some whispered, devious was the homeward walk;<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[294]<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The story came from some reporting spy—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They lie, those fellows—Oh, how they do lie!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not ours those foot tracks in the new fallen snow—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Poets and sages never zigzagged so!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Now Landlord Porter, grave, concise, severe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Master, nay, monarch, in his proper sphere,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though to belles-lettres he pretended not,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lived close to Harvard, so knew what was what;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And having bards, philosophers and such<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To eat his dinner, put the finest touch<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His art could teach, those learned mouths to fill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the best proofs of gustatory skill;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And finding wisdom plenty at his board,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wit, science, learning, all his guests had stored,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By way of contrast, ventured to produce,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To please their palates, an inviting goose.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Better it were the company should starve<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than hands unskilled that goose attempt to carve;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">None but the master artist shall assail<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The bird that turns the mightiest surgeon pale.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">One voice arises from the banquet hall,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The landlord answers to the pleading call;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of stature tall, sublime of port he stands,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His blade and trident gleaming in his hands;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beneath his glance the strong-knit joints relax<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the weak knees before the headsman's axe.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And Landlord Porter lifts his glittering knife<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As some stout warrior armed for bloody strife;<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[295]<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All eyes are on him; some in whispers ask—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What man is he who dares this dangerous task?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When, lo! the triumph of consummate art,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With scarce a touch the creature drops apart!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As when the baby in his nurse's lap<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Spills on the carpet a dissected map.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Then the calm sage, the monarch of the lyre,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Critics and men of science all admire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And one whose wisdom I will not impeach,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lively, not churlish, somewhat free of speech,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Speaks thus: "Say, master, what of worth is left<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In birds like this, of breast and legs bereft?"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And Landlord Porter, with uplifted eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Smiles on the simple querist, and replies—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"When from a goose you've taken legs and breast,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wipe lips, thank God, and leave the poor the rest!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Kind friends, sweet friends, I hold it hardly fair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With that same bird your minstrel to compare,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet in a certain likeness we agree—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No wrong to him, and no offence to me;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I take him for the moral he has lent,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My partner—to a limited extent.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When the stern landlord, whom we all obey,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has carved from life its seventh great slice away,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is the poor fragment left in blank collapse<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A pauper remnant of unvalued scraps?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I care not much what Solomon has said,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Before his time to nobler pleasures dead;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Poor man! he needed half a hundred lives<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With such a babbling wilderness of wives!<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[296]<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But is there nothing that may well employ<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Life's winter months—no sunny hour of joy?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While o'er the fields the howling tempests rage,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The prisoned linnet warbles in his cage;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When chill November through the forest blows<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The greenhouse shelters the untroubled rose,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Round the high trellis creeping tendrils twine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the ripe clusters fill with blameless wine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We make the vine forget the winter's cold,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But how shall age forget it's growing old?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Though doing right is better than deceit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Time is a trickster it is fair to cheat;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The honest watches ticking in your fobs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tell every minute how the rascal robs.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To clip his forelock and his scythe to hide,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To lay his hour-glass gently on its side,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To slip the cards he marked upon the shelf,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And deal him others you have marked yourself,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If not a virtue, cannot be a sin,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the old rogue is sure at last to win.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">What does he leave when life is well-nigh spent<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To lap its evening in a calm content?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Art, Letters, Science, these at least befriend<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our day's brief remnant to its peaceful end—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Peaceful for him who shows the setting sun<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A record worthy of his Lord's "well done!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When he, the Master whom I will not name,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Known to our calling, not unknown to fame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At life's extremest verge half-conscious lay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Helpless and sightless, dying day by day,<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[297]<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> + +<span class="i0">His brain, so long with varied wisdom fraught,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Filled with the broken enginery of thought,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A flitting vision often would illume<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His darkened world and cheer its deepening gloom,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A sunbeam struggling through the long eclipse,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And smiles of pleasure play around his lips.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He loved the Art that shapes the dome and spire;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Roman's page, the ring of Byron's lyre,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And oft, when fitful memory would return<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To find some fragment in her broken urn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Would wake to life some long-forgotten hour,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lead his thought to Pisa's terraced tower,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or trace in light before his rayless eye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The dome-crowned Pantheon printed on the sky;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then while the view his ravished soul absorbs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lends a glitter to the sightless orbs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The patient watcher feels the stillness stirred<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By the faint murmur of some classic word,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or the long roll of Harold's lofty rhyme,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime,"—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such were the dreams that soothed his couch of pain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sweet nepenthe of the worn-out brain.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Brothers in art, who live for others' needs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In duty's bondage, mercy's gracious deeds,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of all who toil beneath the circling sun<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose evening rest than yours more fairly won?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though many a cloud your struggling morn obscures,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What sunset brings a brighter sky than yours?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I, who your labors for a while have shared,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">New tasks have sought, with new companions fared,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For Nature's servant far too often seen<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[298]<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A loiterer by the waves of Hippocrene;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet round the earlier friendship twines the new;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My footsteps wander, but my heart is true,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor e'er forgets the living or the dead<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who trod with me the paths where science led.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">How can I tell you, O my loving friends,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What light, what warmth, your joyous welcome lends<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To life's late hour? Alas! my song is sung,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its fading accents falter on my tongue.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sweet friends, if shrinking in the banquet's blaze,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Your blushing guest must face the breath of praise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Speak not too well of one who scarce will know<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Himself transfigured in its roseate glow;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Say kindly of him what is—chiefly—true,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Remembering always he belongs to you;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Deal with him as a truant, if you will,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But claim him, keep him, call him brother still!<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>The next toast was to "The Clergy."</p> + + +<div class="poemblock2"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one, exceeding<br /></span> +<span class="i2">wise, fair-spoken and persuading.<br /></span> +<span class="i2"><span style="margin-left: 13em"><i>—King Henry VIII.</i><br /></span></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +</div></div></div> + +<p>Bishop Clark of Rhode Island responded. +"We honor," he said, "the high priesthood of +science and art. We honor the man who has +brought life and joy to many weary dwellings, +and therefore we extend the right hand of fellowship +to him." When after tracing the lineage of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> +the guest, he reviewed his life, quoted from his +writings, and said in conclusion, that he stood +side by side with Oliver Goldsmith.</p> + +<p>The toast to "The Bar"—</p> + + +<div class="poemblock"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Why might that not be the skull<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of a lawyer? Where be his quidet's now?<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span style="margin-left: 14em">—<i>Hamlet.</i><br /></span></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p class="noi">was answered by Hon. Wm. M. Evarts, in a +witty and characteristic address.</p> + +<p>Doctor T. Gaillard Thomas responded to the +toast, "The Medical Profession"—</p> + + +<div class="poemblock1"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">She honors herself in honoring a favorite son,—<br /><br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p class="noi">and George William Curtis followed in an +address, answering to the toast "Literature"—</p> + +<div class="poemblock"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A kind of medicine in itself.<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 8em">—<i>Measure for Measure.</i><br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>All factions, he declared, claimed Oliver +Wendell Holmes, and all peoples spoke of +him in praise. He then mentioned many of +the poet's songs, reciting a stanza occasionally +and commenting on them in a touching manner. +The next toast was "The Press"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>—</p> + + +<div class="poemblock2"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But words are things, and a small drop of ink<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Falling like dew upon a thought, produces<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span style="margin-left: 18em;"><i>—Byron.</i></span><br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>This was responded to by Whitelaw Reid in +a humorous address in which he closely connected +Doctor Holmes with the profession of +journalism. It was a late hour when the company +separated, and the last toast given, found +a hearty, though silent response from all present—</p> + + +<div class="poemblock2"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Good-night, good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That I shall say good-night till it be to-morrow.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span style="margin-left: 14em;"><i>—Romeo and Juliet.</i></span><br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<hr style='width: 40%' /> + +<p class="p2">Before closing this long chapter of "honors +to Doctor Holmes," we cannot refrain from giving +the following cordial tribute from John +Boyle O'Reilly:</p> + +<p>"Oliver Wendell Holmes:—the wise, the +witty, the many ideald, philosopher, poet, physician, +novelist, essayist, professor, but, best of all, +the kind, the warm heart. A man of unexpected +tastes, ranging in all directions from +song to science, and from theology to boat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>racing. +Me met one day on Tremont street +an acquaintance fond of athletic exercise, and +he stopped himself with a pathetic little sigh.</p> + +<p>"'Ah, you send me back fifty years,' he said. +'As you walked then with a swing, you reminded +me of an old friend who was dead before you +were born; and he was a good man with +his hands, too.'</p> + +<p>"Never was a more healthy, natural, lovable +man than Doctor Holmes."</p><div class="p6" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2> + +<h4>IN LATER YEARS.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>IT</big> was not until the spring of 1886 that +Doctor Holmes made his second trip to +Europe. A whole half century had elapsed since +his return home from the three years spent +abroad when he was completing his medical +studies.</p> + +<p>In this second European tour he was accompanied +by his daughter, Mrs. Sargent; and he +gives his own delightful account of it in "One +Hundred Days in Europe," which first appeared +as a serial in the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, and has +since been published in book form, with a +charming dedication to his daughter. "The +Sailing of the Autocrat" was celebrated by +T.B. Aldrich in a fine poem, from which we +quote a few lines as embodying the tender love +and ardent admiration of the whole American +people:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>—</p> + + +<div class="poemblock"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">"O Wind and Wave, be kind to him!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For him may radiant mornings break<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From out the bosom of the deep,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And golden noons above him bend,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And fortunate constellations keep<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Bright vigils to his journey's end!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Take him, green Erin, to thy breast!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Keep him, gray London—for a while!<br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>In him we send thee of our best,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Our wisest word, our blithest smile—</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our epigram, alert and pat,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That kills with joy the folly hit—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our Yankee Tzar, our Autocrat<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of all the happy realms of wit!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Take him and keep him—but forbear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To keep him more than half a year....<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His presence will be sunshine there,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His absence will be shadow here!"<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>We delight to recall with what distinguished +honors he was received abroad from the highest +dignitaries of church and state, as well as from +his own literary compeers. It was during this +visit in England that the London <i>Spectator</i> wrote, +"No literary American—unless it be Mr. Lowell, +and we should not except even him—occupies +precisely the same place as Doctor Holmes in +Englishmen's regard. They have the feeling for +him which they had for Charles Lamb, Charles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span> +Dickens, and John Leech, in which admiration +somewhat blends into and is indistinguishable +from affectionateness."</p> + +<p>The Universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, and +Cambridge all conferred their honorary degrees +upon him, and he has given us his own inimitable +description of the manner in which he was entertained +by Carlyle and by Tennyson.</p> + +<p>At a club dinner given to him in London, he +said to the bishop of Gloucester:</p> + +<p>"I think we are all unconsciously conscious of +each other's brain waves at times. The fact is +that words and even signs are a very poor sort of +language, compared with the direct telegraphy between +souls. The mistake we make is to suppose +that the soul is circumscribed and imprisoned by +the body. Now, the truth is, I believe I extend a +good way outside my body. Well, I should say at +least three or four feet all round, and so do you, +and it is our extensions that meet. Before words +pass or we shake hands, our souls have exchanged +impressions, and they never lie."</p> + +<p>In reply to a toast at the farewell banquet +given him in Liverpool by the Medical Society +of London, he said:</p> + +<p>"I cannot do justice to the manner in which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span> +I have been everywhere received. Any phrase of +mine would be a most inadequate return for the +months of loving and assiduous attentions through +which I have been living. You need not ask me, +therefore, the almost stereotyped question, how +I like England and Scotland. I cannot help loving +both, and I only regret I could not accept the +welcome awaiting me from my friends in warmhearted +Ireland."</p> + +<p>Fresh in mind still is the enthusiastic ovation +given to our beloved Autocrat when the hundred +days had passed, and "Wind and Wave" brought +safely home again "our wisest word, our blithest +smile."</p> + +<p>But grim Death, that had "rained through every +roof save his," was soon to send a cruel shaft into +the poet's happy home. On the 6th of February, +1888, the dear companion and helpmeet of his life +for nearly half a century—</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i05">"Stole with soft step the shining archway through<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And left the past years' dwelling for the new."<br /></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Mrs. Holmes was a remarkably gifted woman, +and singularly fitted to be the wife of a man of +genius. She was devoted to her home and family, +and the charm of her sweet womanliness will long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span> +be remembered by those who had the privilege +of knowing her intimately. Doctor Holmes has +himself told us that her simple, reticent "I think +so," was valued by him as a far more encouraging +sanction for action, than the dogmatic advice of +a more arbitrary adviser. When the Civil War +broke out, Mrs. Holmes was one of the first +Boston women to enter actively into the work +of the United States Sanitary Commission.</p> + +<p>"She impressed us all," says one of her fellow +workers, "as being so strong, steady, clear, and +firm. There was not one among the whole body +with whom we were so united as with her. And +the strange thing about her was that she really +had the executive ability and the clear mind, as +well as the gentle and amiable spirit. She shirked +no labor, even of the most menial, and was one +of those who gave up almost all her time to the +work. Her eldest son was at this time in the +war, and went through six battles; and this, +although she never complained, was a constantly +harrowing pain to her."</p> + +<p>The younger son of Doctor Holmes, Edward +Jackson Holmes, died in 1884, leaving one son +who bears the same name; and in 1889, his only +daughter, Mrs. Sargent, passed away. The ach<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>ing +void left in heart and home by these sad +bereavements was felt still more keenly as, one +after another, the old friends of his youth were +laid to rest.</p> + +<p>"I do not think," he said upon one of his last +birthdays, "that one of the companions of my +early years, of my boyhood, is left. When a man +reaches my age, and then looks back fifty years, +why, even that distance into the past to such a +man leaves a pretty good gap behind it. Half +a century from eighty years leaves a 'gap' of +thirty years, and thirty years are a good many to +most men."</p> + +<p>At one of the Saturday Club dinners, when +fewer members than usual were present, Doctor +Holmes remarked,</p> + +<p>"This room is full of ghosts to me. I can see +so many faces here that used to be here years +ago, and that have since passed from this life. +They are all real to me here, and I think if I were +the only living person at one of these dinners, +I could sit here and talk to those I see about me, +and dine pleasantly, even alone."</p> + +<p>Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier and +Lowell—all lifelong friends of Holmes—had +already "passed on." To other dearly-loved com<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>rades, +also, the great last summons had come. +Ticknor, Prescott, Fields, Benjamin Pierce, James +Freeman Clarke, Francis Parkman—all were +gone.</p> + +<p>"I feel," he often said with a sigh, "that I am +living in another age and generation."</p> + +<p>Little, indeed, did the young Oliver realize +when he wrote that pathetic poem, "The +Last Leaf," that he was the one of our five +great poets destined to be the "last upon the +tree!"</p> + +<p>Upon his eightieth birthday, he remarked, "I +have worn well, but you cannot cheat old age. +The difficulty with me now in writing is that I +don't like to start on anything. I always feel +that people must be saying, 'Are you not rash +at eighty years of age to write for young people +who think a man old at forty?'"</p> + +<p>But in his delightful series of papers, "Over +the Teacups," we mark the same brilliant flashes +of wit, the same keen intuition, the same warmhearted +sympathy with all phases of human nature, +that our beloved Autocrat showed in the +Breakfast Table chats. As Doctor Holmes himself +says:</p> + +<p>"In sketching the characters, I have tried to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span> +make just the difference one would naturally +find in a breakfast and a tea table set."</p> + +<p>Another volume of poems, "Before the Curfew," +and a series of essays entitled "Our New +Portfolio," were published soon after. The last +poem of Doctor Holmes printed in the <i>Atlantic +Monthly</i> was written in his eighty-fourth year +and dedicated to the memory of Francis Parkman. +Some of its verses, however, pay a loving +tribute also to his old friends Prescott and +Motley:</p> + + +<div class="poemblock1"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i05">"One wrought the record of a royal pair<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Who saw the great discoverer's sail unfurled,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Happy his more than regal prize to share,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The spoils, the wonders of the sunset world.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">There, too, he found his theme; upreared anew<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Our eyes beheld the vanished Aztec shrines,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And all the silver splendors of Peru<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That lured the conqueror to her fatal mines.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Nor less remembered he who told the tale<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Of empire wrested from the strangling sea;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Of Leyden's woe, that turned his readers pale,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The price of unborn freedom yet to be;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Who taught the new world what the old could teach;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Whose silent hero, peerless as our own,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">By deeds that mocked the feeble breath of speech<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Called up to life a State without a throne.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[310]<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> + +<span class="i1">As year by year his tapestry unrolled,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">What varied wealth its growing length displayed!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">What long processions flamed in cloth of gold!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">What stately forms their glowing robes arrayed!"<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>Contrasting with Prescott's and Motley's the +subject of Parkman's histories, the poet says,</p> + +<div class="poemblock1"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i05">"Not such the scenes our later craftsman drew,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Not such the shapes his darker pattern held;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">A deeper shadow lent its sombre hue,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">A sadder tale his tragic task compelled.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">He told the red man's story; far and wide<br /></span> +<span class="i1">He searched the unwritten records of his race;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">He sat a listener at the sachem's side,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">He tracked the hunter through his wildwood chase.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em">* * +* * +* * *</span> +</div><div class="stanza"> + +<span class="i1">Soon o'er the horizon rose the cloud of strife,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Two proud, strong nations battling for the prize;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Which swarming host should mould a nation's life,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Which royal banner flout the western skies.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Long raged the conflict; on the crimson sod<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Native and alien joined their hosts in vain;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The lilies withered where the lion trod,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Till peace lay panting on the ravaged plain."<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>In the extracts given from this fine poem, with +its stately, majestic rhythm, it is plain to see that, +even at the age of eighty-four, our autocrat poet +had lost none of the vigor and fire of youth.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span></p> + +<p>In the closing verses he speaks most tenderly +of Parkman's patient, untiring energy,</p> + +<p class="center"> +"While through long years his burdening cross he bore," +</p> + +<p class="noi">and concludes with this fine eulogy:</p> + + +<div class="poemblock1"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i05">"A brave, bright memory! his the stainless shield<br /></span> +<span class="i1">No shame defaces and no envy mars!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">When our far future's record is unsealed<br /></span> +<span class="i1">His name will shine among its morning stars."<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>It was in January, 1889, that Doctor Holmes +sent to Doctor Richard M. Hodges, who was at +that time president of the Boston Medical Library +Association, the following characteristic letter:</p> + +<blockquote><p class="noi"> +<span class="smcap">My Dear Sir</span>: +</p> + +<p>I have transferred my medical library to the +hall of the Boston Medical Library Association. +Please accept it as a gift from its late president. +As there is no provision for its reception, and +as I liked the idea of keeping together the books +which had been so long together, I have provided +a new set of shelves in which they can be properly +and conveniently arranged.</p> + + +<p class="tdr">Your very truly, <br /> +O.W. <span class="smcap">Holmes</span>.</p></blockquote> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span></p> + +<p>To show how highly Doctor Holmes valued this +library, which consisted of nine hundred and sixty-eight +extremely rare volumes, Doctor Chadwick, +the librarian, said: "All these books have been +collected by him in his fifty years of experience, +and it is fitting that we should realize it is the +result of years of labor. He has been ready on +every occasion to deliver addresses on topics having +a wide scope. He carried off with honor +three of the four Boylston prizes, and this alone +shows the range of his studies. He has contributed +to the funds of the association in various +ways, and now gives us his most valuable library. +In this act, as well as his continuing the position +as president of the association several years after +he had relinquished all other connection with the +profession, he has designated our institution as +the one in which he takes the greatest pride; in +whose future he has the greatest confidence."</p> + +<p>In reply, Doctor Holmes then said:</p> + +<p>"The books I have offered the association, +and which you have kindly accepted, constitute +my own medical library, with the exception of a +few volumes which, for several reasons, I have +retained. It has grown by a slow process of +accretion. The first volume of it was 'Bell's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span> +Anatomy,' and the last was 'Elements of Pharmacy.' +The oldest book was written in 1490, +and the latest in 1887, so it can be seen that the +library covers the space of four centuries."</p> + +<p>After reviewing the better books of the library, +and alluding to the private library that a +practitioner should keep, Doctor Holmes added: +"These books are dear to me; a twig from some +one of my nerves runs to every one of them, and +they mark the progress of my study and the stepping-stones +of my professional life. If any of +them can be to others as they have been to me, +I am willing to part with them, even if they are +such old and beloved companions."</p> + +<p>Doctor Holmes' warm interest in everything +connected with education was shown most emphatically +in one of the last public addresses he +delivered. It was at that memorable reception +given at the Vendome, February 28, 1893, by the +Boston publishers to Doctor Holmes and other +authors, and to the members of the National +Educational Association. Mrs. Elizabeth Phelps-Ward, +with Mr. Henry O. Houghton and Mr. +Edwin Ginn, gave welcome to the many distinguished +guests.</p> + +<p>When Doctor Holmes was called upon to address +the large company assembled, he began:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Surely the Autocrat never felt more powerless +than he does at this moment. I meant to come +here and say a few almost careless words. I was +saying to myself, 'You know very well what you've +got to talk about, and you can soon say it.' But," +and here the Autocrat's bright face grew serious, +"at half-past ten this morning there came to me +an elegantly engraved copper-plate invitation to +appear here, with a formality and a style about it +which showed that I had deceived myself in thinking +I could utter a few careless words. There +was but one refuge for me, and that was the old +one. I can only hold up a copy of verses," and +he waved the manuscript deprecatingly.</p> + +<p>"But not one word, not one thought of it was +in my head before half-past ten to-day. There +are things in literature," and here Dr. Holmes +dropped his voice to a confidential key, "that are +christened 'impromptus,' the authenticity of which +I am inclined to doubt. I have the idea that a +good many impromptus have cost their authors +many sleepless nights.</p> + +<p>"I shall tell you what I would have spoken +about. I should have said, in the first place, that +I have a great sympathy with instructors. I have +been an instructor myself. I was for thirty-five<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span> +years professor in Harvard College, and two +years before that professor in Dartmouth College. +I enjoyed very much the relations I had with my +students in both places. Many of them have +lasted up to the present time, and it is pleasant +for me every now and then to have a bald-headed +man come up to me and tell me he was one of my +boys thirty or forty years ago.</p> + +<p>"A great many changes have taken place since +that time, but two of them are especially interesting. +One is the sub-division of teaching. There +were six of us who taught the medical graduates +of Harvard College during a considerable part of +the time when I was professor there. There are +now seventy. How much better they are taught +I do not know. I presume they are taught well. +But a wicked thought came into my head just +now—it is not every animal that has the most +legs who crawls the fastest. It reminds me of +the sirloin of beef one day, which was mince-meat +on the second."</p> + +<p>All these pleasantries were given in the +Autocrat's happiest manner, amidst many interruptions +of laughter and applause from his +audience.</p> + +<p>"I don't mean, however," he added, "to dep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>recate +that which I accomplished by the sub-division +into specialties. What I say is rather +playful than serious. The next point is the education +of women, which I have regarded at a distance, +to be sure. But, occasionally visiting +Wellesley and the Cambridge Annex, it has been +a great delight to me to see how the intellects of +the fair sex matched with those of the sterner. I +then thought I should say something of the importance +of implanting ideas on all the most +important subjects at a very early period of life, +and I was going to recall my theology which +came out of the little primer, and my patriotism +which was kindled at the shrine of Dr. Dwight's +'Columbia, Queen of the World.' But all these +things I would prefer to leave, and what else I +would have said I will defer until the next occasion, +I also wish to say here, personally, that it +was most unwillingly that I appeared before an +audience like this. I felt it was, at my age, more +becoming that I should be a listener rather than a +speaker." Here he was interrupted by cries of +"No! No!" but he shook his head determinedly, +saying, "I am speaking seriously now, however +difficult it may be to do that. These little verses +I have written, and which I am going to read, are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span> +really impromptu. They are poorly scrawled, for +my hand was unsteady."</p> + +<p>Then in a clear, strong voice he read:</p> + + +<div class="poemblock"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i05">"Teachers of teachers! yours the task,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Noblest that noble minds can ask,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">High up Aonia's murmurous mount<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To watch, to guard the sacred fount<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That feeds the stream below.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To guide the hurrying flood that fills<br /></span> +<span class="i1">A thousand silvery, rippling rills<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In ever widening flow.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Rich is the harvest from the fields<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That bounteous nature kindly yields;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But fairer growths enrich the soil<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Ploughed deep by thought and wearied toil,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In learning's broad domain.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And where the leaves, the flowers, the fruits,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Without your watering at the roots<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To fill each branching vein?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Welcome! the author's firmest friends,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Your voice the surest Godspeed lends.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Of you the growing mind demands<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The patient care, the guiding hands<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Through all the mists of morn.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And knowing well the future's need,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Your prescient wisdom sows the seed<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To flower in years unborn."<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span></p> + +<p>It will be remembered that the last time Doctor +Holmes appeared in public to read a poem was on +May 28, 1893, when he attended the celebration +of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the reorganization +of the Boston Young Men's Christian Union. +The beautiful hymn he wrote for this occasion is +the sweet, simple expression of his own lifelong +creed:</p> + + +<div class="poemblock"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i05">"Our Father! while our hearts unlearn<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The creeds that wrong thy name,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Still let our hallowed altars burn<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With faith's undying flame.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Not by the lightning's gleam of wrath<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our souls thy face shall see,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The star of love must light the path<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That leads to heaven and thee.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Help us to read our Master's will<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Through every darkening stain<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That clouds his sacred image still,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And see him once again,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">The brother man, the pitying friend<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Who weeps for human woes,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Whose pleading words of pardon blend<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With cries of raging foes.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">If, 'mid the gathering storms of doubt<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our hearts grow faint and cold,<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum">[319]</span> +<span class="i1">The strength we cannot live without,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thy love will not withhold.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Our prayers accept; our sins forgive;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our youthful zeal renew;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Shape for us holier lives to live,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And nobler work to do!"<br /></span> +</div></div></div> +<div class="p6" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2> + +<h4>LAST DAYS.</h4> + + +<p class="noi"><big>THE</big> eighty-fifth birthday of Doctor Holmes +was quietly spent at his pleasant country +home in Beverly.</p> + +<p>"The burden of years sits lightly upon me," +he remarked to a friend that day, "but after +fourscore years the encroachments of time make +themselves felt with rapidly increasing progress. +The twelfth septennial period has always seemed +to me as one of the natural boundaries of life. +One who has lived to complete his eighty-fourth +year has had his full share, even of an old man's +allowance. Whatever is granted over that is a +prodigal indulgence of nature. When one can +no longer hear the lark, when he can no longer +recognize the faces he passes on the street, when +he has to watch his steps, when it becomes more +and more difficult for him to recall names, he is +reminded at every moment that he must spare<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span> +himself, or nature will not spare him the penalties +she exacts for overtaxing his declining powers."</p> + +<p>In spite of these words, that seem prophetic to +us now, the sunny-hearted Autocrat declared he +was "eighty-five years <i>young</i>" that day, and all the +friends who came with loving gifts and congratulations +fully agreed with him. His conversation +sparkled with all the wit of his younger days, +and he talked with animation of his daily walks +through the town, and of his long drives into the +country in search of "big trees." Near the base +of "Woodbury's Hill" in Beverly, he had recently +found a mammoth elm that he considered +finer than all his other favorites in Essex county; +for, in addition to its great size, the wide spreading +branches were covered with unusually thick +rich foliage.</p> + +<p>"I call all trees mine," said the Autocrat, "that +I have put my wedding-ring on—that is, my +thirty-foot tape-measure!"</p> + +<p>Having been slightly troubled with writers' +cramp, Doctor Holmes was advised by one of his +callers that day to try a typewriter. This remark +brought forth a smile from the man who had +moved the people of the world with his pen; and +he said, with a merry laugh, that he did not pro<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span>pose +to forsake an old friend for a new one at that +late time in life.</p> + +<p>In speaking of his birthday, Doctor Holmes +alluded to the great men who were born that +same year, 1809.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "I was particularly fortunate +in being born the same year with four of the most +distinguished men of the age, and I really feel +flattered that it so happened. Now, in England, +there were Tennyson, Darwin, and Gladstone—Gladstone +being, I think, four months younger +than myself. That is a most remarkable trio, +isn't it? Just contemplate the greatness of those +three men, and then remember that in the same +year Abraham Lincoln was born in this country. +Most remarkable!" And when the visitor added, +"You have forgotten to mention the fifth, doctor; +there was also Oliver Wendell Holmes," +Doctor Holmes quickly retorted in his own inimitable +way:</p> + +<p>"Oh! that does not count; I 'sneaked in,' as +it were!"</p> + +<p>Doctor Holmes remained at his country home +in Beverly until late in September, this last year +of his life, and his health seemed steadily to improve +with the bracing autumn weather.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span></p> + +<p>On his return to the city, however, he had a +severe attack of the asthmatic trouble from which +he had suffered all his life. A severe cold, and +the "weight of years" aggravated what seemed +at first but a slight indisposition; and the poet, +with his accurate medical knowledge, realized that +the end was not far distant.</p> + +<p>But as he grew weaker and weaker, his sunshiny +spirit shone all the brighter. With playful +jests he tried to soothe the sad hearts of his dear +ones, and to make them feel that the pain of parting +was the only sting of death. He seldom, +indeed, made any reference to the dark shadow he +felt so near; but one morning, three or four days +before his death, he said to his son:</p> + +<p>"Well, Wendell, what is it? King's Chapel?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, father," said Judge Holmes.</p> + +<p>"Then I am satisfied. That is all I am going +to say about it."</p> + +<p>On Sunday morning, October 7th, he seemed +so much easier that his physician and intimate +friend, Doctor Charles P. Putnam, went out of +town to make a professional visit, leaving his +brother, Doctor James Putnam, in charge.</p> + +<p>About noon Doctor Holmes had a sudden +spasm, and his breathing became so labored<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span> +that he asked to be moved into his favorite +armchair.</p> + +<p>"That is better, thank you. That rests me +more," he said to his son, who stood beside him.</p> + +<p>These were his last words. Painlessly and +peacefully, with all the dear ones of his home +around him, his life flowed away like the ebbing +of a tide.</p> + +<p>To the world outside, the tidings of Doctor +Holmes' death, that bright October day, came +with a terrible shock. As late as Thursday of +the preceding week he had been down town, and +was intending to be present at the meeting of +the Saturday Morning Club. Not even his nearest +friends realized that the end was so near.</p> + +<p>"It is as if a long accustomed element had gone +out of the air!" exclaimed one Boston citizen. +"While Doctor Holmes lived we felt as if we +were still bound by a living tie to the Titanic age +of American literature."</p> + +<p>"The death of Doctor Holmes," said Charles +Eliot Norton, "marks the close of an epoch in +American literature. He was the sole survivor of +the five great New England authors, and he has +no successor. This group was a remarkable one. +They grew up, as it were, together, and are the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span> +product of our New England life in the first half +century. Their writings were contemporaneous, +and they were bound in the closest ties of friendship. +Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, +Holmes—no other section of the country can +show such a group."</p> + +<p>"Boston without Doctor Holmes!" exclaimed +another friend. "What will it be like? There +has been but one 'Autocrat,'—there will never be +another!"</p> + +<p>Yet not only Boston—the whole world mourned +the departure of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Within +his domain his genius was imperial, and his bright +cheery nature endeared him to all humanity.</p> + +<p>It seemed fitting that Nature herself should +weep on the sad burial day of one whose life had +embodied her sunshine!</p> + +<p>The wind mourned, the rain fell continuously, +as loving hands bore into King's Chapel, upon +Wednesday, October 10, all that was mortal of +our famous poet. The simple funeral rites began +just at noon. The casket, upon which rested +wreaths of pansies and laurels, was borne up the +aisle to the wailing organ strains of Händel's +"Dead March in Saul." Rev. Edward Everett +Hale led the sad procession, reciting in his clear,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span> +sympathetic voice, "I am the resurrection and +the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, +though he were dead, yet shall he live."</p> + +<p>All the seats upon the middle aisle were reserved +and occupied by the poet's immediate +family and intimate friends, members of the +Massachusetts Medical Society, representatives of +Harvard College, and delegations from the numerous +other societies of which the poet and physician +was a member.</p> + +<p>A beautiful wreath of laurel hung from the +south gallery, marking with mute eloquence the +vacant pew of the dead poet.</p> + +<p>The Chapel was filled with a notable assembly, +representing the best life of Boston—its intellect, +culture, and heart. And probably never at one +time had the ancient church held so many venerable +personages. Rev. S.F. Smith, the author of +"America," and Rev. Samuel May of Leicester, +the only surviving classmates of Doctor Holmes, +were present, in spite of the inclement weather. +Judge Rockwood Hoar, fast nearing the fourscore +milestone, Doctor Bartol, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe—all +the great poet's friends and contemporaries +were there to pay their last tribute.</p> + +<p>After the reading of passages from the Bible,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span> +and a prayer by Rev. Edward Everett Hale, a +selection from Mendelssohn's "Elijah," "Oh, rest +in the Lord," was sung by Miss Lena Little, followed +by a chant, "The Lord is my Shepherd," +and a hymn, "O Paradise," by the choir.</p> + +<p>Then the strains of the "Dead March" again +rolled from the organ, and the funeral procession +left the Chapel.</p> + +<p>The services at the grave were attended by only +the relatives and most intimate friends. It was +the wish of Doctor Holmes and his family that +he should rest beside his wife in the Jackson lot +at Mt. Auburn. It is in the immediate vicinity +of the Holmes' lot, amidst the beautiful oaks +that the poet loved; and only a few yards distant +rest Longfellow and James Russell Lowell.</p> + + + +<p class="p2">The life of Oliver Wendell Holmes spanned +nearly the whole nineteenth century; and to the +very last he kept abreast of the feeling, the +thought, the movement, of the day. He was one +of the few men of our generation who raised the +American name in the esteem of the whole world.</p> + +<p>Comparing Doctor Holmes with his four illustrious +contemporaries in literature, Professor +Norton says:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span>—</p> + +<p>"Emerson was the deepest thinker of them +all; Longfellow possessed in a rare degree the +power of felicitous expression, and gave us +thoughts couched in the most beautiful poetry; +Whittier was the apostle of freedom, fearless, +and moved by an untiring purpose; Lowell +was a man of versatile genius, as great in the +field of poetry as he was in that of prose.</p> + +<p>"Holmes was one who wrote without effort. +His was a ready genius. His thoughts came +unbidden, and he had but to give them expression +in words. Apt, vivacious, animated, pure, +happy, he always was at once a wit and a +humorist, but greater in his wit than in his +humor. Whatever his subject, he wrote of it +with equal ability, and his books are remarkable +for the variety of topics which he has +treated so easily."</p> + +<p>Of all his poems, Doctor Holmes ranked +"The Chambered Nautilus" highest.</p> + +<p>"I wrote that poem," he said, "at white +heat. When it was finished I took it to my +wife, who was sewing in an adjoining room, +and said, 'I think I have the best poem here +that I have ever written.' And I have never +changed my mind about it."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span></p> + +<p>By universal consent, indeed, "The Chambered +Nautilus" is considered the gem of Doctor +Holmes' beautiful lyrics. The poet always +kept in his study specimens of the nautilus +shell, cut entirely across, to show the spiral +ascent of its curious inhabitant. He delighted +to show these shells to his visitors; and, as he +replaced them on the shelves, he would often +repeat the last stanza of his beautiful poem:—</p> + + +<div class="poemblock1"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">As the swift seasons roll;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Leave thy low-vaulted past;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Let each new temple, loftier than the last,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Till thou at length art free,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Leaving thine out-grown shell by life's unresting sea.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>Among the poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes +are seven that may truly be called "Hymns;" +and it is well to remember that the test of +the use and value of a hymn is not the occasion +for which it was written, but its adoption +into hymnal collections, and its use thereafter.</p> + +<p>"We were singing one of Doctor Holmes' +hymns in our church," said Rev. Minot Savage,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span> +"that Sunday morning when the great singer was +passing into the higher choir.</p> + +<p>"Doctor Holmes was manly in his religion, and +his songs show the bright and noble spirit that +dominated his life. He was worshipful and trustful, +and always hopeful. He was a firm, even +passionate, believer in an existence after death, +and found the ground of his trust in the dissecting-room. +As a scientist he faced everything, +and then believed that the soul was more than +the body."</p> + +<p>Of these seven hymns of Doctor Holmes', the +familiar one beginning,—</p> + + +<div class="poemblock"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Lord of all being, throned afar,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thy glory flames from star to star,<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + + +<p>the poet appropriately characterized his "Sunday +Hymn." It first appeared in the <i>Atlantic +Monthly</i> of December, 1859, and the "Professor" +prefaced it with these words:—</p> + +<p>"Peace be to all such as may have been vexed +by any utterance the pages have repeated. They +will doubtless forget for the moment the difference +in the lines of truth we look at through our +human prisms, and join in singing (inwardly) +this hymn to the Source of the Light we all need<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span> +to lead us, and the warmth which alone can make +us all brothers."</p> + +<p>In the many heartfelt tributes to Doctor Holmes, +it is interesting to note that his spiritual character +was appreciated and approved by men differing +from him very widely in religious belief. Indeed, +it would be impossible for any one to hold communion +with him through his writings without +growing more kindly, more loving toward his fellow-men, +and more reverent, more filial, towards +his Heavenly Father.</p> + +<p>"And personally," remarked an intimate friend, +"Doctor Holmes was as delightful a character as +he is in his books. His best thoughts came full +flood, as it were, from a richly stocked mind. His +most characteristic traits were his extreme kindliness +and his animation. The mirth and vivacity +which bubble forth from his books was the same +which came spontaneously from his lips in conversation. +He was a delightful companion, and +a true friend to those who were so fortunate as +to know him and be known by him."</p> + +<p>Oliver Wendell Holmes taught that life is good +and sweet, and worth the living. There is not in +all his writings a single morbid note. The world +is brighter and happier and better for the rare +gift of such a life.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span></p> + +<p>His wit has been the solvent of bigotry. He +has done for the religious thought of the century +what Whittier did for the political; and his bright +optimism has pierced many an old-time error with +the potency of the sunbeam.</p> + +<p>"It is clearly seen in the perspective," says +Charles Dudley Warner, "that Doctor Holmes' +life gives us the kind of reputation that is of value +to one's native land, and shows us that, after all +the parade of official station and the notoriety of +politics and money, those names only endure in +honor and love which are borne by men of high +intellectual and moral qualities. When we sum +up all our sources and achievements, it is to him +and his few compeers that we must point for our +distinction."</p> + +<div class="p6" /> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<h2><a name="FOOTNOTES" id="FOOTNOTES"></a>FOOTNOTES:</h2> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noi"><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> From notes furnished the writer by Dr. Holmes.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noi"><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> In the Harvard College Library may be seen a copy of Anne Bradstreet's +poems, which passed through eight editions. The extraordinary title of her +world-renowned book reads as follows: "Several poems compiled with great +variety of wit and learning, full of delight, wherein especially is contained a complete +discourse and description of the four elements, constitutions, ages of man, +seasons of the year, together with an exact epitome of the three first monarchies, +viz., the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and beginning of the Roman Commonweal +to the end of their last king: with diverse other pleasant and serious poems. By +a gentlewoman in New England." This talented lady was the ancestress not +only of Oliver Wendell Holmes, but also of the Channings, Danas and +Phillipses.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noi"><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> From notes furnished by Doctor Holmes.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noi"><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> From notes furnished by Doctor Holmes.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noi"><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> From notes furnished by Doctor Holmes.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noi"><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> From notes furnished by Dr. Holmes.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noi"><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> From notes furnished by Dr. Holmes.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noi"><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> The site occupied by the medical college was once covered by the tides.</p></div> +</div> +<div class="p4" /> +<div class="transnote"> +<p class="tdc">Transcribers notes:<br /><br /> + +Maintained original spelling and punctuation.</p></div> + + + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes, by E. 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E. Brown + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes + +Author: E. E. Brown + +Release Date: October 30, 2011 [EBook #37878] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES *** + + + + +Produced by Tor Martin Kristiansen, Ron Stephens, Carol +Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + [Illustration: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.] + + + + + LIFE OF + OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES + + BY + E.E. BROWN + + Author of "LIFE OF GARFIELD," "LIFE OF WASHINGTON," + "FROM NIGHT TO LIGHT," ETC., ETC. + + + CHICAGO NEW YORK + THE WERNER COMPANY + + + + + COPYRIGHT 1884 + BY D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY + + COPYRIGHT 1895 + BY THE WERNER COMPANY + + Holmes + + + + +OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + CHAP. PAGE. + + I. ANCESTRY 9 + + II. BOYHOOD 20 + + III. EARLY RECOLLECTIONS 30 + + IV. OTHER REMINISCENCES 40 + + V. ABROAD 49 + + VI. CHANGE IN THE HOME 60 + + VII. THE PROFESSOR 67 + + VIII. THE LECTURER 74 + + IX. NAMING THE NEW MAGAZINE 83 + + X. ELSIE VENNER 92 + + XI. FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE 107 + + XII. FAVORITES OF SONG 114 + + XIII. THE MAN OF SCIENCE 136 + + XIV. THE HOLMES BREAKFAST 152 + + XV. ORATIONS AND ESSAYS 171 + + XVI. THE HOME CIRCLE 208 + + XVII. LOVE OF NATURE 227 + + XVIII. THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL 240 + + XIX. TOKENS OF ESTEEM 284 + + XX. IN LATER YEARS 302 + + XXI. LAST DAYS 320 + + + + +OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +ANCESTRY. + + +In a quaint old gambrel-roofed house that once stood on Cambridge +Common, Oliver Wendell Holmes--poet, professor, "beloved physician"--was +born, on the twenty-ninth of August, 1809. His father, the Rev. Abiel +Holmes, was the pastor of the "First Church" in Cambridge-- + + That ancient church whose lofty tower, + Beneath the loftier spire, + Is shadowed when the sunset hour + Clothes the tall shaft in fire. + +Here, in Revolutionary times, General Washington frequently worshiped, +and the old homestead itself was the headquarters of the American army +during the siege of Boston. + +"It was a great happiness," writes the _Poet at the Breakfast-Table_, +"to have been born in an old house haunted by such recollections, with +harmless ghosts walking its corridors, with fields of waving grass and +trees and singing birds, and that vast territory of four or five acres +around it, to give a child the sense that he was born to a noble +principality.... + +"The gambrel-roofed house was not one of those old Tory, Episcopal +church-goer's strongholds. One of its doors opens directly upon the +Green, always called the Common; the other faces the south, a few steps +from it, over a paved foot-walk on the other side of which is the +miniature front yard, bordered with lilacs and syringas. + +"The honest mansion makes no pretensions. Accessible, companionable, +holding its hand out to all--comfortable, respectable, and even in its +way dignified, but not imposing; not a house for his Majesty's +Counsellor, or the Right Reverend successor of Him who had not where to +lay his head, for something like a hundred and fifty years it has stood +in its lot, and seen the generations of men come and go like the leaves +of the forest." + +The house was not originally built for a parsonage. It was first the +residence of a well-to-do tailor, who sold it to Jonathan Hastings, a +prosperous farmer whom the college students used to call "Yankee Jont.," +and whose son was the college steward in 1775. It was long known in +Cambridge as the "Hastings House," but about the year 1792 it was sold +to Eliphalet Pearson, the Hebrew Professor at Harvard, and in 1807 it +passed into the hands of the Rev. Abiel Holmes. + +For forty years the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes ministered to his +Cambridge parish, revered and loved by all who knew him. He was a man of +marked literary ability, as his _Annals of America_ shows--"full of +learning," as some one has said, "but never distressing others by +showing how learned he was." + +Said T.W. Higginson, at the Holmes Breakfast: + +"I should like to speak of that most delightful of sunny old men, the +father of Doctor Holmes, whom I knew and loved when I was a child.... I +was brought up in Cambridge, my father's house being next door to that +of Doctor Holmes' gambrel-roofed house, and the library I most enjoyed +tumbling about in was the same in which his infant gambols had first +disturbed the repose of the books. I shall always remember a certain +winter evening, when we boys were playing before the fire, how the old +man--gray, and gentle, and kindly as any old German professor, and never +complaining of our loudest gambols--going to the frost-covered window, +sketched with his pen-knife what seemed a cluster of brambles and a +galaxy of glittering stars, and above that he wrote, _Per aspera ad +astra_: 'Through difficulties to the stars.' He explained to us what it +meant, and I have never forgotten that quiet winter evening and the +sweet talk of that old man." + +The good pastor was a graduate of Yale College, and before coming to +Cambridge had taught at his _Alma Mater_, and preached in Georgia. He +was the son of Doctor David Holmes, a physician of Woodstock, Ct., who +had served as captain in the French and Indian wars, and afterward as +surgeon in the Revolutionary army. The grandfather of Doctor David +Holmes was one of the original settlers of Woodstock.[1] + +The genealogy of the Holmes family of Woodstock dates from Thomas +Holmes, a lawyer of Gray's Inn, London. In 1686, John Holmes, one of his +descendants, joined a colony from Roxbury, Mass., and settled in +Woodstock, Conn. His son David married a certain "Bathsheba," who had a +remarkable reputation as nurse and doctress. + +In the great storm of 1717, when the settlers' houses were almost buried +in the snow, it is said that she climbed out of an upper-story window +and travelled on snow-shoes through almost impassable drifts to Dudley, +Mass., to visit a sick woman. The son of this noble Bathsheba was "Dr. +David," the grandfather of Oliver Wendell Holmes. + +In 1790, Abiel Holmes was married to the daughter of President Stiles of +Yale, who died without children. His second wife, and the mother of +Oliver Wendell Holmes, was a daughter of Hon. Oliver Wendell, an eminent +lawyer. He was descended from various Wendells, Olivers, Quinceys, and +Bradstreets--names that belonged to the best blue blood of New +England--and his wife was Mary Jackson, a daughter of Dorothy Quincy, +the "Dorothy Q." whom Doctor Holmes has immortalized in his poem. And +just here, lest some of my readers may have forgotten some parts of this +delicious bit of family portraiture, I am tempted to give the entire +poem: + + Grandmother's mother, her age I guess, + Thirteen summers or something less; + Girlish bust, but womanly air, + Smooth square forehead, with uprolled hair, + Lips that lover has never kissed, + Taper fingers and slender wrist, + Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade-- + So they painted the little maid. + + On her hand a parrot green + Sits unmoving and broods serene; + Hold up the canvas full in view-- + Look, there's a rent the light shines through. + Dark with a century's fringe of dust, + That was a Redcoat's rapier thrust! + Such is the tale the lady old, + Dorothy's daughter's daughter told. + + Who the painter was none may tell-- + One whose best was not over well; + Hard and dry, it must be confessed, + Flat as a rose that has long been pressed; + Yet in her cheek the hues are bright, + Dainty colors of red and white; + And in her slender shape are seen + Hint and promise of stately mien. + + Look not on her with eyes of scorn-- + Dorothy Q. was a lady born! + Ay, since the galloping Normans came, + England's annals have known her name; + And still to the three-hilled rebel town + Dear is that ancient name's renown, + For many a civic wreath they won, + The youthful sire and the gray-haired son. + + O damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q., + Strange is the gift that I owe to you; + Such a gift as never a king + Save to daughter or son might bring-- + All my tenure of heart and hand, + All my title to house and land; + Mother and sister, and child and wife, + And joy and sorrow, and death and life. + + What if a hundred years ago + Those close-shut lips had answered, no, + When forth the tremulous question came + That cost the maiden her Norman name; + And under the folds that look so still + The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill + Should I be I, or would it be + One tenth another to nine tenths me? + + Soft is the breath of a maiden's yes; + Not the light gossamer stirs with less; + But never a cable that holds so fast, + Through all the battles of wave and blast, + And never an echo of speech or song + That lives in the babbling air so long! + There were tones in the voice that whispered then + You may hear to-day in a hundred men. + + O lady and lover, how faint and far + Your images hover, and here we are, + Solid and stirring in flesh and bone, + Edward's and Dorothy's--all their own-- + A goodly record for time to show + Of a syllable spoken so long ago! + Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive, + For the tender whisper that bade me live? + + It shall be a blessing, my little maid, + I will heal the stab of the Redcoat's blade, + And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame, + And gild with a rhyme your household name, + So you shall smile on us, brave and bright, + As first you greeted the morning's light, + And live untroubled by woes and fears, + Through a second youth of a hundred years. + +This Dorothy Quincy, it is interesting to note, was the aunt of a second +Dorothy Quincy, who married Governor Hancock. The Wendells were of Dutch +descent. + +Evert Jansen Wendell, who came from East Friesland in 1645, was the +original settler in Albany. From the church records, we find that he was +the _Regerendo Dijaken_ in 1656, and upon one of the windows of the old +Dutch church in Albany, the arms of the Wendells--a ship riding at two +anchors--were represented in stained glass. Very little is known of +these early ancestors, but the name is still an influential one among +the old Knickerbocker families. + +Early in the eighteenth century, Abraham and Jacob Wendell left their +Albany home and came to Boston. It is said that Jacob (the +great-grandfather of Oliver Wendell Holmes) fell in love with his future +wife, the daughter of Doctor James Oliver, when she was only nine years +of age. Seeing her at play, he was so impressed by her beauty and grace +that, like the Jacob of old, he willingly waited the flight of years. +Twelve children blessed this happy union, and the youngest daughter +married William Phillips, the first mayor of Boston, and the father of +Wendell Phillips. + + Fair cousin, Wendell P., + +says Doctor Holmes in his Phi Beta Kappa poem of 1881: + + Our ancestors were dwellers beside the Zuyder Zee; + Both Grotius and Erasmus were countrymen of we, + And Vondel was our namesake, though he spelt it with a v. + +Jacob Wendell became, eventually, one of the richest merchants of +Boston; was a member of the City Council and colonel of the Boston +regiment. His son, Oliver (the grandfather of Doctor Holmes), was born +in 1733, and after his graduation at Harvard, in 1753, he went into +business with his father. He still continued his studies, however, and +preferring a professional life to that of a business man, he afterwards +graduated at the Law School, was admitted to the bar, and soon after +appointed Judge of Probate for Suffolk County. In Drake's _Old Landmarks +of Boston_, we find that Judge Wendell was a selectman during the siege +of Boston, and was commissioned by General Washington to raise a company +of men to watch the British after the evacuation, so that no spies might +pass between the two armies. + +The original Bradstreet was Simon, the old Charter Governor, who +married Governor Dudley's daughter Anne.[2] This accomplished lady, +the first New England poetess, and frequently called by her +contemporaries "The Tenth Muse," was Doctor Holmes' grandmother's +great-great-grandmother.[3] + +With such an ancestry, Oliver Wendell Holmes surely fulfils all the +conditions of "a man of family," and who will not readily agree with the +_Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table_, when he writes as follows: + +"I go for the man with the family portraits against the one with the +twenty-five cent daguerreotype, unless I find out that the last is the +better of the two. I go for the man that inherits family traditions and +the cumulative humanities of at least four or five generations. Above +all things, as a child, he should have tumbled about in a library. All +men are afraid of books that have not handled them from infancy." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] From notes furnished the writer by Dr. Holmes. + +[2] In the Harvard College Library may be seen a copy of Anne +Bradstreet's poems, which passed through eight editions. The +extraordinary title of her world-renowned book reads as follows: +"Several poems compiled with great variety of wit and learning, full of +delight, wherein especially is contained a complete discourse and +description of the four elements, constitutions, ages of man, seasons of +the year, together with an exact epitome of the three first monarchies, +viz., the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and beginning of the Roman +Commonweal to the end of their last king: with diverse other pleasant +and serious poems. By a gentlewoman in New England." This talented lady +was the ancestress not only of Oliver Wendell Holmes, but also of the +Channings, Danas and Phillipses. + +[3] From notes furnished by Doctor Holmes. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +BOYHOOD. + + +In a curious little almanac for 1809 may still be seen against the date +of August 29, the simple record, "Son b." Twice before had good Parson +Holmes recorded in similar manner the births of his children, for Oliver +Wendell, who bore his grandfather's name, was his third child; but this +was the first time he could write "son." + +A few years later another son came--the "brother John" whose wit and +talents have gladdened so many hearts--and, last of all, another +daughter came to brighten the family circle for a few brief years. + +The little Oliver was a bright, sunny-tempered child, highly imaginative +and extremely sensitive. Speaking of his childhood in after years, and +of certain superstitious fancies that always clung to him, he says: + +"I tell you it was not so pleasant for a little boy of impressible +nature to go up to bed in an old gambrel-roofed house, with untenanted, +locked upper chambers, and a most ghostly garret; ... There was a dark +store-room, too, on looking through the keyhole of which I could dimly +see a heap of chairs and tables and other four-footed things, which +seemed to me to have rushed in there frightened, and in their fright to +have huddled together and climbed up on each other's backs--as the +people did in that awful crush where so many were killed at the +execution of Holloway and Haggerty. Then the lady's portrait up-stairs +with the sword-thrusts through it--marks of the British officers' +rapiers--and the tall mirror in which they used to look at their red +coats--confound them for smashing its mate!--and the deep, +cunningly-wrought arm-chair in which Lord Percy used to sit while his +hair was dressing; he was a gentleman, and always had it covered with a +large _peignoir_ to save the silk covering my grandmother embroidered. +Then the little room down-stairs from which went the orders to throw up +a bank of earth on the hill yonder where you may now observe a granite +obelisk, the study in my father's time, but in those days the +council-chamber of armed men, sometimes filled with soldiers. Come with +me, and I will show you the 'dents' left by the butts of their muskets +all over the floor. With all these suggestive objects round me, aided by +the wild stories those awful country boys that came to live in our +service brought with them--of contracts written in blood and left out +over night not to be found the next morning (removed by the Evil One who +takes his nightly round among our dwellings, and filed away for future +use), of dreams coming true, of death-signs, of apparitions, no wonder +that my imagination got excited, and I was liable to superstitious +fancies." + +What some of these fancies were, he tells us elsewhere: + +"I was afraid of ships. Why, I could never tell. The masts looked +frightfully tall, but they were not so tall as the steeple of our old +yellow meeting-house. At any rate, I used to hide my eyes from the +sloops and schooners that were wont to lie at the end of the bridge, and +I confess that traces of this undefined terror lasted very long. One +other source of alarm had a still more fearful significance. There was +a great wooden hand, a glovemaker's sign, which used to swing and creak +in the blast as it hung from a pillar before a certain shop a mile or +two outside of the city. Oh, the dreadful hand! Always hanging there +ready to catch up a little boy who would come home to supper no more, +nor yet to bed, whose porringer would be laid away empty thenceforth, +and his half-worn shoes wait until his small brother grew to fit them. + +"As for all manner of superstitious observances, I used once to think I +must have been peculiar in having such a list of them, but I now believe +that half the children of the same age go through the same experiences. +No Roman soothsayer ever had such a catalogue of omens as I found in the +sibylline leaves of my childhood. That trick of throwing a stone at a +tree and attaching some mighty issue to hitting or missing, which you +will find mentioned in one or more biographies, I well remember. +Stepping on or over certain particular things or spots--Doctor Johnson's +special weakness--I got the habit of at a very early age. + +"With these follies mingled sweet delusions which I loved so well I +would not outgrow them, even when it required a voluntary effort to put +a momentary trust in them. Here is one which I cannot help telling you. + +"The firing of the great guns at the Navy Yard is easily heard at the +place where I was born and lived. 'There is a ship of war come in,' they +used to say, when they heard them. Of course I supposed that such +vessels came in unexpectedly, after indefinite years of absence, +suddenly as falling stones, and that the great guns roared in their +astonishment and delight at the sight of the old war-ship splitting the +bay with her cut-water. Now, the sloop-of-war the _Wasp_, Captain +Blakely, after gloriously capturing the _Reindeer_ and the _Avon_, had +disappeared from the face of the ocean, and was supposed to be lost. But +there was no proof of it, and of course for a time, hopes were +entertained that she might be heard from. Long after the last real +chance had utterly vanished, I pleased myself with the fond illusion +that somewhere on the waste of waters she was still floating, and there +were _years_ during which I never heard the sound of the great guns +booming inland from the Navy Yard without saying to myself, 'the _Wasp_ +has come!' and almost thinking I could see her as she rolled in, +crumpling the waters before her, weather-beaten, barnacled, with +shattered spars and threadbare canvas, welcomed by the shouts and tears +of thousands. This was one of those dreams that I mused and never told. +Let me make a clean breast of it now, and say, that, so late as to have +outgrown childhood, perhaps to have got far on towards manhood, when the +roar of the cannon has struck suddenly on my ear, I have started with a +thrill of vague expectation and tremulous delight, and the long unspoken +words have articulated themselves in the mind's dumb whisper, _The Wasp +has come!_ + +"Yes; children believe plenty of queer things. I suppose all of you have +had the pocket-book fever when you were little? What do I mean? Why, +ripping up old pocket-books in the firm belief that bank-bills to an +immense amount were hidden in them. So, too, you must all remember some +splendid unfulfilled promise of somebody or other, which fed you with +hopes perhaps for years, and which left a blank in your life which +nothing has ever filled up. O.T. quitted our household carrying with +him the passionate regrets of the more youthful members. He was an +ingenious youngster; wrote wonderful copies, and carved the two initials +given above with great skill on all available surfaces. I thought, by +the way, they were all gone, but the other day, I found them on a +certain door. How it surprised me to find them so near the ground! I had +thought the boy of no trivial dimensions. Well, O.T., when he went, made +a solemn promise to two of us. I was to have a ship, and the other a +martin house (last syllable pronounced as in the word _tin_). Neither +ever came; but oh! how many and many a time I have stolen to the +corner--the cars pass close by it at this time--and looked up that long +avenue, thinking that he must be coming now, almost sure as I turned to +look northward that there he would be, trudging toward me, the ship in +one hand and the mar_tin_ house in the other!" + +At an early age the merry, restless little fellow was sent to a +neighboring school, kept by Ma'am Prentiss, a good, motherly old dame, +who ruled her little flock, not with a scourge of birches, but with a +long willow rod that reached quite across the schoolroom, +"reminding,[4] rather than chastening." Among her pupils was Alfred +Lee, afterwards the beloved Bishop of Delaware. + +"It is by little things," says the Autocrat, "that we know ourselves; a +soul would very probably mistake itself for another, when once +disembodied, were it not for individual experiences which differ from +those of others only in details seemingly trivial. All of us have been +thirsty thousands of times, and felt with Pindar, that water was the +best of things. I alone, as I think, of all mankind, remember one +particular pailful of water, flavored with the white-pine of which the +pail was made, and the brown mug out of which one Edmund, a red-faced +and curly-haired boy, was averred to have bitten a fragment in his haste +to drink; it being then high summer, and little full-blooded boys +feeling very warm and porous in the low studded schoolroom where Dame +Prentiss, dead and gone, ruled over young children. Thirst belongs to +humanity everywhere, in all ages, but that white-pine pail and that +brown mug belong to me in particular." + +The next school to which the Cambridge pastor sent his little son was +kept by William Biglow, a man of considerable scholarship and much +native wit. Five years were spent at a school in Cambridgeport, which +was kept by several successive teachers, and it was here, as +schoolmates, that Oliver Wendell Holmes first met Margaret Fuller and +Richard Henry Dana. + +"I was moderately studious," says Doctor Holmes, "and very fond of +reading stories, which I sometimes did in school hours. I was fond also +of whispering, and my desk bore sad witness to my passion for whittling. +For these misdemeanors I sometimes had a visitation from the ferule, and +once when a Gunter's scale was used for this purpose, it flew to pieces +as it came down on my palm."[5] + +It was about this time, doubtless, that the _Autocrat_ learned that +important fact about the "hat." + +"I was once equipped," he says, "in a hat of Leghorn straw, having a +brim of much wider dimensions than were usual at that time, and sent to +school in that portion of my native town which lies nearest to the +metropolis. On my way I was met by a 'Port-Chuck,' as we used to call +the young gentlemen of that locality, and the following dialogue ensued: + +"_The Port-Chuck_: 'Hullo, you sir, joo know th' wus goin' to be a race +to-morrah?' + +"_Myself_: 'No. Who's goin' to run, 'n' wher' 's't goin' to be?' + +"_The Port-Chuck_: 'Squire Mico 'n' Doctor Williams, round the brim o' +your hat.' + +"These two much-respected gentlemen being the oldest inhabitants at that +time, and the alleged race-course being out of the question, the +Port-Chuck also winking and thrusting his tongue into his cheek, I +perceived that I had been trifled with, and the effect has been to make +me sensitive and observant respecting this article ever since. The hat +is the vulnerable point of the artificial integument." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[4] From notes furnished by Doctor Holmes. + +[5] From notes furnished by Doctor Holmes. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. + + +Of the boyhood of Doctor Holmes we have many delightful glimpses. + +"Like other boys in the country," he tells us, "I had my patch of ground +to which in the springtime I intrusted the seeds furnished me with a +confident trust in their resurrection and glorification in the better +world of summer. But I soon found that my lines had fallen in a place +where a vegetable growth had to run the gauntlet of as many foes and +trials as a Christian pilgrim. Flowers would not blow; daffodils +perished like criminals in their condemned caps, without their petals +ever seeing daylight; roses were disfigured with monstrous protrusions +through their very centres, something that looked like a second bud +pushing through the middle of the corolla; lettuces and cabbages would +not head; radishes knotted themselves until they looked like +centenarians' fringes; and on every stem, on every leaf, and both sides +of it, and at the root of everything that grew, was a professional +specialist in the shape of grub, caterpillar, aphis, or other expert, +whose business it was to devour that particular part, and help murder +the whole attempt at vegetation.... Yet Nature is never wholly unkind. +Economical as she was in my unparadised Eden, hard as it was to make +some of my floral houris unveil, still the damask roses sweetened +the June breezes, the bladed and plumed flower-de-luces unfolded +their close-wrapped cones, and larkspurs, and lupins, lady's +delights--plebeian manifestations of the pansy--self-sowing marigolds, +hollyhocks; the forest flowers of two seasons, and the perennial lilacs +and syringas, all whispered to the winds blowing over them that some +caressing presence was around me. + +"Beyond the garden was the field, a vast domain of four acres or +thereabouts by the measurement of after years, bordered to the north by +a fathomless chasm--the ditch the base-ball players of the present era +jump over; on the east by unexplored territory; on the south by a +barren enclosure, where the red sorrel proclaimed liberty and equality +under its _drapeau rouge_, and succeeded in establishing a vegetable +commune where all were alike, poor, mean, sour, and uninteresting; and +on the west by the Common, not then disgraced by jealous enclosures +which make it look like a cattle-market. + +"Beyond, as I looked round, were the colleges, the meeting-house, the +little square market-house, long vanished, the burial ground where the +dead presidents stretched their weary bones under epitaphs stretched out +at as full length as their subjects; the pretty church where the gouty +Tories used to kneel on their hassocks, the district schoolhouse, and +hard by it Ma'am Hancock's cottage, never so called in those days, but +rather 'ten-footer'; then houses scattered near and far, open spaces, +the shadowy elms, round hilltops in the distance, and over all the great +bowl of the sky. Mind you, this was the WORLD, as I first knew it; +_terra veteribus cognita_, as Mr. Arrowsmith would have called it, if he +had mapped the universe of my infancy." + +"When I was of smallest dimensions," he says at another time, "and wont +to ride impacted between the knees of fond parental pair, we would +sometimes cross the bridge to the next village town and stop opposite a +low, brown, gambrel-roofed cottage. Out of it would come one Sally, +sister of its swarthy tenant, swarthy herself, shady-lipped, sad-voiced, +and bending over her flower bed, would gather a 'posy,' as she called +it, for the little boy. Sally lies in the churchyard, with a slab of +blue slate at her head, lichen-crusted, and leaning a little within the +last few years. Cottage, garden-bed, posies, grenadier-like rows of +seeding-onions--stateliest of vegetables--all are gone, but the breath +of a marigold brings them all back to me." + +Of Cambridge at this time, James Russell Lowell, in his _Fireside +Travels_, tells us: "It was still a country village with its own habits +and traditions, not yet feeling too strongly the force of suburban +gravitation. Approaching it from the west, by what was then called the +New Road, you would pause on the brow of Symond's Hill to enjoy a view +singularly soothing and placid. In front of you lay the town, tufted +with elms, lindens, and horse-chestnuts, which had seen Massachusetts a +colony, and were fortunately unable to emigrate with the Tories by +whom, or by whose fathers they were planted. Over it rose the noisy +belfry of the College, the square, brown tower of the Episcopal Church, +and the slim yellow spire of the parish meeting-house. On your right the +Charles slipped smoothly through green and purple salt meadows, darkened +here and there with the blossoming black grass as with a stranded +cloud-shadow. To your left upon the Old Road you saw some half-dozen +dignified old houses of the colonial time, all comfortably fronting +southward.... We called it 'the Village' then, and it was essentially an +English village--quiet, unspeculative, without enterprise, sufficing to +itself, and only showing such differences from the original type as the +public school and the system of town government might superinduce. A few +houses, chiefly old, stood around the bare common, with ample +elbow-room, and old women, capped and spectacled, still peered through +the same windows from which they had watched Lord Percy's artillery +rumble by to Lexington, or caught a glimpse of the handsome Virginia +general who had come to wield our homespun Saxon chivalry. The hooks +were to be seen from which had swung the hammocks of Burgoyne's captive +red-coats. If memory does not deceive me, women still washed clothes in +the town spring, clear as that of Bandusia. One coach sufficed for all +the travel to the metropolis. Commencement had not ceased to be the +great holiday of the Boston commonwealth, and a fitting one it was. The +students (scholars they were called then) wore their sober uniform, not +ostentatiously distinctive, or capable of rousing democratic envy; and +the old lines of caste were blurred rather than rubbed out, as servitor +was softened into beneficiary. Was it possible for us in those days to +conceive of a greater potentate than the president of the University, in +his square doctor's cap, that still filially recalled Oxford and +Cambridge?" + +The father of Oliver Wendell Holmes was a Calvanist, not indeed of the +severest cast, but still strictly "orthodox" in all his religious views, +and when Oliver, his elder son, was fifteen years of age, he sent him to +the Phillips Academy in Andover, thinking that the religious atmosphere +there was less heretical than at Phillips Academy, Exeter, where +Arminian tendencies were just beginning to show themselves. + +"I have some recollections of Andover, pleasant and other," says Doctor +Holmes. "I wonder if the old Seminary clock strikes as slowly as it used +to. My room-mate thought, when he first came, it was the bell tolling +deaths, and people's ages, as they do in the country. He swore +(ministers' sons get so familiar with good words that they are apt to +handle them carelessly), that the children were dying by the dozen of +all ages, from one to twelve, and ran off next day in recess when it +began to strike eleven, but was caught before the clock got through +striking. At the foot of the hill, down in town, is, or was, a tidy old +elm, which was said to have been hooped with iron to protect it from +Indian tomahawks (_Credab Hahnucmannus_), and to have grown round its +hoops and buried them in its wood." + +The extreme conscientiousness of the boy is strikingly depicted in the +following revelation: + +"The first unequivocal act of wrong that has left its trace in my memory +was this: refusing a small favor asked of me--nothing more than telling +what had happened at school one morning. No matter who asked it; but +there were circumstances which saddened and awed me. I had no heart to +speak; I faltered some miserable, perhaps petulant excuse, stole away, +and the first battle of life was lost. + +"What remorse followed I need not tell. Then and there to the best of my +knowledge, I first consciously took Sin by the hand and turned my back +on Duty. Time has led me to look upon my offence more leniently; I do +not believe it or any other childish wrong is infinite, as some have +pretended, but infinitely finite. Yet, if I had but won that first +battle!" + +And what a charming picture he gives us of the peaceful, hallowing +influences about him in that quiet old parsonage! + +"The Puritan 'Sabbath,' as everybody knows, began at 'sundown' on +Saturday evening. To such observances of it I was born and bred. As the +large, round disk of day declined, a stillness, a solemnity, a somewhat +melancholy hush came over us all. It was time for work to cease, and for +playthings to be put away. The world of active life passed into the +shadow of an eclipse, not to emerge until the sun should sink again +beneath the horizon. + +"It was in the stillness of the world without and of the soul within +that the pulsating lullaby of the evening crickets used to make itself +most distinctly heard--so that I well remember I used to think that the +purring of these little creatures, which mingled with the batrachian +hymns from the neighboring swamps, _was peculiar to Saturday evenings_. +I don't know that anything could give a clearer idea of the quieting and +subduing effect of the old habit of observance of what was considered +holy time, than this strange, childish fancy." + +Had all the clergymen who visited the parsonage been as true to their +profession as his own dear father, the thoughtful, impressible boy +might, very possibly, have devoted his brilliant talents to the +ministry. "It was a real delight," he says, "to have one of those good, +hearty, happy, benignant old clergymen pass the Sunday with us, and I +can remember one whose advent made the day feel almost like +'Thanksgiving.' But now and then would come along a clerical visitor +with a sad face and a wailing voice, which sounded exactly as if +somebody must be lying dead up-stairs, who took no interest in us +children, except a painful one, as being in a bad way with our cheery +looks, and did more to unchristianize us with his woebegone ways than +all his sermons were like to accomplish in the other direction. I +remember one in particular who twitted me so with my blessings as a +Christian child, and whined so to me about the naked black children, +that he did more in that one day to make me a heathen than he had ever +done in a month to make a Christian out of an infant Hottentot. I might +have been a minister myself for aught I know, if this clergyman had not +looked and talked so like an undertaker." + +An exercise written while at Andover, shows at what an early age he +attempted versification. It is a translation from the first book of +Virgil's AEneid, and reads as smoothly as any lines of Pope. The +following extract shows the angry god giving his orders to Zephyrus and +Eurus: + + Is this your glory in a noble line, + To leave your confines and to ravage mine? + Whom I--but let these troubled waves subside-- + Another tempest and I'll quell your pride! + Go bear our message to your master's ear, + That wide as ocean I am despot here; + Let him sit monarch in his barren caves! + I wield the trident and control the waves. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +OTHER REMINISCENCES. + + +In his vacations the inquiring mind of the young student had made +"strange acquaintances" in a certain book infirmary up in the attic of +the gambrel-roofed house. + +"_The Negro Plot at New York_," he says, "helped to implant a feeling in +me which it took Mr. Garrison a good many years to root out. _Thinks I +to myself_, an old novel which has been attributed to a famous +statesman, introduced me to a world of fiction which was not represented +on the shelves of the library proper, unless perhaps by _Caelebs in +search of a Wife_, or allegories of the bitter tonic class." + +Then there was an old, old Latin alchemy book, with the manuscript +annotations of some ancient Rosicrucian, "In the pages of which," he +says, "I had a vague notion that I might find the mighty secret of the +_Lapis Philosophorum_, otherwise called Chaos, the Dragon, the Green +Lion, the _Quinta Essentia_, the Soap of Sages, the vinegar of Heavenly +Grace, the Egg, the Old Man, the Sun, the Moon, and by all manner of odd +_aliases_, as I am assured by the plethoric little book before me, in +parchment covers browned like a meerschaum with the smoke of furnaces, +and the thumbing of dead gold-seekers, and the fingering of bony-handed +book-misers, and the long intervals of dusty slumber on the shelves of +the _bonquiniste_." + +"I have never lost my taste for alchemy," he adds, "since I first got +hold of the _Palladium Spagyricum_ of Peter John Faber, and sought--in +vain, it is true--through its pages for a clear, intelligible, and +practical statement of how I could turn my lead sinkers and the weights +of the tall kitchen clock into good yellow gold specific gravity, 19.2, +and exchangeable for whatever I then wanted, and for many more things +than I was then aware of. + +"One of the greatest pleasures of childhood is found in the mysteries +which it hides from the scepticism of the elders, and works up into +small mythologies of its own. I have seen all this played over again in +adult life, the same delightful bewilderment of semi-emotional belief +in listening to the gaseous promises of this or that fantastic system, +that I found in the pleasing mirages conjured up for me by the ragged +old volume I used to pore over in the southeast attic chamber." + +There are other reminiscences of these days that show us not only the +outward surroundings, but the inner workings of the boy's mind. + +"The great Destroyer," he says, "had come near me, but never so as to be +distinctly seen and remembered during my tender years. There flits dimly +before me the image of a little girl whose name even I have forgotten, a +schoolmate whom we missed one day, and were told that she had died. But +what death was I never had any very distinct idea until one day I +climbed the low stone-wall of the old burial ground and mingled with a +group that were looking into a very deep, long, narrow hole, dug down +through the green sod, down through the brown loam, down through the +yellow gravel, and there at the bottom was an oblong red box, and a +still, sharp, white face of a young man seen through an opening at one +end of it. + +"When the lid was closed, and the gravel and stones rattled down +pell-mell, and the woman in black who was crying and wringing her hands +went off with the other mourners, and left him, then I felt that I had +seen Death, and should never forget him." + +There were certain sounds too, he tells us, that had "a mysterious +suggestiveness" to him. One was the "creaking of the woodsleds, bringing +their loads of oak and walnut from the country, as the slow-swinging +oxen trailed them along over the complaining snow in the cold, brown +light of early morning. Lying in bed and listening to their dreary music +had a pleasure in it akin to the Lucretian luxury, or that which Byron +speaks of as to be enjoyed in looking on at a battle by one 'who hath no +friend, no brother there.' + +"Yes, and there was still another sound which mingled its solemn +cadences with the waking and sleeping dreams of my boyhood. It was heard +only at times, a deep, muffled roar, which rose and fell, not loud, but +vast; a whistling boy would have drowned it for his next neighbor, but +it must have been heard over the space of a hundred square miles. I used +to wonder what this might be. Could it be the roar of the thousand +wheels and the ten thousand footsteps jarring and trampling along the +stones of the neighboring city? That would be continuous; but this, as I +have said, rose and fell in regular rhythm. I remember being told, and I +suppose this to have been the true solution, that it was the sound of +the waves after a high wind breaking on the long beaches many miles +distant." + +After a year's study at Andover, he was fully prepared to enter Harvard +University. + +In the Charlestown Navy Yard, at this time, was the old frigate +_Constitution_, which the government purposed to break up as unfit for +service, thoughtless of the desecration: + + There was an hour when patriots dared profane + The mast that Britain strove to bow in vain, + And one, who listened to the tale of shame, + Whose heart still answered to that sacred name, + Whose eye still followed o'er his country's tides + Thy glorious flag, our brave _Old Ironsides!_ + From yon lone attic, on a summer's morn, + Thus mocked the spoilers with his schoolboy scorn: + + Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! + Long has it waved on high, + And many an eye has danced to see + That banner in the sky; + Beneath it rung the battle shout, + And burst the cannon's roar; + The meteor of the ocean air + Shall sweep the clouds no more! + + Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, + Where knelt the vanquished foe, + When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, + And waves were white below, + No more shall feel the victor's tread, + Or know the conquered knee; + The harpies of the shore shall pluck + The eagle of the sea. + + Oh, better that her shattered hulk + Should sink beneath the wave; + Her thunders shook the mighty deep, + And there should be her grave; + Nail to the mast her holy flag, + Set every thread-bare sail, + And give her to the god of storms + The lightning and the gale! + +This stirring poem--the first to make him known--was written by Oliver +Wendell Holmes in 1830, "with a pencil in the White Chamber _Stans pede +in uno_, pretty nearly," and was published in the Boston _Advertiser_. +From these columns it was extensively copied by other newspapers +throughout the country, and handbills containing the verses were +circulated in Washington. The eloquent, patriotic outburst not only +brought instant fame to the young poet, but so thoroughly aroused the +heart of the people that the grand old vessel was saved from +destruction. + +The "schoolboy" had already entered Harvard College, and among his +classmates in that famous class of 1829, were Benjamin R. Curtis, +afterwards Judge of the Supreme Court, James Freeman Clarke, Chandler +Robbins, Samuel F. Smith (the author of "My country, 'tis of thee"), +G.T. Bigelow (Judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts), G.T. Davis, +and Benjamin Pierce. + +In the class just below him (1830) was Charles Sumner; and his cousin, +Wendell Phillips, with John Lothrop Motley, entered Harvard during his +Junior year. George Ticknor was one of his instructors, and Josiah +Quincy became president of the college before he graduated. + +Throughout his whole college course Oliver Wendell Holmes maintained an +excellent rank in scholarship. He was a frequent contributor to the +college periodicals, and delivered several poems upon a variety of +subjects. One of these was given before the "Hasty Pudding Club," and +another entitled "Forgotten Days," at an "Exhibition." He was the class +poet; was called upon to write the poem at Commencement, and was one of +the sixteen chosen into the Phi Beta Kappa Society.[6] + +After his graduation, he studied law one year in the Dane Law School of +Harvard College. It was at this time that _The Collegian_, a periodical +published by a number of the Harvard under-graduates, was started at +Cambridge. To this paper the young law student sent numerous anonymous +contributions, among them "Evening, by a Tailor," "The Height of the +Ridiculous," "The Meeting of the Dryads," and "The Spectre Pig." A +brilliant little journal it must have been with Holmes' inimitable +outbursts of wit, "Lochfast's" (William H. Simmons) translations from +Schiller, and the numerous pen thrusts from John O. Sargent, Robert +Habersham and Theodore William Snow, who wrote under the respective +signatures of "Charles Sherry," "Mr. Airy" and "Geoffery La Touche." +Young Motley, too, was an occasional contributor to _The Collegian_, and +his brother-in-law, Park Benjamin, joined Holmes and Epes Sargent, in +1833, in writing a gift book called "The Harbinger," the profits of +which were given to Dr. Howe's Asylum for the blind. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[6] From notes furnished by Dr. Holmes. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +ABROAD. + + +After a year's study of law, during which time the Muses were constantly +tempting him to "pen a stanza when he should engross," young Holmes +determined to take up the study of medicine, which was much more +congenial to his tastes than the formulas of Coke and Blackstone. Doctor +James Jackson and his associates were his instructors for the following +two years and a half; and then before taking his degree of M.D., he +spent three years in Europe, perfecting his studies in the hospitals and +lecture-rooms of Paris and Edinburgh. + +Of this European tour, we find occasional allusions scattered throughout +his writings. Listen, for instance, to this grand description of +Salisbury Cathedral: + +"It was the first cathedral we ever saw, and none has ever so impressed +us since. Vast, simple, awful in dimensions and height, just beginning +to grow tall at the point where our proudest steeples taper out, it +fills the whole soul, pervades the vast landscape over which it reigns, +and, like Niagara and the Alps, abolishes that five or six foot +personality in the beholder which is fostered by keeping company with +the little life of the day in its little dwellings. In the Alps your +voice is as the piping of a cricket. Under the sheet of Niagara the +beating of your heart seems too trivial a movement to take reckoning of. +In the buttressed hollow of one of these paleozoic cathedrals you are +ashamed of your ribs, and blush for the exiguous pillars of bone on +which your breathing structure reposes.... These old cathedrals are +beyond all comparison, what are best worth seeing of man's handiwork in +Europe." + +"Lively emotions very commonly do not strike us full in front, but +obliquely from the side," he says at another time. "A scene or incident +in _undress_ often affects us more than one in full costume." + + Is this the mighty ocean?--is this all? + +Says the Princess in Gebir. The rush that should have flooded my soul in +the Coliseum did not come. But walking one day in the fields about the +city, I stumbled over a fragment of broken masonry, and lo! the World's +Mistress in her stone girdle--_alta maenia Romae_--rose before me, and +whitened my cheek with her pale shadow, as never before or since. + +"I used very often, when coming home from my morning's work at one of +the public institutions of Paris, to stop in at the dear old church of +St. Etienne du Mont. The tomb of St. Genevieve, surrounded by burning +candles and votive tablets was there; there was a noble organ with +carved figures; the pulpit was borne on the oaken shoulders of a +stooping Samson; and there was a marvellous staircase, like a coil of +lace. These things I mention from memory, but not all of them together +impressed me so much as an inscription on a small slab of marble fixed +in one of the walls. It told how this Church of St. Stephen was repaired +and beautified in the 16--, and how during the celebration of its +re-opening, two girls of the parish (_filles de la paroisse_), fell +from the gallery, carrying a part of the balustrade with them, to the +pavement, but by miracle escaped uninjured. Two young girls, nameless, +but real presences to my imagination, as much as when they came +fluttering down on the tiles with a cry that outscreamed the sharpest +treble in the _Te Deum_. All the crowd gone but these two _filles de la +paroisse_--gone as utterly as the dresses they wore, as the shoes that +were on their feet, as the bread and meat that were in the market on +that day. + +"Not the great historical events, but the personal incidents that call +up single sharp pictures of some human being in its pang of struggle, +reach us most nearly. I remember the platform at Berne, over the parapet +of which Theobald Weinzaepfli's restive horse sprang with him and landed +him more than a hundred feet beneath in the lower town, not dead, but +sorely broken, and no longer a wild youth, but God's servant from that +day forward. I have forgotten the famous bears and all else. I remember +the Percy lion on the bridge over the little river at Alnwick--the +leaden lion with his tail stretched out straight like a pump-handle--and +why? Because of the story of the village boy who must fain bestride the +leaden tail, standing out over the water--which breaking, he dropped +into the stream far below, and was taken out an idiot for the rest of +his life." + +Again he says: "I once ascended the spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which +is the highest, I think, in Europe. It is a shaft of stone +filigree-work, frightfully open, so that the guide puts his arms behind +you to keep you from falling. To climb it is a noonday nightmare, and to +think of having climbed it crisps all the fifty-six joints of one's +twenty digits. While I was on it, 'pinnacled dim in the intense inane,' +a strong wind was blowing, and I felt sure that the spire was rocking. +It swayed back and forward like a stalk of rye, or a cat-o'-nine tails +(bulrush) with a bobolink on it. I mentioned it to the guide, and he +said that the spire did really swing back and forward, I think he said +some feet. + +"Keep any line of knowledge ten years and some other line will intersect +it. Long after I was hunting out a paper of Dumeril's in an old +journal--the '_Magazin Encyclopedique_'--for _l'an troiseme_ (1795), +when I stumbled upon a brief article on the vibrations of the spire of +Strasburg Cathedral. A man can shake it so the movement shall be shown +in a vessel of water nearly seventy feet below the summit, and higher up +the vibration is like that of an earthquake. I have seen one of those +wretched wooden spires with which we very shabbily finish some of our +stone churches (thinking that the lidless blue eye of heaven cannot tell +the counterfeit we try to pass on it), swinging like a reed in a wind, +but one would hardly think of such a thing happening in a stone spire." + +Nor does he forget that dear little child he saw and heard in a French +hospital. "Between two and three years old. Fell out of her chair and +snapped both thigh-bones. Lying in bed, patient, gentle. Rough students +round her, some in white aprons, looking fearfully businesslike; but the +child placid, perfectly still. I spoke to her, and the blessed little +creature answered me in a voice of such heavenly sweetness, with that +reedy thrill in it which you have heard in the thrush's even-song, that +I hear it at this moment. '_C'est tout comme unserin_,' said the French +student at my side." + +[Illustration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.] + +The ruins of a Roman aqueduct he describes in another place, and now and +then some incident that happened in England or Scotland, may be found +among his writings; but when, after three years' absence, he returns to +Cambridge and delivers his poem before the "Phi Beta Kappa Society," he +begs his classmates to-- + + Ask no garlands sought beyond the tide, + But take the leaflets gathered at your side. + +How affectionately his thoughts turned homeward is strikingly shown in +the very first lines of the poem: + + Scenes of my youth! awake its slumbering fire! + Ye winds of memory, sweep the silent lyre! + Ray of the past, if yet thou canst appear, + Break through the clouds of Fancy's waning year; + Chase from her breast the thin autumnal snow, + If leaf or blossom still is fresh below! + Long have I wandered; the returning tide + Brought back an exile to his cradle's side; + And as my bark her time-worn flag unrolled + To greet the land-breeze with its faded fold, + So, in remembrance of my boyhood's time, + I lift these ensigns of neglected rhyme; + O more than blest, that all my wanderings through, + My anchor falls where first my pennons flew! + +And read yet again in another place this loving tribute to the home of +his childhood: + +"To what small things our memory and our affections attach themselves! I +remember when I was a child that one of the girls planted some Star of +Bethlehem bulbs in the southwest corner of our front yard. Well, I left +the paternal roof and wandered in other lands, and learned to think in +the words of strange people. But after many years, as I looked in the +little front yard again, it occurred to me that there used to be some +Stars of Bethlehem in the southwest corner. The grass was tall there, +and the blade of the plant is very much like grass, only thicker and +glossier. + +"Even as Tully parted the briers and brambles when he hunted for the +sphere-containing cylinder that marked the grave of Archimedes, so did I +comb the grass with my fingers for my monumental memorial flower. Nature +had stored my keepsake tenderly in her bosom. The glossy, +faintly-streaked blades were there; they are there still, though they +never flower, darkened as they are by the shade of the elms and rooted +in the matted turf. + +"Our hearts are held down to our homes by innumerable fibres, trivial as +that I have just recalled; but Gulliver was fixed to the soil, you +remember, by pinning his head a hair at a time. Even a stone, with a +whitish band crossing it, belonging to the pavement of the back yard, +insisted on becoming one of the talismans of memory. + +"This intersusception of the ideas of inanimate objects, and their +faithful storing away among the sentiments, are curiously prefigured in +the material structure of the thinking centre itself. In the very core +of the brain, in the part where Des Cartes placed the soul, is a small +mineral deposit of grape-like masses of crystalline matter. + +"But the plants that come up every year in the same place, like the +Stars of Bethlehem, of all the lesser objects, give me the liveliest +home-feeling." + +To return to the Phi Beta Kappa poem, modestly termed by the author "A +Metrical Essay," it is interesting to note Lowell's hearty appreciation +of it in his _Fable for Critics_: + + There's _Holmes_, who is matchless among you for wit, + A Leyden jar always full-charged, from which flit + The electrical tingles of hit after hit. + In long poems 'tis painful sometimes, and invites + A thought of the way the new telegraph writes, + Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spitefully, + As if you got more than you'd title to rightfully. + And you find yourself hoping its wild father Lightning + Would flame in for a second and give you a fright'ning. + He has perfect sway of what I call a sham metre, + But many admire it, the English pentameter, + And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse. + With less nerve, swing and fire, in the same kind of verse. + Nor e'er achieved aught in 't so worthy of praise + As the tribute of Holmes to the grand _Marseillaise_. + You went crazy last year over Bulwer's _New Simon_; + Why, if B., to the day of his dying should rhyme on, + Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes, + He could ne'er reach the best point and vigor of Holmes! + His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric + Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satyric + In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes + That are trodden upon, are your own or your foes. + +This tribute of Holmes to the grand Marseillaise is indeed one of the +finest passages in a poem abounding in point and vigor, as well as in +fancy and feeling. Who can read these stirring lines without a +sympathetic thrill for the watching, weeping Rouget de l'Isle, composing +in one night both music and words of the nameless song? + + The city slept beneath the moonbeam's glance, + Her white walls gleaming through the vines of France, + And all was hushed save where the footsteps fell + On some high tower, of midnight sentinel. + But one still watched; no self-encircled woes + Chased from his lids the angel of repose; + He watched, he wept, for thoughts of bitter years + Bowed his dark lashes, wet with burning tears; + His country's sufferings and her children's shame + Streamed o'er his memory like a forest's flame, + Each treasured insult, each remembered wrong, + Rolled through his heart and kindled into song; + His taper faded; and the morning gales + Swept through the world the war song of Marseilles! + +In this same Phi Beta Kappa poem may be found that beautiful pastoral, +_The Cambridge Churchyard_, and + + Since the lyric dress + Relieves the statelier with its sprightliness, + +the stirring verses on _Old Ironsides_ are here repeated. Said one who +heard young Holmes deliver this poem in the college church: + +"Extremely youthful in his appearance, bubbling over with the mingled +humor and pathos that have always marked his poetry, and sparkling with +the coruscations of his peculiar genius, he delivered the poem with a +clear, ringing enunciation which imparted to the hearers his own +enjoyment of his thoughts and expressions." + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +CHANGE IN THE HOME. + + +In 1836, Oliver Wendell Holmes took his degree of M.D. The following +year was made sadly memorable to the happy family at the parsonage by +the death of the beloved father. He had reached his threescore years and +ten, but still seemed so vigorous in mind and body that neither his +family nor the parish were prepared for the sad event. Mary and Ann, the +two eldest daughters, were already married; the one to Usher Parson, +M.D., the other to Honorable Charles Wentworth Upham. Sarah, the +youngest, had died in early childhood, and only Oliver Wendell and his +brother John remained of the once large family at the parsonage. Mrs. +Holmes still continued to reside with her two sons in the old +gambrel-roofed house which her father, Judge Oliver Wendell, had bought +for her at the time of her marriage. + +The _Poet at the Breakfast-Table_ thus describes the delightful old +dwelling now used as one of the College buildings: + +"The worst of a modern stylish mansion is, that it has no place for +ghosts.... Now the old house had wainscots behind which the mice were +always scampering, and squeaking, and rattling down the plaster, and +enacting family scenes and parlor theatricals. It had a cellar where the +cold slug clung to the walls and the misanthropic spider withdrew from +the garish day; where the green mould loved to grow, and the long, +white, potato-shoots went feeling along the floor if happily they might +find the daylight; it had great brick pillars, always in a cold sweat +with holding up the burden they had been aching under day and night for +a century and more; it had sepulchral arches closed by rough doors that +hung on hinges rotten with rust, behind which doors, if there was not a +heap of bones connected with a mysterious disappearance of long ago, +there well might have been, for it was just the place to look for them. + +"Let us look at the garret as I can reproduce it from memory. It has a +flooring of lath, with ridges of mortar squeezed up between them, which +if you tread on you will go to--the Lord have mercy on you! where will +you go to?--the same being crossed by narrow bridges of boards, on which +you may put your feet, but with fear and trembling. + +"Above you and around you are beams and joists, on some of which you may +see, when the light is let in, the marks of the conchoidal clippings of +the broadaxes, showing the rude way in which the timber was shaped, as +it came, full of sap, from the neighboring forest. It is a realm of +darkness and thick dust, and shroudlike cobwebs and dead things they +wrap in their gray folds. For a garret is like a seashore, where wrecks +are thrown up and slowly go to pieces. There is the cradle which the old +man you just remember was rocked in; there is the ruin of the bedstead +he died on; that ugly slanting contrivance used to be put under his +pillow in the days when his breath came hard; there is his old chair +with both arms gone, symbol of the desolate time when he had nothing +earthly left to lean on; there is the large wooden reel which the +blear-eyed old deacon sent the minister's lady, who thanked him +graciously, and twirled it smilingly, and in fitting season bowed it +out decently to the limbo of troublesome conveniences. And there are old +leather portmanteaus, like stranded porpoises, their mouths gaping in +gaunt hunger for the food with which they used to be gorged to bulging +repletion; and the empty churn with its idle dasher which the Nancys and +Phebes, who have left their comfortable places to the Bridgets and +Norahs, used to handle to good purpose; and the brown, shaky old +spinningwheel, which was running, it may be, in the days when they were +hanging the Salem witches. + +"Under the dark and haunted garret were attic chambers which themselves +had histories.... The rooms of the second story, the chambers of birth +and death, are sacred to silent memories. + +"Let us go down to the ground floor. I retain my doubts about those +dents on the floor of the right-hand room, the study of successive +occupants, said to have been made by the butts of the Continental +militia's firelocks, but this was the cause the story told me in +childhood, laid them to. That military consultations were held in that +room when the house was General Ward's headquarters, that the Provincial +generals and colonels and other men of war there planned the movement +which ended in the fortifying of Bunker's Hill, that Warren slept in the +house the night before the battle, that President Langdon went forth +from the western door and prayed for God's blessing on the men just +setting forth on their bloody expedition--all these things have been +told, and perhaps none of them need be doubted.... + +"In the days of my earliest remembrance, a row of tall Lombardy poplars +mounted guard on the western side of the old mansion. Whether like the +cypress, these trees suggest the idea of the funeral torch or the +monumental spire, whether their tremulous leaves make us afraid by +sympathy with their nervous thrills, whether the faint balsamic smell of +their leaves and their closely swathed limbs have in them vague hints of +dead Pharaohs stiffened in their cerements, I will not guess; but they +always seemed to me to give an air of sepulchral sadness to the house +before which they stood sentries. + +"Not so with the row of elms you may see leading up towards the western +entrance. I think the patriarch of them all went over in the great gale +of 1815; I know I used to shake the youngest of them with my hands, +stout as it is now, with a trunk that would defy the bully of Crotona, +or the strong man whose _liaison_ with the Lady Delilah proved so +disastrous. + +"The College plain would be nothing without its elms. As the long hair +of a woman is a glory to her, so are these green tresses that bank +themselves against the sky in thick clustered masses, the ornament and +the pride of the classic green.... + +"There is a row of elms just in front of the old house on the south. +When I was a child the one at the southwest corner was struck by +lightning, and one of its limbs and a long ribbon of bark torn away. The +tree never fully recovered its symmetry and vigor, and forty years and +more afterwards a second thunderbolt crashed upon it and set its heart +on fire, like those of the lost souls in the Hall of Eblis. Heaven had +twice blasted it, and the axe finished what the lightning had begun." + +"Ah me!" he exclaims at another time, "what strains of unwritten verse +pulsate through my soul when I open a certain closet in the ancient +house where I was born! On its shelves used to lie bundles of sweet +marjoram and pennyroyal and lavender and mint and catnip; there apples +were stored until their seeds should grow black, which happy period +there were sharp little milk teeth always ready to anticipate; there +peaches lay in the dark, thinking of the sunshine they had lost, until, +like the hearts of saints that dream of heaven in their sorrow, they +grew fragrant as the breath of angels. The odorous echo of a score of +dead summers lingers yet in those dim recesses." + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE PROFESSOR. + + +In 1839, Doctor Holmes was appointed Professor of Anatomy and Physiology +in Dartmouth College, and pleasantly describes in _The Professor_, his +"Autumnal sojourn by the Connecticut, where it comes loitering down from +its mountain fastnesses like a great lord swallowing up the small +proprietary rivulets very quietly as it goes." The little country tavern +where he stayed while delivering his lectures, he calls "that +caravansary on the banks of the stream where Ledyard launched his log +canoe, and the jovial old Colonel used to lead the Commencement +processions." And what a charming description this of the little town of +Hanover, "where blue Ascutney looked down from the far distance and the +'hills of Beulah' rolled up the opposite horizon in soft, climbing +masses, so suggestive of the Pilgrim's Heavenward Path that he (the +Professor) used to look through his old 'Dollond' to see if the Shining +Ones were not within range of sight--sweet visions, sweetest in those +Sunday walks which carried him by the peaceful common, through the +solemn village lying in cataleptic stillness under the shadow of the rod +of Moses, to the terminus of his harmless stroll, the spreading +beech-tree." + +In 1840, Doctor Holmes was married to Amelia Lee Jackson, a daughter of +Hon. Charles Jackson, formerly judge of the Supreme Court of +Massachusetts. The first home of the young couple was at No. 8, +Montgomery Place, the house at the left-hand side of the court, and next +the farther corner. Here Doctor Holmes resided for about eighteen +years,[7] and here all his children were born. + +"When he entered that door, two shadows glided over the threshold; five +lingered in the doorway when he passed through it for the last time, and +one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to be longer than his own. +What changes he saw in that quiet place! Death rained through every roof +but his; children came into life, grew to maturity, wedded, faded away, +threw themselves away; the whole drama of life was played in that stock +company's theatre of a dozen houses, one of which was his, and no deep +sorrow or severe calamity ever entered his dwelling in that little court +where he lived in gay loneliness so long." + +In order to devote himself more strictly to his practice in Boston, +Doctor Holmes resigned his professorship at Dartmouth College soon after +his marriage. During the summer months, however, he delivered lectures +before the Berkshire Medical School at Pittsfield, Mass., and +established his summer residence "up among those hills that shut in the +amber-flowing Housatonic, in the home overlooking the winding stream and +the smooth, flat meadow; looked down upon by wild hills where the tracks +of bears and catamounts may yet sometimes be seen upon the winter +snow--a home," he adds, "where seven blessed summers were passed which +stand in memory like the seven golden candlesticks in the beatific +vision of the holy dreamer." + +The township of Pontoosuc, now Pittsfield, including some twenty-four +thousand acres, was bought by Doctor Holmes' great-grandfather, Jacob +Wendell, about the year 1734. It was on a small part of this large +possession that "Canoe Place," the pleasant summer home of Doctor +Holmes, was built. + +Hawthorne was then living at Lenox, which is only a few miles from +Pittsfield, and in his contribution to Lowell's magazine, _The Pioneer_, +in 1843, he describes in his _Hall of Fantasy_, the poets he saw +"talking in groups, with a liveliness of expression, or ready smile, and +a light, intellectual laughter which showed how rapidly the shafts of +wit were glancing to and fro among them. In the most vivacious of +these," he adds, "I recognized Holmes." + +Beside Hawthorne, there was Herman Melville, Miss Sedgwick and Fanny +Kemble near by on those "maple-shadowed plains of Berkshire," while +Bryant and Ellery Channing not unfrequently joined the brilliant circle +in their summer trips to the Stockbridge hills. + +In the Boston home of Doctor Holmes, John Lothrop Motley was a welcome +visitor--a man whose "generous sympathies with popular liberty no homage +paid to his genius by the class whose admiring welcome is most seductive +to scholars could ever spoil." Both young men were members of the +Massachusetts Historical Society, and after the death of Motley, Holmes +became his biographer. + +Charles Sumner formed another of this pleasant literary coterie, and is +described by Doctor Holmes, after a short acquaintance, as "an amiable, +blameless young man; pleasant, affable and cheerful." Years after, when +Sumner was assaulted in the Senate, Doctor Holmes, at a public dinner in +Boston, denounced in strong language, the shameful outrage as an assault +not only upon the man, but upon the Union. + +At the Berkshire festivals, the poet was often called upon to furnish a +song, and brimful of wit and wisdom they always were, though often +composed upon the spur of the moment. Here is a part of one of them: + + Come back to your mother, ye children, for shame, + Who have wandered like truants, for riches or fame! + With a smile on her face, and a sprig in her cap, + She calls you to feast from her bountiful lap. + + Come out from your alleys, your courts, and your lanes, + And breathe, like young eagles, the air of our plains, + Take a whiff from our fields, and your excellent wives + Will declare it's all nonsense insuring your lives. + + Come you of the law, who can talk, if you please, + Till the Man in the Moon will declare it's a cheese, + And leave 'the old lady that never tell lies,' + To sleep with her handkerchief over her eyes. + + Ye healers of men, for a moment decline + Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line; + While you shut up your turnpike, your neighbors can go + The old roundabout road, to the regions below. + + You clerk, on whose ears are a couple of pens, + And whose head is an anthill of units and tens, + Though Plato denies you, we welcome you still + As a featherless biped, in spite of your quill. + + Poor drudge of the city! how happy he feels + With the burrs on his legs and the grass at his heels! + No _dodger_ behind, his bandannas to share, + No constable grumbling "You mustn't walk there!" + + In yonder green meadow, to memory dear, + He slaps a mosquito and brushes a tear; + The dewdrops hang round him on blossoms and shoots, + He breathes but one sigh for his youth and his boots. + + There stands the old schoolhouse, hard by the old church + That tree at its side had the flavor of birch; + O sweet were the days of his juvenile tricks, + Though the prairie of youth had so many "big licks." + + By the side of yon river he weeps and he slumps, + The boots fill with water as if they were pumps; + Till, sated with rapture, he steals to his bed, + With a glow in his heart, and a cold in his head. + +At the annual dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, in 1843, Doctor +Holmes read the fine poem entitled _Terpsichore_. + +Three years later he delivered _Urania, A Rhyme Lesson_ before the +Boston Mercantile Library Association. "To save a question that is +sometimes put," remarks the poet, "it is proper to say that in naming +these two poems after two of the Muses, nothing more was intended than a +suggestion of their general character and aim." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[7] From notes furnished by Dr. Holmes. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +THE LECTURER. + + +When Doctor Warren gave up the Parkman professorship at Harvard, in +1847, Doctor Holmes was appointed to take his place as Professor of +Anatomy and Physiology. For eight months of the year, four lectures are +delivered each week in this department of the college, and yet Doctor +Holmes still found time "between whiles," to attend to his Boston +practice, and to write many charming poems and essays. He also entered +the lyceum arena, "an original American contrivance," as Theodore Parker +describes it in 1857, "for educating the people. The world has nothing +like it. In it are combined the best things of the Church: i.e., the +preaching; and of the College: i.e., the informing thought, with some of +the fun of the theatre. Besides, it gives the rural districts a chance +to see the men they read about--to see the lions--for the lecturer is +also a show to the eyes. For ten years past six or eight of the most +progressive minds in America have been lecturing fifty or a hundred +times a year." + +Among the many subjects that Doctor Holmes touched upon in these lyceum +lectures was a fine, witty, and remarkably just criticism on the +_English Poets of the Nineteenth Century_. What a pity that Oscar Wilde +and his brother poets of this later day could not have the benefit of +just such a clear, microscopic analysis! What the Autocrat himself +thought of these lecturing tours through the country we have in his own +words: + +"I have played the part of 'Poor Gentleman' before many audiences," he +says; "more, I trust, than I shall ever face again. I did not wear a +stage costume, nor a wig, nor mustaches of burnt cork; but I was +placarded and announced as a public performer, and at the proper hour I +came forward with the ballet-dancer's smile upon my countenance, and +made my bow and acted my part. I have seen my name stuck up in letters +so big that I was ashamed to show myself in the place by daylight. I +have gone to a town with a sober literary essay in my pocket, and seen +myself everywhere announced as the most desperate of _buffos_. I have +been through as many hardships as Ulysses in the exercise of my +histrionic vocation. I have sometimes felt as if I were a wandering +spirit, and this great, unchanging multivertebrate which I faced night +after night was one ever-listening animal, which writhed along after me +wherever I fled, and coiled at my feet every evening turning up to me +the same sleepless eyes which I thought I had closed with my last drowsy +incantation." + +Of his audiences he writes again as follows: + +"Two lyceum assemblies, of five hundred each, are so nearly alike, that +they are absolutely undistinguishable in many cases by any definite +mark, and there is nothing but the place and time by which one can tell +the 'remarkably intelligent audience' of a town in New York or Ohio from +one in any New England town of similar size. Of course, if any principle +of selection has come in, as in those special associations of young men +which are common in cities, it deranges the uniformity of the +assemblage. But let there be no such interfering circumstances, and one +knows pretty well even the look the audience will have, before he goes +in. Front seats, a few old folks--shiny-headed--slant up best ear toward +the speaker--drop off asleep after a while, when the air begins to get a +little narcotic with carbonic acid. Bright women's faces, young and +middle-aged, a little behind these, but toward the front--(pick out the +best, and lecture mainly to that). Here and there a countenance, sharp +and scholarlike, and a dozen pretty female ones sprinkled about. An +indefinite number of pairs of young people--happy, but not always very +attentive. Boys in the background more or less quiet. Dull faces here, +there--in how many places! I don't say dull _people_, but faces without +a ray of sympathy or a movement of expression. They are what kill the +lecturer. These negative faces with their vacuous eyes and stony +lineaments pump and suck the warm soul out of him;--that is the chief +reason why lecturers grow so pale before the season is over. + +"Out of all these inevitable elements the audience is generated--a great +compound vertebrate, as much like fifty others you have seen as any two +mammals of the same species are like each other." + +"Pretty nigh killed himself," says the good landlady, "goin' about +lecterin' two or three winters, talking in cold country lyceums--as he +used to say--goin' home to cold parlors and bein' treated to cold apples +and cold water, and then goin' up into a cold bed in a cold chamber, and +comin' home next mornin' with a cold in his head as bad as the horse +distemper. Then he'd look kind of sorry for havin' said it, and tell how +kind some of the good women was to him; how one spread an eiderdown +comforter for him, and another fixed up somethin' hot for him after the +lectur, and another one said, 'There now, you smoke that cigar of yours +after the lectur, jest as if you was at home,' and if they'd all been +like that, he'd have gone on lecturing forever, but, as it was, he had +got pooty nigh enough of it, and preferred a nateral death to puttin' +himself out of the world by such violent means as lecturin'." + +To these graphic pictures of the "lyceum lecturer" we would add one more +which was given by Mr. J.W. Harper, at the Holmes Breakfast. + +"I well remember," he said, "the first time I saw Doctor Holmes. It was +long ago; not as our Autocrat expresses it, 'in the year eighteen +hundred and ever so few;' nor, as Thackeray has it, 'when the present +century was in its teens.' It was just after the close of the last half +century, and on a cold winter's afternoon, when the sun was fast setting +behind the then ungilded dome of the State House, and it was in old +Bromfield street. It was not in the Bromfield Street Methodist Church, +nor in the contiguous Methodist inn, known as the Bromfield House, +which, for many years, might have been the convenient resort of good +Methodist elders, and of the peripatetic presiding elders, who were +called by the genial Bishop Wainwright, the 'bob-tailed bishops' of +their flocks and districts.... I was in the large stable adjoining the +Bromfield House, endeavoring to secure a sleigh, when there entered a +gentleman apparently of my own age. He came in quickly, and with +impatience demanded the immediate production of a team and sleigh, +which, though ordered for him, had somehow been forgotten. The +new-comer, it was evident, was not to be trifled with. There was no +nonsense about him, and I was not surprised, when, a few years later, I +learned that he had become an Autocrat. + +"On that particular night he had a long drive before him, for he was to +lecture at Newburyport, or Nantasket, or Nantucket, or some other then +unannexed suburb of Boston. I doubt if the horse survived the drive, and +I am quite sure he is not now living. But the driver lives, and the +young New Yorker who then admired him, and would fain have driven with +him on that cold winter night, has since, in common with thousands of +other New Yorkers, been filled with grateful admiration for what that +driver has done for literature, and for the happiness and improvement of +the world." + +In 1838 Doctor Holmes wrote the _Boylston Prize Dissertation_, and in +1842, _Homoeopothy and its kindred Delusions_. The Boylston prizes +were established in 1803, by Ward Nicholas Boylston. Doctor Holmes +gained three of these prizes, and the _Dissertations_, one of which was +upon Intermittent Fever, were published together in book form in 1838. + +When, in February of the same year (1842), the young men of Boston gave +a dinner to Charles Dickens, Doctor Holmes welcomed the distinguished +visitor in the following beautiful song: + + The stars their early vigils keep, + The silent hours are near, + When drooping eyes forget to weep-- + Yet still we linger here; + And what--the passing churl may ask-- + Can claim such wondrous power, + That Toil forgets his wonted task, + And Love his promised hour? + + The Irish harp no longer thrills, + Or breathes a fainter tone; + The clarion blast from Scotland's hills + Alas! no more is blown. + And Passion's burning lip bewails + Her Harold's wasted fire, + Still lingering o'er the dust that veils + The Lord of England's lyre. + + But grieve not o'er its broken strings, + Nor think its soul hath died, + While yet the lark at heaven's gate sings, + As once o'er Avon's side;-- + While gentle summer sheds her bloom, + And dewy blossoms wave, + Alike o'er Juliet's storied tomb + And Nelly's nameless grave. + + Thou glorious island of the sea! + Though wide the wasting flood + That parts our distant land from thee, + We claim thy generous blood. + Nor o'er thy far horizon springs + One hallowed star of fame. + But kindles, like an angel's wings, + Our western skies in flame! + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +NAMING THE NEW MAGAZINE. + + +In the year 1857, Mr. Phillips, of the firm of Phillips & Sampson, +undertook the publication in Boston, of a new literary magazine. They +were fortunate in securing James Russell Lowell as editor, and one +condition he made upon accepting the office was, that his friend, Doctor +Holmes, should be one of the chief contributors. + +It was the latter, also, who was called upon to name the new magazine. +Thus was the _Atlantic Monthly_ launched upon the great sea of +literature--a periodical that has never lost its first high prestige. + +When Doctor Holmes sat down to write his first article for the new +magazine, he remembered that some twenty-five years before, he had begun +a series of papers for a certain _New England Magazine_, published in +Boston, by J. T. & E. Buckingham, with the title of _Autocrat of the +Breakfast-Table_. Curious, as he says, to try the experiment of shaking +the same bough again and finding out if the ripe fruit were better or +worse than the early wind-falls, he took the same title for his new +articles. + +"The man is father to the boy that was," he adds, "and I am my own son, +as it seems to me, in those papers of the _New England Magazine_." + +To show the reader some family traits of this "young autocrat," we quote +from these earlier articles the following fine extracts: + +"When I feel inclined to read poetry, I take down my dictionary. The +poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author +may arrange the gems effectively, but their shape and lustre have been +given by the attrition of ages. Bring me the finest simile from the +whole range of imaginative writing, and I will show you a single word +which conveys a more profound, a more accurate, and a more eloquent +analogy. + +"Once on a time, a notion was started that if all the people in the +world would shout at once, it might be heard in the moon. So the +projectors agreed it should be done in just ten years. Some thousand +shiploads of chronometers were distributed to the selectmen and other +great folks of all the different nations. For a year beforehand, nothing +else was talked about but the awful noise that was to be made on the +great occasion. When the time came everybody had their ears so wide open +to hear the universal ejaculation of boo--the word agreed upon--that +nobody spoke except a deaf man in one of the Fejee Islands, and a woman +in Pekin, so that the world was never so still since the creation." + +At the close of the year when the twelve numbers of _The Autocrat of the +Breakfast-Table_ were completed in the _Atlantic Monthly_ and published +in book form, the _British Review_ wrote of the illustrious author as +follows: + +"Oliver Wendell Holmes has been long known in this country as the author +of some poems written in stately classic verse, abounding in happy +thoughts and bright bird-peeps of fancy, such as this, for example: + + The punch-bowl's sounding depths were stirred, + Its silver cherubs smiling as they heard. + +And this first glint of spring-- + + The spendthrift Crocus, bursting through the mould, + Naked and shivering with his cup of gold. + +He is also known as the writer of many pieces which wear a serious look +until they break out into a laugh at the end, perhaps in the last line, +as with those on _Lending a Punch Bowl_, a cunning way of the writer's; +just as the knot is tied in the whip cord at the end of the lash to +enhance the smack. + +"But neither of these kinds of verse prepared us for anything so good, +so sustained, so national, and yet so akin to our finest humorists, as +_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table_; a very delightful book--a handy +book for the breakfast table. A book to conjure up a cosey winter +picture of a ruddy fire and singing kettle, soft hearth-rug, warm +slippers, and easy chair; a musical chime of cups and saucers, fragrance +of tea and toast within, and those flowers of frost fading on the +windows without as though old Winter just looked in, but his cold breath +was melted, and so he passed by. A book to possess two copies of; one to +be read and marked, thumbed and dog-eared; and one to stand up in its +pride of place with the rest on the shelves, all ranged in shining +rows, as dear old friends, and not merely as nodding acquaintances. + +"Not at all like that ponderous and overbearing autocrat, Doctor +Johnson, is our Yankee friend. He has more of Goldsmith's sweetness and +lovability. He is as true a lover of elegance and high bred grace, +dainty fancies, and all pleasurable things, as was Leigh Hunt; he has +more wordly sense without the moral languor; but there is the same +boy-heart beating in a manly breast, beneath the poet's singing robe. +For he is a poet as well as a humorist. Indeed, although this book is +written in prose, it is full of poetry, with the 'beaded bubbles' of +humor dancing up through the true hippocrene and 'winking at the brim' +with a winning look of invitation shining in their merry eyes. + +"The humor and the poetry of the book do not lie in tangible nuggets for +extraction, but they are there; they pervade it from beginning to end. +We cannot spoon out the sparkles of sunshine as they shimmer on the +wavelets of water; but they are there, moving in all their golden life +and evanescent grace. + +"Holmes may not be so recognizably national as Lowell; his prominent +characteristics are not so exceptionally Yankee; the traits are not so +peculiar as those delineated in the _Biglow Papers_. But he is national. +One of the most hopeful literary signs of this book is its quiet +nationality. The writer has made no straining and gasping efforts after +that which is striking and peculiar, which has always been the bane of +youth, whether in nations or individuals. He has been content to take +the common, homespun, everyday humanity that he found ready to +hand--people who do congregate around the breakfast table of an American +boarding-house; and out of this material he has wrought with a vivid +touch and truth of portraiture, and won the most legitimate triumph of a +genuine book.... + +"Holmes has the pleasantest possible way of saying things that many +people don't like to hear. His tonics are bitter and bland. He does not +spare the various foibles and vices of his countrymen and women. But it +is done so good-naturedly, or with a sly puff of diamond dust in the +eyes of the victims, who don't see the joke which is so apparent to us. +As good old Isaak Walton advises respecting the worm, he impales them +tenderly as though he loved them." + + * * * * * + +How vividly every personage around that delightful "Breakfast-Table" is +photographed upon the reader's mind! Can you not see the dear "Old +Gentleman" just opposite the "Autocrat," as he suddenly surprises the +company by repeating a beautiful hymn he learned in childhood? And the +pale sweet "Schoolmistress" in her modest mourning dress? no wonder the +eyes of the Autocrat frequently wandered to that part of the table and +certain remarks are addressed to her alone! To tell the truth, we can't +help falling in love with her ourselves! What a fine foil to this +"soft-voiced little woman," is the landlady's daughter--that +"tender-eyed blonde, with her long ringlets, cameo pin, gold pencil-case +on a chain, locket, bracelet, album, autograph book, and accordion--who +says 'Yes?' when you tell her anything, and reads Byron, Tupper, and +Sylvanus Cobb Junior, while her mother makes the puddings!" Then there +is the "poor relation" from the country--"a somewhat more than +middle-aged female, with parchment forehead and a dry little frizette +shingling it, a sallow neck with a necklace of gold beads, and a black +dress too rusty for recent grief." Can you not hear the very tones of +her high-pitched voice as she remarks that "Buckwheat is skerce and +high." + +"The Professor" under chloroform--"the young man whom they call John," +appropriating the three peaches in illustration of the Autocrat's +metaphysics--the boy, Benjamin Franklin, poring over his French +exercises--the Poet, who had to leave town when the anniversaries came +round--and the divinity student whose head the Autocrat tries +occasionally, "as housewives try eggs," all these are so real to the +reader that he can but feel they were something more than imaginary +characters to the writer. + +Among the poems that close each number of the _Autocrat_, are some of +the finest in our language. _The Chambered Nautilus_, _The Living +Temple_, _The Voiceless_, and _The Two Armies_, are full of inspiring +thought and deep pathos, while _The Deacon's Masterpiece_, _Parson +Turell's Legacy_, _The Old Man's Dream_, and _Contentment_, sparkle with +the Autocrat's own peculiar humor. + +"When we think of the familiar confidences of the Autocrat," says +Underwood, "we might liken him to Montaigne. But when the parallel is +being considered, we come upon passages so full of tingling hits or of +rollicking fun, that we are sure we are mistaken, and that he resembles +no one so much as Sidney Smith. But presently he sounds the depths of +our consciousness, explores the concealed channels of feeling, flashes +the light of genius upon our half-acknowledged thoughts, and we see that +this is what neither the great Gascon nor the hearty and jovial +Englishman could have attempted, ... when the world forgets the sallies +that have set tables in a roar, and even the lyrics that have set a +nation's heart on fire, Holmes' picture of the ship of pearl will +preserve his name forever." + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +ELSIE VENNER. + + +The _Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table_ was followed in 1859 by _The +Professor_, a series of similar essays, in which we are introduced to +"Iris" and "Little Boston," and begin to realize Doctor Holmes' +inimitable skill in dramatic effect as well as in character painting. +_The Story of Iris_ has been printed by itself in Rossiter Johnson's +_Little Classics_, and reads like an exquisite prose poem; but after +all, we like best to follow the delicate thread of narrative just as the +professor himself has introduced it--a dainty aria whose harmony runs +under and over and all through the deep philosophy and sparkling table +talk of the book. + +It prepares us, too, for _Elsie Venner_, the "Professor's Story"--a +novel whose weird conception holds us spell-bound from beginning to +end, in spite of the sadness--"the pity of it." At the very first +introduction to Elsie we have a hint of the strange hereditary curse +that throws its blight over her whole nature: + +"Who and what is that," asks the new master, "sitting a little apart +there--that strange, wild-looking girl?" + +The lady teacher's face changed; one would have said she was frightened +or troubled. She looked at the girl doubtfully, as if she might hear the +master's question and its answer. But the girl did not look up; she was +winding a gold chain about her wrist, and then uncoiling it, as if in a +kind of reverie. + +Miss Dailey drew close to the master and placed her hand so as to hide +her lips. + +"Don't look at her as if we were talking about her," she whispered +softly, "that is Elsie Venner." + +The more we read of her, the more her sad beauty fascinates us. + +"She looked as if she might hate, but could not love. She hardly smiled +at anything, spoke rarely, but seemed to feel that her natural power of +expression lay all in her bright eyes, the force of which so many had +felt, but none perhaps had tried to explain to themselves. A person +accustomed to watch the faces of those who were ailing in body or mind, +and to search in every line and tint for some underlying source of +disorder, could hardly help analyzing the impression such a face +produced upon him. The light of those beautiful eyes was like the lustre +of ice; in all her features there was nothing of that human warmth which +shows that sympathy has reached the soul beneath the mask of flesh it +wears. The look was that of remoteness, of utter isolation. There was in +its stony apathy the pathos which we find in the blind who show no film +or speck over the organs of sight; for Nature had meant her to be +lovely, and left out nothing but love." + +The mother of Elsie, some months before the birth of her child, had been +bitten by a rattlesnake. The instant use of powerful antidotes seemed to +arrest the fatal poison, but death ensued a few weeks after the birth of +her little girl. + +"There was something not human looking out of Elsie's eyes.... There +were two warring principles in that superb organization and proud soul. +One made her a woman, with all a woman's powers and longings. The other +chilled all the currents of outlets for her emotions. It made her +tearless and mute, when another woman would have wept and pleaded. And +it infused into her soul something--it was cruel to call it +malice--which was still and watchful and dangerous--which waited its +opportunity, and then shot like an arrow from its bow out of the coil of +brooding premeditation." + +But the cloud--"the ante-natal impression which had mingled an alien +element in Elsie's nature"--is mercifully lifted just before her death. + +She had fallen into a light slumber, and when she awoke and looked up +into her father's face, she seemed to realize his tenderness and +affection as never before. + +"Elsie dear," he said, "we were thinking how much your expression was, +sometimes, like that of your sweet mother. If you could but have seen +her so as to remember her!" + +The tender look and tone, the yearning of the daughter's heart +for the mother she had never seen, save only with the unfixed, +undistinguishable eyes of earliest infancy, perhaps the understanding +that she might soon rejoin her in another state of being,--all came upon +her with a sudden overflow of feeling which broke through all the +barriers between her heart and her eyes, and Elsie wept. It seemed to +her father as if the malign influence--evil spirit it might almost be +called--which had pervaded her being, had at least been driven forth or +exorcised, and that these tears were at once the sign and pledge of her +redeemed nature. But now she was to be soothed and not excited. After +her tears she slept again, and the look her face wore was peaceful as +never before. + +While "Elsie Venner" is a purely imaginary conception, the author tells +us that after beginning the story he received the most striking +confirmation of the possibility of the existence of such a character. +The reader is awakened to new views of human responsibility in the +perusal of Elsie's life, and with good old pastor Honeywood learns a +lesson of patience with his fellow creatures in their inborn +peculiarities and of charity in judging what seem to him wilful faults +of character. + +The Professor's story while centring the interest upon Elsie, gives +numerous side glances of New England village life; and old Sophy, Helen +Darley, Silas Peckham, Bernard Langdon, Dick Venner, and the good Doctor +are portrayed in vivid colors. There is a deal of psychology throughout +the book, and not a little theology--good wholesome theology too, as the +following brief extract shows: + +"The good minister was as kind-hearted as if he had never groped in the +dust and ashes of those cruel old abstractions which have killed out so +much of the world's life and happiness. 'With the heart man believeth +unto righteousness;' a man's love is the measure of his fitness for good +or bad company here or elsewhere. Men are tattooed with their special +beliefs like so many South Sea Islanders; but a real human heart, with +divine love in it, beats with the same glow under all the patterns of +all earth's thousand tribes!" + +The pathos of poor Elsie's story is relieved now and then by humorous +descriptions of country manners and customs. The Sprowles' party and the +Widow Rowen's "tea-fight" give a vein of light comedy that rests the +sympathetic reader as a sudden merry smile upon a grave and troubled +face. + +_The Guardian Angel_, the second novel of Doctor Holmes, was not +published until 1867, but it is interesting to compare the two stories, +for there is a strong family likeness between them. Both show the power +of inherited tendencies, though Myrtle Hazard, the heroine of _The +Guardian Angel_, has no alien element in her blood like that which +tormented poor Elsie. With Myrtle "it was as when several grafts, +bearing fruit that ripens at different times, are growing upon the same +stock. Her earlier impulses may have been derived directly from her +father and mother, but various ancestors came uppermost in their time +before the absolute and total result of their several forces had found +its equilibrium in the character by which she was to be known as an +individual. These inherited impulses were therefore many, conflicting, +some of them dangerous. The World, the Flesh, and the Devil held +mortgages on her life before its deed was put in her hands; but sweet +and gracious influences were also born with her; and the battle of life +was to be fought between them, God helping her in her need, and her own +free choice siding with one or the other." + +The scene opens in a quiet New England village which is roused from its +usual lethargy by the startling announcement in the weekly paper of a +lost child. This is none other than the little orphan, Myrtle Hazard, +who after a few dreary years in the dismal Wither's homestead, escapes +by night in her little boat, is rescued by a young student from a +frightful death at the rapids, and brought back to her distressed Aunt +Silence by good old Byles Gridley--the true "Guardian Angel" of her +life. + +When old Doctor Hurlbut "ninety-two, very deaf, very feeble, yet a wise +counsellor in doubtful and difficult cases," comes to prescribe for the +young girl, he says to his son: + +"I've seen that look on another face of the same blood--it's a great +many years ago, and she was dead before you were born, my boy,--but I've +seen that look, and it meant trouble then, and I'm afraid it means +trouble now. I see some danger of a brain fever. And if she doesn't +have that, then look out for some hysteric fits that will make +mischief.... I've been through it all before in that same house. Live +folks are only dead folks warmed over. I can see 'em all in that girl's +face.--Handsome Judith to begin with. And that queer woman, the Deacon's +mother--there's where she gets that hystericky look. Yes, and the +black-eyed woman with the Indian blood in her--look out for that--look +out for that. + +... Four generations--four generations, man and wife--yes, five +generations before this Hazard child I've looked on with these old eyes. +And it seems to me that I can see something of almost every one of 'em +in this child's face--it's the forehead of this one, and it's the eyes +of that one, and it's that other's mouth, and the look that I remember +in another, and when she speaks, why, I've heard that same voice +before--yes, yes--as long ago as when I was first married." + +Aside from the interest of the story there is a strange fascination in +tracing the development of these various ancestral traits. + +"This body in which we journey across the isthmus between the two oceans +is not a private carriage, but an omnibus," says old Byles Gridley in +his _Thoughts on the Universe_--dead book that was destined to so grand +a resurrection! Surely no one can deny the successive development of +inherited bodily aspects and habitudes, and the same thing happens, the +author avers, "in the mental and moral nature, though the latter may be +less obvious to common observation." + +_The Guardian Angel_ while a deep study of the Reflex Function in its +higher sphere, is not without its lighter, more mirthful side. Says _The +London News_, "the story is exceedingly humorous and comic in the less +serious chapters. There is no such minor poet in the whole range of +fiction as the immortal Gifted Hopkins. In the character of Hopkins all +the foibles and vanities of the literary nature are exemplified in the +most mirthful manner. If Doctor Holmes has more characters like Gifted +Hopkins in his mind, the hilarity of two continents is not in much +danger of being extinguished." + +Here is a glimpse of the young poet when racked with jealousy: + +"He retired pensive from the interview, and flinging himself at his +desk, attempted wreaking his thoughts upon expression, to borrow the +language of one of his brother bards, in a passionate lyric which he +began thus: + + Another's! + Another's! O the pang, the smart! + Fate owes to Love a deathless grudge-- + The barbed fang has rent a heart + Which--which-- + +judge--judge--no, not judge. Budge, drudge, fudge--what a disgusting +language English is! Nothing fit to couple with such a word as grudge! +And an impassioned moment arrested in full flow, stopped short, +corked up, for want of a paltry rhyme! Judge--budge--drudge +nudge--oh!--smudge--misery!--fudge. In vain--futile--no use--all +up for to-night!'" + +The next day the dejected poet "wandered about with a dreadfully +disconsolate look upon his countenance. He showed a falling-off in his +appetite at tea-time, which surprised and disturbed his mother.... The +most touching evidence of his unhappiness--whether intentional on the +result of accident was not evident--was a _broken heart_, which he left +upon his plate, the meaning of which was as plain as anything in the +language of flowers. His thoughts were gloomy, running a good deal on +the more picturesque and impressive methods of bidding a voluntary +farewell to a world which had allured him with visions of beauty only to +snatch them from his impassioned gaze. His mother saw something of this, +and got from him a few disjointed words, which led her to lock up the +clothes-line and hide her late husband's razors--an affectionate, yet +perhaps unnecessary precaution, for self-elimination contemplated from +this point of view by those who have the natural outlet of verse to +relieve them is rarely followed by a casualty. It may be considered as +implying a more than average chance for longevity; as those who meditate +an imposing finish naturally save themselves for it, and are therefore +careful of their health until the time comes, and this is apt to be +indefinitely postponed so long as there is a poem to write or a proof to +be corrected." + +Gifted Hopkins survives the ordeal, and completes his volume of poems, +_Blossoms of the Soul_. Good old master Gridley, who foresees what the +end will be, offers to accompany the young poet in his visit to the city +publisher. What a world of pathos there is in the fond mother's +preparations for the momentous journey: She brings down from the garret +"a capacious trunk, of solid wood, but covered with leather, and adorned +with brass-headed nails, by the cunning disposition of which, also, the +paternal initials stood out on the rounded lid, in the most conspicuous +manner. It was his father's trunk, and the first thing that went into +it, as the widow lifted the cover, and the smothering shut-up smell +struck an old chord of associations, was a single tear-drop. How well +she remembered the time when she first unpacked it for her young +husband, and the white shirt bosoms showed their snowy plaits! O dear, +dear! + +"But women decant their affections, sweet and sound, out of the old +bottles into the new ones--off from the lees of the past generation, +clear and bright, into the clean vessels just made ready to receive it. +Gifted Hopkins was his mother's idol, and no wonder. She had not only +the common attachment of a parent for him, as her offspring, but she +felt that her race was to be rendered illustrious by his genius, and +thought proudly of the time when some future biographer would mention +her own humble name, to be held in lasting remembrance as that of the +mother of Hopkins." + +The description of the various articles that went into the trunk is +humorous enough. + +"Best clothes and common clothes, thick clothes and thin clothes, +flannels and linens, socks and collars, with handkerchiefs enough to +keep the pickpockets busy for a week, with a paper of gingerbread and +some lozenges for gastralgia, and 'hot drops,' and ruled paper to write +letters on, and a little Bible and a phial with _hiera piera_, and +another with paregoric, and another with 'camphire' for sprains and +bruises. Gifted went forth equipped for every climate from the tropic to +the pole, and armed against every malady from ague to zoster." + +The poet's interview with the publisher is one of the best things in the +book, but to be thoroughly enjoyed, it must be read entire. + +The genial, kindly nature of Doctor Holmes is strikingly shown +throughout the whole volume. Good, quaint Byles Gridley endears himself +more and more to the reader, Gifted Hopkins finds in his heart's choice +an appreciative, admiring audience of at least one, Cyprian Eveleth and +young Doctor Hurlbut are most happily disposed of, Clement Lindsay +receives his reward, Myrtle Hazard emerges from the conflict of mingled +lives in her blood with the dross of her nature burned away, aunt +Silence throws off her melancholy, Miss Cynthia Badlam repents of her +evil manoeuvrings and dies "with the comfortable assurance that she is +going to a better world," the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker learns to +appreciate his patient wife--even Murray Bradshaw, the acknowledged +villain of the book, is not without a few redeeming traits, and we close +the volume with a sense of hearty goodwill and fervent charity toward +all mankind. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE. + + +Between the writing of _Elsie Venner_ and _The Guardian Angel_, Doctor +Holmes wrote a number of essays for the _Atlantic Monthly_, some of +which were afterwards collected in the volume entitled _Soundings from +the Atlantic_. + +_Currents and Counter-currents_ was published in 1861, and _Border-lines +of Knowledge_ in 1862. The two latter books deal with scientific +subjects, but are written in such an attractive style that they have +been extremely popular not only with students but with the whole reading +public. _Songs in many Keys_, a volume of poems dedicated to his mother, +was published by Doctor Holmes in 1862. _Mechanism in Thoughts and +Morals_ appeared in 1871, the same year that _The Poet at the +Breakfast-Table_ was running as a serial in the _Atlantic Monthly_, +and numerous stray poems were also written in this prolific decade. In +1872 the poet's breakfast talk was published in book form. It is +interesting to compare these three volumes--The Autocrat, the Professor, +and the Poet. As a series they are as necessary to one another as the +three strands of a cable, and yet each volume is, in a certain way, +completed in itself. Where in the whole range of the English language, +or indeed, of any language, will you find such an overflow of +spontaneous wit and humor? While in no sense a story or even a +narrative, the breakfast talk is enlivened by wonderfully life-like +characters. We can easily imagine ourselves sitting beside them at the +social table, and just as it is in real life, these chance acquaintances +touch us at different points, awaken various degrees of interest, and +are at all times quite distinct from the observer's own individuality. + +There is not a page without its sparkle of humor, and nugget of sound +philosophy beneath, which the reader appropriates to himself in a +delightfully unconscious manner--for the time being, it is he who is the +Autocrat, the Professor, the Poet! As some one has truly said, "It is +our thoughts which Doctor Holmes speaks; it is our humor to which he +gives expression; it is the pictures of our own fancy that he clothes in +words, and shows us what we ourselves thought, and only lacked the means +of expressing. We never realized until he taught us by his magic power +over us, how much each of us had of genius and invention and +expression." + +Each book has its little romance, and the "Poet" introduces a poor +gentlewoman whose story interests us quite as much as does that of the +two lovers. + +"In a little chamber," he says, "into which a small thread of sunshine +finds its way for half an hour or so every day during a month or six +weeks of the spring or autumn, at all other times obliged to content +itself with ungilded daylight, lives this boarder, whom, without +wronging any others of our company, I may call, as she is very generally +called in the household, the Lady.... + +"From an aspect of dignified but undisguised economy which showed itself +in her dress as well as in her limited quarters, I suspected a story of +shipwrecked fortune, and determined to question our Landlady. That +worthy woman was delighted to tell the history of her most distinguished +boarder. She was, as I had supposed, a gentlewoman whom a change of +circumstances had brought down from her high estate.--Did I know the +Goldenrod family?--Of course I did.--Well, the lady was first cousin to +Mrs. Midas Goldenrod. She had been here in her carriage to call upon +her--not very often.--Were her rich relations kind and helpful to +her?--Well, yes; at least they made her presents now and then. Three or +four years ago they sent her a silver waiter, and every Christmas they +sent her a bouquet--it must cost as much as five dollars, the Landlady +thought. + +"And how did the Lady receive these valuable and useful things? + +"Every Christmas she got out the silver waiter and borrowed a glass +tumbler and filled it with water, and put the bouquet in it and set it +on the waiter. It smelt sweet enough and looked pretty for a day or two, +but the Landlady thought it wouldn't have hurt 'em if they'd sent a +piece of goods for a dress, or at least a pocket handkercher or two, or +something or other that she could 'a' made use of.... + +"What did she do?--Why, she read, and she drew pictures, and she did +needlework patterns, and played on an old harp she had; the gilt was +mostly off, but it sounded very sweet, and she sung to it, sometimes, +those old songs that used to be in fashion twenty or thirty years ago, +with words to 'em that folks could understand.... + +"Poor Lady! She seems to me like a picture that has fallen face downward +on the dusty floor. The picture never was as needful as a window or a +door, but it was pleasant to see it in its place, and it would be +pleasant to see it there again, and I for one, should be thankful to +have the Lady restored by some turn of fortune to the position from +which she has been so cruelly cast down." + +Before the Poet closes his breakfast talk, the poor Lady has, through +the efforts of another boarder, the Register of Deeds, recovered her +property. Mrs. Midas Goldenrod makes frequent and longer calls--"the +very moment her relative, the Lady of our breakfast table, began to find +herself in a streak of sunshine she came forward with a lighted candle +to show her which way her path lay before her. + +"The Lady saw all this, how plainly, how painfully! yet she exercised a +true charity for the weakness of her relative. Sensible people have as +much consideration for the frailties of the rich as for those of the +poor. + +"The Lady that's been so long with me is going to a house of her own," +said the Landlady, "one she has bought back again, for it used to belong +to her folks. It's a beautiful house, and the sun shines in at the front +windows all day long. She's going to be wealthy again, but it doesn't +make any difference in her ways. I've had boarders complain when I was +doing as well as I knowed how for them, but I never heerd a word from +her that wasn't as pleasant as if she'd been talking to the Governor's +lady." + +The strange little man, denominated "Scarabee," who had grown to look so +much like the beetles he studied; the "Member of the House" with his +Down East phrases; the little "Scheherazade" who furnishes a new story +each week for the newspapers;--the good looking, rosy-cheeked salesman +"of very polite manners, only a little more brisk than the approved +style of carriage permits, as one in the habit of springing with a +certain alacrity at the call of a customer;" the good old Master of Arts +who makes so many sage remarks;--the young Astronomer with his heart +confessions in the _Wind-clouds and Star-drifts_--all these are new +acquaintances whom we are loth to part with, when the Landlady announces +her intention of giving up the famous boarding-house, and the Poet drops +the curtain. Would that the Old Master could yet be induced to give to +the public those "notes and reflections and new suggestions" of his +marvellous "interleaved volume!" + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +FAVORITES OF SONG. + + +When we come to consider Doctor Holmes on the poet side of his +many-sided nature, his own words at the famous Breakfast-Table are +vividly brought to mind: + +"The works of other men live, but their personality dies out of their +labors; the poet, who reproduces himself in his creation, as no other +artist does or can, goes down to posterity with all his personality +blended with whatever is imperishable in his song.... A single lyric is +enough, if one can only find in his soul and finish in his intellect one +of those jewels fit to sparkle on the stretched forefinger of all time." + +In the poems of Doctor Holmes we are quite sure there are many just such +lyrics that the world will not willingly let die. _The Last Leaf, The +Voiceless, The Chambered Nautilus, The Two Armies, The Old Man's Dream, +Under the Violets, Dorothy Q._--but where shall we stop in the long +enumeration of popular favorites like these? + +Oliver Wendell Holmes touches the heart as well as the intellect, and +that aside from his power as a humorist, is one great secret of his +success. + +Listen, for instance, to this exquisite bit: + + Yes, dear departed, cherished days + Could Memory's hand restore + Your Morning light, your evening rays + From Time's gray urn once more,-- + Then might this restless heart be still, + This straining eye might close, + And Hope her fainting pinions fold, + While the fair phantoms rose. + + But, like a child in ocean's arms, + We strive against the stream, + Each moment farther from the shore + Where life's young fountains gleam;-- + Each moment fainter wave the fields, + And wider rolls the sea; + The mist grows dark,--the sun goes down,-- + Day breaks,--and where are we? + +And what a dainty touch is given to this _Song of the Sun-Worshipper's +Daughter_! + + Kiss mine eyelids, beauteous Morn + Blushing into life new born! + Send me violets for my hair + And thy russet robe to wear, + And thy ring of rosiest hue + Set in drops of diamond dew! + + * * * * * + + Kiss my lips, thou Lord of light, + Kiss my lips a soft good-night! + Westward sinks thy golden car; + Leave me but the evening star + And my solace that shall be + Borrowing all its light from thee. + +And where will you find a more pathetic picture than that of the old +musician in _The Silent Melody_? + + Bring me my broken harp, he said; + We both are wrecks--but as ye will-- + Though all its ringing tones have fled, + Their echoes linger round it still; + It had some golden strings, I know, + But that was long--how long!--ago. + + I cannot see its tarnished gold; + I cannot hear its vanished tone; + Scarce can my trembling fingers hold + The pillared frame so long their own; + We both are wrecks--a while ago + It had some silver strings, I know. + + But on them Time too long has played + The solemn strain that knows no change, + And where of old my fingers strayed + The chords they find are new and strange-- + Yes; iron strings--I know--I know-- + We both are wrecks of long ago. + +With pitying smiles the broken harp is brought to him. Not a single +string remains. + + But see! like children overjoyed, + His fingers rambling through the void! + +They gather softly around the old musician. + + Rapt in his tuneful trance he seems; + His fingers move; but not a sound! + A silence like the song of dreams.... + "There! ye have heard the air," he cries, + "That brought the tears from Marian's eyes!" + +The poem closes with these fine stanzas: + + Ah, smile not at his fond conceit, + Nor deem his fancy wrought in vain; + To him the unreal sounds are sweet, + No discord mars the silent strain + Scored on life's latest, starlit page + The voiceless melody of age. + + Sweet are the lips of all that sing, + When Nature's music breathes unsought, + But never yet could voice or string + So truly shape our tenderest thought, + As when by life's decaying fire + Our fingers sweep the stringless lyre! + +Though entirely different in style, _Bill and Joe_ is another of those +heart-reaching, tear-starting poems. + +Listen, for instance, to these few verses: + + Come, dear old comrade, you and I + Will steal an hour from days gone by; + The shining days when life was new, + And all was bright with morning dew, + The lusty days of long ago + When you were Bill and I was Joe. + + * * * * * + + You've won the judge's ermined robe, + You've taught your name to half the globe, + You've sung mankind a deathless strain; + You've made the dead past live again; + The world may call you what it will, + But you and I are Joe and Bill. + + * * * * * + + How Bill forgets his hour of pride, + While Joe sits smiling at his side; + How Joe, in spite of time's disguise + Finds the old schoolmate in his eyes,-- + Those calm, stern eyes that melt and fill, + As Joe looks fondly up at Bill. + + Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame? + A fitful tongue of leaping flame; + A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust + That lifts a pinch of mortal dust; + A few swift years and who can show + Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe? + + The weary idol takes his stand, + Holds out his bruised and aching hand, + While gaping thousands come and go,-- + How vain it seems, his empty show! + Till all at once his pulses thrill: + 'Tis poor old Joe's God bless you, Bill! + +The earlier poems of Doctor Holmes are frequently written in the +favorite measures of Pope and Hood. This is not at all strange when we +remember that in the boyhood of Doctor Holmes these two poets were the +most popular of all the English bards. In his later poems, however, we +find an endless variety of rhythms, and the careful reader will notice +in every instance, a wonderful adaptation of the various poetical forms +to the particular thought the poet wishes to convey. + +How well Doctor Holmes understands the "mechanism" of verse may be seen +from his _Physiology of Versification and the Harmonies of Organic and +Animal Life_, a valuable article published in the _Boston Medical and +Surgical Journal_ of January 7, 1875. + +"Respiration," he says, "has an intimate relation to the structure of +metrical compositions, and the reason why octosyllabic verse is so easy +to read aloud is because it follows more exactly than any other measure +the natural rhythm of the respiration.... + +"The ten syllable, or heroic line has a peculiar majesty from the very +fact that its pronunciation requires a longer respiration than is +ordinary. + +"The caesura, it is true, comes in at irregular intervals and serves as a +breathing place, but its management requires care in reading, and +entirely breaks up the natural rhythm of breathing. The reason why the +'common metre' of our hymn books and the fourteen syllable line of +Chapman's Homer is such easy reading is because of the short alternate +lines of six and eight syllables. One of the most irksome of all +measures is the twelve-syllable line in which Drayton's Polyolbion is +written. While the fourteen syllable line can be easily divided in half +in reading, the twelve syllable one is too much for one expiration and +not enough for two, and for this reason has been avoided by poets. + +"There is, however, the personal equation to be taken into account. A +person of quiet temperament and ample chest may habitually breathe but +fourteen times in a minute, and the heroic measure will therefore be +very easy reading to him; a narrow-chested, nervous person, on the +contrary, who breathes oftener than twenty times a minute, may prefer +the seven-syllable verse, like that of Dyer's _Grongar Hill_, to the +heroic measure, and quick-breathing children will recite Mother Goose +melodies with delight, when long metres would weary and distract them. + +"Nothing in poetry or in vocal music is widely popular that is not +calculated with strict reference to the respiratory function. All the +early ballad poetry shows how instinctively the reciters accommodated +their rhythm to their breathing: _Chevy Chace_, or _The Babes in the +Wood_ may be taken as an example for verse. _God save the King_, which +has a compass of some half a dozen notes, and takes one expiration, +economically used, to each line, may be referred to as the musical +illustration. + +"The unconscious adaptation of voluntary life to the organic rhythm is +perhaps a more pervading fact than we have been in the habit of +considering it. One can hardly doubt that Spenser breathed habitually +more slowly than Prior, and that Anacreon had a quicker respiration than +Homer. And this difference, which we conjecture from their rhythmical +instincts, if our conjecture is true, probably, almost certainly, +characterized all their vital movements." + +So much for the bare _vehicle_ of verse, but the poet himself, as Doctor +Holmes says in his review of "Exotics," is a medium, a clairvoyant. "The +will is first called in requisition to exclude interfering outward +impressions and alien trains of thought. After a certain time the second +state or adjustment of the poet's double consciousness (for he has two +states, just as the somnambulists have) sets up its own automatic +movement, with its special trains of ideas and feelings in the thinking +and emotional centres. As soon as the fine frenzy, or _quasi_ +trance-state, is fairly established, the consciousness watches the +torrent of thoughts and arrests the ones wanted, singly with their +fitting expression, or in groups of fortunate sequences which he cannot +better by after treatment. As the poetical vocabulary is limited, and +its plasticity lends itself only to certain moulds, the mind works under +great difficulty, at least until it has acquired by practice such +handling of language that every possibility of rhythm or rhyme offers +itself actually or potentially to the clairvoyant perception +simultaneously with the thought it is to embody. Thus poetical +composition is the most intense, the most exciting, and therefore the +most exhausting of mental exercises. It is exciting because its mental +states are a series of revelations and surprises; intense on account of +the double strain upon the attention. The poet is not the same man who +seated himself an hour ago at his desk with the dust-cart and the +gutter, or the duck-pond and the hay-stack, and the barnyard fowls +beneath his window. He is in the forest with the song-birds; he is on +the mountain-top with the eagles. He sat down in rusty broadcloth, he is +arrayed in the imperial purple of his singing robes. Let him alone, now, +if you are wise, for you might as well have pushed the arm that was +finishing the smile of a Madonna, or laid a veil before a train that had +a queen on board, as thrust your untimely question on this +half-cataleptic child of the Muse, who hardly knows whether he is in the +body or out of the body. And do not wonder if, when the fit is over, he +is in some respects like one who is recovering after an excess of the +baser stimulants." + +As a writer of humorous poetry, it is safe to say that Oliver Wendell +Holmes is without a peer. + +_The Height of the Ridiculous_, _The September Gale_, _The Hot Season_, +_The Deacon's Master-piece_, _Nux Postcoenatica_, _The Stethoscope +Song_, how many a "cobweb" have they shaken from the tired brain! + +And where in the whole range of humorous literature will you find a more +delightful morsel than the "_Parting Word_," that follows?-- + + I must leave thee, lady sweet! + Months shall waste before we meet; + Winds are fair and sails are spread, + Anchors leave their ocean bed; + Ere this shining day grows dark, + Skies shall guide my shoreless bark; + Through thy tears, O lady mine, + Read thy lover's parting line. + + When the first sad sun shall set, + Thou shalt tear thy locks of jet; + When the morning star shall rise + Thou shalt wake with weeping eyes; + When the second sun goes down + Thou more tranquil shalt be grown, + Taught too well that wild despair + Dims thine eyes, and spoils thy hair. + + All the first unquiet week + Thou shalt wear a smileless cheek; + In the first month's second half + Thou shalt once attempt to laugh; + Then in _Pickwick_ thou shalt dip, + Lightly puckering round the lip, + Till at last, in sorrow's spite, + Samuel makes thee laugh outright. + + While the first seven mornings last, + Round thy chamber bolted fast + Many a youth shall fume and pout, + "Hang the girl, she's always out!" + While the second week goes round, + Vainly shall they sing and pound; + When the third week shall begin, + "Martha, let the creature in!" + + Now once more the flattering throng + Round thee flock with smile and song, + But thy lips unweaned as yet, + Lisp, "O, how can I forget!" + Men and devils both contrive + Traps for catching girls alive; + Eve was duped, and Helen kissed, + How, O how can you resist? + + First, be careful of your fan, + Trust it not to youth or man; + Love has filled a pirate's sail + Often with its perfumed gale. + Mind your kerchief most of all, + Fingers touch when kerchiefs fall; + Shorter ell than mercers clip + Is the space from hand to lip. + + Trust not such as talk in tropes + Full of pistols, daggers, ropes; + All the hemp that Russia bears + Scarce would answer lovers' prayers; + Never thread was spun so fine, + Never spider stretched the line, + Would not hold the lovers true + That would really swing for you. + + Fiercely some shall storm and swear, + Beating breasts in black despair; + Others murmur with a sigh + You must melt or they will die; + Painted words on empty lies, + Grubs with wings like butterflies; + Let them die, and welcome, too; + Pray what better could they do? + + Fare thee well, if years efface + From thy heart love's burning trace, + Keep, O keep that hallowed seat + From the tread of vulgar feet; + If the blue lips of the sea + Wait with icy kiss for me, + Let not thine forget that vow, + Sealed how often, love, as now! + +In his _Mechanism in Thought and Morals_, Doctor Holmes reveals one of +the secrets of humorous writing. "The poet," he says, "sits down to his +desk with an odd conceit in his brain; and presently his eyes filled +with tears, his thought slides into the minor key, and his heart is full +of sad and plaintive melodies. Or he goes to his work, saying-- + +"'To-night I would have tears;' and before he rises from his table he +has written a burlesque, such as he might think fit to send to one of +the comic papers, if these were not so commonly cemeteries of hilarity +interspersed with cenotaphs of wit and humor. These strange hysterics of +the intelligence which make us pass from weeping to laughter, and from +laughter back again to weeping, must be familiar to every impressible +nature; and all this is as automatic, involuntary, as entirely +self-evolved by a hidden, organic process, as are the changing moods of +the laughing and crying woman. The poet always recognizes a dictation +_ab extra_; and we hardly think it a figure of speech when we talk of +his inspiration." + +Of Doctor Holmes' inimitable _vers d'occasion_ we select the following: + +At the reception given to Harriet Beecher Stowe on her seventieth +birthday, at Governor Claflin's beautiful summer residence in +Newtonville, Doctor Holmes read the following witty and characteristic +poem: + + If every tongue that speaks her praise + For whom I shape my tinkling phrase + Were summoned to the table, + The vocal chorus that would meet + Of mingling accents harsh or sweet + From every land and tribe would beat + The polyglots of Babel. + + Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane, + Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine, + Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi, + High Dutchman and Low Dutchman, too, + The Russian serf, the Polish Jew, + Arab, Armenian and Mantchoo + Would shout, "We know the lady." + + Know her! Who knows not Uncle Tom + And her he learned his gospel from + Has never heard of Moses; + Full well the brave black hand we know + That gave to freedom's grasp the hoe + That killed the weed that used to grow + Among the Southern roses. + + When Archimedes, long ago, + Spoke out so grandly "_dos pou sto_,-- + Give me a place to stand on, + I'll move your planet for you, now," + He little dreamed or fancied how + The _sto_ at last should find its _pou_ + For woman's faith to land on. + + Her lever was the wand of art, + Her fulcrum was the human heart + Whence all unfailing aid is; + She moved the earth! its thunders pealed, + Its mountains shook, its temples reeled, + The blood-red fountains were unsealed, + And Moloch sunk to Hades. + + All through the conflict, up and down + Marched Uncle Tom and Old John Brown, + One ghost, one form ideal, + And which was false and which was true. + And which was mightier of the two, + The wisest sibyl never knew, + For both alike were real. + + Sister, the holy maid does well + Who counts her beads in convent cell, + Where pale devotion lingers; + But she who serves the sufferer's needs, + Whose prayers are spelt in loving deeds + May trust the Lord will count her beads + As well as human fingers. + + When Truth herself was Slavery's slave + Thy hand the prisoned suppliant gave + The rainbow wings of fiction. + And Truth who soared descends to-day + Bearing an angel's wreath away, + Its lilies at thy feet to lay + With heaven's own benediction. + +The following poem was read by Doctor Holmes at the Unitarian Festival, +June 2, 1882. + + The waves upbuild the wasting shore: + Where mountains towered the billows sweep: + Yet still their borrowed spoils restore + And raise new empires from the deep. + So, while the floods of thought lay waste + The old domain of chartered creeds, + The heaven-appointed tides will haste + To shape new homes for human needs. + Be ours to mark with hearts unchilled + The change an outworn age deplores; + The legend sinks, but Faith shall build + A fairer throne on new-found shores, + The star shall glow in western skies, + That shone o'er Bethlehem's hallowed shrine, + And once again the temple rise + That crowned the rock of Palestine. + Not when the wondering shepherds bowed + Did angels sing their latest song, + Nor yet to Israel's kneeling crowd + Did heaven's one sacred dome belong-- + Let priest and prophet have their dues, + The Levite counts but half a man, + Whose proud "salvation of the Jews" + Shuts out the good Samaritan! + Though scattered far the flock may stray, + His own the shepherd still shall claim,-- + The saints who never learned to pray,-- + The friends who never spoke his name. + Dear Master, while we hear thy voice, + That says, "The truth shall make you free," + Thy servant still, by loving choice, + O keep us faithful unto Thee! + +Doctor Holmes being unable to attend the annual reunion of the Harvard +Club in New York City, February 21, 1882, sent the following letter and +sonnet which were read at the banquet: + + DEAR BROTHERS ALUMNI: + + As I am obliged to deny myself the pleasure of being with you, I do + not feel at liberty to ask many minutes of your time and attention. + I have compressed into the limits of a sonnet the feelings I am sure + we all share that, besides the roof that shelters us we have need of + some wider house where we can visit and find ourselves in a more + extended circle of sympathy than the narrow ring of a family, and + nowhere can we seek a truer and purer bond of fellowship than under + the benignant smile of our _Alma Mater_. Let me thank you for the + kindness which has signified to me that I should be welcome at your + festival. + + In all the rewards of a literary life none is more precious than the + kindly recognition of those who have clung to the heart of the same + nursing mother, and will always flee to each other in the widest + distances of space, and let us hope in those unbounded realms in + which we may not utterly forget our earthly pilgrimage and its dear + companions. + + Very sincerely yours, + OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. + +SONNET. + + Yes, home is sweet! and yet we needs must sigh, + Restless until our longing souls have found + Some realm beyond the fireside's narrow bound, + Where slippered ease and sleepy comfort lie, + Some fair ideal form that cannot die, + By age dismantled and by change uncrowned, + Else life creeps circling in the self-same round, + And the low ceiling hides the lofty sky. + Ah, then to thee our truant hearts return, + Dear mother, Alma, Casta--spotless, kind! + Thy sacred walls a larger home we find, + And still for thee thy wandering children yearn, + While with undying fires thine altars burn, + Where all our holiest memories rest enshrined. + +POEM READ BY DOCTOR HOLMES AT THE WHITTIER CELEBRATION. + + I believe that the copies of verses I've spun, + Like Scheherazade's tales, are a thousand and one, + You remember the story--those mornings in bed-- + 'Twas the turn of a copper--a tale or a head. + + A doom like Scheherazade's falls upon me + In a mandate as stern as the Sultan's decree; + I'm a florist in verse, and what _would_ people say + If I came to a banquet without my bouquet? + + It is trying, no doubt, when the company knows + Just the look and the smell of each lily and rose, + The green of each leaf in the sprigs that I bring, + And the shape of the bunch and the knot of the string. + + Yes, 'the style is the man,' and the nib of one's pen + Makes the same mark at twenty, and threescore and ten; + It is so in all matters, if truth may be told; + Let one look at the cast he can tell you the mould. + + How we all know each other! No use in disguise; + Through the holes in the mask comes the flash of the eyes; + We can tell by his--somewhat--each one of our tribe, + As we know the old hat which we cannot describe. + + Though in Hebrew, in Sanscrit, in Choctaw, you write, + Sweet singer who gave us the Voices of Night, + Though in buskin or slipper your song may be shod, + Or the velvety verse that Evangeline trod. + + We shall say, 'You can't cheat us--we know it is you-- + There is one voice like that, but there cannot be two. + _Maestro_, whose chant like the dulcimer rings; + And the woods will be hushed when the nightingale sings. + + And he, so serene, so majestic, so true, + Whose temple hypaethral the planets shine through, + Let us catch but five words from that mystical pen + We should know our one sage from all children of men. + + And he whose bright image no distance can dim, + Through a hundred disguises we can't mistake him, + Whose play is all earnest, whose wit is the edge + (With a beetle behind) of a sham-splitting wedge. + + Do you know whom we send you, Hidalgos of Spain? + Do you know your old friends when you see them again? + Hosea was Sancho! you Dons of Madrid, + But Sancho that wielded the lance of the Cid! + + And the wood-thrush of Essex--you know whom I mean, + Whose song echoes round us when he sits unseen, + Whose heart-throbs of verse through our memories thrill + Like a breath from the wood, like a breeze from the hill. + + So fervid, so simple, so loving, so pure, + We hear but one strain and our verdict is sure-- + Thee cannot elude us--no further we search-- + 'Tis Holy George Herbert cut loose from his church! + + We think it the voice of a cherub that sings-- + Alas! we remember that angels have wings-- + What story is this of the day of his birth? + Let him live to a hundred! we want him on earth! + + One life has been paid him (in gold) by the sun; + One account has been squared and another begun; + But he never will die if he lingers below + Till we've paid him in love half the balance we owe! + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +THE MAN OF SCIENCE. + + +"What decided me," says Doctor Holmes, "to give up Law and apply myself +to Medicine, I can hardly say, but I had from the first looked upon my +law studies as an experiment. At any rate, I made the change, and soon +found myself introduced to new scenes and new companionships. + +"I can scarcely credit my memory when I recall the first impressions +produced upon me by sights afterwards become so familiar that they could +no more disturb a pulse-beat than the commonest of every-day +experiences. The skeleton, hung aloft like a gibbeted criminal, looked +grimly at me as I entered the room devoted to the students of the school +I had joined, just as the fleshless figure of Time, with the hour-glass +and scythe, used to glare upon me in my childhood from the _New England +Primer_. The white faces in the beds at the Hospital found their +reflection in my own cheeks which lost their color as I looked upon +them. All this had to pass away in a little time; I had chosen my +profession, and must meet all its aspects until they lost their power +over my sensibility.... + +"After attending two courses of lectures in the School of the +University, I went to Europe to continue my studies. I can hardly +believe my own memory when I recall the old practitioners and professors +who were still going round the hospitals when I mingled with the train +of students in the Ecole de Medicine." + +Of the famous Baron Boyer, author of a nine-volumed book on surgery, +Doctor Holmes says, "I never saw him do more than look as if he wanted +to cut a good collop out of a patient he was examining." Baron Larrey, +the favorite surgeon of Napoleon, he describes as a short, square, +substantial man, with iron-gray hair, red face, and white apron. To go +round the Hotel des Invalides with Larrey was to live over the campaign +of Napoleon, to look on the sun of Austerlitz, to hear the cannon of +Marengo, to struggle through the icy waters of the Beresina, to shiver +in the snows of the Russian retreat, and to gaze through the battle +smoke upon the last charge of the red lancers on the redder field of +Waterloo. + +Then there was Baron Dupuytren, "_ce grand homme de lautre cote de la +riviere_,--with his high, full-doomed head and oracular utterances; +Lisfrance, the great drawer of blood and hewer of members; Velpeau, who, +coming to Paris in wooden shoes, and starving, almost, at first, raised +himself to great eminence as surgeon and author; Broussais, the +knotty-featured, savage old man who reminded one of a volcano, which had +well-nigh used up its fire and brimstone, and Gabriel Audral, the rapid, +fluent, fervid and imaginative speaker. + +"The object of our reverence, however, I might almost say idolatry," +adds Doctor Holmes, "was Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis, a tall, rather +spare, dignified personage, of serene and grave aspect, but with a +pleasant smile and kindly voice for the student with whom he came into +personal relations. + +"If I summed up the lessons of Louis in two expressions, they would be +these: First, always make sure that you form a distinct and clear idea +of the matter you are considering. Second, always avoid vague +approximations where exact estimates are possible.... + +"Yes, as I say, I look back on the long hours of the many days I spent +in the wards and in the autopsy room of La Pitie, where Louis was one +of the attending physicians--yes, Louis did a great work for practical +medicine. Modest in the presence of nature, fearless in the face of +authority, unwearying in the pursuit of truth, he was a man whom any +student might be happy and proud to claim as his teacher and his friend. +And yet, as I look back on the days when I followed his teachings, I +feel that I gave myself up too exclusively to his methods of thought and +study. There is one part of their business that certain medical +practitioners are too apt to forget; namely, that what they should most +of all try to do is to ward off disease, to alleviate suffering, to +preserve life, or at least to prolong it if possible. It is not of the +slightest interest to the patient to know whether three or three and a +quarter inches of his lungs are hepatized. His mind is not occupied with +thinking of the curious problems which are to be solved by his own +autopsy, whether this or that strand of the spinal marrow is the seat of +this or that form of degeneration. He wants something to relieve his +pain, to mitigate the anguish of dyspnaea, to bring back motion and +sensibility to the dead limb, to still the tortures of neuralgia. What +is it to him that you can localize and name by some uncouth term, the +disease which you could not prevent and which you can not cure? an old +woman who knows how to make a poultice and how to put it on, and does it +_tuto_, _cito_, _jucunde_, just when and where it is wanted, is +better--a thousand times better in many cases--than a staring +pathologist who explores and thumps and doubts and guesses and tells his +patient he will be better to-morrow, and so goes home to tumble his +books over and make out a diagnosis. + +"But in those days I, like most of my fellow students, was thinking much +more of 'science' than of practical medicine, and I believe if we had +not clung so closely to the skirts of Louis, and had followed some of +the courses of men like Rousseau,--therapeutists, who gave special +attention to curative methods, and not chiefly to diagnosis--it would +have been better for me and others. One thing, at any rate, we did learn +in the wards of Louis. We learned that a very large proportion of +diseases get well of themselves, without any special medication--the +great fact formulated, enforced and popularized by Doctor Jacob +Bigelow." + +It is well known that Doctor Holmes detests the habit of drugging +practised by so many physicians of the "old school," and in his address +before the Massachusetts Medical Society, entitled Currents and Counter +Currents in Medical Science, he makes a severe attack upon the +inordinate use of medicines. + +"What is the honest truth," he says at another time, "about the medical +art? By far the largest number of diseases which physicians are called +to treat will get well at any rate, even in spite of reasonably bad +treatment. Of the other fraction, a certain number will inevitably die, +whatever is done: there remains a small margin of cases where the life +of the patient depends on the skill of the physician. Drugs now and then +save life; they often shorten disease and remove symptoms; but they are +second in importance to food, air, temperature, and the other hygienic +influences. That was a shrewd trick of Alexander's physician on the +occasion of his attack after bathing. He asked three days to prepare his +medicine. Time is the great physician as well as the great consoler. +Sensible men in all ages have trusted most to nature." + +Of quacks and other humbugs, Doctor Holmes had an undisguised, wholesome +contempt. + +"Shall we try," he says, "the medicines advertised with the certificates +of justices of the peace, of clergymen, or even members of Congress? +Certainly, it may be answered, any one of them which makes a good case +for itself. But the difficulty is, that the whole class of commercial +remedies are shown by long experience, with the rarest exceptions, to be +very sovereign cures for empty pockets, and of no peculiar efficacy for +anything else. You may be well assured that if any really convincing +evidence was brought forward in behalf of the most vulgar nostrum, the +chemists would go at once to work to analyze it, the physiologists to +experiment with it, and the young doctors would all be trying it on +their own bodies, if not on their patients. But we do not think it worth +while, as a general rule, to send a Cheap Jack's gilt chains and lockets +to be tested for gold. We know they are made to sell, and so with the +pills and potions.... Think how rapidly any real discovery is +appropriated and comes into universal use. Take anaesthetics, take the +use of bromide of potassium, and see how easily they obtained +acceptance. If you are disposed to think any of the fancy systems has +brought forward any new remedy of value which the medical profession has +been slow to accept, ask any fancy practitioner to name it. Let him +name one,--the best his system claims,--not a hundred, but one. A single +new, efficient, trustworthy remedy which the medical profession can test +as they are ready to test before any scientific tribunal, opium, +quinine, ether, the bromide of potassium. There is no such remedy on +which any of the fancy practitioners dare stake his reputation. If there +were, it would long ago have been accepted, though it had been flowers +of brimstone from the borders of Styx or Cocytus." + +Homoeopathy is classed by Doctor Holmes among such "Kindred Delusions" +as the Royal Cure for the King's Evil, the Weapon Ointment, the +Sympathetic Powder, the Tar-water mania of Bishop Berkeley, and the +Metallic Tractors, or Perkinsism. + +In making a direct attack upon the pretentions of Homoeopathy, Doctor +Holmes declares at the outset that he shall treat it not by ridicule, +but by argument; with great freedom, but with good temper and in +peaceable language. + +_Similia similibus curantur._ Like cures like, is one of the fundamental +principles of Homoeopathy, and "improbable though it may seem to +some," says Doctor Holmes with his usual impartial fairness, "there is +no essential absurdity involved in the proposition that diseases yield +to remedies capable of producing like symptoms. There are, on the other +hand, some analogies which lend a degree of plausibility to the +statement. There are well-ascertained facts, known from the earliest +periods of medicine, showing that under certain circumstances, the very +medicine which from its known effects, one would expect to aggravate the +disease, may contribute to its relief. I may be permitted to allude, in +the most general way, to the case in which the spontaneous efforts of an +over-tasked stomach are quieted by the agency of a drug which that organ +refuses to entertain upon any terms. But that _every_ cure ever +performed by medicine should have been founded upon this principle, +although without the knowledge of a physician, that the Homoeopathy +axiom is, as Hahnemann asserts, "the _sole_ law of nature in +therapeutics," a law of which nothing more than a transient glimpse ever +presented itself to the innumerable host of medical observers, is a +dogma of such sweeping extent and pregnant novelty, that it demands a +corresponding breath and depth of unquestionable facts to cover its vast +pretensions." + +Among the many facts of which great use has been made by the +Homoeopathists, is that found in the precept given for the treatment +of parts which have been frozen, by friction with snow, etc. + +"But," says Doctor Holmes, "we deceive ourselves by names, if we suppose +the frozen part to be treated by cold, and not by heat. The snow may +even be actually _warmer_ than the part to which it is applied. But even +if it were at the same temperature when applied, it never did and never +could do the least good to a frozen part, except as a mode of regulating +the application of what? of _heat_. But the heat must be applied +_gradually_, just as food must be given a little at a time to those +perishing with hunger. If the patient were brought into a warm room, +heat would be applied _very rapidly_, were not something interposed to +prevent this, and allow its gradual admission. Snow or iced water is +exactly what is wanted; it is not cold to the part; it is very possibly +warm, on the contrary, for these terms are relative, and if it does not +melt and let the heat in, or is not taken away, the part will remain +frozen up until doomsday. Now the treatment of a frozen limb by heat, in +large or small quantities, is not Homoeopathy." + +Another supposed illustration of the Homoeopathic law is the alleged +successful management of burns, by holding them to the fire. "This is a +popular mode of treating those burns which are of too little consequence +to require any more efficacious remedy, and would inevitably get well of +themselves, without any trouble being bestowed upon them. It produces a +most acute pain in the part, which is followed by some loss of +sensibility, as happens with the eye after exposure to strong light, and +the ear after being subjected to very intense sounds. This is all it is +capable of doing, and all further notions of its efficacy must be +attributed merely to the vulgar love of paradox. If this example affords +any comfort to the Homoeopathist, it seems as cruel to deprive him of +it as it would be to convince the mistress of the smoke-jack or the +flatiron that the fire does not literally draw the fire out, which is +her hypothesis. + +"But if it were true that frost-bites were cured by cold and burns by +heat, it would be subversive, so far as it went, of the great principle +of Homoeopathy. For you will remember that this principle is that +_Like_ cures _Like_, and not that _Same_ cures _Same_; that there is +_resemblance_ and not _identity_ between the symptoms of the disease and +those produced by the drug which cures it, and none have been readier to +insist upon this distinction than the Homoeopathists themselves. For +if _Same_ cures _Same_, then every poison must be its own +antidote,--which is neither a part of their theory nor their so-called +experience. They have been asked often enough, why it was that arsenic +could not cure the mischief which arsenic had caused, and why the +infectious cause of small-pox did not remedy the disease it had +produced, and then they were ready enough to see the distinction I have +pointed out. "O no! it was not the hair of the same dog, but only of one +very much like him!" + +The belief in and employment of the "Infinitesimal doses," Doctor Holmes +handles with the same fairness and acumen; but the absurd idea affirmed +by Hahnemann that Psora is the cause of the great majority of chronic +diseases, he treats as it deserves, with unqualified contempt. + +In conclusion, he says, "As one humble member of a profession which for +more than two thousand years has devoted itself to the pursuit of the +best earthly interests of mankind always assailed and insulted from +without by such as are ignorant of its infinite perplexities and labors, +always striving in unequal contest with the hundred armed giants who +walk in the noonday and sleep not in the midnight, yet still toiling not +merely for itself and the present moment, but for the race and the +future, I have lifted up my voice against this lifeless delusion, +rolling its shapeless bulk into the path of a noble science it is too +weak to strike or to injure." + +Upon the contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, Doctor Holmes wrote an able +treatise some forty years ago. This was reprinted with some additions, +in 1855, and in an introductory note which accompanies the still later +addition (1883), Doctor Holmes says, "The subject of this Paper has the +same profound interest for me at the present moment as it had when I +was first collecting the terrible evidence out of which, as it seems to +me, the commonest exercise of reason could not help shaping the truth it +involved. It is not merely on account of the bearing of the question--if +there is a question--on all that is most sacred in human life and +happiness that the subject cannot lose its interest. It is because it +seems evident that a fair statement of the facts must produce its +proportion of well-constituted and unprejudiced minds." + +The essay, a most valuable one, is republished without the change of a +word or syllable, as the author upon reviewing finds that it anticipates +and eliminates those secondary questions which cannot be for a moment +entertained until the one great point of fact is peremptorily settled. + +There are but very few subjects, indeed, in medical science, that Doctor +Holmes has not investigated, and investigated, too, most thoroughly.... + +In his article on "Reflex Vision," published in Volume IV. of the +Proceedings of the American Academy, will be found a very interesting +account of his experiments in optics. One, indeed, that will both +interest and instruct. + +To him, as is well known, we are indebted for numerous improvements in +the stereoscope; and in microscopes also, he has done some original and +important work. + +Said an admirer of Doctor Holmes in referring to his career as a medical +professor: + +"He always makes people attentive, and I have been told that there is no +professor whom the students so much like to listen to. In one of his +books he says that every one of us is three persons, and I think that if +the statement is true in regard to ordinary men and women, Doctor Holmes +himself is at least half a dozen persons. He lectures so well on anatomy +that his students never suspect him to be a poet, and he writes verses +so well that most people do not suspect him of being an authority among +scientific men. Though he illustrates his medical lectures by quotations +of the most appropriate and interesting sort, from a wonderful variety +of authors, he has never been known to refer to his own writings in that +way." + +In celebrating the silver anniversary year of his wedding with the Muse +of the monthlies--meaning his reappearance in the _Atlantic_--he +observed that during the larger part of his absence, his time had been +in a great measure occupied with other duties. "I never forgot the +advice of Coleridge," he said, "that a literary man should have a +regular calling. I may say, in passing, that I have often given the +advice to others, and too often wished that I could supplement it with +the words, "And confine himself to it.'" + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +THE HOLMES BREAKFAST. + + +As the seventieth birthday of Doctor Holmes drew near, the publishers of +the _Atlantic Monthly_ resolved to give a "Breakfast" in his honor. The +twenty-ninth of August, 1879, was, of course, the true anniversary, but +knowing it would be difficult to bring together at that season of the +year the friends and literary associates of Doctor Holmes, Mr. Houghton +decided to postpone the invitations until the thirteenth of November. +Upon that day a brilliant company assembled at noon in the spacious +parlors of the Hotel Brunswick, in Boston. + +Doctor Holmes and his daughter, Mrs. Sargent, received the guests, who +numbered in all about one hundred. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs. +Julia Ward Howe, Ralph Waldo Emerson and John G. Whittier assisted in +this ceremony, and after a couple of hours spent in sparkling converse, +the company adjourned to the dining-room, where a sumptuous "Breakfast" +was served to the "Autocrat" and his friends. + +At the six tables were seated writers of eminence in every department of +literature. Grace was said by the Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D., and after +the cloth was removed, Mr. H.O. Houghton introduced the guest of the day +in a few happily-chosen words. + +The company then rose and drank the health of the poet, after which +Doctor Holmes read the following beautiful poem: + +THE IRON GATE. + + Where is the patriarch you are kindly greeting? + Not unfamiliar to my ear his name, + Not yet unknown to many a joyous meeting + In days long vanished,--is he still the same, + + Or changed by years forgotten and forgetting, + Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech and thought, + Still o'er the sad, degenerate present fretting, + Where all goes wrong and nothing as it ought? + + Old age, the gray-beard! Well, indeed, I know him,-- + Shrunk, tottering, bent, of aches and ills the prey; + In sermon, story, fable, picture, poem, + Oft have I met him from my earliest day. + + In my old AEsop, toiling with his bundle,-- + His load of sticks,--politely asking Death, + Who comes when called for,--would he lug or trundle + His fagot for him?--he was scant of breath. + + And sad "Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher," + Has he not stamped the image on my soul, + In that last chapter, where the worn-out Teacher + Sighs o'er the loosened cord, the broken bowl? + + Yes, long, indeed, I've known him at a distance, + And now my lifted door-latch shows him here; + I take his shrivelled hand without resistance, + And find him smiling as his step draws near. + + What though of gilded baubles he bereaves us, + Dear to the heart of youth, to manhood's prime, + Think of the calm he brings, the wealth he leaves us, + The hoarded spoils, the legacies of time! + + Altars once flaming, still with incense fragrant, + Passion's uneasy nurslings rocked asleep, + Hope's anchor faster, wild desire less vagrant, + Life's flow less noisy, but the stream how deep! + + Still as the silver cord gets worn and slender, + Its lightened task-work tugs with lessening strain, + Hands get more helpful, voices grown more tender, + Soothe with their softened tones the slumberous brain. + + Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers, + Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past, + Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embers + That warm its creeping life-blood till the last. + + Dear to its heart is every loving token + That comes unbidden ere its pulse grows cold, + Ere the last lingering ties of life are broken, + Its labors ended, and its story told. + + Ah, while around us rosy youth rejoices, + For us the sorrow-laden breezes sigh, + And through the chorus of its jocund voices + Throbs the sharp note of misery's hopeless cry. + + As on the gauzy wings of fancy flying + From some far orb I track our watery sphere, + Home of the struggling, suffering, doubting, dying, + The silvered globule seems a glistening tear. + + But Nature lends her mirror of illusion + To win from saddening scenes our age-dimmed eyes, + And misty day-dreams blend in sweet confusion + The wintery landscape and the summer skies. + + So when the iron portal shuts behind us, + And life forgets us in its noise and whirl, + Visions that shunned the glaring noonday find us, + And glimmering starlight shows the gates of pearl. + + I come not here your morning hour to sadden + A limping pilgrim leaning on his staff,-- + I, who have never deemed it sin to gladden + This vale of sorrows with a wholesome laugh. + + If word of mine another's gloom has brightened, + Through my dumb lips the heaven-sent message came; + If hand of mine another's task has lightened, + It felt the guidance that it dares not claim. + + But, O my gentle sisters, O my brothers, + These thick-sown snow-flakes hint of toil's release; + These feebler pulses bid me leave to others + The tasks once welcome; evening asks for peace. + + Time claims his tribute; silence now is golden; + Let me not vex the too long suffering lyre; + Though to your love untiring still beholden, + The curfew tells me--cover up the fire. + + And now with grateful smile and accents cheerful, + And warmer heart than look or word can tell, + In simplest phrase--these traitorous eyes are tearful-- + Thanks, Brothers, Sisters,--Children, and farewell! + +After the reading of the poem, the following reminiscence from Doctor +Holmes' pen, was read by Mr. Houghton:-- + +"The establishment of the _Atlantic Monthly_ was due to the liberal +enterprise of the then flourishing firm of Phillips & Sampson. Mr. +Phillips, more especially, was most active and sanguine. The publishers +were fortunate enough to secure the services of Mr. Lowell as editor. +Mr. Lowell had a fancy that I could be useful as a contributor, and woke +me from a kind of literary lethargy in which I was half slumbering, to +call me to active service. Remembering some crude contributions of mine +to an old magazine, it occurred to me that their title might serve for +some fresh papers, and so I sat down and wrote off what came into my +head under the title _The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table_. This series +of papers was not the result of an express premeditation, but was, as I +may say, dipped from the running stream of my thoughts. Its very kind +reception encouraged me, and you know the consequences, which have +lasted from that day to this. + +"But what I want especially to say here is, that I owe the impulse which +started my second growth, to the urgent hint of my friend Mr. Lowell, +and that you have him to thank, not only for his own noble contributions +to our literature, but for the spur which moved me to action, to which +you owe any pleasure I may have given, and I am indebted for the +crowning happiness of this occasion. His absence I most deeply regret +for your and my own sake, while I congratulate the country to which in +his eminent station he is devoting his services." + +As Mr. Whittier had been obliged to leave the company before this, Mr. +James T. Fields read his fine poem entitled "Our Autocrat," from which +we quote the last verses: + + What shapes and fancies, grave or gay, + Before us at his bidding come! + The Treadmill tramp, the "One Hoss Shay," + The dumb despair of Elsie's doom! + + The tale of Aris and the Maid, + The plea for lips that cannot speak, + The holy kiss that Iris laid + On Little Boston's pallid cheek! + + Long may he live to sing for us + His sweetest songs at evening time, + And like his Chambered Nautilus + To holier heights of beauty climb! + + Though now unnumbered guests surround + The table that he rules at will, + Its Autocrat, however crowned, + Is but our friend and comrade still. + + The world may keep his honored name, + The wealth of all his varied powers; + A stronger claim has love than fame + And he himself is only ours! + +Mr W.D. Howells then took the chair and was introduced to the company as +the representative of the "mythical editor." + +In his remarks, Mr. Howells paid the following tribute to the Autocrat: + +"The fact is known to you all, and I will not insist upon it, but it was +Oliver Wendell Holmes who not only named, but who made the _Atlantic_. +How did he do this? Oh, very simply! He merely invented a new kind of +literature, something so beautiful and rare and fine that while you were +trying to determine its character as monologue or colloquy, prose or +poetry, philosophy or humor, it was gradually penetrating your +consciousness with a sense that the best of all these had been fused in +one--a perfect form, an exquisite wisdom, an unsurpassable grace. This, +and much more than any poor words of mine can say, was the Autocrat, +followed by the Professor, and then by the Poet, at the same +Breakfast-Table. We pledge him by all these names to-day, not only with +the wine in our cups, but with the pride and love in our hearts, where +we have enshrined him immortally young, in spite of the birthdays that +come and go, and where we defy the future that lies in wait for our +precious things, to know his quality better, or value his genius more +highly than we." + +Mrs. Julia Ward Howe was then called upon to respond to the toast, "The +girls we have _not_ left behind us," and after a few words in reply, she +read a fine poem in honor of the illustrious guest. + +Charles Dudley Warner was then introduced, and after a short speech, +read a poem by H. H., "To Oliver Wendell Holmes, on his seventieth +birthday." In these charming lines almost every poem of Doctor Holmes is +mentioned with rare tact and skill. + +At the close of the poem, President Eliot of Harvard, rose and said: + +"It seems to me that it is my duty to remind all these poets, essayists +and story-tellers who are gathered here, that the main work of our +friend's life has been of an altogether different nature. I know him as +the professor of anatomy and physiology in the Medical School of Harvard +University for the last thirty-two years, and I know him to-day as one +of the most active and hard-working of our lecturers. Some of you +gentlemen, I observe, are lecturers by profession, at least during the +winter months. Doctor Holmes delivers four lectures every week for eight +months of the year. I am sure the lecturers by profession will +understand that this task requires an extraordinary amount of mental and +physical vigor. And I congratulate our friend on the weekly +demonstration of that vigor which he gives in our medical school. Most +of you have perhaps the impression that Doctor Holmes chiefly enjoys a +pretty couplet, a beautiful verse, an elegant sentence. It has fallen to +me to observe that he has other great enjoyments. I never heard any +other mortal exhibit such enthusiasm over an elegant dissection. And +perhaps you think it is the pen with which Doctor Holmes is chiefly +skilful. I assure you that he is equally skilful with scalpel and with +microscope. And I think that none of us can understand the meaning and +scope of Doctor Holmes' writing, unless we have observed that the daily +work of his life has been to study and teach a natural science, the +noble science of anatomy. It is his to know with absolute exactness the +form of every bone in this wonderful body of ours, the course of every +artery, and vein, and nerve, the form and function of every muscle, and +not only to know it, but to describe it with a fascinating precision and +enthusiasm. When I read his writings I find the traces of this life-work +of his on every page. There are three thousand men scattered through New +England at this moment who will remember Doctor Holmes through their +lives, and transmit to their children the memory of him, as student and +teacher of exact science. And let us honor him to-day, not +forgetting--they can never be forgotten--his poems and essays, as a +noble representative of the profession of the scientific student and +teacher." + +Mr. S.L. Clemens (Mark Twain) followed President Eliot. + +"I would have travelled," he began, "a much greater distance than I have +come to witness the paying of honors to Doctor Holmes, for my feeling +toward him has always been one of peculiar warmth. When one receives a +letter from a great man for the first time in his life, it is a large +event to him, as all of you know by your own experience. Well, the first +great man who ever wrote me a letter was our guest--Oliver Wendell +Holmes. He was also the first great literary man I ever stole anything +from, and that is how I came to write to him and he to me. When my first +book was new, a friend of mine said, 'The dedication is very neat.' +'Yes,' I said, 'I thought it was.' My friend said, 'I always admired it +even before I saw it in _The Innocents Abroad_.' I naturally said, 'What +do you mean? Where did you ever see it before?' 'Well, I saw it some +years ago, as Doctor Holmes' dedication to his _Songs in Many Keys_.' Of +course my first impulse was to prepare this man's remains for burial, +but upon reflection I said I would reprieve him for a moment or two and +give him a chance to prove his assertion if he could. We stepped into a +bookstore and he did prove it. I had really stolen that dedication +almost word for word. I could not imagine how this curious thing +happened, for I knew one thing for a dead certainty--that a certain +amount of pride always goes along with a teaspoonful of brains, and that +this pride protects a man from deliberately stealing other people's +ideas. That is what a teaspoonful of brains will do for a man, and +admirers had often told me I had nearly a basketful, though they were +rather reserved as to the size of the basket. However, I thought the +thing out and solved the mystery. Two years before I had been laid up a +couple of weeks in the Sandwich Islands, and had read and re-read Doctor +Holmes's poems till my mental reservoir was filled with them to the +brim. The dedication lay on top and handy, so by and by I unconsciously +stole it. Perhaps I unconsciously stole the rest of the volume, too, for +many people have told me that my book was pretty poetical in one way or +another. Well, of course I wrote Doctor Holmes and told him I hadn't +meant to steal, and he wrote back and said in the kindest way that it +was all right and no harm done; and added that he believed we all +unconsciously worked over ideas gathered in reading and hearing, +imagining they were original with ourselves. He stated a truth and did +it in such a pleasant way, and salved over my sore spot so gently and so +healingly that I was rather glad I had committed the crime, for the sake +of the letter. I afterward called on him and told him to make perfectly +free with any ideas of mine that struck him as being good protoplasm +for poetry. He could see by that that there wasn't anything mean about +me; so we got along right from the start. + +"I have met Doctor Holmes many times since; and lately he said--however, +I am wandering away from the one thing which I got on my feet to do, +that is, to make my compliments to you, my fellow-teachers of the great +public, and likewise to say I am right glad to see that Doctor Holmes is +still in his prime and full of generous life; and as age is not +determined by years, but by trouble and by infirmities of mind and body, +I hope it may be a very long time yet before any one can truthfully say, +'He is growing old.'" + +Mr. Howells then introduced Mr. J.W. Harper of New York, who gave in his +remarks a delightful pen portrait of Doctor Holmes, the lyceum lecturer, +which we have elsewhere quoted. Mr. E.C. Stedman followed Mr. Harper +with a brief speech and graceful poem. Mr. T.B. Aldrich spoke of the +"inexhaustible kindness of Doctor Holmes to his younger brothers in +literature," and Mr. William Winter paid his tribute to the honored +guest by "The Chieftain," a poem which he named for the occasion _Hearts +and Holmes_. + +Mr. J.T. Trowbridge then read a poem entitled "Filling an Order," in +which Nature compounds for Miss Columbia "three geniuses A 1.," to grace +her favorite city. She concludes her mixture as follows: + + Says she, "The fault I'm well aware, with genius is the presence + Of altogether too much clay with quite too little essence, + And sluggish atoms that obstruct the spiritual solution; + So now instead of spoiling these by over-much dilution + With their fine elements I'll make a single rare phenomenon, + And of three common geniuses concoct a most uncommon one, + So that the world shall smile to see a soul so universal, + Such poesy and pleasantry, packed in so small a parcel. + + So said, so done; the three in one she wrapped, and stuck the label + _Poet, Professor, Autocrat of Wit's own Breakfast-Table._" + +C.P. Cranch then read a fine sonnet, and Colonel T.W. Higginson followed +with felicitous remarks, a portion of which referring to the father of +Doctor Holmes we have quoted elsewhere in the book. + +Letters of regrets were then read from R. B. Hayes, John Holmes, the +poet's brother, George William Curtis and George Bancroft. + +Among others unable to be present, but who sent regrets, were Rebecca +Harding Davis, Carl Schurz, Edwin P. Whipple, Noah Porter, George +Ripley, Henry Watterson, George H. Boker, Frances Hodgson Burnett, L. +Maria Child, Gail Hamilton, Parke Godwin, Donald G. Mitchell, John J. +Piatt, Richard Grant White, D.C. Gilman, J.W. DeForest, Frederick +Douglass, J.G. Holland, George W. Childs, John Hay and W.W. Story. + +Mr. James T. Fields was obliged to fulfil a lecture engagement soon +after the speaking began, else he would have read the following fairy +tale:-- + +Once upon a time a company of good-natured fairies assembled for a +summer moonlight dance on a green lawn in front of a certain picturesque +old house in Cambridge. They had come out for a midnight lark, and as +their twinkling feet flew about among the musical dewdrops they were +suddenly interrupted by the well-known figure of the village doctor, +which, emerging from the old mansion, rapidly made its way homeward. + +"Another new mortal has alighted on our happy planet," whispered a fairy +gossip to her near companion. + +"Evidently so," replied the tiny creature, smiling good-naturedly on the +doctor's footprints in the grass. + +"That is the minister's house," said another small personage, with a +wink of satisfaction. + +"Perhaps it is a boy," ejaculated Fairy Number One. + +"I _know_ it is a boy!" said Fairy Number Two. I read it in the Doctor's +face when the moon lighted up his countenance as he shut the door so +softly behind him. + +"It _is_ a boy!" responded the Fairy Queen, who always knew everything, +and that settled the question. + +"If that is the case," cried all the fairies at once, "let us try what +magic still remains to us in this busy, bustling New England. Let us +make that child's life a happy and a famous one if we can." + +"Agreed," replied the queen; "and I will lead off with a substantial +gift to the little new-comer. I will crown him with Cheerfulness, a +sunny temperament, brimming over with mirth and happiness." + +"And I will second your Majesty's gift to the little man," said a +sweet-voiced creature, "and tender him the ever-abiding gift of Song. He +shall be a perpetual minstrel to gladden the hearts of all his +fellow-mortals." + +"And I," said another, "will shower upon him the subtle power of Pathos +and Romance, and he shall take unto himself the spell of a sorcerer +whenever he chooses to scatter abroad his wise and beautiful fancies." + +"And I," said a very astute-looking fairy, "will touch his lips with +Persuasion; he shall be a teacher of knowledge, and the divine gift of +eloquence shall be at his command, to uplift and instruct the people." + +"And I," said a quaint, energetic little body, "will endow him with a +passionate desire to help forward the less favored sons and daughters of +earth, who are struggling for recognition and success in their various +avocations." + +"And I," said a motherly-looking, amiable fairy, "will see that in due +time he finds the best among women for his companionship, a helpmeet +indeed, whose life shall be happily bound up in _his_ life." + +"Do give me a chance," cried a beautiful young fairy "and I will answer +for his children, that they may be worthy of their father, and all a +mother's heart may pray that Heaven will vouchsafe to her." + +And after seventy years have rolled away into space, the same fairies +assembled on the same lawn at the same season of the year, to compare +notes with reference to their now famous _protege_. And they declared +that their magic had been thoroughly successful, and that their charms +had all worked without a single flaw. + +Then they took hands, and dancing slowly around the time-honored +mansion, sang this roundelay, framed in the words of their own beloved +poet:-- + + Strength to his hours of manly toil! + Peace to his star-lit dreams! + He loves alike the furrowed soil, + The music-haunted streams! + + Sweet smiles to keep forever bright + The sunshine on his lips, + And faith that sees the ring of light + Round Nature's last eclipse! + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +ORATIONS AND ESSAYS. + + +In _Pages from an old Volume of Life_, one of the latest books published +by Doctor Holmes, we have a collection of most delightful orations and +essays. Some of them we recognize as old, familiar friends. "Bread and +the Newspaper," for instance, recalls vividly those sad, terribly +earnest days when the civil war was rending not only our land but our +hearts. Something to eat, and the daily papers to read--these we must +have, no matter what else we had to give up! + +War taught us, as nothing else could, what we really were. It exalted +our manhood and our womanhood, and showed us our substantial human +qualities for a long time kept out of sight, it may be, by the spirit of +commerce, the love of art, science, or literature. Those who had called +Doctor Holmes "an aristocrat," "a Tory," forgot all their bitter +feelings when he said, "We are finding out that not only 'patriotism is +eloquence,' but that heroism is gentility. All ranks are wonderfully +equalized under the fire of a masked battery. The plain artisan, or the +rough fireman, who faces the lead and iron like a man, is the truest +representative we can show of the heroes of Crecy and Agincourt. And if +one of our fine gentlemen puts off his straw-colored kids and stands by +the other, shoulder to shoulder, or leads him on to the attack, he is as +honorable in our eyes and in theirs as if he were ill-dressed and his +hands were soiled with labor. + +In _The Inevitable Trial_, an oration delivered on the 4th of July, +1863, before the City Authorities of Boston, Doctor Holmes who had been +falsely classed among the enemies of the Anti-slavery movement, spoke as +follows:-- + +"Long before the accents of our famous statesmen resounded in the halls +of the Capitol, long before the _Liberator_ opened its batteries, the +controversy now working itself out by trial of battle was foreseen and +predicted. Washington warned his countrymen of the danger of sectional +divisions, well knowing the line of clearage that ran through the +seemingly solid fabric. Jefferson foreshadowed the judgment to fall upon +the land for its sins against a just God. Andrew Jackson announced a +quarter of a century beforehand that the next pretext of revolution +would be slavery. De Tocqueville recognized with that penetrating +insight which analyzed our institutions and conditions so keenly, that +the Union was to be endangered by slavery not through its interests, but +through the change of character it was bringing about in the people of +the two sections, the same fatal change which George Mason, more than +half a century before, had declared to be the most pernicious effect of +the system, adding the solemn warning, now fearfully justifying itself +in the sight of his descendants, that 'by an inevitable chain of causes +and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities.' + +"The Virginian romancer pictured the far-off scenes of the conflict +which he saw approaching as the prophets of Israel painted the coming +woes of Jerusalem, and the strong iconoclast of Boston announced the +very year when the curtain should rise on the yet unopened drama. + +"The wise men of the past, and the shrewd men of our own time, who +warned us of the calamities in store for our nation, never doubted what +was the cause which was to produce first alienation and finally rupture. +The descendants of the men, 'daily exercised in tyranny,' the 'petty +tyrants,' as their own leading statesmen called them long ago, came at +length to love the institution which their fathers had condemned while +they tolerated. It is the fearful realization of that vision of the poet +where the lost angels snuff up with eager nostrils the sulphurous +emanations of the bottomless abyss,--so have their natures become +changed by long breathing the atmosphere of the realm of darkness." + +In this same grand oration occur also these eloquent words:-- + +"Whether we know it or not, whether we mean it or not, we cannot help +fighting against the system that has proved the source of all those +miseries which the author of the Declaration of Independence trembled to +anticipate. And this ought to make us willing to do and to suffer +cheerfully. There were Holy Wars of old, in which it was glory enough +to die; wars in which the one aim was to rescue the sepulchre of Christ +from the hands of infidels. The sepulchre of Christ is not in Palestine! +He rose from that burial-place more than eighteen hundred years ago. He +is crucified wherever his brothers are slain without cause; he lies +buried wherever man, made in his Maker's image, is entombed in ignorance +lest he should learn the rights which his Divine Master gave him! This +is our Holy War, and we must bring to it all the power with which he +fought against the Almighty before he was cast from heaven." + +In his _Hunt after the Captain_, we realize how near the "dull dead +ghastliness of War" came to the fond father's heart as he sought his +wounded hero through those dreary hospital wards! He knew of what he +spake when appealing so eloquently to his fellow-patriots:-- + +"Sons and daughters of New England, men and women of the North, brothers +and sisters in the bond of the American Union, you have among you the +scarred and wasted soldiers who have shed their blood for your temporal +salvation. They bore your nation's emblems bravely through the fire and +smoke of the battle-field; nay, their own bodies are starred with +bullet-wounds and striped with sabre-cuts, as if to mark them as +belonging to their country until their dust becomes a portion of the +soil which they defended. In every Northern graveyard slumber the +victims of this destroying struggle. Many whom you remember playing as +children amidst the clover blossoms of our Northern fields, sleep under +nameless mounds with strange Southern wild flowers blooming over them. +By those wounds of living heroes, by those graves of fallen martyrs, by +the hopes of your children, and the claims of your children's children +yet unborn, in the name of outraged honor, in the interest of violated +sovereignty, for the life of an imperilled nation, for the sake of men +everywhere, and of our common humanity, for the glory of God and the +advancement of his kingdom on earth, your country calls upon you to +stand by her through good report and through evil report, in triumph and +in defeat, until she emerges from the great war of Western civilization, +Queen of the broad continent, Arbitress in the councils of earth's +emancipated peoples." + +It will be remembered that this heart-stirring oration, _The Inevitable +Trial_, from which the above is quoted, was delivered at one of the most +discouraging periods of the war; when Lee was in Pennsylvania, and just +before the capture of Vicksburg. + +Among the other essays and orations in _Pages from an old Volume of +Life_, we find the _Physiology of Walking_, which contains many +interesting facts concerning the human wheel, with its spokes and +felloes. + +"Walking," says Doctor Holmes, "is a perpetual falling with a perpetual +self-recovery. It is a most complex, violent, and perilous operation, +which we divest of its extreme danger only by continual practice from a +very early period of life. We find how complex it is when we attempt to +analyze it, and we see that we never understood it thoroughly until the +time of the instantaneous photograph. We learn how violent it is, when +we walk against a post or a door in the dark. We discover how dangerous +it is when we slip or trip and come down, perhaps breaking or +dislocating our limbs, or overlook the last step of a flight of stairs, +and discover with what headlong violence we have been hurling ourselves +forward. + +"Two curious facts are easily proved. First, a man is shorter when he is +walking than when at rest. We have found a very simple way of showing +this by having a rod or stick placed horizontally, so as to touch the +top of the head forcibly, as we stand under it. In walking rapidly +beneath it, even if the eyes are shut, the top of the head will not even +graze the rod. The other fact is, that one side of a man always tends to +outwalk the other side, so that no person can walk far in a straight +line, if he is blindfolded. _The Seasons_, and _The Human Body and its +Management_, were originally published in the Atlantic Almanac. _Cinders +from the Ashes_ gives some exceedingly interesting reminiscences. + +Richard Henry Dana, the schoolboy, is described by Doctor Holmes as +ruddy, sturdy, quiet and reserved; and of Margaret Fuller he says, +"Sitting on the girls' benches, conspicuous among the schoolgirls of +unlettered origin, by that look which rarely fails to betray hereditary +and congenital culture, was a young person very nearly of my own age. +She came with the reputation of being 'smart,' as we should have called +it; clever, as we say nowadays. Her air to her schoolmates was marked by +a certain stateliness and distance; as if she had other thoughts than +theirs, and was not of them. She was a great student and a great reader +of what she used to call 'naw-vels;' I remember her so well as she +appeared at school and later, that I regret that she had not been +faithfully given to canvas or marble in the day of her best looks. None +know her aspect who have not seen her living. Margaret, as I remember +her at school and afterwards, was tall, fair complexioned, with a +watery, aquamarine lustre in her light eyes, which she used to make +small, as one does who looks at the sunshine. + +"A remarkable point about her was that long, flexile neck, arching and +undulating in strange, sinuous movements, which one who loved her would +compare to those of a swan, and one who loved her not, to those of the +ophidian who tempted our common mother. Her talk was affluent, +magisterial, _de haut en bas_, some would say euphuistic, but surpassing +the talk of women in breadth and audacity. Her face kindled and +reddened and dilated in every feature as she spoke, and, as I once saw +her in a fine storm of indignation at the supposed ill treatment of a +relative, showed itself capable of something resembling what Milton +calls the Viraginian aspect." + +A composition of Margaret's was one day taken up by the boy Oliver. + +"It is a trite remark," she began. + +Alas! the embryo-poet did not know the meaning of the word trite. + +"How could I ever judge Margaret fairly," he exclaims, "after such a +crushing discovery of her superiority?" + +Of his instructors and schoolmates at Andover, Doctor Holmes has given +us numerous pen portraits. The old Academy building had a dreary look to +the homesick boy, but he soon recovered from his "slightly nostalgic" +state, and found not a few congenial spirits in his new surroundings. + +One fine, rosy-faced boy with whom he had a school discussion upon Mary, +Queen of Scots, and for whom he has always cherished a lasting +friendship, is now the well-known Phinehas Barnes. Another little +fellow, with black hair and very black eyes, studying with head between +his hands, and eyes fastened to his book as if reading a will that made +him heir to a million, was the future professor, Greek scholar and Bible +Commentator, Horatio Balch Hackett. One of the masters was the late Rev. +Samuel Horatio Stearns, "an excellent and lovable man," says Doctor +Holmes, "who looked kindly on me, and for whom I always cherished a +sincere regard." Professor Moses Stuart he describes as "tall, lean, +with strong, bold features, a keen, scholarly, accipitrine nose, thin, +expressive lips, and great solemnity and impressiveness of voice and +manner. His air was Roman, his neck long and bare, like Cicero's, and +his toga,--that is, his broadcloth cloak,--was carried on his arm, +whatever might have been the weather, with such a statue-like, rigid +grace that he might have been turned into marble as he stood, and looked +noble by the side of the antiques of the Vatican." Then, there was +Doctor Porter, an invalid, with the prophetic handkerchief bundling his +throat; and Doctor Woods, who looked his creed decidedly, and had the +firm fibre of a theological athlete. But none of the preceptors, it may +be presumed, was so closely watched as the one to whom a dream had come +that he should drop dead when praying. "More than one boy kept his eye +on him during his public devotions, possessed by the same feeling the +man had who followed Van Amburgh about, with the expectation, let us not +say hope, of seeing the lion bite his head off sooner or later." + +In _Mechanism in Thought and Morals_, we find a deal of psychology as +well as science. + +"It is in the moral world," says Doctor Holmes, "that materialism has +worked the strangest confusion. In various forms, under imposing names +and aspects, it has thrust itself into the moral relations, until one +hardly knows where to look for any first principles without upsetting +everything in searching for them. + +"The moral universe includes nothing but the exercise of choice: all +else is machinery. What we can help and what we cannot help are on two +sides of a line which separates the sphere of human responsibility from +that of the Being who has arranged and controls the order of things. + +"The question of the freedom of the will has been an open one, from the +days of Milton's demons in conclave to the noteworthy essay of Mr. +Hazard, our Rhode Island neighbor. It still hangs suspended between the +seemingly exhaustive strongest motive argument and certain residual +convictions. The sense that we are, to a limited extent, +self-determining; the sense of effort in willing; the sense of +responsibility in view of the future, and the verdict of conscience in +review of the past,--all of these are open to the accusation of fallacy; +but they all leave a certain undischarged balance in most minds. We can +invoke the strong arm of the _Deus in machina_, as Mr. Hazard, and Kant +and others, before him have done. Our will may be a primary initiating +cause or force, as unexplainable, as unreducible, as indecomposable, as +impossible if you choose, but as real to our belief as the _oeternitas +a parte ante_. The divine foreknowledge is no more in the way of +delegated choice than the divine omnipotence is in the way of delegated +power. The Infinite can surely slip the cable of the finite if it choose +so to do." + +With outspoken braveness Doctor Holmes rejects "the mechanical doctrine +which makes me," he says, "the slave of outside influences, whether it +work with the logic of Edwards, or the averages of Buckle; whether it +come in the shape of the Greek's destiny, or the Mahometan's fatalism." + +But he claims, too, the right to eliminate all mechanical ideas which +have crowded into the sphere of intelligent choice between right and +wrong. "The pound of flesh," he declares, "I will grant to Nemesis; but +in the name of human nature, not one drop of blood,--not one drop." + +And this leads us to speak of Doctor Holmes' religious views. He +attended King's Chapel, and is classed among the most liberal-minded of +the Unitarian creed. + +When chairman of the Boston Unitarian Festival, in 1877, he gave the +following list of certain theological beliefs that he has always +delighted to combat. + +"May I," he begins, "without committing any one but myself, enumerate a +few of the stumbling blocks which still stand in the way of some who +have many sympathies with what is called the liberal school of thinkers? + +"The notion of sin as a transferable object. As philanthropy has ridded +us of chattel slavery, so philosophy must rid us of chattel sin and all +its logical consequences. + +"The notion that what we call sin is anything else than inevitable, +unless the Deity had seen fit to give every human being a perfect +nature, and develop it by a perfect education. + +"The oversight of the fact that all moral relations between man and his +Maker are reciprocal, and must meet the approval of man's enlightened +conscience before he can render true and heartfelt homage to the power +that called him into being, and is not the greatest obligation to all +eternity on the side of the greatest wisdom and the greatest power? + +"The notion that the Father of mankind is subject to the absolute +control of a certain malignant entity known under the false name of +justice, or subject to any law such as would have made the father of the +prodigal son meet him with an account-book and pack him off to jail, +instead of welcoming him back and treating him to the fatted calf. + +"The notion that useless suffering is in any sense a satisfaction for +sin, and not simply an evil added to a previous one." + +In reviewing the life and the writings of Jonathan Edwards, Doctor +Holmes with his usual fairness and kindly spirit toward all mankind, +declares that the spiritual nature seems to be a natural endowment, like +a musical ear. + +"Those who have no ear for music must be very careful how they speak +about that mysterious world of thrilling vibrations which are idle +noises to them. And so the true saint can be appreciated only by saintly +natures. Yet the least spiritual man can hardly read the remarkable +'Resolutions' of Edwards without a reverence akin to awe for his purity +and elevation. His beliefs and his conduct we need not hesitate to +handle freely. The spiritual nature is no safeguard against error of +doctrine or practice; indeed it may be doubted whether a majority of all +the spiritual natures in the world would be found in Christian +countries. Edwards' system seems, in the light of to-day, to the last +degree barbaric, mechanical, materialistic, pessimistic. If he had lived +a hundred years later, and breathed the air of freedom, he could not +have written with such old-world barbarism as we find in his volcanic +sermons.... + +"There is no sufficient reason for attacking the motives of a man so +saintly in life, so holy in aspirations, so patient, so meek, so +laborious, so thoroughly in earnest in the work to which his life was +given. But after long smothering in the sulphurous atmosphere of his +thought, one cannot help asking, is this,--or anything like this,--the +accepted belief of any considerable part of Protestantism? If so, we +must say with Bacon, 'It were better to have no opinion of God than such +an opinion as is unworthy of him.'" + +In speaking of the old reproach against physicians, that where there +were three of them together there were two atheists, Doctor Holmes +pertinently remarks: "There is, undoubtedly, a strong tendency in the +pursuits of the medical profession to produce disbelief in that figment +of tradition and diseased human imagination which has been installed in +the seat of divinity by the priesthood of cruel and ignorant ages. It is +impossible, or, at least, very difficult, for a physician who has seen +the perpetual efforts of Nature--whose diary is the book he reads +oftenest--to heal wounds, to expel poisons, to do the best that can be +done under the given conditions,--it is very difficult for him to +believe in a world where wounds cannot heal, where opiates cannot give a +respite from pain, where sleep never comes with its sweet oblivion of +suffering, where the art of torture is the only faculty which remains to +the children of that same Father who cares for the falling sparrow. The +Deity has often been pictured as Moloch, and the physician has, no +doubt, frequently repudiated him as a monstrosity. + +"On the other hand, the physician has often been renounced for piety as +well as for his peculiarly professional virtue of charity, led upward by +what he sees the source of all the daily marvels wrought before his own +eyes. So it was that Galen gave utterance to that song of praise which +the sweet singer of Israel need not have been ashamed of; and if this +heathen could be lifted into such a strain of devotion, we need not be +surprised to find so many devout Christian worshippers among the crowd +of medical 'atheists.'" + +In coming back again as a regular contributor to the magazine which +Doctor Holmes was so prominently identified with a quarter of a century +ago, he indulges in a few entertaining reflections. "When I sat down to +write the first paper I sent to the _Atlantic Monthly_," he says, "I +felt somewhat as a maiden of more than mature effloresence may be +supposed to feel as she passes down the broad aisle in her bridal veil +and wealth of orange blossoms. I had written little of late years. I was +at that time older than Goldsmith was when he died, and Goldsmith, as +Doctor Johnson says, was a plant that flowered late. A new generation +had grown up since I had written the verses by which, if remembered at +all, I was best known. I honestly feared that I might prove the +superfluous veteran who has no business behind the footlights. I can as +honestly say that it turned out otherwise. I was most kindly welcomed, +and now I am looking back on that far-off time as the period--I will not +say of youth--for I was close upon the five-barred gate of the +_cinquantaine_, though I had not yet taken the leap--but of marrowy and +vigorous manhood. Those were the days of unaided vision, of acute +hearing, of alert movements, of feelings almost boyish in their +vivacity. It is a long cry from the end of a second quarter of a century +in a man's life to the end of the third quarter. His companions have +fallen all around him, and he finds himself in a newly peopled world. +His mental furnishing looks old-fashioned and faded to the generation +which is crowding about him with its new patterns and fresh colors. +Shall he throw open his apartments to visitors, or is it not wiser to +live on his memories in a decorous privacy, and not risk himself before +the keen young eyes and relentless judgment of the new-comers, who have +grown up in strength and self-reliance while he has been losing force +and confidence. If that feeling came over me a quarter of a century ago, +it is not strange that it comes back upon me now. Having laid down the +burden, which for more than thirty-five years I have carried cheerfully, +I might naturally seek the quiet of my chimney corner, and purr away the +twilight of my life, unheard beyond the circle of my own fireplace. But +when I see what my living contemporaries are doing, I am shamed out of +absolute inertness and silence. The men of my birth year are so +painfully industrious at this very time that one of the same date hardly +dares to be idle. I look across the Atlantic and see Mr. Gladstone, +only four months younger than myself, and standing erect with patriots' +grievances on one shoulder, and Pharaoh's pyramids on the other--an +Atlas whose intervals of repose are paroxysms of learned labor; I listen +to Tennyson, another birth of the same year, filling the air with melody +long after the singing months of life are over; I come nearer home, and +here is my very dear friend and college classmate, so certain to be in +every good movement with voice or pen, or both, that, where two or three +are gathered together for useful ends, if James Freeman Clarke is not +with them, it is because he is busy with a book or a discourse meant for +a larger audience; I glance at the placards on the blank walls that I am +passing, and there I see the colossal head of Barnum, the untiring, +inexhaustible, insuperable, ever-triumphant and jubilant Barnum, who +came to his atmospheric life less than a year before I began to breathe +the fatal mixture, and still wages his Titanic battle with his own past +superlatives. How can one dare to sit down inactive with such examples +before him? One must do something, were it nothing more profitable than +the work of that dear old Penelope, of almost ninety years, whom I so +well remember hemming over and over again the same piece of linen, her +attendant scissors removing each day's work at evening; herself meantime +being kindly nursed in the illusion that she was still the useful martyr +of the household." + +An author, in Doctor Holmes' opinion, should know that the very +characteristics which make him the object of admiration to many, and +endear him to some among them, will render him an object of dislike to a +certain number of individuals of equal, it may be of superior, +intelligence. The converse of all this is very true. + +"There will be individuals--they may be few, they may be many--who will +so instantly recognize, so eagerly accept, so warmly adopt, even so +devoutly idolize, the writer in question, that self-love itself, dulled +as its palate is by the hot spices of praise, draws back overcome by the +burning stimulants of adoration. I was told, not long since, by one of +our most justly admired authoresses, that a correspondent wrote to her +that she had read one of her stories fourteen times in succession." + +There is a deep meaning in these elective affinities. Each personality +is more or less completely the complement of some other. Doctor Holmes +thinks it should never be forgotten by the critic that "every grade of +mental development demands a literature of its own; a little above its +level, that it may be lifted to a higher grade, but not too much above +it, so that it requires too long a stride--a stairway, not a steep wall +to climb. The true critic is not the sharp _captator verborum_; not the +brisk epigrammatist, showing off his own cleverness, always trying to +outflank the author against whom he has arrayed his wits and his +learning. He is a man who knows the real wants of the reading world, and +can prize at their just value the writings which meet those wants." + +There is also another side of the picture. Doctor Holmes does not forget +the trials of authorship. The writer who attains a certain measure of +popularity "will be startled to find himself the object of an +embarrassing devotion, and almost appropriation, by some of his parish +of readers. He will blush at his lonely desk, as he reads the +extravagances of expression which pour over him like the oil which ran +down upon the beard of Aaron, and even down to the skirts of his +garments--an extreme unction which seems hardly desirable. We ought to +have his photograph as he reads one of those frequent missives, oftenest +traced, we may guess, in the delicate, slanting hand which betrays the +slender fingers of the sympathetic sisterhood. + +"A slight sense of the ridiculous at being made so much of qualifies the +placid tolerance with which the rhymester or the essayist sees himself +preferred to the great masters in prose and verse, and reads his name +glowing in a halo of epithets which might belong to Bacon or Milton. We +need not grudge him such pleasure as he may derive from the illusion of +a momentary revery, in which he dreams of himself as clad in royal robes +and exalted among the immortals. The next post will probably bring him +some slip from a newspaper or critical journal, which will strip him of +his regalia, as Thackeray, in one of his illustrations, has disrobed and +denuded the grand monarque. He saw himself but a moment ago a colossal +figure in a drapery of rhetorical purple, ample enough for an Emperor, +as Bernini would clothe him. The image breaker has passed by, belittling +him by comparison, jostling him off his pedestal, levelling his most +prominent feature, or even breaking a whole ink bottle against him as +the indignant moralist did on the figure in the vestibule of the opera +house--the shortest and most effective satire that ever came from that +fountain of approval and commendation. Such are some of the varied +experiences of authorship." + +Out of his literary career as a successful writer, Doctor Holmes was +able to formulate many rules for the self-protection of authors, which +were adopted unanimously at an authors' association which was held in +Washington last September, and the remainder of his "talk" is devoted to +extracts from their proceedings. Appended are a few of them: + +Of visits of strangers to authors. These are not always distinguishable +from each other, and may justly be considered together. The stranger +should send up his card if he has one; if he has none, he should, if +admitted, at once announce himself and his object, without +circumlocution, as thus; "My name is M. or N., from X. or Y. I wish to +see and take the hand of a writer whom I have long admired for his," +etc., etc. Here the author should extend his hand, and reply in +substance as follows: "I am pleased to see you, my dear sir, and very +glad that anything I have written has been a source of pleasure or +profit to you." The visitor has now had what he says he came for, and, +after making a brief polite acknowledgment, should retire, unless, for +special reasons, he is urged to stay longer. + +Of autograph-seekers. The increase in the number of applicants for +autographs is so great that it has become necessary to adopt positive +regulations to protect the author from the exorbitant claims of this +class of virtuosos. The following propositions were adopted without +discussion: + +No author is under any obligation to answer any letter from an unknown +person applying for his autograph. If he sees fit to do so, it is a +gratuitous concession on his part. + +No stranger should ask for more than one autograph. + +No stranger should request an author to copy a poem, or even a verse. He +should remember that he is one of many thousands; that one thousand +fleas are worse than one hornet, and that a mob of mosquitoes will draw +more blood than a single horse leech. + +Every correspondent applying for an autograph should send a card or +blank paper, in a stamped envelope, directed to himself (or herself). If +he will not take the trouble to attend to all this, which he can just as +well as to make the author do it, he must not expect the author to make +good his deficiencies. [Accepted by acclamation]. + +Sending a stamp does not constitute a claim on an author for answer. +[Received with loud applause]. The stamp may be retained by the author, +or, what is better, devoted to the use of some appropriate charity, as +for instance, the asylum for idiots and feeble-minded persons. + +Albums. An album of decent external aspect may, without impropriety, be +offered to an author, with the request that he will write his name +therein. It is not proper, as a general rule, to ask for anything more +than the name. The author may, of course, add a quotation from his +writings, or a sentiment, if so disposed; but this must be considered as +a work of supererogation, and an exceptional manifestation of courtesy. + +Bed-quilt autographs. It should be a source of gratification to an +author to contribute to the soundness of his reader's slumbers, if he +cannot keep him awake by his writings. He should therefore cheerfully +inscribe his name on the scrap of satin or other stuff (provided always +that it be sent him in a stamped and directed envelope), that it may +take its place in the patchwork mosaic for which it is intended. + +Letters of admiration. These may be accepted as genuine, unless they +contain specimens of the writer's own composition, upon which a critical +opinion is requested, in which case they are to be regarded in the same +light as medicated sweetmeats, namely, as meaning more than their looks +imply. Genuine letters of admiration, being usually considered by the +recipient as proofs of good taste and sound judgment on the part of his +unknown correspondent, may be safely left to his decision as to whether +they shall be answered or not. + +The author of _Elsie Venner_ thus excuses himself for opening the budget +of the grievances of authors. "In obtaining and giving to the public +this abstract of the proceedings of the association, I have been +impelled by the same feelings of humanity which led me to join the +Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, believing that the +sufferings of authors are as much entitled to sympathy and relief as +those of the brute creation." + +The birthday of the Emperor of Japan is the principal holiday of the +year among his subjects, and as Saturday, November 3d, 1883, was the +thirty-third anniversary of the birthday of Mutsuhito Tenno, the +reigning Emperor, it was appropriately celebrated by the Japanese +gentlemen in Boston. The Japanese department at the Foreign Exhibition +was closed, and in the evening a banquet was given at the Parker House, +about sixty gentlemen assembling in response to the invitation of Mr. +S.R. Takahashi, chief of the imperial Japanese commission to the Boston +Foreign Exhibition. The entrance to the banquet rooms was decorated with +the Japanese and American colors, and at the head of the hall were +portraits of the Emperor and Empress of Japan, with the colors of that +country between them. The occasion was a very enjoyable one, and was +especially interesting as it was a departure from the custom at ordinary +dinners here, several gentlemen dividing with the presiding officer the +duty of proposing the toasts. One of the most delightful orations of the +evening given by Oliver Wendell Holmes, was as follows: + +"I have heard of 'English' as she is spoke," being taught in ten +lessons, but I never heard that a nation's literature could have justice +done to it in ten minutes. An ancestress of mine--one of my thirty-two +great-great-great-great-grandmothers--a noted poetess in her day, thus +addressed her little brood of children: + + Alas! my birds, you wisdom want + Of perils you are ignorant; + Ofttimes in grass, on trees, in flight, + Sore accidents on you may light; + Oh, to your safety have an eye, + So happy may you live and die. + +"In accepting your kind invitation, I confess that I was ignorant of my +perils. I did not follow the counsel of my grandmamma with the four g's +in having an eye to my own safety. For I fear that if I had dreamed of +being called on to answer for American literature, one of those +'previous engagements,' which crop out so opportunely, would have stood +between me and my present trying position. I had meant, if called upon, +to say a few words about a Japanese youth who studied law in Boston, a +very cultivated and singularly charming young person, who died not very +long after his return to his native country. Some of you may remember +young Enouie--I am not sure that I spell it rightly, and I know that I +cannot pronounce it properly; for from his own lips it was as soft as an +angel's whisper. His intelligence, his delicate breeding, the loveliness +of his character, captivated all who knew him. We loved him, and we +mourned for him as if he had been a child of our own soil. But of him I +must say no more. + +"In speaking of American literature we naturally think first of our +historical efforts. We see that books hold but a small part of American +history. The axe and the ploughshare are the two pens with which our New +World annals have been principally written, with schoolhouses as notes +of interrogation, and steeples as exclamation points of pious adoration +and gratitude. Within half a century the railroad has ruled our broad +page all over, and rewritten the story, with States for new chapters and +cities for paragraphs. This is the kind of history which he who runs may +read, and he must run fast and far if he means to read any considerable +part of it. + +"But we must not forget our political history, perishable in great +measure as to its form, long enduring in its results. This literature is +the index of our progress--in both directions--forward and the contrary. +From the days of Washington and Franklin to the times still fresh in our +memory, from the Declaration of Independence to the proclamation which +enfranchised the colored race, our political literature, with all its +terrible blunders and short-comings, has been, after all, the fairest +expression the world has yet seen of what a free people and a free press +have to say and to show for themselves. + +"But besides 'Congressional Documents' and the like, the terror of +librarians and the delight of paper-makers, we do a good deal of other +printing. We make some books, a good many books, a great many books, so +many that the hyperbole at the end of St. John's gospel would hardly be +an extravagance in speaking of them. And among these are a number of +histories which hold an honorable place on the shelves of all the great +libraries of Christendom. Why should I enumerate them? For history is a +Boston specialty. From the days of Prescott and Ticknor to those of +Motley and Parkman, we have always had an historian or two on hand, as +they used always to have a lion or two in the Tower of London. + +"Next to the historians naturally come the story-tellers and romancers. +The essential difference is--I would not apply the rough side of the +remark to historians like the best of our own, but it is very often the +fact--that history tells lies about real persons and fiction tells truth +through the mouths of unreal ones. England threw open the side doors of +its library to Irving. The continent flung wide its folding doors to +Cooper. Laplace was once asked who was the greatest mathematician of +Germany. 'Pfaff is the greatest,' he answered. 'I thought Gauss was,' +the questioner said. 'You asked me,' rejoined Laplace, 'who was the +greatest mathematician of Germany. Gauss was the greatest mathematician +of Europe.' So, I suppose we might say _The Pilot_ is or was the most +popular book ever written in America, but _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ is the +most popular story ever published in the world. And if _The Heart of Mid +Lothian_ added a new glory of romance to the traditions of Auld Reekie, +_The Scarlet Letter_ did as much for the memories of our own New +England. I need not speak of the living writers, some of whom are among +us, who have changed the old scornful question into 'Who _does not_ read +an American book?' + +"As to poetical literature, I must confess that, except a line or two of +Philip Freneau's, I know little worthy of special remembrance before the +beginning of this century, always excepting, as in duty bound, the +verses of my manifold grandmother. The conditions of the country were +unfavorable to the poetical habit of mind. The voice that broke the +silence was that of Bryant, a clear and smooth baritone, if I may borrow +a musical term, with a gamut of a few notes of a grave and manly +quality. Then came Longfellow, the poet of the fireside, of the library, +of all gentle souls and cultivated tastes, whose Muse breathed a soft +contralto that was melody itself, and Emerson, with notes that reached +an octave higher than any American poet--a singer whose + + Voice fell like a falling star. + +Like that of the bird addressed by Wordsworth-- + + At once far off and near, + +it was a + + Cry + Which made [us] look a thousand ways, + In bush and tree and sky; + +for whether it soared from the earth or dropped from heaven, it was next +to impossible to divine. + +"I will not speak of the living poets of the old or the new generation. +It belongs to the young to give the heartiest welcome to the new brood +of singers. Samuel Rogers said that when he heard a new book praised, he +read an old one. Mr. Emerson, in one of his later essays, advises us +never to read a book that is not a year old. This I will say, that every +month shows us in the magazines, and even in the newspapers, verse that +would have made a reputation in the early days of the _North American +Review_, but which attracts little more notice than a breaking bubble. + +"A great improvement is noticeable in the character of criticism, which +is leaving the hands of the 'general utility' writers and passing into +the hands of experts. The true critic is the last product of literary +civilization. It costs as great an effort to humanize the being known by +that name as it does to make a good church-member of a scalping savage. +Criticism is a noble function, but only so in noble hands. We have just +welcomed Mr. Arnold as its worthy English representative; we could not +secure our creditors more handsomely than we have done by leaving Mr. +Lowell in pledge for our visitor's safe return. + +"One more hopeful mark of literary progress is seen in our cyclopaedias, +our periodicals, our newspapers, and I may add our indexes. I would +commend to the attention of our enlightened friends such works as Mr. +Pool's great _Index to Periodical Literature_, Mr. Alibone's _Dictionary +of Authors_, and the _Index Medicus_, now publishing at Washington--a +wonderful achievement of organized industry, still carried on under the +superintendence of Doctor Billings, and well deserving examination by +all scholars, whatever their calling. + +"We have learned so much from our Japanese friends, that we should be +thankful to pay them back something in return. With art such as they +have, they must also have a literature showing the same originality, +grace, facility and simple effectiveness. Let us hope they will carry +away something of our intellectual products, as well as those good +wishes which follow them wherever they show their beautiful works of art +and their pleasant and always welcome faces." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +THE HOME CIRCLE. + + +Doctor Holmes has two sons and one daughter. Oliver Wendell Holmes +Junior, his eldest child, was born in 1841. When a young lad, he +attended the school of Mr. E.S. Dixwell, in Boston, and it was here that +he met his future wife, Miss Fannie Dixwell. In his graduating year at +Harvard College (1861), he joined the Fourth Battalion of Infantry, +commanded by Major Thomas G. Stevenson. The company was at that time +stationed at Fort Independence, Boston Harbor, and it was there that +young Holmes wrote his poem for Class Day. He served three years in the +war, and was wounded first in the breast at Ball's Bluff, and then in +the neck at the Battle of Antietam. + +In Doctor Holmes' _Hunt after the Captain_, we have not only a vivid +picture of war times, but a most touching revelation of fatherly love +and solicitude. The young captain was wounded yet again at Sharpsburgh, +and was afterwards brevetted as Lieutenant-Colonel. During General +Grant's campaign of 1864 he served as aide-de-camp to Brigadier-General +H.G. Wright. After the war he entered the Harvard Law School, and in +1866 received the degree of LL. B. Since then he has practised law in +Boston, and has written many valuable articles upon legal subjects. + +His edition of Kent's _Commentaries on American Law_, to which he +devoted three years of careful labor, has received the highest +encomiums, and his volume on _The Common Law_ forms an indispensable +part of every law student's library. + +In 1882, he was appointed Professor in the Harvard Law School, and a few +weeks later was elected Justice in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. + +At the Lawyers' Banquet, given January 30th, 1883, at the Hotel Vendome, +Honorable William G. Russell thus introduced the father of the +newly-appointed judge: + +"We come now to a many-sided subject, and I know not on which side to +attack him with any hope of capturing him. I might hail him as our poet, +for he was born a poet; they are all born so. If he didn't lisp in +numbers, it was because he spoke plainly at a very early age. I might +hail him as physician, and a long and well-spent life in that profession +would justify it; but I don't believe it will ever be known whether he +has cured more cases of dyspepsia and blues by his poems or his powders +and his pills. I might hail him as professor, and as professor +_emeritus_ he has added a new wreath to his brow. I might hail him as +Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, for there he had a long reign. He will +defend himself with courage, for he never showed the white feather but +once, and that is, that he does not dare to be as funny as he can. A +tough subject, surely, and I must try him on the tender side, the +paternal. I give you the father who went in search of a captain, and, +finding him, presents to us now his son, the judge." + +On rising, Doctor Holmes held up a sheet of paper, and said, "You see +before you" (referring to the paper) "all that you have to fear or +hope. For thirty-five years I have taught anatomy. I have often heard of +the roots of the tongue, but I never found them. The danger of a tongue +let loose you have had opportunity to know before, but the danger of a +scrap of paper like this is so trivial that I hardly need to apologize +for it." + + His Honor's father yet remains, + His proud paternal posture firm in; + But, while his right he still maintains + To wield the household rod and reins, + He bows before the filial ermine. + + What curious tales has life in store, + With all its must-bes and its may-bes! + The sage of eighty years and more + Once crept a nursling on the floor,-- + Kings, conquerors, judges, all were babies. + + The fearless soldier, who has faced + The serried bayonets' gleam appalling, + For nothing save a pin misplaced + The peaceful nursery has disgraced + With hours of unheroic bawling. + + The mighty monarch, whose renown + Fills up the stately page historic, + Has howled to waken half the town, + And finished off by gulping down + His castor oil or paregoric. + + The justice, who, in gown and cap, + Condemns a wretch to strangulation, + Has scratched his nurse and spilled his pap, + And sprawled across his mother's lap + For wholesome law's administration. + + Ah, life has many a reef to shun + Before in port we drop our anchor, + But when its course is nobly run + Look aft! for there the work was done. + Life owes its headway to the spanker! + + Yon seat of justice well might awe + The fairest manhood's half-blown summer; + There Parsons scourged the laggard law, + There reigned and ruled majestic Shaw,-- + What ghosts to hail the last new-comer! + + One cause of fear I faintly name,-- + The dread lest duty's dereliction + Shall give so rarely cause for blame + Our guileless voters will exclaim, + "No need of human jurisdiction!" + + What keeps the doctor's trade alive? + Bad air, bad water; more's the pity! + But lawyers walk where doctors drive, + And starve in streets where surgeons thrive, + Our Boston is so pure a city. + + What call for judge or court, indeed, + When righteousness prevails so through it + Our virtuous car-conductors need + Only a card whereon they read + "Do right; it's naughty not to do it!" + + The whirligig of time goes round, + And changes all things but affection; + One blessed comfort may be found + In heaven's broad statute which has bound + Each household to its head's protection. + + If e'er aggrieved, attacked, accused, + A sire may claim a son's devotion + To shield his innocence abused, + As old Anchises freely used + His offspring's legs for locomotion. + + You smile. You did not come to weep, + Nor I my weakness to be showing; + And these gay stanzas, slight and cheap, + Have served their simple use,--to keep + A father's eyes from overflowing. + +Doctor Holmes' daughter, who bore her mother's name, Amelia Jackson, +married the late John Turner Sargent. In her _Sketches and Reminiscences +of the Radical Club_, we have some pithy remarks of Doctor Holmes'. To +speak without premeditation, he says, on a carefully written essay, made +him feel as he should if, at a chemical lecture, somebody should pass +around a precipitate, and when the mixture had become turbid should +request him to give his opinion concerning it. The fallacies continually +rising in such a discussion from the want of a proper understanding of +terms, always made him feel as if quicksilver had been substituted for +the ordinary silver of speech. The only true way to criticize such an +essay was to take it home, slowly assimilate it, and not talk about it +until it had become a part of one's self. + +Edward, the youngest son of Doctor Holmes, had chosen the same +profession as his brother. + +It was at Mrs. Sargent's home, at Beverly Farms, that Doctor Holmes +passed most of his summers. The pretty, cream-colored house, with its +broad veranda in front, can be easily seen from the station; but to +appreciate the charms of this pleasant country home, one should catch a +glimpse of the cosey interior. + +Robert Rantoul, John T. Morse and Henry Lee were neighbors of Doctor +Holmes at Beverly Farms, and Lucy Larcom's home was not far distant. + +After eighteen years' residence at No. 8 Montgomery Place, Doctor Holmes +moved to 164 Charles street, where he lived about twelve years. His home +in Boston was at No. 296 Beacon street. + +"We die out of houses," says the poet, "just as we die out of our +bodies.... The body has been called the house we live in; the house is +quite as much the body we live in.... The soul of a man has a series of +concentric envelopes around it, like the core of an onion, or the +innermost of a nest of boxes. First, he has his natural garment of flesh +and blood. Then his artificial integuments, with their true skin of +solid stuffs, their cuticle of lighter tissues, and their +variously-tinted pigments. Thirdly, his domicile, be it a single chamber +or a stately mansion. And then the whole visible world, in which Time +buttons him up as in a loose, outside wrapper.... Our houses shape +themselves palpably on our inner and outer nature. See a householder +breaking up and you will be sure of it. There is a shell fish which +builds all manner of smaller shells into the walls of its own. A house +is never a home until we have crusted it with the spoils of a hundred +lives besides those of our own past. See what these are and you can tell +what the occupant is." + +The poet's home on Beacon street well illustrates the above extract. I +shall not soon forget the charming picture that greeted me, one gray +winter day, as I was ushered into the poet's cheerful study. A blazing +wood fire was crackling on the hearth, and the ruddy glow was reflected +now on the stately features of "Dorothy Q.," now on the Copley portrait +of old Doctor Cooper, and now with a peculiar Rembrandt effect upon the +low rows of books, the orderly desk, and the kind, cordial face of the +poet himself. An "Emerson Calendar" was hanging over the mantel, and +after calling my attention to the excellent picture upon it of the old +home at Concord, Doctor Holmes began to talk of his brother poet in +terms of warmest affection. + +[Illustration: Hand written Poem signed by Oliver Wendell Holmes] + +As he afterwards remarked at the Nineteenth Century Club, the difference +between Emerson's poetry and that of others with whom he might naturally +be compared, was that of algebra and arithmetic. The fascination of his +poems was in their spiritual depth and sincerity and their all pervading +symbolism. Emerson's writings in prose and verse were worthy of all +honor and admiration, but his manhood was the noblest of all his high +endowments. A bigot here and there might have avoided meeting him, but +if He who knew what was in men had wandered from door to door in New +England, as of old in Palestine, one of the thresholds which "those +blessed feet" would have crossed would have been that of the lovely and +quiet home of Emerson. + +The view from the broad bay window in Doctor Holmes' study, recalled his +own description: + + Through my north window, in the wintry weather, + My airy oriel on the river shore, + I watch the sea-fowl as they flock together, + Where late the boatman flashed his dripping oar. + + The gull, high floating, like a sloop unladen, + Lets the loose water waft him as it will; + The duck, round-breasted as a rustic maiden, + Paddles and plunges, busy, busy still. + +A microscopical apparatus placed under another window in the study, +reminds the visitor of the "man of science," while the books-- + + A mingled race, the wreck of chance and time + That talk all tongues and breathe of every clime-- + +speak in eloquent numbers of the "man of letters." + +There is the Plato on the lower shelf, with the inscription, Ezra +Stiles, 1766, to which Doctor Holmes alludes in his tribute to the New +England clergy. Here is the hand-lens imported by the Reverend John +Prince, of Salem, and just before us, in the "unpretending row of local +historians," is Jeremy Belknap's _History of New Hampshire_, "in the +pages of which," says Doctor Holmes, "may be found a chapter contributed +in part by the most remarkable man in many respects, among all the older +clergymen,--preacher, lawyer, physician, astronomer, botanist, +entomologist, explorer, colonist, legislator in State and national +governments, and only not seated on the bench of the Supreme Court of a +Territory because he declined the office when Washington offered it to +him. This manifold individual," adds Doctor Holmes, "was the minister of +Hamilton, a pleasant little town in Essex County, Massachusetts, the +Reverend Manasseh Cutler." + +[Illustration: DR. HOLMES' LIBRARY, BEACON ST.] + +Here is the _Aetius_ found one never-to-be-forgotten rainy day, in that +dingy bookshop in Lyons, and here the vellum-bound _Tulpius_, "my only +reading," says Doctor Holmes, "when imprisoned in quarantine at +Marseilles, so that the two hundred and twenty-eight cases he has +recorded are, many of them, to this day still fresh in my memory." +Here, too, is the _Schenckius_,--"the folio filled with _casus +rariores_, which had strayed in among the rubbish of the bookstall on +the boulevard--and here the noble old _Vesalius_, with its grand +frontispiece not unworthy of Titian, and the fine old _Ambroise Parie_, +long waited for even in Paris and long ago, and the colossal Spigelius, +with his eviscerated beauties, and Dutch Bidloo with its miracles of +fine engraving and bad dissection, and Italian Mascagni, the despair of +all would-be imitators, and pre-Adamite John de Ketam, and antediluvian +_Berengarius Carpensis_," and many other rare volumes, dear to the heart +of every bibliophile. + +Glancing again from the window, I catch a glimpse of the West Boston +Bridge, and recall the poet's description of the "crunching of ice at +the edges of the river as the tide rises and falls, the little cluster +of tent-like screens on the frozen desert, the excitement of watching +the springy hoops, the mystery of drawing up life from silent, unseen +depths." With his opera glass he watches the boys and men, black and +white, fishing over the rails of the bridge "as hopefully as if the +river were full of salmon." At certain seasons, he observes, there will +now and then be captured a youthful and inexperienced codfish, always, +however, of quite trivial dimensions. The fame of the exploit has no +sooner gone abroad than the enthusiasts of the art come flocking down to +the river and cast their lines in side by side, until they look like a +row of harp-strings for number. "That a codfish is once in a while +caught," says Doctor Holmes, "I have asserted to be a fact; but I have +often watched the anglers, and do not remember ever seeing one drawn +from the water, or even any unequivocal symptom of a bite. The spring +sculpin and the flabby, muddy flounder are the common rewards of the +angler's toil. + +The silhouette figures on the white background enliven the winter +landscape, but now the blazing log on the hearthstone rolls over and the +whole study is aglow with light! Truly "winter _is_ a cheerful season to +people who have open fireplaces;" and who will not agree with our +poet-philosopher when he says, "A house without these is like a face +without eyes, and that never smiles. I have seen respectability and +amiability grouped over the air-tight stove; I have seen virtue and +intelligence hovering over the register; but I have never seen true +happiness in a family circle where the faces were not illuminated by the +blaze of an open fireplace." + +A well-known journalist writes as follows of Doctor Holmes "at home." + +"All who pay their respects to the distinguished Autocrat will find the +genial, merry gentleman whose form and kindly greeting all admirers have +anticipated while reading his sparkling poems. He is the perfect essence +of wit and hospitality--courteous, amiable and entertaining to a degree +which is more easily remembered than imparted or described. If the +caller expects to find blue-blood snobbishness at 296 Beacon street, he +will be disappointed. It is one of the most elegant and charming +residences on that broad and fashionable thoroughfare, but far less +pretentious, both inwardly and outwardly, than many of the others. For +an uninterrupted period of forty-seven years, Doctor Holmes has lived in +Boston, and for the last dozen years he has occupied his present +residence on Beacon street. + +"The chief point of attraction in the present residence--for the +visitor as well as the host--is the magnificent and spacious library, +which may be more aptly termed the Autocrat's workshop. It is up one +flight, and seemingly occupies the entire rear half of the whole +building on this floor. It is a very inviting room in every respect, and +from the spacious windows overlooking the broad expanse of the Charles +River, there can be had an extensive view of the surrounding suburbs in +the northerly, eastern and western directions. On a clear day there can +be more or less distinctly described the cities and towns of Cambridge, +Arlington, Medford, Somerville, Malden, Revere, Everett, Chelsea, +Charlestown and East Boston. Even in the picture can be recognized the +lofty tower of the Harvard Memorial Hall, which is but a few steps from +the doctor's birthplace and first home. Arthur Gilman, in his admirable +pen and pencil sketches of the homes of the American poets, makes a +happy and appropriate allusion to the Autocrat's library. 'The ancient +Hebrew,' he says, 'always had a window open toward Jerusalem, the city +about which his most cherished hopes and memories clustered, and this +window gives its owner the pleasure of looking straight to the place of +his birth, and thus of freshening all the happy memories of a successful +life.' + +"In renewing his old-time acquaintance with the _Atlantic_ family +circle, the Autocrat recognized the modern invention of the journalistic +interviewer, and submitted some plans for his regulation, to be +considered by the various local governments. His idea is that the +interviewer is a product of our civilization, one who does for the +living what the undertaker does for the dead, taking such liberties as +he chooses with the subject of his mental and conversational +manipulations, whom he is to arrange for public inspection. 'The +interview system has its legitimate use,' says Doctor Holmes, 'and is +often a convenience to politicians, and may even gratify the vanity and +serve the interests of an author.' He very properly believes, however, +that in its abuse it is an infringement of the liberty of the private +citizen to be ranked with the edicts of the council of ten, the decrees +of the star chamber, the _lettres de cachet_, and the visits of the +Inquisition. The interviewer, if excluded, becomes an enemy, and has the +columns of a newspaper at his service in which to revenge himself. If +admitted, the interviewed is at the mercy of the interviewer's memory, +if he is the best meaning of men; of his accuracy, if he is careless; of +his malevolence, if he is ill-disposed; of his prejudices, if he has +any, and of his sense of propriety, at any rate. + +"Doctor Holmes humorously suggests the following restrictions: 'A +licensed corps of interviewers, to be appointed by the municipal +authorities, each interviewer to wear, in a conspicuous position, a +number and a badge, for which the following emblems and inscriptions are +suggested: Zephyrus, with his lips at the ear of Boreas, who holds a +speaking trumpet, signifying that what is said by the interviewed in a +whisper will be shouted to the world by the interviewer through that +brazen instrument. For mottoes, either of the following: _Faenum halct in +cornu_; _Hunc tu Romane caveto_. No person to be admitted to the corps +of interviewers without a strict preliminary examination. The candidate +to be proved free from color blindness and amblyopia, ocular and mental +strabismus, double refraction of memory, kleptomania, mendacity of more +than average dimensions, and tendency to alcholic endosmosis. His moral +and religious character to be vouched for by three orthodox clergymen of +the same belief, and as many deacons who agree with them and each other. +All reports to be submitted to the interviewed, and the proofs thereof +to be corrected and sanctioned by him before being given to the public. +Until the above provisions are carried out no record of an alleged +interview to be considered as anything more than the untrustworthy +gossip of an irresponsible impersonality.'" + +"What business have young scribblers to send me their verses and ask my +opinion of the stuff?" said Doctor Holmes one day, annoyed by the +officiousness of certain would-be aspirants to literary fame. "They have +no more right to ask than they have to stop me on the street, run out +their tongues, and ask what the matter is with their stomachs, and what +they shall take as a remedy." At another time he made the remark: +"Everybody that writes a book must needs send me a copy. It's very good +of them, of course, but they're not all successful attempts at +bookmaking, and most of them are relegated to my hospital for sick books +up-stairs." + +But once a young writer sent from California a sample of his poetry, and +asked Holmes if it was worth while for him to keep on writing. It was +evident that the doctor was impressed by something decidedly original in +the style of the writer, for he wrote back that he should keep on, by +all means. + +Some time afterward a gentleman called at the home of Professor Holmes +in Boston and asked him if he remembered the incident. "I do, indeed," +replied Holmes. "Well," said his visitor, who was none other than Bret +Harte, "I am the man." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +LOVE OF NATURE. + + +It is city-life, Boston-life, in fact, that forms the fitting frame of +any pen-picture one might draw of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and yet even +his prose writings are full of all a poet's love for country sights and +sounds. Listen, for instance, to this rich word-picture of the opening +spring: "A flock of wild geese wedging their way northward, with +strange, far-off clamor, are the heralds of April; the flowers are +opening fast; the leaves are springing bright green upon the currant +bushes; dark, almost livid, upon the lilacs; the grass is growing apace, +the plants are coming up in the garden beds, and the children are +thinking of May-day.... + +"The birds come pouring in with May. Wrens, brown thrushes, the various +kinds of swallows, orioles, cat-birds, golden robins, bobo'links, +whippoorwills, cuckoos, yellow-birds, hummingbirds, are busy in +establishing their new households. The bumble-bee comes in with his +'mellow, breezy bass,' to swell the song of the busy minstrels. + +"And now June comes in with roses in her hand ... the azalea--wild +honeysuckle--is sweetening the road-sides; the laurels are beginning to +blow, the white lilies are getting ready to open, the fireflies are seen +now and then flitting across the darkness; the katydids, the +grasshoppers, the crickets, make themselves heard; the bull-frogs utter +their tremendous voices, and the full chorus of birds makes the air +vocal with melody." + +How like Thoreau the following passage reads: + +"O, for a huckleberry pasture to wander in, with labyrinths of taller +bushes, with bayberry leaves at hand to pluck and press and smell of, +and sweet fern, its fragrant rival, growing near!... I wonder if others +have noticed what an imitative fruit the blackberry is. I have tasted +the strawberry, the pine-apple, and I do not know how many other flavors +in it--if you think a little, and have read Darwin, and Huxley, perhaps +you will believe that it, and all the fruits it tastes of, may have +come from a common progenitor." + +And there is the poet's beautiful picture of Indian summer. + +"It is the time to be in the woods or on the seashore,--a sweet season +that should be given to lonely walks, to stumbling about in old +churchyards, plucking on the way the aromatic silvery herb everlasting, +and smelling at its dry flower until it etherizes the soul into aimless +reveries outside of space and time. There is little need of painting the +still, warm, misty, dreamy Indian summer in words; there are many states +that have no articulate vocabulary, and are only to be reproduced by +music, and the mood this season produces is of that nature. By and by, +when the white man is thoroughly Indianized (if he can bear the +process), some native Hayden will perhaps turn the Indian summer into +the loveliest _andante_ of the new 'Creation.'" + +And again: "To those who know the Indian summer of our Northern States, +it is needless to describe the influence it exerts on the senses and the +soul. The stillness of the landscape in that beautiful time is as if the +planet were _sleeping_ like a top, before it begins to rock with the +storms of autumn. All natures seem to find themselves more truly in its +light; love grows more tender, religion more spiritual, memory sees +farther back into the past, grief revisits its mossy marbles, the poet +harvests the ripe thoughts which he will tie in sheaves of verse by his +winter fireside." + +At another time, when revisiting the scenes of his old schooldays at +Andover, he gives us the following vivid description of mountain +scenery: + +"Far to the north and west the mountains of New Hampshire lifted their +summits in a long encircling ridge of pale-blue waves. The day was +clear, and every mound and peak traced its outline with perfect +definition against the sky. + +I have been by the seaside now and then, but the sea is constantly +busy with its own affairs, running here and there, listening to +what the winds have to say, and getting angry with them, always +indifferent, often insolent, and ready to do a mischief to those +who seek its companionship. But these still, serene, unchanging +mountains,--Monadnock, Kearsarge,--what memories that name recalls! and +the others, the dateless Pyramids of New England, the eternal monuments +of her ancient race, around which cluster the homes of so many of her +bravest and hardiest children, I can never look at them without feeling +that, vast and remote and awful as they are, there is a kind of inward +heat and muffled throb in their stony cores, that brings them into a +vague sort of sympathy with human hearts. How delightful all those +reminiscences, as he wanders, "the ghost of a boy" by his side, now by +the old elm that held, buried in it by growth, iron rings to keep the +Indians from destroying it with their tomahawks; and now through the old +playground sown with memories of the time when he was young. + +"A kind of romance gilds for me," he says, "the sober tableland of that +cold New England hill where I came a slight, immature boy, in contact +with a world so strange to me, and destined to leave such mingled and +lasting impressions. I looked across the valley to the hillside where +Methuen hung suspended, and dreamed of its wooded seclusion as a village +paradise. I tripped lightly down the long northern slope with _facilis +descensus_ on my lips, and toiled up again, repeating _sed revocare +gradum_. I wandered in the autumnal woods that crown the 'Indian Ridge,' +much wondering at that vast embankment, which we young philosophers +believed with the vulgar to be of aboriginal workmanship, not less +curious, perhaps, since we call it an escar, and refer it to alluvial +agencies. The little Shawsheen was our swimming-school, and the great +Merrimac, the right arm of four toiling cities, was within reach of a +morning stroll." + +Nor does he forget to recall a visit to Haverhill with his room-mate, +when he saw the mighty bridge over the Merrimac that defied the +ice-rafts of the river, and the old meeting-house door with the +bullet-hole in it, through which the minister, Benjamin Rolfe, was shot +by the Indians. "What a vision it was," he exclaims, "when I awoke in +the morning to see the fog on the river seeming as if it wrapped the +towers and spires of a great city! for such was my fancy, and whether it +was a mirage of youth, or a fantastic natural effect, I hate to inquire +too nicely." + +Like all poets, Doctor Holmes had a passionate love for flowers, and +with a delight that is most heartily shared by the sympathetic reader, +he thus recalls the old garden belonging to the gambrel-roofed house in +Cambridge. + +"There were old lilac bushes, at the right of the entrance, and in the +corner at the left that remarkable moral pear-tree, which gave me one of +my first lessons in life. Its fruit never ripened but always rotted at +the core just before it began to grow mellow. It was a vulgar plebeian +specimen, at best, and was set there, no doubt, only to preach its +annual sermon, a sort of 'Dudleian Lecture' by a country preacher of +small parts. But in the northern border was a high-bred Saint Michael +pear-tree, which taught a lesson that all of gentle blood might take to +heart; for its fruit used to get hard and dark, and break into unseemly +cracks, so that when the lord of the harvest came for it, it was like +those rich men's sons we see too often, who have never ripened, but only +rusted, hardened and shrunken. We had peaches, lovely nectarines, and +sweet, white grapes, growing and coming to kindly maturity in those +days; we should hardly expect them now, and yet there is no obvious +change of climate. As for the garden-beds, they were cared for by the +Jonathan or Ephraim of the household, sometimes assisted by one Rule, a +little old Scotch gardener, with a stippled face and a lively temper. +Nothing but old-fashioned flowers in them--hyacinths, pushing their +green beaks through as soon as the snow was gone, or earlier tulips, +coming up in the shape of sugar 'cockles,' or cornucopiae, one was almost +tempted to look to see whether nature had not packed one of those +two-line 'sentiments,' we remember so well in each of them; peonies, +butting their way bluntly through the loosened earth; flower-de-luces +(so I will call them, not otherwise); lilies; roses, damask, white, +blush, cinnamon (these names served us then); larkspurs, lupins, and +gorgeous holyhocks. + +"With these upper-class plants were blended, in republican fellowship, +the useful vegetables of the working sort;--beets, handsome with +dark-red leaves; carrots, with their elegant filigree foliage, parsnips +that cling to the earth like mandrakes; radishes, illustrations of total +depravity, a prey to every evil underground emissary of the powers of +darkness; onions, never easy until they are out of bed, so to speak, a +communicative and companionable vegetable, with a real genius for soups; +squash vines with their generous fruits, the winter ones that will hang +up 'ag'in the chimbly' by and by--the summer ones, vase like, as +Hawthorne described them, with skins so white and delicate, when they +are yet new-born, that one thinks of little sucking pigs turned +vegetables, like Daphne into a laurel, and then of tender human infancy, +which Charles Lamb's favorite so calls to mind;--these, with melons, +promising as 'first scholars,' but apt to put off ripening until the +frost came and blasted their vines and leaves, as if it had been a +shower of boiling water, were among the customary growths of the +Garden." + +Then follows, in these charming reminiscences, an account of the +reconstruction of the dear old Garden. + +"Consuls Madisonius and Monrovious left the seat of office, and Consuls +Johannes Quincius, and Andreas, and Martinus, and the rest, followed in +their turn, until the good Abraham sat in the curule chair. In the +meantime changes had been going on under our old gambrel roof, and the +Garden had been suffered to relapse slowly into a state of wild nature. +The haughty flower-de-luces, the curled hyacinths, the perfumed roses, +had yielded their place to suckers from locust-trees, to milkweed, +burdock, plantain, sorrel, purslane; the gravel walks, which were to +nature as rents in her green garment, had been gradually darned over +with the million threaded needles of her grasses until nothing was left +to show that a garden had been there. + +"But the Garden still existed in my memory; the walks were all mapped +out there, and the place of every herb and flower was laid down as if on +a chart. + +"By that pattern I reconstructed the Garden, lost for a whole generation +as much as Pompeii was lost, and in the consulate of our good Abraham it +was once more as it had been in the days of my childhood. It was not +much to look upon for a stranger; but when the flowers came up in their +old places, the effect on me was something like what the widow of Nain +may have felt when her dead son rose on his bier and smiled upon her. + +"Nature behaved admirably, and sent me back all the little tokens of her +affection she had kept so long. The same delegates from the underground +fauna ate up my early radishes; I think I should have been disappointed +if they had not. The same buff-colored bugs devoured my roses that I +remembered of old. The aphids and the caterpillar and the squash-bug +were cordial as ever; just as if nothing had happened to produce a +coolness or entire forgetfulness between us. But the butterflies came +back too, and the bees and the birds." + +Says a well-known writer: + +"Though born and reared beneath the shadow of the great city, yet Doctor +Holmes has ever found great delight in spending a portion of each year +in the country. The last few summers he has made his home at Beverly +Farms, but from 1849 to 1856, inclusive, his summer home was in +Pittsfield, in Berkshire County. His recollections of the scenes and +people in that charming town are pleasant and abundant. The villa which +he built was upon a round knoll, commanding a fine view of the whole +circle of Berkshire mountains, and of the Housatonic, winding in its +serpentine way through the fertile meadows and valleys to the sound of +Long Island. Yielding to his own good nature and the soft persuasion of +a committee of Pittsfield ladies, Doctor Holmes once contributed a +couple of poems to a fancy fair which was being held in the town during +his residence there. They do not appear in any of the published +collections, which is the one reason, above all others, why we print +them now. Each of the poems was inclosed in an envelope bearing a motto; +and the right to a second choice, guided by these, was disposed of in a +raffle, to the no small emolument of the objects of the fair. The two +pieces are even to this day represented by at least a square yard of the +quaint ecclesiastical heraldry which illuminates the gorgeous chancel +window of the St. Stephen's church in Pittsfield. The motto of the first +envelope ran thus: + + Faith is the conquering angels' crown; + Who hopes for grace must ask it; + Look shrewdly ere you lay me down; + I'm Portia's leaden casket. + +The following verses were found within: + + Fair lady, whosoe'er thou art, + Turn this poor leaf with tenderest care, + And--hush, oh, hush thy beating heart; + The one thou lovest will be there. + + Alas, not loved by thee alone, + Thine idol ever prone to range; + To-day all thine, to-morrow flown, + Frail thing, that every hour may change. + + Yet, when that truant course is done, + If thy lost wanderer reappear, + Press to thy heart the only one + That nought can make more truly dear. + +Within this paper was a smaller envelope containing a one dollar bill, +and this explanation of the poet's riddle: + + Fair lady, lift thine eyes and tell + If this is not a truthful letter; + This is the (1) thou lovest well, + And nought (0) can make thee love it better (10) + + Though fickle, do not think it strange + That such a friend is worth possessing; + For one that gold can never change + Is Heaven's own dearest earthly blessing. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL. + + +Upon the seventeenth of October, 1883, the centennial anniversary of the +Harvard Medical School, the new building upon the Back Bay was +dedicated. The fine, commodious structure is situated upon the corner of +Boylston and Exeter streets, and is at nearly equal distances from the +Massachusetts General Hospital, the City Hospital, the Boston Dispensary +and the Children's Hospital with their stores of clinical material, +available for the purposes of teaching. Close by, also, are the +Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the museums of the Society of +Natural History and of Fine Arts, and the Medical Library Association. +The building has a frontage of one hundred and twenty-two feet toward +the north on Boylston street, and of ninety feet toward the west on +Exeter street, and its corner position, together with the reservation +of a large open area on the east, will always insure good light and good +air. + +The dedication exercises were divided into two parts, the opening +addresses being given in Huntington Hall, at the Institute of +Technology, and the remainder of the programme in the new building. Upon +the platform, in Huntington Hall, were seated President Eliot, of +Harvard University, the faculty of the Medical School, and numerous +invited guests. Upon the walls just back of the platform, against a +background of maroon-colored drapery, and directly over the head of the +original, hung a portrait of Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes. Beneath +this portrait was a fine marble bust of Professor Henry J. Bigelow, who +was seated beside Doctor Holmes. + +President Eliot opened the exercises with the interesting address which +follows: + +"We are met to celebrate the beginning of the second century of the +Medical School's existence, and the simultaneous completion of its new +building. It is a hundred years since John Warren, Benjamin Waterhouse +and Aaron Dexter were installed as professors of anatomy and surgery, +theory and practice, and _materia medica_ respectively, and without the +aid of collections or hospitals began to lecture in some small, rough +rooms in the basement of Harvard Hall, and in a part of little Holden +Chapel, at Cambridge. From that modest beginning the school has +gradually grown until it counts a staff of forty-seven teachers, ten +professors, six assistant professors, nine instructors, thirteen +clinical instructors, and nine assistants--working in the spacious and +well-equipped building, which we are shortly to inspect, and commanding +every means of instruction and research which laboratories, dispensaries +and hospitals can supply. Out of our present strength and abundance we +look back to the founding of the school and to its slow and painful +development. We bear in our hearts the three generations of teachers who +have served this school with disinterested diligence and zeal. We recall +their unrequited labors, their frequent anxieties and conflicts and +their unfulfilled hopes; we bring to mind the careful plantings and the +tardy harvests, reaped at last, but not by them that sowed. We meet, +indeed, to rejoice in present prosperity and fair prospects, but we +would first salute our predecessors and think with reverence and +gratitude of their toils and sacrifices, the best fruits of which our +generation has inherited. + +"The medical faculty of to-day have strong grounds for satisfaction in +the present state of the school; for they have made great changes in its +general plan and policy, run serious risks, received hearty support from +the profession and the community, and now see their efforts crowned with +substantial success. By doubling the required period of study in each +year of the course, instituting an admission examination, strengthening +the examinations at the end of each year, and establishing a voluntary +fourth year of instruction, which clearly indicates that the real +standard of the faculty cannot be reached in three years, they have +taken step after step to increase their own labors, make the attainment +of the degree more difficult, and diminish the resort of students to the +school. They have deliberately sacrificed numbers in their determination +to improve the quality of the graduates of the school. At the same time +they have successfully carried out an improvement in medical education +which required large expenditures. This improvement is the partial +substitution, by every student, of personal practice in laboratories for +work upon books, and attendance at lectures. The North Grove street +building, erected in 1846-47, contained only one small laboratory for +students, that of anatomy. The new building contains a students' +laboratory for each of the five fundamental subjects--anatomy, +physiology, chemistry, histology and pathology--and that a large part of +the building is devoted to these working rooms. It was a grave question +whether the profession, the community and the young men who year by year +aspire to become physicians and surgeons would support the faculty in +making these improvements. The answer can now be recorded. + +"The school has received by gift and bequest three hundred and twenty +thousand dollars in ten years; it has secured itself in the centre of +the city for many years to come by the timely purchase of a large piece +of land; it has paid about two hundred and twenty thousand dollars for a +spacious, durable and well-arranged building; it has increased its +annual expenditure for salaries of teachers from twenty thousand dollars +in 1871-72, to thirty-six thousand dollars in 1882-83; its receipts have +exceeded its expenses in every year since 1871-72, and its invested +funds now exceed those of 1871 by more than one hundred thousand +dollars. At the same time the school has become a centre of chemical, +physiological, histological and sanitary research, as well as a place +for thorough instruction; its students bring to the school a better +education than ever before; they work longer and harder while in the +school, and leave it prepared, so far as sound training can prepare them +to enter, not the over-crowded lower ranks of the profession, but the +higher, where there is always room. + +"The faculty recognize that the generosity of the community and the +confidence of the students impose upon them reciprocal obligations. They +gladly acknowledge themselves bound to teach with candor and enthusiasm, +to observe and study with diligence that they may teach always better +and better, to illustrate before their students the pure scientific +spirit, and to hold all their attainments and discoveries at the +service of mankind. Certainly the medical faculty have good reason to +ask to-day for the felicitations of the profession and the public. + +"Nevertheless, the governors, teachers, graduates and friends of this +school have no thought of resting contented with its present condition. +Instructed by its past, they have faith in its future. They hope they +know that the best fruits of their labors will be reaped by later +generations. The medical profession is fortunate among the learned +professions in that a fresh and boundless field of unimaginable +fertility spreads out before it. Its conquests to come are infinitely +greater than those already achieved. The great powers of chemistry and +physics, themselves all new, have only just now been effectively +employed in the service of medicine and surgery. The zooelogist, +entomologist, veterinarian and sanitarian have just begun to contribute +effectively to the progress of medicine. + +"The great achievements of this century in medical science and the +healing art are all prophetic. Thus, the measurable deliverance of +mankind from small-pox is an earnest of deliverance from measles, +scarlatina, and typhoid fever. Within forty years anaesthetics and +antiseptics have quadrupled the chances of success in grave surgical +operations and have extended indefinitely the domain of warrantable +surgery; but in value far beyond all the actual benefits which have thus +far accrued to mankind from these discoveries is the clear prophecy they +utter of greater blessing to come. A medical school must needs be always +expecting new wonders. + +"How is medical science to be advanced? First, by the devoted labors of +men, young and old, who give their lives to medical observations, +research and teaching; secondly, by the gradual aggregation in safe +hands of permanent endowments for the promotion of medical science and +of the sciences upon which medicine rests. Neither of these springs of +progress is to fail us here. Modern society produces the devoted student +of science as naturally and inevitably as mediaeval society produced the +monk. Enthusiastic devotion to unworldly ends has not diminished; it +only manifests itself in new directions. So, too, benevolence and public +spirit, when diverted by the teachings of both natural and political +science from many of the ancient forms of benevolent activity, have +simply found new and better modes of action. + +"With thankfulness for the past, with reasonable satisfaction in the +present, and with joyful hope in the future, the medical faculty +celebrate this anniversary festival, welcoming their guests, thanking +their benefactors, and exchanging with their colleagues, their students, +and the governing boards mutual congratulations and good wishes as the +school sets bravely out upon its second century." + +At the close of his address President Eliot turned to the large +audience, and said: + +"I have now the pleasure of presenting to you our oldest professor and +our youngest; our man of science, and our man of letters; our teacher +and our friend, Doctor Holmes." + +From the delightful and characteristic address of Doctor Holmes, we are +permitted to give the following extracts: + +"We are in the habit of counting a generation as completed in thirty +years, but two lives cover a whole century by an easy act of memory. I, +who am now addressing you, distinctly remember the Boston practitioner +who walked among the dead after the battle of Bunker Hill, and pointed +out the body of Joseph Warren among the heaps of the slain. Look forward +a little while from that time to the period at which this medical school +was founded. Eight years had passed since John Jeffries was treading the +bloody turf on yonder hillside. The independence of the United States +had just been recognized by Great Britain. The lessons of the war were +fresh in the minds of those who had served as military surgeons. They +knew what anatomical knowledge means to the man called upon to deal with +every form of injury to every organ of the body. They knew what fever +and dysentery are in the camp, and what skill is needed by those who +have to treat the diseases more fatal than the conflicts of the +battlefield. They know also, and too well, how imperfectly taught were +most of those to whom the health of the whole community was +entrusted.... + +"And now I will ask you to take a stride of half a century, from the +year 1783 to the year 1833. Of this last date I can speak from my own +recollection. In April, 1833, I had been more than two years a medical +student attending the winter lectures of this school, and have therefore +a vivid recollection of the professors of that day. I will only briefly +characterize them by their various merits, not so much troubling myself +about what may have been their short-comings. The shadowy procession +moves almost visibly by me as I speak: John Collins Warren, a cool and +skilful operator, a man of unshaken nerves, of determined purpose, of +stern ambition, equipped with a fine library, but remarkable quite as +much for knowledge of the world as for erudition, and keeping a steady +eye on professional and social distinctions, which he attained and +transmitted. + +"James Jackson, a man of serene and clear intelligence, well instructed, +not over book-fed, truthful to the centre, a candid listener to all +opinions; a man who forgot himself in his care for others and his love +for his profession; by common consent recognized as a model of the wise +and good physician. Jacob Bigelow, more learned, far more various in +gifts and acquirements than any of his colleagues; shrewd, inventive, +constructive, questioning, patient in forming opinions, steadfast in +maintaining them; a man of infinite good nature, of ready wit, of a keen +sense of humor, and a fine literary taste; one of the most accomplished +of American physicians; I do not recall the name of one who could be +considered his equal in all respects. Walter Channing, meant by nature +for a man of letters, like his brothers, William Ellery and Edward; +vivacious, full of anecdote, ready to make trial of new remedies, with +the open and receptive intelligence belonging to his name as a +birthright; esteemed in his specialty by those who called on him in +emergencies. The professor of chemistry of that day was pleasant in the +lecture room; rather nervous and excitable, I should say, and +judiciously self-conservative when an explosion was a part of the +programme." + +Speaking of the new building, Doctor Holmes said: + +"You will enter or look into more amphitheatres and lecture-rooms than +you might have thought were called for. But if you knew what it is to +lecture and be lectured to, in a room just emptied of its preceding +audience, you would be thankful that any arrangement should prevent +such an evil. The experimental physiologists tell us that a bird will +live under a bell glass until he has substituted a large amount of +carbonic acid for oxygen in the air of the bell glass. But if another +bird is taken from the open air and put in with the first, the new-comer +speedily dies. So when the class I was lecturing to, was sitting in an +atmosphere once breathed already, after I have seen head after head +gently declining, and one pair of eyes after another emptying themselves +of intelligence, I have said, inaudibly, with the considerate +self-restraint of Musidora's rural lover: + +"'Sleep on, dear youth; this does not mean that you are indolent, or +that I am dull; it is the partial coma of commencing asphyxia.' + +"You will see extensive apartments destined for the practical study of +chemistry and of physiology. But these branches are no longer studied as +of old, by merely listening to lectures. The student must himself +perform the analyses which he used to hear about. He must not be +poisoned at his work, and therefore he will require a spacious and +well-ventilated room to work in. You read but the other day of an +esteemed fellow-citizen who died from inhaling the vapors of a broken +demijohn of a corrosive acid. You will be glad to see that every +precaution is taken to insure the safety and health of our students. + +"Physiology, as now studied, involves the use of much delicate and +complex machinery. You may remember the balance at which Sanctorius sat +at his meals, so that when he had taken in a certain number of ounces +the lightened table and more heavily weighted philosopher gently parted +company. You have heard, perhaps, of Pettenkofer's chamber, by means of +which all the living processes of a human body are made to declare the +total consumption and product during a given period. Food and fuel +supplied; work done. Never was the human body as a machine so +understood, never did it give such an account of itself, as it now does +in the legible handwriting of the cardiograph, the sphygmograph, the +myograph, and other self-registering contrivances, with all of which the +student of to-day is expected to be practically familiar. + +... Among the various apartments destined to special uses one will be +sure to rivet your attention; namely, the Anthropotomic Laboratory, +known to plainer speech as the dissecting room. The most difficult work +of a medical school is the proper teaching of practical anatomy. The +pursuit of that vitally essential branch of professional knowledge has +always been in the face of numerous obstacles. Superstition has arrayed +all her hobgoblins against it. Popular prejudice has made the study +embarrassing and even dangerous to those engaged in it. The surgical +student was prohibited from obtaining the knowledge required in his +profession, and the surgeon was visited with crushing penalties for want +of that necessary knowledge. Nothing is easier than to excite the odium +of the ignorant against this branch of instruction and those who are +engaged in it. It is the duty and interest of all intelligent members of +the community to defend the anatomist and his place of labor against +such appeals to ignorant passion as will interfere with this part of +medical education, above all, against such inflammatory representations +as may be expected to lead to mid-day mobs or midnight incendiarism. + +"The enlightened legislation of Massachusetts has long sanctioned the +practice of dissection, and provided means for supporting the needs of +anatomical instruction, which managed with decent privacy and +discretion, have served the beneficent purpose intended by the wise and +humane law-givers, without doing wrong to those natural sensibilities +which are always to be respected. + +"During the long period in which I have been a professor of anatomy in +this medical school, I have had abundant opportunities of knowing the +zeal, the industry, the intelligence, the good order and propriety with +which this practical department has been carried on. The labors +superintended by the demonstrator and his assistants are in their nature +repulsive, and not free from risk of diseases, though in both these +respects modern chemistry has introduced great ameliorations. The +student is breathing an air which unused senses would find insufferable. +He has tasks to perform which the chambermaid and the stable-boy would +shrink from undertaking. We cannot wonder that the sensitive Rousseau +could not endure the atmosphere of the room in which he had began a +course of anatomical study. But we know that the great painters, Michael +Angelo, Leonardo and Raphael must have witnessed many careful +dissections; and what they endured for art our students can endure for +science and humanity. + +"Among the large number of students who have worked in the department of +which I am speaking during my long term of service--nearly two thousand +are on the catalogue as students--there must have been some who were +thoughtless, careless, unmindful of the proprieties. Something must be +pardoned to the hardening effect of habit. Something must be forgiven to +the light-heartedness of youth, which shows itself in scenes that would +sadden and solemnize the unseasoned visitor. Even youthful womanhood has +been known to forget itself in the midst of solemn surroundings. I well +remember the complaint of Willis, a lover of the gentle sex, and not +likely to have told a lie against a charming young person; I quote from +my rusty memory, but I believe correctly: + + She trifled! ay, that angel maid, + She trifled where the dead was laid. + +"Nor are older persons always so thoughtful and serious in the presence +of mortality as it might be supposed they would show themselves. Some of +us have encountered Congressional committees attending the remains of +distinguished functionaries to their distant place of burial. They +generally bore up well under their bereavement. One might have expected +to find them gathered in silent groups in the parlors of the Continental +Hotel or the Brevoort House; to meet the grief-stricken members of the +party smileless and sobbing as they sadly paced the corridors of +Parker's, before they set off in a mournful and weeping procession. It +was not so; Candor would have to confess that it was far otherwise; +Charity would suggest that Curiosity should withdraw her eye from the +key-hole; Humanity would try to excuse what she could not help +witnessing; and a tear would fall from the blind eye of oblivion and +blot out their hotel bills forever. + +"You need not be surprised, then, if among this large number of young +men there should have been now and then something to find fault with. +Twice in the course of thirty-five years I have had occasion to rebuke +the acts of individual students, once in the presence of the whole +class on the human and manly sympathy of which I could always safely +rely. I have been in the habit of considering myself at liberty to visit +the department I am speaking of, though it had its own officers; I took +a part in drawing up the original regulations which governed the methods +of work; I have often found fault with individuals or small classes for +a want of method and neatness which is too common in all such places. +But in the face of all peccadilloes and of the idle and baseless stories +which have been circulated, I will say, as if from the chair I no longer +occupy, that the management of the difficult, delicate and all important +branch committed to the care of a succession of laborious and +conscientious demonstrators, as I have known it through more than the +third of a century, has been discreet, humane, faithful, and that the +record of that department is most honorable to them and to the classes +they have instructed. + +"But there are better things to think of and to speak of than the false +and foolish stories to which we have been forced to listen. While the +pitiable attempt has been making to excite the feelings of the ignorant +against the school of the university, hundreds of sufferers throughout +Christendom--throughout civilization--have been blessing the name of +Boston and the Harvard Medical School as the source from which relief +has reached them for one of the gravest injuries, and for one of the +most distressing of human maladies. I witnessed many of the experiments +by which the great surgeon who lately filled a chair in Harvard +University, has made the world his debtor. Those poor remains of +mortality of which we have heard so much, have been of more service to +the human race than the souls once within them ever dreamed of +conferring. Doctor Bigelow's repeated and searching investigations into +the anatomy of the hip joint showed him the band which formed the chief +difficulty in reducing dislocations of the thigh. What Sir Astley Cooper +and all the surgeons after him had failed to see, Doctor Bigelow +detected. New rules for reduction of the dislocation were the +consequence, and the terrible pulleys disappeared from the operating +amphitheatre. + +"Still more remarkable are the results obtained by Doctor Bigelow in the +saving of life and the lessening of suffering in the new method of +operation for calculus. By the testimony of those renowned surgeons, Sir +Henry Thompson and Mr. Erichsen, by the award to Doctor Bigelow of a +sexennial prize founded by the Marquis d' Argenteuil, and by general +consent, this innovation is established as one of the great modern +improvements in surgery. I saw the numerous and patient experiments by +which that priceless improvement was effected, and I cannot stop to moan +over a scrap of integument, said to have been made imperishable, when I +remember that for every lifeless body which served for these +experiments, a hundred died or a thousand living fellow creatures have +been saved from unutterable anguish, and many of them from premature +death. + +"You will visit the noble hall soon to be filled with the collections +left by the late Professor John Collins Warren, added to by other +contributors, and to the care and increase of which the late Doctor John +Jackson of precious memory gave many years of his always useful and +laborious life. You may expect to find there a perfect Golgotha of +skulls and a platoon of skeletons open to the sight of all comers. You +will find portions of every human organ. You will see bones softened by +acid and tied in bowknots; other bones burned until they are light as +cork and whiter than ivory, yet still keeping their form; you will see +sets of teeth from the stage of infancy to that of old age, and in every +intermediate condition, exquisitely prepared and mounted; you will see +preparations that once formed portions of living beings now carefully +preserved to show their vessels and nerves; the organ of hearing +exquisitely carved by French artists; you will find specimens of human +integument, showing its constituent parts in different races; among the +rest, that of the Ethiopian, with its cuticle or false skin turned back +to show that God gave him a true skin beneath it as white as our own. +Some of these specimens are injected to show their blood vessels; some +are preserved in alcohol; some are dried. There was formerly a small +scrap, said to be human skin, which had been subjected to the tanning +process, and which was not the least interesting of the series. I have +not seen it for a good while, and it may have disappeared as the cases +might happen to be open while unscrupulous strangers were strolling +through the museum. If it has, the curator will probably ask the next +poor fellow who has his leg cut off, for permission to have a portion of +its integument turned into leather. He would not object, in all +probability, especially if he were promised that a wallet for his pocket +or a slipper for his remaining foot, should be made from it. + +"There is no use in quarrelling with the specimens in a museum because +so many of them once formed a part of human beings. The British +Government paid fifteen thousand pounds for the collection made by John +Hunter, which is full of such relics. The Huntarian Museum is still a +source of pride to every educated citizen in London. Our foreign +visitors have already learned that the Warren Anatomical Museum is one +of the sights worth seeing during their stay among us. Charles Dickens +was greatly interested in looking through its treasures, and that +intelligent and indefatigable hard worker, the Emperor of Brazil, +inspected its wonders with as much curiosity as if he had been a +professor of anatomy. May it ever remain sacred from harm in the noble +hall of which it is about taking possession. If violence, excited by +false outcries, shall ever assail the treasure-house of anthropology, we +may tremble lest its next victim shall be the home of art, and ignorant +passions once aroused, the archives that hold the wealth of literature +perish in a new Alexandrian conflagration. This is not a novel source of +apprehension to the thoughtful. Education, religious, moral, +intellectual, is the only safeguard against so fearful a future. + +"To one of the great interests of society, the education of those who +are to be the guardians of its health, the stately edifice which opens +its doors to us for the first time to-day is devoted. It is a lasting +record of the spirit and confidence of the young men of the medical +profession, who led their elders in the brave enterprise, an enduring +proof of the liberality of the citizens of Boston and of friends beyond +our narrow boundaries, a monument to the memory of those who, a hundred +years ago, added a school of medicine to our honored, cherished, revered +university, and to all who have helped to sustain its usefulness and +dignity through the century just completed. + +"It stands solid and four square among the structures which are the +pride of our New England Venice--our beautiful metropolis, won by +well-directed toil from the marshes and creeks and lagoons which were +our inheritance from nature. The magnificent churches around it let in +the sunshine through windows stained with the pictured legends of +antiquity. The student of nature is content with the white rays that +show her just as she is; and if ever a building was full of light--light +from the north and the south; light from the east and the west; light +from above, which the great concave mirror of sky pours down into +it--this is such an edifice. The halls where Art teaches its lessons and +those where the sister Sciences store their collections, the galleries +that display the treasures of painting, and sculpture, are close enough +for agreeable companionship. It is probable that in due time the Public +Library, with its vast accumulations, will be next door neighbor to the +new domicile of our old and venerated institution. And over all this +region rise the tall landmarks which tell the dwellers in our streets +and the traveller as he approaches that in the home of Science, Arts, +and Letters, the God of our Fathers is never forgotten, but that high +above these shrines of earthly knowledge and beauty, are lifted the +towers and spires which are the symbols of human aspiration ever looking +up to Him, the Eternal, Immortal, Invisible." + +At the conclusion of this noble address, the portrait of Professor +Oliver Wendell Holmes was presented to the Medical School by Doctor +Minot, in the happily-chosen words that follow: + +"Many alumni of the school, together with some of its present students, +have desired that a permanent memorial of their beloved teacher, +Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes, should be placed in the new college +building, in token of their gratitude for the great services which he +has rendered to many generations of his pupils. By his eminent +scientific attainments, his sound method of teaching, his felicity of +illustration, and his untiring devotion to all the duties of his chair, +he inspired those who were so fortunate as to come under his instruction +with the importance of a thorough knowledge of anatomy, the foundation +of medical science. In the name of the alumni and students of this +college, I have the pleasure of presenting to the medical faculty a +portrait of Professor Holmes, painted by Mr. Alexander, to be placed in +the college in remembrance of his invaluable services to Harvard +University, to the medical profession and to the community." + +The bust of Professor Bigelow was then presented to the school by Hon. +Samuel Green, in the following words: + +"The pleasant duty has been assigned me, Mr. President, to present to +you, as the head of the corporation of Harvard College, in behalf of his +many friends, this animated bust of Professor Henry J. Bigelow. The list +of subscribers comprises about fifty names, and includes nearly all the +surgeons of the two great hospitals in this city; several gentlemen not +belonging to the medical profession, but warm personal friends of Doctor +Bigelow; a few ladies who had been his patients; and all the surgical +house pupils who had ever been connected with the Massachusetts General +Hospital during his long term of service at that institution, so far as +they could easily be reached by personal application. The bust is given +on the condition that it shall be placed permanently in the new surgical +lecture room, which corresponds to the scene of Doctor Bigelow's long +labors in the old building. It has been made by the eminent sculptor, +Launt Thompson of New York, and is a most faithful representation of the +distinguished surgeon. It outlines with such accuracy and precision the +features of his face and the pose of his head that nothing is wanted, in +the opinion of his friends, to make it a correct likeness. + +"I need not, in the presence of this audience, name the various steps by +which Doctor Bigelow has reached the high position which is conceded to +him as freely and fully in Europe as it is in America; but I cannot +forbear an allusion to some of his original researches. His mechanism of +the reduction of a dislocated femur by manipulation was a great +discovery in surgical science, and follows as a simple corollary to the +anatomical facts which he has so clearly and minutely demonstrated. His +operation of rapid lithotrity has deprived a painful disease of much of +its terror as well as of its danger. Nor should I overlook on this +occasion his quick and ready discernment of the importance of Doctor +Morton's demonstration of the use of ether as a safe anaesthetic, which +took place at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the autumn of 1846. +The discovery of this greatest boon to the human family since the +invention of printing, was fraught with such immense possibilities that +the world was slow to realize its magnitude; but by the clear foresight +and prudent zeal of Doctor Bigelow, shown in many ways, the day was +hastened when its use became well nigh universal. + +"Doctor Bigelow has filled the chair of surgery in this medical school +during thirty-three years, a period of professional instruction that +rarely falls to the lot of any teacher; and he now leaves it with the +honored title of professor emeritus. During this long term of service he +has taught, through his lectures, probably not fewer than one thousand +eight hundred students, who have graduated at the Harvard Medical +School, and perhaps seven thousand five hundred more who have taken +their degrees elsewhere; and by these thousands of physicians now +scattered throughout the land, those of them who survive, Doctor Bigelow +is remembered as most eminently a practical teacher. Active in his +profession, clear in his instruction, and enthusiastic in his +investigations, he always had the happy faculty of imparting to his +students a kindred spirit and zeal. _Haud inexpertus loquor._" + +The remainder of the exercises took place in the new building. The +dedicatory prayer was offered by Rev. Doctor Peabody, who consecrated +the building "to science, humanity and charity, to Christian tenderness +and love, and to all the ministries that can enrich humanity." + +President Eliot then said: + +"In behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard University, and of +the Medical School, I declare this building to be devoted to medical +science and the art of healing." + +Professor Henry W. Williams, in behalf of the medical faculty, said: + +"Friends of the Harvard Medical School: For a hundred years the medical +faculty of Harvard College have earnestly sought to discover, and +striven faithfully to teach, whatever might exalt the condition, relieve +the woes and prolong the service of those minds and bodies through which +man lives, and moves, and is. Year by year they have seen their horizon +of knowledge extended and their sphere of duty enlarged. But, though +zeal and self-sacrifice have not been wanting, their efforts to be +useful have been continually hindered because of imperfect facilities +and scanty resources. All is changed. In this more wonderful than +Aladdin's palace, risen from the sea,[8] and which has already endured +the wrath and mercy of the flames, we see a fulfilment of our hopes, and +the means and assurance of success. Thanks to generous benefactors, +there will no longer be a lack of room or of appliances for our needs; +our work will go on under fairer auspices, and we can offer to disciples +of the healing art fitter opportunities and ampler aid in their studies. + +"As spokesman of the faculty on this occasion, so full of felicitation +and of promise, I would I could give to their message a host of tongues, +to adequately thank those whose great flood of bounty has thus favored +and endowed us. In occupying this beautiful and convenient structure, we +shall ever feel that the place is dignified by the givers' deed. And we +rejoice the more, because we know that this gift of three hundred +thousand dollars has been bestowed by those who are accustomed to use +their own eyes in their estimation of desert, and that it signifies a +hearty approval of our endeavors, and an intent that medical science, as +it is to be here embodied and taught, shall have a warm and generous +support. + +"In accepting this more than princely gift as a token that the value and +necessity of well-educated physicians to every community is felt and +acknowledged, we hail the privilege of goodly fellowship in which the +donors and ourselves have become co-workers, to the end that blessings +to the whole land may arise and be memorized in this institution; and we +trust that the efforts of the faculty to advance the knowledge, train +the judgment and perfect the skill of those entering our profession will +ever continue to deserve countenance and help. + +Colonel Henry Lee's address was the next to follow: + +Mr. President: Thanks for your invitation to be present on this +interesting occasion--the hundredth anniversary of your medical school +and the dedication of a new building of fair proportions, well adapted +to your wants, as far as a non-professional can judge. You have assigned +to me the honorable task of speaking for the contributors to the +building fund. I little thought, as I used to gaze with awe at that +prim, solitary, impenetrable little building in Mason Street, and with +imaginative companions conjure up the mysteries within, that I should +ever dare to enter and explore its interior; nor have I yet acquired +that relish for morbid specimens which characterized my lamented +kinsman, who devoted so many years to accumulating and illustrating your +pathological collection. It is an ordeal to a layman, Mr. President, +especially to one who has reached the sixth age, to be so forcibly +reminded, as one is here, of the + + last scene of all + That ends this strange, eventful history, + _Sans_ teeth, _sans_ eyes, _sans_ taste, _sans_ everything, + +and it is a further ordeal to assume to speak for others, whose motives +for aiding you I may not adequately set forth. This I can say, that we +are citizens of no mean city; that private frugality and public +liberality have distinguished the inhabitants of this 'Old Town of +Boston,' from the days of the good and wise John Winthrop, whose own +substance was consumed in founding this colony, to the present time. +Down through these two centuries and a half the multiform and +ever-increasing needs of the community have been discovered and +supplied, not by Government, but by patriotic citizens, who have given +of their time and substance to promote the common weal, remembering +'that the body is not one member, but many, and that the members should +have the same care, one for another.' It is this public spirit, +manifested in its heroic form in our civil war, that has made this dear +old Commonwealth what we all know it to be, despite foul slanders. Far +distant be the day when this sense of brotherhood shall be lost. Purple +and fine linen are well, if one can afford them; but let not Dives +forget Lazarus at his gate. + + Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, + Where wealth accumulates, and men decay. + +"Whatever doubts may arise as to some of our benevolent schemes, our +safety and progress rest upon the advancement of sound learning, and we +feel assured that the increased facilities furnished by this ample +building, for acquiring and disseminating knowledge of our fearful and +wonderful frame, will be improved by your brethren. Some of the papers +read before the International Medical College, in London, two years ago, +impressed me deeply with the many wants of the profession. And who are +more likely to have their wants supplied? for the physician is not +regarded here, as in some countries, as the successor to the barber +surgeon, and his fees slipped into his upturned palm as if he were a +mendicant or a menial. Dining with two Englishmen, one an Oxford +professor, the other the brother of a lord, a few years since, I was +surprised to hear their views of the social standing of the medical +profession, and could not help contrasting their position here, where, +if not all autocrats, they are all constitutional, and some of them +hereditary, monarchs, accompanied by honor, love, obedience, troops of +friends. But however ranked, physicians have the same attributes the +world over. I have had occasion to see a good deal of English, French, +German and Italian physicians under very trying circumstances, and have +been touched by their affectionate devotion to their patients. The good +physician is our earliest and our latest friend; he listens to our first +and our last breath; in all times of bodily distress and danger we look +up to him to relieve us. 'Neither the pestilence that walketh in +darkness, nor the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday, deters him.' + + Alike to him is time, or tide, + December's snow or July's pride; + Alike to him is tide, or time, + Moonless midnight, or matin prime. + +"The faithful pursuit of any profession involves sacrifice of self; but +the man who calls no hour his own, who consecrates his days and nights +to suffering humanity, treads close in the footsteps of his Master. No +wonder, then, that the bond between them and their patients is so +strong; no wonder that we respond cheerfully to their call, in gratitude +for what they have, and in sorrow for what they have not, been able to +do to preserve the lives and to promote the health of those dear to us. +And how could money be spent more economically than to promote the +further enlightenment of the medical profession? What better legacy can +we leave our children, and our children's children, than an illumined +medical faculty?" + +After these addresses a reception was given to the subscribers to the +building fund by President Eliot and the faculty of the Medical School. + +In referring to Doctor Holmes' brave, outspoken words, an eminent Boston +clergyman wrote as follows: + +"The only qualification which we have heard of the universal and +enthusiastic appreciation of the sage, the vivacious and the rich +utterance of our admired doctor and foremost man of letters on this +occasion, was in a somewhat regretful feeling that he should have turned +the full power of his humor and of his caustic satire upon the mean and +contemptible effort of an unprincipled demagogue to defame the Harvard +Medical School. We do not sympathize with even this qualified stricture +on the remarks of Doctor Holmes here referred to. True, his address was +an historical one, designed for an historical review of the past of the +institution. But it is also to serve the uses of history for the future, +especially as a record of the aspects of the institution and of the +interest and confidence of our living community in it during the year +marking such a conspicuous event for it as the inauguration of the new +edifice prepared for it by the munificence of those who appreciate its +almost divine offices of mercy and benevolence. And during this very +year, an assault of the most dastardly character has been made upon it +by one who, high in office and with vast power of influence over an +ignorant and easily prejudiced constituency, knows as well as any one +among us the utter and wicked falsity of his allegations. + +"Doctor Holmes was forced to make some recognition of these slanders +addressed to the uninformed, credulous and gullible portion of our +community. He would have been generally censured if he had passed them +by. The only question for him and for a critically judging community +would concern the true spirit and way in which he should recognize them. +We can conceive of no more fitting and effective course than that which +the sagacious doctor followed. The occasion was one in which it was for +him, in defining and greeting the steady advance made during a century +in medical and surgical science among us, to remind his hearers that +those to whom we are indebted for this advancement, have had, with their +own noble, personal devotion and effort, to triumph over and fight their +way against all the prejudices and obstructions which popular ignorance, +prejudice and superstition have engaged to annoy and withstand them. In +scarcely any one of the multiplied interests of average society have +popular weaknesses and follies more mischievously asserted themselves +than in opposition to hospitals and medical schools. When that noble +institution, the Massachusetts General Hospital, was devised, about +three quarters of a century ago, the most besotted folly and suspicion +were engaged against those who planned and fostered it. It was charged +that under the guise of benevolent service for homeless sufferers and +for the victims of accident or special maladies, it was really to be +artfully used for the trial of new medicines and risky experiments on +the poor and humble, that practitioners might have the benefit of the +knowledge thus gained in dealing with their rich patients. Let any one +visit the wards of that institution to-day, or read its annual reports, +noting the thousands of cases of its work of mercy in restoration or +relief of all classes of sufferers, and then recall the asinine abuse +visited upon its projectors. The millions of money which have been +poured into its treasury, mostly from the private benevolence of our own +citizens, is the crown of glory for that institution. An appeal of the +most artful and atrocious sort to this same popular ignorance and +passion has been made this year for purposes which we need not search +the dictionary to characterize with fitting epithets. How could Doctor +Holmes on this great occasion pass it by? How could he have treated the +offence and the offender with a more fitting combination of wit and +scorn? Most happy also was his suggestive allusion to the self mastery +by which practitioners at the dissecting table have to control, in the +interest of their high service, revulsions and shrinkings incident to +disgusting offices unknown even to chambermaids and stable boys. + +"But as Doctor Holmes well said, there are more attractive and +instructive matters to engage our most grateful interest in the occasion +to which he gave such a grand interpretation. The century of medical +history which he sketched with such a naive and vigorous narrative has +its most suggestive incidents lettered on the walls on the main stairway +of the imposing edifice just opened for use. Little Holden Hall in +Cambridge; the obscure structure on Mason street; the melancholy +building on Grove street, with its tragic history, in which the donor of +its site was turned to a use by no means serviceable to science, make up +the genealogical, architectural ancestry of the new hall. The +development in the material fabric is no inadequate symbol of the +progress in every quality, accomplishment and attainment characteristic +of the advance of the profession in the last hundred years." + +The name of Doctor Holmes will always be so intimately connected with +the Harvard Medical School that we give below a brief sketch of its past +history. + +In the year 1780, the Boston Medical Society voted "that Doctor John +Warren be desired to demonstrate a course of anatomical lectures the +ensuing winter." The course of lectures proved so popular that the +corporation of the college asked Doctor Warren to draw up a plan for a +Medical School in connection with Harvard College. At the commencement +of the school, October 7th, 1783, there were three professors: Doctor +John Warren, who lectured on anatomy and surgery; Doctor Aaron Dexter, +who took the department of chemistry and materia medica; and Doctor +Benjamin Waterhouse, instructor in the theory and practice of medicine. +During the first year of its establishment the attendance was rather +small, consisting of members of the senior class of the college and +those students who could procure the consent of their parents. The name +of the first graduate recorded was that of John Fleet, in 1788, and he +seems to have been the only graduate of that class. + +In 1806, Doctor John Collins Warren, son of Doctor John Warren, was +appointed assistant professor of anatomy and surgery. He proved a most +enthusiastic laborer in behalf of the school and to it he gave his large +anatomical collection, which was considered the most complete in the +country. In his will he bequeathed his body to the interest of science, +and provided that his skeleton be prepared and mounted, to serve the +uses of the demonstrators on anatomy. It was he, also, who took the +first steps that led to the establishment of the Medical School in +Boston. At 49 Marlborough street, he opened a room for the demonstration +of practical anatomy, and here a course of lectures was started in the +autumn of 1810 by Doctors Warren, Jackson, and Waterhouse. + +In 1816, the "Massachusetts Medical College" was formally inaugurated in +a building erected on Mason street by a special grant from the +Commonwealth. At this time the faculty consisted of Doctors Jackson, +Warren, Gorham, Jacob Bigelow and Walter Channing. + +In 1821 the Massachusetts General Hospital on Allan street, was +established; the two institutions have since been intimately connected +as the resources afforded students by the Hospital are here given to +members of the Medical School. + +In 1836, Doctor Jackson resigned his position, and Doctor John Ware, the +assistant professor of theory and practice was appointed in the chair. +Eleven years later Doctor John Collins Warren resigned, having served +the interests of the school for forty-one years. + +In 1847, through the liberality of Doctor George C. Shattuck, Sr., a +professorship of pathological anatomy was established, and Doctor John +Barnard Swett Jackson was appointed to fill the chair. It was during +this year that Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes was chosen Parkman professor +of anatomy and physiology. + +In 1849 Doctor Henry J. Bigelow was appointed to the chair of surgery +left vacant by the resignation of Doctor George Hayward, and in 1854, +Doctor Walter Channing was succeeded by Doctor David Humphreys Storer. +In 1855 Doctor Jacob Bigelow resigned, and was succeeded by Doctor +Edward Hammond Clarke. + +The building on North Grove street, erected by a grant of the State upon +land donated by Doctor George Parkman, was first occupied by the school +in 1846. In this building, which was considered amply commodious at that +time, were stored the Warren Anatomical Museum, the physiological +library founded by George Woodbury Swett, the gifts to the chemical +department by Doctor John Bacon, and the collection of microscopes given +by Doctor Ellis. Since then the number of medical students has +constantly increased and the accommodations becoming inadequate, steps +were taken for the erection of the new building. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[8] The site occupied by the medical college was once covered by the +tides. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +TOKENS OF ESTEEM. + + +Said one of the medical students in Doctor Holmes' last class at +Harvard: + +"We always welcomed Professor Holmes with enthusiastic cheers when he +came into the class room, and his lectures were so brimful of witty +anecdotes that we sometimes forgot it was a lesson in anatomy we had +come to learn. But the instruction--deep, sound and thorough--was there +all the same, and we never left the room without feeling what a fund of +knowledge and what a clear insight upon difficult points in medical +science had been imparted to us through the sparkling medium!" + +The position of Parkman Professor of Anatomy in Harvard University, was +resigned by Doctor Holmes in the autumn of 1882, that he might give his +time more exclusively to literary pursuits. He was immediately appointed +Professor Emeritus by the college, and Doctor Thomas Dwight, a teacher +in the Medical School, succeeded him in the active duties of the chair. + +The last lecture of Doctor Holmes before his students, was delivered in +the anatomical room, on the twenty-eighth of November. As he entered the +room, a storm of applause greeted him, and then as it died away, one of +the students came forward and presented him, in behalf of his last +class, with an exquisite "Loving Cup." On one side of this beautiful +souvenir was the happy quotation from his own writings: "Love bless +thee, joy crown thee, God speed thy career." + +Doctor Holmes was so deeply affected by this delicate token of esteem +that, afterwards, in acknowledging the cup by letter, he said that the +tribute was so unexpected it made him speechless. He was quite sure, +however, that they did not mistake _aphasia_ for _acardia_--his heart +was in its right place, though his tongue forgot its office. + +In the address to his class, the Professor gave an interesting review of +his thirty-five years' connection with the school. Then he referred to +his early college days, and to his studies in Paris, and added many +delightful reminiscences of the famous French savants whose lectures he +attended at that time. A full report of this address may be found in the +_Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, for December 7, 1882. + +This, one of his most interesting essays, is also reprinted in one of +Doctor Holmes' later volumes, entitled _Medical Essays_. + +On the evening of April 12, 1883, a complimentary dinner was given +Doctor Holmes at Delmonico's, by the medical profession of New York +City. The reception opened at about half-past six, and soon after that +hour Doctor Holmes entered the rooms with Doctor Fordyce Barker. The +guests, numbering some two hundred and twenty-five in all, were seated +at six tables, the table of honor occupying the upper end of the room, +and decorated with banks of choice flowers. + +The _menus_ were cleverly arranged in the form of small books bound in +various-colored plush. A dainty design in gilt, representing a scalpel +and pen, surrounded by a laurel wreath, adorned the covers, and inside +was the stanza: + + A few can touch the magic string, + And noisy fame is proud to win them, + Alas, for those that never sing, + But die with all their music in them. + +At the top of the leaf containing the bill of fare were the lines: + + You know your own degree; sit down; at first and last a hearty + welcome. + +at the end: + + Prithee, no more; thou dost talk nothing to me. + +A few minutes before the coffee was brought in, each guest received what +purported to be a telegram from Boston, dated April 1, 1883. The message +read as follows: + + The dinner bell, the dinner bell + Is ringing loud and clear, + Through hill and plain, through street and lane + It echoes far and near. + + I hear the voice! I go, I go! + Prepare your meat and wine; + They little heed their future need + Who pay not when they dine. + --_O.W.H._ + +The back of the despatch was decorated with two pictures; one showing +Doctor Fordyce Barker ringing a dinner bell and brandishing a knife and +fork, the other Doctor Holmes hurrying to answer the bell, with a pile +of books under one arm and a bundle of bones under the other. + +Among the guests present were George William Curtis, Hon. William M. +Evarts, Bishop Clark, Whitelaw Reid, Doctors Post, Emmett, Sayre, +Billing, Vanderpoel Metcalfe, Detmoold Draper, Doremus, Hammond, St. J. +Roosa, Flint, Dana, Peabody, Ranney, Jacobi, Austin, and many others. + +The first toast was as follows: + + The hour's now come; + The very minute bids thee ope thine ear + Obey, and be attentive. + --_The Tempest._ + +After a few brief words of introduction, Doctor Barker called upon +Doctor A.H. Smith to complete the greeting, which he did in the +following happy lines: + + You've heard of the deacon's one hoss shay + Which, finished in Boston the self-same day + That the City of Lisbon went to pot, + Did a century's service, and then was not. + But the record's at fault which says that it burst + Into simply a heap of amorphous dust, + For after the wreck of that wonderful tub + Out of the ruins they saved a hub; + And the hub has since stood for Boston town, + Hub of the universe, note that down. + But an orderly hub as all will own, + Must have something central to turn upon, + And, rubber-cushioned, and true and bright + We have the axle here to-night. + Thrice welcome then to our festal board + The doctor-poet, so doubly stored + With science as well as with native wit, + _Poeta nascitur_, you know, _non fit_, + Skilled to dissect with knife or pen + His subjects dead or living men; + With thought sublime on every page + To swell the veins with virtuous rage, + Or with a syringe to inject them + With sublimate to disinfect them; + To show with demonstrator's art + The complex chambers of the heart, + Or armed with a diviner skill + To make it pulsate at his will; + With generous verse to celebrate + The loaves and fishes of some giver; + And then proceed to demonstrate + The lobes and fissures of the liver; + To soothe the pulses of the brain + With poetry's enchanting strain. + Or to describe to class uproarious + _Pes hippocampi accessorious_; + To nerve with fervor of appeal + The sluggish muscles into steel, + Or, pulling their attachments, show + Whence they arise and where they go; + To fire the eye by wit consummate, + Or draw the aqueous humor from it; + In times of peril give the tone + To public feeling, called backbone, + Or to discuss that question solemn, + The muscles of the spinal column. + And now I close my artless ditty + As per agreement with committee, + And making place for those more able + I leave the subject on the table. + +The toast "Our Guest," was prefaced by the following quotation from +Emerson: + +"One would say here is a man with such an abundance of thought! He is +never dull, never insincere, and has the genius to make the reader care +for all that he cares for." + +As Doctor Holmes rose, the room fairly shook with applause. Without any +prefatory remarks, he then read the following poem: + + Have I deserved your kindness? Nay, my friends; + While the fair banquet its illusion lends, + Let me believe it, though the blood may rush + And to my cheek recall the maiden blush + That o'er it flamed with momentary blaze + When first I heard the honeyed words of praise; + Let me believe it while the roses wear + Their bloom unwithering in the heated air; + Too soon, too soon their glowing leaves must fall, + The laughing echoes leave the silent hall, + Joy drop his garland, turn his empty cup, + And weary labor take his burden up,-- + How weigh that burden they can tell alone + Whose dial marks no moment as their own. + + Am I your creditor? Too well I know + How Friendship pays the debt it does not owe, + Shapes a poor semblance fondly to its mind, + Adds all the virtues that it fails to find, + Adorns with graces to its heart's content, + Borrows from love what nature never lent, + Till what with halo, jewels, gilding, paint, + The veriest sinner deems himself a saint. + Thus while you pay these honors as my due, + I owe my value's larger part to you; + And in the tribute of the hour I see + Not what I am, but what I ought to be. + + Friends of the Muse, to you of right belong + The first staid footsteps of my square-toed song; + Full well I know the strong heroic line + Has lost its fashion since I made it mine; + But there are tricks old singers will not learn, + And this grave measure still must serve my turn, + So the old bird resumes the self-same note + His first young summer wakened in his throat; + The self-same tune the old canary sings, + And all unchanged the bobolink's carol rings; + When the tired songsters of the day are still, + The thrush repeats his long-remembered trill; + Age alters not the crow's persistent caw, + The Yankee's "Haow," the stammering Briton's "Haw;" + And so the hand that takes the lyre for you + Plays the old tune on strings that once were new, + Nor let the rhymester of the hour deride + The straight-backed measure with its stately stride; + It gave the mighty voice of Dryden scope: + It sheathed the steel-bright epigrams of Pope; + In Goldsmith's verse it learned a sweeter strain, + Byron and Campbell wore its clanking chain; + I smile to listen while the critic's scorn + Flouts the proud purple kings have nobly worn; + Bid each new rhymer try his dainty skill + And mould his frozen phrases as he will; + We thank the artist for his neat device-- + The shape is pleasing though the stuff is ice. + + Fashions will change--the new costume allures-- + Unfading still the better type endures; + While the slashed doublet of the cavalier + Gave the old knight the pomp of chanticleer, + Our last-hatched dandy with his glass and stick + Recalls the semblance of a new-born chick + (To match the model he is aiming at + He ought to wear an eggshell for a hat), + Which of these objects would a painter choose, + And which Velasquez or Vandyke refuse? + When your kind summons reached my calm retreat, + Who are the friends, I questioned, I shall meet? + Some in young manhood, shivering with desire + To feel the genial warmth of Fortune's fire-- + Each with his bellows ready in his hand + To puff the flame just waiting to be fanned; + Some heads half-silvered, some with snow-white hair; + A crown ungarnished glistening here and there, + The mimic moonlight gleaming on the scalps + As evening's empress lights the shining Alps. + But count the crowds that throng your festal scenes-- + How few that knew the century in its teens! + + Save for the lingering handful fate befriends, + Life's busy day the Sabbath decade ends; + When that is over, how with what remains + Of Nature's outfit--muscle, nerve and brains? + + Were this a pulpit, I should doubtless preach; + Were this a platform, I should gravely teach; + But to no solemn duties I pretend + In my vocation at the table's end, + So as my answer let me tell instead + What Landlord Porter--rest his soul--once said. + A feast it was that none might scorn to share; + Cambridge and Concord demigods were there-- + And who were they? You know as well as I + The stars long glittering in our Eastern sky-- + The names that blazon our provincial scroll + Ring round the world with Britain's drumbeat roll! + + Good was the dinner, better was the talk; + Some whispered, devious was the homeward walk; + The story came from some reporting spy-- + They lie, those fellows--Oh, how they do lie! + Not ours those foot tracks in the new fallen snow-- + Poets and sages never zigzagged so! + + Now Landlord Porter, grave, concise, severe, + Master, nay, monarch, in his proper sphere, + Though to belles-lettres he pretended not, + Lived close to Harvard, so knew what was what; + And having bards, philosophers and such + To eat his dinner, put the finest touch + His art could teach, those learned mouths to fill + With the best proofs of gustatory skill; + And finding wisdom plenty at his board, + Wit, science, learning, all his guests had stored, + By way of contrast, ventured to produce, + To please their palates, an inviting goose. + + Better it were the company should starve + Than hands unskilled that goose attempt to carve; + None but the master artist shall assail + The bird that turns the mightiest surgeon pale. + + One voice arises from the banquet hall,-- + The landlord answers to the pleading call; + Of stature tall, sublime of port he stands, + His blade and trident gleaming in his hands; + Beneath his glance the strong-knit joints relax + As the weak knees before the headsman's axe. + + And Landlord Porter lifts his glittering knife + As some stout warrior armed for bloody strife; + All eyes are on him; some in whispers ask-- + What man is he who dares this dangerous task? + When, lo! the triumph of consummate art, + With scarce a touch the creature drops apart! + As when the baby in his nurse's lap + Spills on the carpet a dissected map. + + Then the calm sage, the monarch of the lyre, + Critics and men of science all admire, + And one whose wisdom I will not impeach, + Lively, not churlish, somewhat free of speech, + Speaks thus: "Say, master, what of worth is left + In birds like this, of breast and legs bereft?" + + And Landlord Porter, with uplifted eyes, + Smiles on the simple querist, and replies-- + "When from a goose you've taken legs and breast, + Wipe lips, thank God, and leave the poor the rest!" + + Kind friends, sweet friends, I hold it hardly fair + With that same bird your minstrel to compare, + Yet in a certain likeness we agree-- + No wrong to him, and no offence to me; + I take him for the moral he has lent, + My partner--to a limited extent. + + When the stern landlord, whom we all obey, + Has carved from life its seventh great slice away, + Is the poor fragment left in blank collapse + A pauper remnant of unvalued scraps? + I care not much what Solomon has said, + Before his time to nobler pleasures dead; + Poor man! he needed half a hundred lives + With such a babbling wilderness of wives! + But is there nothing that may well employ + Life's winter months--no sunny hour of joy? + While o'er the fields the howling tempests rage, + The prisoned linnet warbles in his cage; + When chill November through the forest blows + The greenhouse shelters the untroubled rose, + Round the high trellis creeping tendrils twine, + And the ripe clusters fill with blameless wine, + We make the vine forget the winter's cold, + But how shall age forget it's growing old? + + Though doing right is better than deceit, + Time is a trickster it is fair to cheat; + The honest watches ticking in your fobs + Tell every minute how the rascal robs. + To clip his forelock and his scythe to hide, + To lay his hour-glass gently on its side, + To slip the cards he marked upon the shelf, + And deal him others you have marked yourself, + If not a virtue, cannot be a sin, + For the old rogue is sure at last to win. + + What does he leave when life is well-nigh spent + To lap its evening in a calm content? + Art, Letters, Science, these at least befriend + Our day's brief remnant to its peaceful end-- + Peaceful for him who shows the setting sun + A record worthy of his Lord's "well done!" + + When he, the Master whom I will not name, + Known to our calling, not unknown to fame, + At life's extremest verge half-conscious lay, + Helpless and sightless, dying day by day, + + His brain, so long with varied wisdom fraught, + Filled with the broken enginery of thought, + A flitting vision often would illume + His darkened world and cheer its deepening gloom,-- + A sunbeam struggling through the long eclipse,-- + And smiles of pleasure play around his lips. + He loved the Art that shapes the dome and spire; + The Roman's page, the ring of Byron's lyre, + And oft, when fitful memory would return + To find some fragment in her broken urn, + Would wake to life some long-forgotten hour, + And lead his thought to Pisa's terraced tower, + Or trace in light before his rayless eye + The dome-crowned Pantheon printed on the sky; + Then while the view his ravished soul absorbs + And lends a glitter to the sightless orbs, + The patient watcher feels the stillness stirred + By the faint murmur of some classic word, + Or the long roll of Harold's lofty rhyme, + "Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime,"-- + Such were the dreams that soothed his couch of pain, + The sweet nepenthe of the worn-out brain. + + Brothers in art, who live for others' needs + In duty's bondage, mercy's gracious deeds, + Of all who toil beneath the circling sun + Whose evening rest than yours more fairly won? + Though many a cloud your struggling morn obscures, + What sunset brings a brighter sky than yours? + + I, who your labors for a while have shared, + New tasks have sought, with new companions fared, + For Nature's servant far too often seen + A loiterer by the waves of Hippocrene; + Yet round the earlier friendship twines the new; + My footsteps wander, but my heart is true, + Nor e'er forgets the living or the dead + Who trod with me the paths where science led. + + How can I tell you, O my loving friends, + What light, what warmth, your joyous welcome lends + To life's late hour? Alas! my song is sung, + Its fading accents falter on my tongue. + Sweet friends, if shrinking in the banquet's blaze, + Your blushing guest must face the breath of praise, + Speak not too well of one who scarce will know + Himself transfigured in its roseate glow; + Say kindly of him what is--chiefly--true, + Remembering always he belongs to you; + Deal with him as a truant, if you will, + But claim him, keep him, call him brother still! + +The next toast was to "The Clergy." + + He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one, exceeding + wise, fair-spoken and persuading. + --_King Henry VIII._ + +Bishop Clark of Rhode Island responded. "We honor," he said, "the high +priesthood of science and art. We honor the man who has brought life and +joy to many weary dwellings, and therefore we extend the right hand of +fellowship to him." When after tracing the lineage of the guest, he +reviewed his life, quoted from his writings, and said in conclusion, +that he stood side by side with Oliver Goldsmith. + +The toast to "The Bar"-- + + Why might that not be the skull + Of a lawyer? Where be his quidet's now? + --_Hamlet._ + +was answered by Hon. Wm. M. Evarts, in a witty and characteristic +address. + +Doctor T. Gaillard Thomas responded to the toast, "The Medical +Profession"-- + + She honors herself in honoring a favorite son,-- + +and George William Curtis followed in an address, answering to the toast +"Literature"-- + + A kind of medicine in itself. + --_Measure for Measure._ + +All factions, he declared, claimed Oliver Wendell Holmes, and all +peoples spoke of him in praise. He then mentioned many of the poet's +songs, reciting a stanza occasionally and commenting on them in a +touching manner. The next toast was "The Press"-- + + But words are things, and a small drop of ink + Falling like dew upon a thought, produces + That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. + --_Byron._ + +This was responded to by Whitelaw Reid in a humorous address in which he +closely connected Doctor Holmes with the profession of journalism. It +was a late hour when the company separated, and the last toast given, +found a hearty, though silent response from all present-- + + Good-night, good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, + That I shall say good-night till it be to-morrow. + --_Romeo and Juliet._ + + * * * * * + +Before closing this long chapter of "honors to Doctor Holmes," we cannot +refrain from giving the following cordial tribute from John Boyle +O'Reilly: + +"Oliver Wendell Holmes:--the wise, the witty, the many ideald, +philosopher, poet, physician, novelist, essayist, professor, but, best +of all, the kind, the warm heart. A man of unexpected tastes, ranging in +all directions from song to science, and from theology to boatracing. +Me met one day on Tremont street an acquaintance fond of athletic +exercise, and he stopped himself with a pathetic little sigh. + +"'Ah, you send me back fifty years,' he said. 'As you walked then with a +swing, you reminded me of an old friend who was dead before you were +born; and he was a good man with his hands, too.' + +"Never was a more healthy, natural, lovable man than Doctor Holmes." + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +IN LATER YEARS. + + +It was not until the spring of 1886 that Doctor Holmes made his second +trip to Europe. A whole half century had elapsed since his return home +from the three years spent abroad when he was completing his medical +studies. + +In this second European tour he was accompanied by his daughter, Mrs. +Sargent; and he gives his own delightful account of it in "One Hundred +Days in Europe," which first appeared as a serial in the _Atlantic +Monthly_, and has since been published in book form, with a charming +dedication to his daughter. "The Sailing of the Autocrat" was celebrated +by T.B. Aldrich in a fine poem, from which we quote a few lines as +embodying the tender love and ardent admiration of the whole American +people:-- + + "O Wind and Wave, be kind to him! + For him may radiant mornings break + From out the bosom of the deep, + And golden noons above him bend, + And fortunate constellations keep + Bright vigils to his journey's end! + + Take him, green Erin, to thy breast! + Keep him, gray London--for a while! + _In him we send thee of our best, + Our wisest word, our blithest smile_-- + Our epigram, alert and pat, + That kills with joy the folly hit-- + Our Yankee Tzar, our Autocrat + Of all the happy realms of wit! + Take him and keep him--but forbear + To keep him more than half a year.... + His presence will be sunshine there, + His absence will be shadow here!" + +We delight to recall with what distinguished honors he was received +abroad from the highest dignitaries of church and state, as well as from +his own literary compeers. It was during this visit in England that the +London _Spectator_ wrote, "No literary American--unless it be Mr. +Lowell, and we should not except even him--occupies precisely the same +place as Doctor Holmes in Englishmen's regard. They have the feeling for +him which they had for Charles Lamb, Charles Dickens, and John Leech, +in which admiration somewhat blends into and is indistinguishable from +affectionateness." + +The Universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge all conferred their +honorary degrees upon him, and he has given us his own inimitable +description of the manner in which he was entertained by Carlyle and by +Tennyson. + +At a club dinner given to him in London, he said to the bishop of +Gloucester: + +"I think we are all unconsciously conscious of each other's brain waves +at times. The fact is that words and even signs are a very poor sort of +language, compared with the direct telegraphy between souls. The mistake +we make is to suppose that the soul is circumscribed and imprisoned by +the body. Now, the truth is, I believe I extend a good way outside my +body. Well, I should say at least three or four feet all round, and so +do you, and it is our extensions that meet. Before words pass or we +shake hands, our souls have exchanged impressions, and they never lie." + +In reply to a toast at the farewell banquet given him in Liverpool by +the Medical Society of London, he said: + +"I cannot do justice to the manner in which I have been everywhere +received. Any phrase of mine would be a most inadequate return for the +months of loving and assiduous attentions through which I have been +living. You need not ask me, therefore, the almost stereotyped question, +how I like England and Scotland. I cannot help loving both, and I only +regret I could not accept the welcome awaiting me from my friends in +warmhearted Ireland." + +Fresh in mind still is the enthusiastic ovation given to our beloved +Autocrat when the hundred days had passed, and "Wind and Wave" brought +safely home again "our wisest word, our blithest smile." + +But grim Death, that had "rained through every roof save his," was soon +to send a cruel shaft into the poet's happy home. On the 6th of +February, 1888, the dear companion and helpmeet of his life for nearly +half a century-- + + "Stole with soft step the shining archway through + And left the past years' dwelling for the new." + +Mrs. Holmes was a remarkably gifted woman, and singularly fitted to be +the wife of a man of genius. She was devoted to her home and family, and +the charm of her sweet womanliness will long be remembered by those who +had the privilege of knowing her intimately. Doctor Holmes has himself +told us that her simple, reticent "I think so," was valued by him as a +far more encouraging sanction for action, than the dogmatic advice of a +more arbitrary adviser. When the Civil War broke out, Mrs. Holmes was +one of the first Boston women to enter actively into the work of the +United States Sanitary Commission. + +"She impressed us all," says one of her fellow workers, "as being so +strong, steady, clear, and firm. There was not one among the whole body +with whom we were so united as with her. And the strange thing about her +was that she really had the executive ability and the clear mind, as +well as the gentle and amiable spirit. She shirked no labor, even of the +most menial, and was one of those who gave up almost all her time to the +work. Her eldest son was at this time in the war, and went through six +battles; and this, although she never complained, was a constantly +harrowing pain to her." + +The younger son of Doctor Holmes, Edward Jackson Holmes, died in 1884, +leaving one son who bears the same name; and in 1889, his only daughter, +Mrs. Sargent, passed away. The aching void left in heart and home by +these sad bereavements was felt still more keenly as, one after another, +the old friends of his youth were laid to rest. + +"I do not think," he said upon one of his last birthdays, "that one of +the companions of my early years, of my boyhood, is left. When a man +reaches my age, and then looks back fifty years, why, even that distance +into the past to such a man leaves a pretty good gap behind it. Half a +century from eighty years leaves a 'gap' of thirty years, and thirty +years are a good many to most men." + +At one of the Saturday Club dinners, when fewer members than usual were +present, Doctor Holmes remarked, + +"This room is full of ghosts to me. I can see so many faces here that +used to be here years ago, and that have since passed from this life. +They are all real to me here, and I think if I were the only living +person at one of these dinners, I could sit here and talk to those I see +about me, and dine pleasantly, even alone." + +Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier and Lowell--all lifelong friends +of Holmes--had already "passed on." To other dearly-loved comrades, +also, the great last summons had come. Ticknor, Prescott, Fields, +Benjamin Pierce, James Freeman Clarke, Francis Parkman--all were gone. + +"I feel," he often said with a sigh, "that I am living in another age +and generation." + +Little, indeed, did the young Oliver realize when he wrote that pathetic +poem, "The Last Leaf," that he was the one of our five great poets +destined to be the "last upon the tree!" + +Upon his eightieth birthday, he remarked, "I have worn well, but you +cannot cheat old age. The difficulty with me now in writing is that I +don't like to start on anything. I always feel that people must be +saying, 'Are you not rash at eighty years of age to write for young +people who think a man old at forty?'" + +But in his delightful series of papers, "Over the Teacups," we mark the +same brilliant flashes of wit, the same keen intuition, the same +warmhearted sympathy with all phases of human nature, that our beloved +Autocrat showed in the Breakfast Table chats. As Doctor Holmes himself +says: + +"In sketching the characters, I have tried to make just the difference +one would naturally find in a breakfast and a tea table set." + +Another volume of poems, "Before the Curfew," and a series of essays +entitled "Our New Portfolio," were published soon after. The last poem +of Doctor Holmes printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_ was written in his +eighty-fourth year and dedicated to the memory of Francis Parkman. Some +of its verses, however, pay a loving tribute also to his old friends +Prescott and Motley: + + "One wrought the record of a royal pair + Who saw the great discoverer's sail unfurled, + Happy his more than regal prize to share, + The spoils, the wonders of the sunset world. + + There, too, he found his theme; upreared anew + Our eyes beheld the vanished Aztec shrines, + And all the silver splendors of Peru + That lured the conqueror to her fatal mines. + + Nor less remembered he who told the tale + Of empire wrested from the strangling sea; + Of Leyden's woe, that turned his readers pale, + The price of unborn freedom yet to be; + + Who taught the new world what the old could teach; + Whose silent hero, peerless as our own, + By deeds that mocked the feeble breath of speech + Called up to life a State without a throne. + + As year by year his tapestry unrolled, + What varied wealth its growing length displayed! + What long processions flamed in cloth of gold! + What stately forms their glowing robes arrayed!" + +Contrasting with Prescott's and Motley's the subject of Parkman's +histories, the poet says, + + "Not such the scenes our later craftsman drew, + Not such the shapes his darker pattern held; + A deeper shadow lent its sombre hue, + A sadder tale his tragic task compelled. + + He told the red man's story; far and wide + He searched the unwritten records of his race; + He sat a listener at the sachem's side, + He tracked the hunter through his wildwood chase. + + * * * * * + + Soon o'er the horizon rose the cloud of strife, + Two proud, strong nations battling for the prize; + Which swarming host should mould a nation's life, + Which royal banner flout the western skies. + + Long raged the conflict; on the crimson sod + Native and alien joined their hosts in vain; + The lilies withered where the lion trod, + Till peace lay panting on the ravaged plain." + +In the extracts given from this fine poem, with its stately, majestic +rhythm, it is plain to see that, even at the age of eighty-four, our +autocrat poet had lost none of the vigor and fire of youth. + +In the closing verses he speaks most tenderly of Parkman's patient, +untiring energy, + + "While through long years his burdening cross he bore," + +and concludes with this fine eulogy: + + "A brave, bright memory! his the stainless shield + No shame defaces and no envy mars! + When our far future's record is unsealed + His name will shine among its morning stars." + +It was in January, 1889, that Doctor Holmes sent to Doctor Richard M. +Hodges, who was at that time president of the Boston Medical Library +Association, the following characteristic letter: + + MY DEAR SIR: + + I have transferred my medical library to the hall of the Boston + Medical Library Association. Please accept it as a gift from its + late president. As there is no provision for its reception, and as + I liked the idea of keeping together the books which had been so + long together, I have provided a new set of shelves in which they + can be properly and conveniently arranged. + + Your very truly, + O.W. HOLMES. + +To show how highly Doctor Holmes valued this library, which consisted of +nine hundred and sixty-eight extremely rare volumes, Doctor Chadwick, +the librarian, said: "All these books have been collected by him in his +fifty years of experience, and it is fitting that we should realize it +is the result of years of labor. He has been ready on every occasion to +deliver addresses on topics having a wide scope. He carried off with +honor three of the four Boylston prizes, and this alone shows the range +of his studies. He has contributed to the funds of the association in +various ways, and now gives us his most valuable library. In this act, +as well as his continuing the position as president of the association +several years after he had relinquished all other connection with the +profession, he has designated our institution as the one in which he +takes the greatest pride; in whose future he has the greatest +confidence." + +In reply, Doctor Holmes then said: + +"The books I have offered the association, and which you have kindly +accepted, constitute my own medical library, with the exception of a few +volumes which, for several reasons, I have retained. It has grown by a +slow process of accretion. The first volume of it was 'Bell's Anatomy,' +and the last was 'Elements of Pharmacy.' The oldest book was written in +1490, and the latest in 1887, so it can be seen that the library covers +the space of four centuries." + +After reviewing the better books of the library, and alluding to the +private library that a practitioner should keep, Doctor Holmes added: +"These books are dear to me; a twig from some one of my nerves runs to +every one of them, and they mark the progress of my study and the +stepping-stones of my professional life. If any of them can be to others +as they have been to me, I am willing to part with them, even if they +are such old and beloved companions." + +Doctor Holmes' warm interest in everything connected with education was +shown most emphatically in one of the last public addresses he +delivered. It was at that memorable reception given at the Vendome, +February 28, 1893, by the Boston publishers to Doctor Holmes and other +authors, and to the members of the National Educational Association. +Mrs. Elizabeth Phelps-Ward, with Mr. Henry O. Houghton and Mr. Edwin +Ginn, gave welcome to the many distinguished guests. + +When Doctor Holmes was called upon to address the large company +assembled, he began: + +"Surely the Autocrat never felt more powerless than he does at this +moment. I meant to come here and say a few almost careless words. I was +saying to myself, 'You know very well what you've got to talk about, and +you can soon say it.' But," and here the Autocrat's bright face grew +serious, "at half-past ten this morning there came to me an elegantly +engraved copper-plate invitation to appear here, with a formality and a +style about it which showed that I had deceived myself in thinking I +could utter a few careless words. There was but one refuge for me, and +that was the old one. I can only hold up a copy of verses," and he waved +the manuscript deprecatingly. + +"But not one word, not one thought of it was in my head before half-past +ten to-day. There are things in literature," and here Dr. Holmes dropped +his voice to a confidential key, "that are christened 'impromptus,' the +authenticity of which I am inclined to doubt. I have the idea that a +good many impromptus have cost their authors many sleepless nights. + +"I shall tell you what I would have spoken about. I should have said, in +the first place, that I have a great sympathy with instructors. I have +been an instructor myself. I was for thirty-five years professor in +Harvard College, and two years before that professor in Dartmouth +College. I enjoyed very much the relations I had with my students in +both places. Many of them have lasted up to the present time, and it is +pleasant for me every now and then to have a bald-headed man come up to +me and tell me he was one of my boys thirty or forty years ago. + +"A great many changes have taken place since that time, but two of them +are especially interesting. One is the sub-division of teaching. There +were six of us who taught the medical graduates of Harvard College +during a considerable part of the time when I was professor there. There +are now seventy. How much better they are taught I do not know. I +presume they are taught well. But a wicked thought came into my head +just now--it is not every animal that has the most legs who crawls the +fastest. It reminds me of the sirloin of beef one day, which was +mince-meat on the second." + +All these pleasantries were given in the Autocrat's happiest manner, +amidst many interruptions of laughter and applause from his audience. + +"I don't mean, however," he added, "to deprecate that which I +accomplished by the sub-division into specialties. What I say is rather +playful than serious. The next point is the education of women, which I +have regarded at a distance, to be sure. But, occasionally visiting +Wellesley and the Cambridge Annex, it has been a great delight to me to +see how the intellects of the fair sex matched with those of the +sterner. I then thought I should say something of the importance of +implanting ideas on all the most important subjects at a very early +period of life, and I was going to recall my theology which came out of +the little primer, and my patriotism which was kindled at the shrine of +Dr. Dwight's 'Columbia, Queen of the World.' But all these things I +would prefer to leave, and what else I would have said I will defer +until the next occasion, I also wish to say here, personally, that it +was most unwillingly that I appeared before an audience like this. I +felt it was, at my age, more becoming that I should be a listener rather +than a speaker." Here he was interrupted by cries of "No! No!" but he +shook his head determinedly, saying, "I am speaking seriously now, +however difficult it may be to do that. These little verses I have +written, and which I am going to read, are really impromptu. They are +poorly scrawled, for my hand was unsteady." + +Then in a clear, strong voice he read: + + "Teachers of teachers! yours the task, + Noblest that noble minds can ask, + High up Aonia's murmurous mount + To watch, to guard the sacred fount + That feeds the stream below. + To guide the hurrying flood that fills + A thousand silvery, rippling rills + In ever widening flow. + + Rich is the harvest from the fields + That bounteous nature kindly yields; + But fairer growths enrich the soil + Ploughed deep by thought and wearied toil, + In learning's broad domain. + And where the leaves, the flowers, the fruits, + Without your watering at the roots + To fill each branching vein? + + Welcome! the author's firmest friends, + Your voice the surest Godspeed lends. + Of you the growing mind demands + The patient care, the guiding hands + Through all the mists of morn. + And knowing well the future's need, + Your prescient wisdom sows the seed + To flower in years unborn." + +It will be remembered that the last time Doctor Holmes appeared in +public to read a poem was on May 28, 1893, when he attended the +celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the reorganization of the +Boston Young Men's Christian Union. The beautiful hymn he wrote for this +occasion is the sweet, simple expression of his own lifelong creed: + + "Our Father! while our hearts unlearn + The creeds that wrong thy name, + Still let our hallowed altars burn + With faith's undying flame. + + Not by the lightning's gleam of wrath + Our souls thy face shall see, + The star of love must light the path + That leads to heaven and thee. + + Help us to read our Master's will + Through every darkening stain + That clouds his sacred image still, + And see him once again, + + The brother man, the pitying friend + Who weeps for human woes, + Whose pleading words of pardon blend + With cries of raging foes. + + If, 'mid the gathering storms of doubt + Our hearts grow faint and cold, + The strength we cannot live without, + Thy love will not withhold. + + Our prayers accept; our sins forgive; + Our youthful zeal renew; + Shape for us holier lives to live, + And nobler work to do!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +LAST DAYS. + + +The eighty-fifth birthday of Doctor Holmes was quietly spent at his +pleasant country home in Beverly. + +"The burden of years sits lightly upon me," he remarked to a friend that +day, "but after fourscore years the encroachments of time make +themselves felt with rapidly increasing progress. The twelfth septennial +period has always seemed to me as one of the natural boundaries of life. +One who has lived to complete his eighty-fourth year has had his full +share, even of an old man's allowance. Whatever is granted over that is +a prodigal indulgence of nature. When one can no longer hear the lark, +when he can no longer recognize the faces he passes on the street, when +he has to watch his steps, when it becomes more and more difficult for +him to recall names, he is reminded at every moment that he must spare +himself, or nature will not spare him the penalties she exacts for +overtaxing his declining powers." + +In spite of these words, that seem prophetic to us now, the +sunny-hearted Autocrat declared he was "eighty-five years _young_" that +day, and all the friends who came with loving gifts and congratulations +fully agreed with him. His conversation sparkled with all the wit of his +younger days, and he talked with animation of his daily walks through +the town, and of his long drives into the country in search of "big +trees." Near the base of "Woodbury's Hill" in Beverly, he had recently +found a mammoth elm that he considered finer than all his other +favorites in Essex county; for, in addition to its great size, the wide +spreading branches were covered with unusually thick rich foliage. + +"I call all trees mine," said the Autocrat, "that I have put my +wedding-ring on--that is, my thirty-foot tape-measure!" + +Having been slightly troubled with writers' cramp, Doctor Holmes was +advised by one of his callers that day to try a typewriter. This remark +brought forth a smile from the man who had moved the people of the world +with his pen; and he said, with a merry laugh, that he did not propose +to forsake an old friend for a new one at that late time in life. + +In speaking of his birthday, Doctor Holmes alluded to the great men who +were born that same year, 1809. + +"Yes," he said, "I was particularly fortunate in being born the same +year with four of the most distinguished men of the age, and I really +feel flattered that it so happened. Now, in England, there were +Tennyson, Darwin, and Gladstone--Gladstone being, I think, four months +younger than myself. That is a most remarkable trio, isn't it? Just +contemplate the greatness of those three men, and then remember that in +the same year Abraham Lincoln was born in this country. Most +remarkable!" And when the visitor added, "You have forgotten to mention +the fifth, doctor; there was also Oliver Wendell Holmes," Doctor Holmes +quickly retorted in his own inimitable way: + +"Oh! that does not count; I 'sneaked in,' as it were!" + +Doctor Holmes remained at his country home in Beverly until late in +September, this last year of his life, and his health seemed steadily to +improve with the bracing autumn weather. + +On his return to the city, however, he had a severe attack of the +asthmatic trouble from which he had suffered all his life. A severe +cold, and the "weight of years" aggravated what seemed at first but a +slight indisposition; and the poet, with his accurate medical knowledge, +realized that the end was not far distant. + +But as he grew weaker and weaker, his sunshiny spirit shone all the +brighter. With playful jests he tried to soothe the sad hearts of his +dear ones, and to make them feel that the pain of parting was the only +sting of death. He seldom, indeed, made any reference to the dark shadow +he felt so near; but one morning, three or four days before his death, +he said to his son: + +"Well, Wendell, what is it? King's Chapel?" + +"Oh, yes, father," said Judge Holmes. + +"Then I am satisfied. That is all I am going to say about it." + +On Sunday morning, October 7th, he seemed so much easier that his +physician and intimate friend, Doctor Charles P. Putnam, went out of +town to make a professional visit, leaving his brother, Doctor James +Putnam, in charge. + +About noon Doctor Holmes had a sudden spasm, and his breathing became so +labored that he asked to be moved into his favorite armchair. + +"That is better, thank you. That rests me more," he said to his son, who +stood beside him. + +These were his last words. Painlessly and peacefully, with all the dear +ones of his home around him, his life flowed away like the ebbing of a +tide. + +To the world outside, the tidings of Doctor Holmes' death, that bright +October day, came with a terrible shock. As late as Thursday of the +preceding week he had been down town, and was intending to be present at +the meeting of the Saturday Morning Club. Not even his nearest friends +realized that the end was so near. + +"It is as if a long accustomed element had gone out of the air!" +exclaimed one Boston citizen. "While Doctor Holmes lived we felt as if +we were still bound by a living tie to the Titanic age of American +literature." + +"The death of Doctor Holmes," said Charles Eliot Norton, "marks the +close of an epoch in American literature. He was the sole survivor of +the five great New England authors, and he has no successor. This group +was a remarkable one. They grew up, as it were, together, and are the +product of our New England life in the first half century. Their +writings were contemporaneous, and they were bound in the closest ties +of friendship. Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes--no other +section of the country can show such a group." + +"Boston without Doctor Holmes!" exclaimed another friend. "What will it +be like? There has been but one 'Autocrat,'--there will never be +another!" + +Yet not only Boston--the whole world mourned the departure of Oliver +Wendell Holmes. Within his domain his genius was imperial, and his +bright cheery nature endeared him to all humanity. + +It seemed fitting that Nature herself should weep on the sad burial day +of one whose life had embodied her sunshine! + +The wind mourned, the rain fell continuously, as loving hands bore into +King's Chapel, upon Wednesday, October 10, all that was mortal of our +famous poet. The simple funeral rites began just at noon. The casket, +upon which rested wreaths of pansies and laurels, was borne up the aisle +to the wailing organ strains of Haendel's "Dead March in Saul." Rev. +Edward Everett Hale led the sad procession, reciting in his clear, +sympathetic voice, "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; +he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." + +All the seats upon the middle aisle were reserved and occupied by the +poet's immediate family and intimate friends, members of the +Massachusetts Medical Society, representatives of Harvard College, and +delegations from the numerous other societies of which the poet and +physician was a member. + +A beautiful wreath of laurel hung from the south gallery, marking with +mute eloquence the vacant pew of the dead poet. + +The Chapel was filled with a notable assembly, representing the best +life of Boston--its intellect, culture, and heart. And probably never at +one time had the ancient church held so many venerable personages. Rev. +S.F. Smith, the author of "America," and Rev. Samuel May of Leicester, +the only surviving classmates of Doctor Holmes, were present, in spite +of the inclement weather. Judge Rockwood Hoar, fast nearing the +fourscore milestone, Doctor Bartol, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe--all the great +poet's friends and contemporaries were there to pay their last tribute. + +After the reading of passages from the Bible, and a prayer by Rev. +Edward Everett Hale, a selection from Mendelssohn's "Elijah," "Oh, rest +in the Lord," was sung by Miss Lena Little, followed by a chant, "The +Lord is my Shepherd," and a hymn, "O Paradise," by the choir. + +Then the strains of the "Dead March" again rolled from the organ, and +the funeral procession left the Chapel. + +The services at the grave were attended by only the relatives and most +intimate friends. It was the wish of Doctor Holmes and his family that +he should rest beside his wife in the Jackson lot at Mt. Auburn. It is +in the immediate vicinity of the Holmes' lot, amidst the beautiful oaks +that the poet loved; and only a few yards distant rest Longfellow and +James Russell Lowell. + + * * * * * + +The life of Oliver Wendell Holmes spanned nearly the whole nineteenth +century; and to the very last he kept abreast of the feeling, the +thought, the movement, of the day. He was one of the few men of our +generation who raised the American name in the esteem of the whole +world. + +Comparing Doctor Holmes with his four illustrious contemporaries in +literature, Professor Norton says:-- + +"Emerson was the deepest thinker of them all; Longfellow possessed in a +rare degree the power of felicitous expression, and gave us thoughts +couched in the most beautiful poetry; Whittier was the apostle of +freedom, fearless, and moved by an untiring purpose; Lowell was a man of +versatile genius, as great in the field of poetry as he was in that of +prose. + +"Holmes was one who wrote without effort. His was a ready genius. His +thoughts came unbidden, and he had but to give them expression in words. +Apt, vivacious, animated, pure, happy, he always was at once a wit and a +humorist, but greater in his wit than in his humor. Whatever his +subject, he wrote of it with equal ability, and his books are remarkable +for the variety of topics which he has treated so easily." + +Of all his poems, Doctor Holmes ranked "The Chambered Nautilus" highest. + +"I wrote that poem," he said, "at white heat. When it was finished I +took it to my wife, who was sewing in an adjoining room, and said, 'I +think I have the best poem here that I have ever written.' And I have +never changed my mind about it." + +By universal consent, indeed, "The Chambered Nautilus" is considered the +gem of Doctor Holmes' beautiful lyrics. The poet always kept in his +study specimens of the nautilus shell, cut entirely across, to show the +spiral ascent of its curious inhabitant. He delighted to show these +shells to his visitors; and, as he replaced them on the shelves, he +would often repeat the last stanza of his beautiful poem:-- + + Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, + As the swift seasons roll; + Leave thy low-vaulted past; + Let each new temple, loftier than the last, + Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, + Till thou at length art free, + Leaving thine out-grown shell by life's unresting sea. + +Among the poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes are seven that may truly be +called "Hymns;" and it is well to remember that the test of the use and +value of a hymn is not the occasion for which it was written, but its +adoption into hymnal collections, and its use thereafter. + +"We were singing one of Doctor Holmes' hymns in our church," said Rev. +Minot Savage, "that Sunday morning when the great singer was passing +into the higher choir. + +"Doctor Holmes was manly in his religion, and his songs show the bright +and noble spirit that dominated his life. He was worshipful and +trustful, and always hopeful. He was a firm, even passionate, believer +in an existence after death, and found the ground of his trust in the +dissecting-room. As a scientist he faced everything, and then believed +that the soul was more than the body." + +Of these seven hymns of Doctor Holmes', the familiar one beginning,-- + + Lord of all being, throned afar, + Thy glory flames from star to star, + +the poet appropriately characterized his "Sunday Hymn." It first +appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of December, 1859, and the +"Professor" prefaced it with these words:-- + +"Peace be to all such as may have been vexed by any utterance the pages +have repeated. They will doubtless forget for the moment the difference +in the lines of truth we look at through our human prisms, and join in +singing (inwardly) this hymn to the Source of the Light we all need to +lead us, and the warmth which alone can make us all brothers." + +In the many heartfelt tributes to Doctor Holmes, it is interesting to +note that his spiritual character was appreciated and approved by men +differing from him very widely in religious belief. Indeed, it would be +impossible for any one to hold communion with him through his writings +without growing more kindly, more loving toward his fellow-men, and more +reverent, more filial, towards his Heavenly Father. + +"And personally," remarked an intimate friend, "Doctor Holmes was as +delightful a character as he is in his books. His best thoughts came +full flood, as it were, from a richly stocked mind. His most +characteristic traits were his extreme kindliness and his animation. The +mirth and vivacity which bubble forth from his books was the same which +came spontaneously from his lips in conversation. He was a delightful +companion, and a true friend to those who were so fortunate as to know +him and be known by him." + +Oliver Wendell Holmes taught that life is good and sweet, and worth the +living. There is not in all his writings a single morbid note. The world +is brighter and happier and better for the rare gift of such a life. + +His wit has been the solvent of bigotry. He has done for the religious +thought of the century what Whittier did for the political; and his +bright optimism has pierced many an old-time error with the potency of +the sunbeam. + +"It is clearly seen in the perspective," says Charles Dudley Warner, +"that Doctor Holmes' life gives us the kind of reputation that is of +value to one's native land, and shows us that, after all the parade of +official station and the notoriety of politics and money, those names +only endure in honor and love which are borne by men of high +intellectual and moral qualities. When we sum up all our sources and +achievements, it is to him and his few compeers that we must point for +our distinction." + + * * * * * + +Transcribers notes: + +Maintained original spelling and punctuation. + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes, by E. E. 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