^tanbarb Sibrarp ^bition 
LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
BY 
JOHN T. MORSE, Jr. 
IN TWO VOLUMES 
VOLUME I. Dr. Holmes in 1850 LIFE AND LETTERS 
OF 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
BY 
JOHN T. MORSE, Jr. 
IN TWO VOLUMES 
VOLUME I. 
BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
IfitVemtie lOress, Cambritioe Copyright, 1896, 
By JOHN T. MORSE, Jb. 
All rights reserved. 
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., V. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company. PREFACE 
To the reader I have only a word to say: I fear 
his criticism that these volumes have too much 
Memoir, too little Correspondence. To this com- 
plaint, if it be made, I must plead in " confession and 
avoidance." The fact is that letter-writing was to Dr. 
Holmes an irksome task. Except to Motley and to 
Lowell, during their absences in Europe, he very 
rarely wrote spontaneously and in the way of friend- 
ship. His letters, it will be observed, were almost 
always written because some correspondent could not 
courteously be left unanswered, or under the more 
or less mild compulsion of some special occasion. 
Therefore his letters were few. Every effort has been 
made to collect them, and the result is spread very 
fully before the reader. Nothing has been omitted 
which, by any liberality of judgment, could be sup- 
posed to have any interest; on the contrary, notes 
and letters are printed, which would hardly have been 
selected had there been an embarras de richesses. 
Now " occasional " letters often demand an explana- 
tory setting; and besides this it was to be considered 
that Dr. Holmes's life was so retired that those who IV 
preface 
care for him have not that knowledge of it and of 
him which they naturally desire to possess. For these 
reasons, a narrative apparently disproportioned to the 
space allotted to the letters seemed inevitable. 
It is right for me to say that my friend and cousin, 
Mr. Justice Holmes, has been most patient and liberal 
in aiding me; so that the faults of the book, at least, 
are all my own. 
John T. Morse, Jr. 
16 Fairfield Street, Boston. 
February 17, 1896. CONTENTS 
PAGE 
CHAPTER I 
Genealogy and Birth 1 
CHAPTER II 
The Autobiographical Notes 28 
CHAPTER III 
Letters to Phineas Barnes. (1828-1831) .... 52 
CHAPTER IV 
Education, at Home and Abroad ..... 76 
CHAPTER V 
Letters from Europe 98 
CHAPTER VI 
Dr. Holmes practises Medicine, and marries . . 157 
CHAPTER VII 
Lectures, Medical and Literary 173 
CHAPTER VIII 
The Atlantic: The Autocrat 203 
CHAPTER IX 
Poetry : Thb Saturday Club : The Professor : The 
Poet 225 VI 
CONTENTS 
CHAPTER X 
The Doctor's Novels and Religious Teachings . . 256 
CHAPTER XI 
The Doctor's Distaste for Public Affairs . . . 294 
CHAPTER XII 
The Victim of Correspondents ..... 314 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
VOLUME I 
PAGE 
Oliver Wendell Holmes. From a daguerreotype taken in 
1850 owned by Dr. J. R. Chadwick . . Frontispiece 
Facsimile of Leaf from Almanac for 1809, showing 
Record of Dr. Holmes's Birth 20 
Dr. Holmes's Paris Lodgings, 1833-1835 .... 86 
Rev. Abiel Holmes. From a painting owned by 0. W. H. 
Upham, Salem, Mass 96 
Professor Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis. From a 
portrait, Paris, 1867, in possession of Boston Medical Library 
Association .......... 142 
Phineas Barnes. From a daguerreotype .... 168 
The "Pine-Tree" at Pittsfield, Mass., standing near 
Dr. Holmes's House. From a photograph .... 202 
A Group from the Saturday Club : Ralph Waldo Emer- 
son, John Lothrop Motley, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, 
James Russell Lowell, and Henry Wadsworth Long- 
fellow 242 
A Group from the Saturday Club: E. R. Hoar, Louis 
Agassiz, T. G. Appleton, Charles Sumner, John A. 
Andrew, E. P. Whipple, and James T. Fields . . 246 
Interior of King's Chapel, Boston. From a photograph . 280 MEMOIRS AND CORRESPONDENCE 
CHAPTER I 
GENEALOGY AND BIRTH 
When this memoir was in an early stage of prepa- 
ration, a thoughtful friend read aloud to the writer 
these ominous words from Temple, Bar .• " There is 
a common complaint against the biographies of men 
of letters, that they are, with few exceptions, insuf- 
ferably dull reading. And the cause of this is not 
far to seek. If an author has put the best of himself 
into his books, he has, as a rule, left his biographer 
little to tell." 
" With few exceptions," - there was scant comfort 
in these words, and even that was immediately taken 
away by the explanation that they covered only the 
cases of those authors who had not put the best of 
themselves into their books ; whereas in point of fact 
Dr. Holmes had not only put the best, but absolutely 
dll, both of and about himself, into the volumes with 
which he had amused and instructed the English- 
reading world. 
It was further not unknown to the biographer that 
Dr. Holmes himself had uttered sundry pungent, 
discouraging sentences: - 
" I should like to see any man's biography with 
corrections and emendations by his ghost. We don't 
know each other's secrets quite so well as we flatter 
ourselves we do." 2 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
" There are but two biographers who can tell the 
story of a man's oi* a woman's life. One is the per- 
son himself or herself; the other is the Recording 
Angel. The autobiographer cannot be trusted to tell 
the whole truth, though he may tell nothing but the 
truth, and the Recording Angel never lets his book 
go out of his own hands." 
"Think what a horrid piece of work the biogra 
phers make of a man's private history! Just imagine 
the subject of one of those extraordinary fictions 
called biographies coming back and reading the life 
of himself, written very probably by somebody or 
other who thought he could turn a penny by doing it." 
Yet in spite of all this, it is certain that Dr. Holmes 
expected that some Life or Memoir would be given 
to the public ; and it is hardly doubtful that he de- 
sired this; and if he has told so freely of himself, 
yet, as he says of Carlyle: " He remains not the less 
one of the really interesting men of his generation, a 
man about whom we wish to know all that we have 
a right to know." 
His life was so uneventful that the utter absence 
of anything in it to remark upon became in itself 
remarkable. He passed two years of his youth in Eu- 
rope studying medicine ; in his old age he went there 
again for three months ; otherwise he lived all his 
years, almost literally all his days, in or near Boston, 
within tethering distance, so to speak, of that State 
House which he declared to be " the hub of the solar 
system," - and by the phrase made true his accom- 
panying words: " You could n't pry that out of a 
Boston man, if you had the tire of all creation straight- 
ened out for a crowbar." All his intimate friends 
lived within a few miles of him, save when some one GENEALOGY AND BIRTH 
3 
of them went abroad, as Motley and Lowell did. He 
was not, like so many English and a few American 
men of letters, connected in any way with political 
affairs; he never held any office; nothing ever hap- 
pened to him. Fortunately the picturesqueness of 
poverty was never his, nor the prominence of wealth. 
Days and years glided by with little to distinguish 
them from each other, in that kind of procession which 
those who like it call tranquil, and those who dislike 
it call monotonous. Such is the panorama which 
awaits the reader. 
In view of the fact that a large part of Dr. Holmes's 
literary work was devoted to the enforcement and illus- 
tration of the controlling influence of inherited tend- 
encies, one would expect to find him making careful 
inquiry concerning his own ancestors. Yet so far was 
this from being the case that he seemed almost indif- 
ferent about them. Other persons, perhaps desiring 
to establish relationship with him, or instigated by 
mere genealogical curiosity, from time to time sent 
him information and pricked him with queries; and 
by these means he gradually acquired a more accurate 
information than he would ever have been at much 
trouble to obtain by original effort. In truth, the 
facts that A begat B, and that B begat C, and so on, 
were wretched dust for him, and he was entirely sat- 
isfied with the fragmentary knowledge which showed 
that he himself, as he said of Emerson, " came of the 
best New England stock." But since it was "the 
best New England stock," the memorial of it is worth 
preserving, especially since the name of New England 
is now a mere geographical title rather than, as it 
used to be, an implied expression of racial and social 
characteristics. 4 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
When Dr. Holmes died, his friend, Mr. John Bel- 
lows, an Englishman, wrote to the Gloucestershire 
Chronicle a statement that Dr. Holmes " was de- 
scended from a Sheriff Hoar, of this City, and from 
Richard Hoar, the donor, in 1607, to our corporation 
of three houses at the Cross, the rents of which were 
to go to certain charities." He added that lately, 
upon the demolition of these buildings, a piece of the 
old oak therefrom had been carved with the city arms, 
and sent to Dr. Holmes. 
Thomas Holmes, a lawyer of Gray's Inn in the six- 
teenth century, was the earliest ancestor, of the name, 
of whom there is any record. A letter which the 
Doctor wrote to Mr. Emra Holmes, also an English- 
man, may fairly be construed to imply that he sup- 
posed himself to have English ancestors who had been 
men of some note, and also that he had never been at 
the trouble to assure himself on the subject; indeed, 
it appears by this letter that he "mistook the Ad- 
miral Charles Holmes, Wolfe's contemporary, for his 
great ancestor, Sir Robert Holmes." 
TO EMKA HOLMES. 
Beverly Farms, Mass. 
My dear Sir, - I thank you for the interesting 
notices you have sent me of the family with which I 
may suppose myself connected through my ancestry. 
Most of the settlers of New England were too poor 
and too hard worked in fighting famine and the In- 
dians to think much of their genealogical trees. My 
own great-great-grandfather was one of the first settlers 
of the town of Woodstock, Conn., where my father 
was born. He probably carried an axe on his shoul- 
der, and thought himself lucky if he could keep his GENEALOGY AND BIRTH 
5 
scalp on his crown. His grandson, my grandfather, 
fought the French and Indians in Canada, in what we 
used to call the "Old French War," the same in 
which Wolfe fell, and in which Admiral Sir Robert 
Holmes took a part, as the Gentleman s Magazine, 
among other authorities, will inform you. My father 
was a clergyman and an author, his Annals of Amer- 
ica having made him a reputation as an accurate and 
trustworthy writer. I, too, have made a number of 
books, some of which are not unknown in England. 
My eldest son, who bears my own name, has very 
recently published a work on the Common Law, 
which you may see noticed at considerable length, 
and in a very flattering way, in a late number of the 
Saturday Review. So we are trying to keep the 
name of Holmes respectable on this side of the Atlan- 
tic ; and I thank you for what you have done on yours. 
I remember, by the way, the statue of Sir Robert 
Holmes, in Westminster Abbey, one of the most 
pleasing that I can recall. If you ever look in Cam- 
den's Britannia, you will find our old family name as 
we spell it, and its derivation. 
The first Holmes who appeared upon this side of 
the Atlantic was John. He came to the village of 
Woodstock, Conn., with the first settlers, in 1686, 
not as an original proprietor or grantee of the 
township, but " taken in on the way by the company 
of ' Goers,' " because he was " the kind of man they 
wanted," since " he knew something of surveying." 
He is reported to have become "generally useful," 
to have set up a saw-mill and a fulling-mill, and to 
have given for the public use the land which is now 
South Woodstock common. One of his sons, David, 6 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
comes down to us simply as Deacon Holmes. In the 
next generation, the second David was a captain in 
the "Old French War," and a surgeon of the army 
in the Revolutionary War. He married Temperance, 
daughter of John and Temperance Bishop, of Nor- 
wich, Conn. His tombstone states that he " fell on 
sleep March ye 19th, 1779, Aetatis 57." His son, 
Abiel, the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes, was born 
at Woodstock, December 24,1763, and graduated from 
Yale College " with honour and a respectable part at 
Commencement," September, 1783. He married for 
his first wife Mary, daughter of Rev. Ezra Stiles, 
D. D., president of Yale College; embraced the min- 
istry, went to Georgia, and was settled over a parish 
there until 1791. Then he returned to Cambridge 
and became the pastor of the First Congregational 
Church. March 26, 1801, he married his second wife, 
Sarah Wendell, only daughter of Hon. Oliver Wen- 
dell, of Boston. 
Twice his lecturing journeys brought Dr. Holmes 
to the neighborhood of Woodstock, and he made some 
little exploration there, apparently to gratify his sis- 
ter Ann (wife of Charles W. Upham,1 of Salem), 
who seems to have cared more than he did for matters 
genealogical. Some of his notes are as follows : - 
" While I was in the burial-ground an old man and 
his daughter drove up to the fence in a wagon. His 
staff lay by him. He had come, as his daughter after- 
wards told me, to mark out with his staff the place 
where he was to be buried. His name was Jacob 
Lyon and his age 88." With this couple the Doctor 
visited the " Old Holmes place." There he found a 
1 A clergyman, an author, and a member of Congress, 1854- 
1856. GENEALOGY AND BIRTH 
7 
well, which "had the aspect of antiquity. This, I 
doubt not, was ' old Dr. David Holmes's ' well, and 
that he ' drank thereof himself and his children and 
his cattle.' The brook, which I remember Father's 
mentioning, ran at the foot of the mound where the 
house was placed. There he went one Sunday morn- 
ing, when a child, forgetting that it was 'Sabbath 
day,' until some horror-stricken person startled and 
confounded him by announcing the awful fact. In the 
rocky, steep banks of the brook, near his father's 
house, he might easily have found the natural pul- 
pit from which he used to hold forth in his tender 
years." 
" Rode to Muddy Brook, where an old man, Child 
by name, sat in front of his house. He was nearly 
80 years old. Remembered father's brothers. Was 
ready to talk, in a mild way, but said: ' I am not 
very -flippant' 
" Old Mr. Lyon spoke well of the Holmeses. Lib- 
erty H. was ' a little dissipated,' -went off - thinks 
he became a Methodist preacher." 
In June, 1866, Dr. Holmes made another visit to 
Woodstock, and on this occasion his genealogical 
booty was as follows : - 
"Visited the old Holmes place. . . . Came upon 
Dr. Daniel Lyman, son of the Rev. Eliphalet Lyman, 
who was minister of Woodstock from 1779 to 1821. 
Dr. Lyman is about 82 years old. His father and 
mother, when first married, boarded with Dr. David 
Holmes. He told me what here follows : - 
" Dr. David Holmes was a pleasant sociable man, 
like my father. His wife, whom Dr. Lyman remem- 
bers very well, was a nice old lady. 
" General David, his oldest son, was a man of 8 
character, - would have been distinguished if he had 
been living in this last war. Dr. L. told me a story 
of David's cleverness and boldness in the raising of 
the Academy steeple. 
" Major Sanford II. was a humorist. Story about 
his talking of 'land-eels,' meaning snakes thereby. 
He tried a great many things, as Deacon Sanger had 
told me, - a saw-mill - a pepper-mill - tavern, etc., 
- then went to Vermont. 
" Captain Leonard H., a worthy man, went to 
Muddy Brook, lived there. 
" Hartwell H. was an ingenious mechanic. 
" Dr. Lathrop H. sold out slaves, etc., in Georgia. 
Lost the proceeds and his life by shipwreck, but left 
a good deal of property to his daughter, Tempe [Tem- 
perance] . 
" Tempe married Barstow. Had two daughters. 
The first married Stoddard, and died. The second 
married Wilkinson, and was divorced (after some 
scandal) ; then married Stoddard, deceased sister's 
husband." 
Among Dr. Holmes's papers, I also find the follow- 
ing " Extracts from the Diary of my father : " - 
" August, 1790. Rode to Coventry with my sister 
Tempy, lodged at my Uncle Coleman's, find my much 
respected and very pious Grandmother Hewet much 
debilitated, etc., will be 88 years old if she lives till 
the 6th September. August, 1791. My Grand- 
mother Hewet departed this life in the 88th year of 
her age at Coventry July, 1791, - paid the following 
tribute of respect: - 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES GENEALOGY AND BIRTH 
9 
" TO THE MEMORY OE 
" 'T is done, O Death ! thy well-aim'd dart hath sped - 
Swift from the clay-cold corse the spirit fled; 
Nor deem the triumph thine - SHE, she did gain 
The palm of victory on the ethereal plain - 
All calm and placid as the unruffled sea 
She met thy dart, and own'd a Friend in thee." 
[Several more stanzas follow, in the same strain.] 
" 1803. On Thursday the 4th day of August, at 
4 o'clock in the morning, I was awakened by a mes- 
senger from Woodstock, who brought me the melan- 
choly tidings of the death of my much honored 
and beloved Mother. She died very suddenly the 
preceding day, August 3d, between 11 and 12 o'clock, 
A. M. . . . 
" Mrs. Temperance Holmes, my much honored and 
beloved Mother, was born at Norwich in Connecticut, 
A. D. 1733. She was the daughter of John and Tem- 
perance Bishop. Were I to attempt a delineation 
of her character I should probably betray the Son. I 
will, however, minute a few things, in indulgence to 
my present feelings, and in aid of my future recollec- 
tion. She was, in my estimation, a woman distin- 
guished for vigour of mind, and energy in action. . . . 
Eight children, the eldest of whom was not at that 
time seventeen years of age, were devolved, under 
Providence, on her entire care. She was left sole 
Executrix of my Father's Will (a proof of his high 
estimate of her judgment and ability), and had there- 
fore, in addition to the cares of her family, the sole 
care of settling the estate. ... To the affairs of her 
household she was assiduously and unweariedly atten- 
"MRS. TEMPERANCE HEWET. 10 
tive, and never ate the bread of idleness. . . . Although 
I entered College in less than six months after my 
father's death, I do not recollect the time when I was 
not seasonably supplied with suitable clothes, and 
money for my college expenses, so far as to enable 
me to be punctually present with my class. 
" My Mother was an admirer of learning. Though 
she received her education in a part of the town 
of Norwich (Newent Parish) which did not prob- 
ably furnish her any signal advantages at school, yet 
she had a Mother who was at once a school and a 
library to her. My Grandmother Hewet possessed 
very superior accomplishments. I seldom, if ever, 
have seen a woman at so advanced a period of life 
as hers when I knew her, so comely in countenance, 
so polite in address, so graceful in manners, so 
pleasant and improving in conversation, so pious and 
exemplary in deportment. She had a thirst for know- 
ledge ; so desirous was she of knowing something of 
Virgil in the original, that, with some little instruction 
and the aid of a dictionary, she examined that classical 
author for herself. The writings and the character 
of Watts she greatly admired. ... I do not mean 
that [my mother] read extensively, but she read more 
than was usual for her sex at that day, and what she 
did read was judiciously selected, attentively perused, 
and faithfully retained. Milton's Paradise Lost and 
Young's Night Thoughts were her very favorite au- 
thors. . . . The loss of a most estimable husband had 
occasioned that temperament of mind which I know 
not how bettei' to describe than by the Penseroso of 
Milton. Hence the writings of the pensive and con- 
templative Young were now more congenial to her 
than ever. . . . 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES GENEALOGY AND BIRTH 
11 
" I cannot forbear to mention another instance, of 
her resolute refusal to change hei' state of life, - a 
refusal which seemed to me grounded on her delicate 
respect to the memory of her deceased husband, which 
she would not suffer to be violated, together with a 
devoted care for her children, which she seemed de- 
termined neither to relinquish nor divide. A very 
worthy man, whose years somewhat exceeded her own, 
made her several visits and appeared evidently inclined 
to make proposals of marriage. As Young was com- 
monly near at hand and she had occasionally read 
some paragraphs in his hearing, she took care season- 
ably to select one with the intention that it should 
be understood, and the end was completely answered 
without offence: - 
" ' Though gray our heads, our thoughts and aims are green, 
Like damaged clocks, whose hand and ball dissent, 
Folly sings six, while nature points at twelve.' " 
" She always commenced the Sabbath at sunset on 
Saturday, as did my father in his lifetime, and in the 
observance at home and at the house of God was 
highly exemplary. In the disposal of her children 
she consulted their genius and inclination, and had 
the happiness to see them reputably established in 
different occupations and professions. 
" Her dissolution was at last sudden and surprising 
to us, it was probably without any premonition to 
her." 
" 1800. A few weeks since I visited a Mrs. Prentiss, 
at Newton, aged about 91, who was originally from 
Woodstock, and whose maiden name was Bacon. 12 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
She was at Woodstock in the time of Mr. Dwight, 
and sat under his ministry. She says (what I have 
often heard of Mr. D.) that he was very singular in 
his manner of preaching, and added this anecdote : 
That one winter, he dwelt so long upon the oppres- 
sions of the Israelites in Egypt, and mentioned such 
strange and incredible things (as that the streets in 
Egypt were paved with the skulls of the Israelites, 
etc.) that Mrs. Holmes, my great-grandmother, re- 
fused to write after him. It was her custom (said 
Mrs. P.) to write after the minister, at meeting, for 
she was a learned woman, and wrote short-hand." 
" Of my paternal ancestors," wrote Dr. Holmes, in 
1889, " I know little compared with what I know of 
those on ray mother's side." His mother's name was 
Wendell, and the first Wendell came, in 164?, from 
Friesland to Albany. " In speaking of Holland," 
wrote the Doctor to Mr. Motley, " and my maternal 
ancestors, it was from Emden, in East Friesland, 
which as you know is - now at any rate - in the 
kingdom of Hanover, that my progenitor came, - 
Evert Jansen Wendell, - about 1640, to Albany. I 
suppose if I were there and found Mynheers of the 
name grand people I should claim their acquaintance, 
but if the descendants of the Regicenden Diaconen 
whose arms were emblazoned on the old Dutch Church 
window were come to be poor devils, - I don't know 
just what I should do." 
And again he said, in his usual odd tone, half inter- 
ested, half indifferent, concerning his ancestry: - 
" I wonder if you ever heard my maternal name 
Wendell in Holland. It came from Emden, and was 
then honorable; but they may be all rogues now GENEALOGY AND BIRTH 
13 
for aught that I know. Vondd, 'the Dutch Shake- 
speare,' comes pretty near it." 
TO GEORGE W. VAN STOLEN, SECRETARY HOLLAND SOCIETY, 
NEW YORK. 
Boston, January 10, 1887. 
My dear Sir, - The very kind and cordial invi- 
tation you send me, on behalf of the Holland Society 
of New York, warms every drop of Batavian blood in 
my veins. I heard a great deal of my Dutch ances- 
tors in my early years. There was a Dutch family 
Bible in the family, which was to be the property of 
the first of us children who could read a chapter in it. 
My sister Mary had the start of me by half a dozen 
years or more, and so I lost my chance of trying for 
the Bible. 
My forefather Evert Jansen Wendell was among 
the early settlers of Albany, and his arms, as I have 
often mentioned with a certain satisfaction, were 
stained on one of the windows of the old Dutch 
Church of that city. I never meet a Schuyler, or a 
Cuyler, or a Van Rensselaer, without claiming rela- 
tionship with the owner of that name. 
Boston, January 22, 1889. 
My dear Sir, - If I were in the flower instead 
of being in the brown leaf, I could hardly resist your 
appeal. I have no doubt that I should sit down at 
once and write a ballad of the Schenectady Wendell 
who, when the town was burned and the inhabitants 
were massacred, had a horse and a blanket brought 
him by a friendly Indian, and escaped in the darkness 
of that terrible night. 
TO THE SAME. 14 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
But from me, just now, you can hardly hope for 
anything more than kind wishes and cousinly greet- 
ings ; you may be assured that these are with you, 
warmed by all the drops of Holland blood that run in 
my veins. 
Another line of good blood came as follows: 
Thomas Dudley, governor of Massachusetts Bay,1 had 
a daughter Anne, who married Simon Bradstreet, 
who also was twice governor of the province.2 This 
lady published, in London, in 1650, a volume of 
Poems under the droll title of The Tenth Muse, 
lately Sprung up in America, wherefore she herself 
has ever since been spoken of as " the tenth muse." 
The nickname has done more to immortalize her than 
ever her rhymes did, for they were poor stuff, and 
would not have made the original nine jealous. 
Her grand-daughter, Mercy Bradstreet, married Dr. 
James Oliver (whereby that name came into the 
family); and Sarah Oliver, the daughter of this 
couple, married Jacob Wendell, who "came to Boston 
from Albany early in the last century." His son, the 
Hon. Oliver Wendell, married Mary Jackson, and 
their daughter, Sarah, was the mother of Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes. 
It may be remarked that the Alary Jackson above 
named was the daughter of Edward Jackson (son of 
Jonathan Jackson) and Dorothy Quincy, his wife, 
celebrated in the fascinating verses " Dorothy Q.; " 
and Dr. Holmes's own wife was also in the direct line 
of descent from this same couple. 
Thus at last the patient reader is brought within 
1 1634-1640 and 1645-1650. 
2 1679-1686 and 1689-1692. 15 
one generation of Dr. Holmes himself! The Doctor's 
father, the Rev. Abiel Holmes, was a clergyman who 
taught the old-fashioned Calvinism, with all its hor- 
rors, and yet apart from his religious creed was a 
gentleman of humanity and cultivation. Colonel T. 
Wentworth Higginson calls him " that most delightful 
of sunny old men." A portrait of him at the age of 
thirty-one years, by Edward Savage, shows a refined 
and pleasing face, of regular and handsome features. 
The Doctor wrote of it: " Everybody remarks on the 
beauty of the countenance. Richard Dana Senr told 
me that when Father first came to Cambridge he was 
considered very handsome, and the girls used to say 
' There goes Holmes - look I ' " He had a weakness 
for writing poetry, and offered to the world a volume 
of verses; but his gifts were not great. If he cbuld 
have managed to be a contemporary of his son, he 
would probably have received the sound advice: not 
to publish. His Annals of America was more in the 
line of his capacity; it was a careful, accurate, and 
useful history. 
Sarah Wendell, his second wife, was born Decem- 
ber 30, 1768. She well remembered that, when she 
was a little girl, six years old, she was hurried off 
from Boston, then occupied by the British soldiers, to 
Newburyport, and heard the people saying that " the 
redcoats were coming, killing and murdering every- 
body as they went along." Her traits were very 
different from those of her husband. She was a 
bright, vivacious woman ; of small figure, and sprightly 
manners. Being also very cheerful and social, and 
fond of dropping in upon her neighbors, and witbal 
of sympathetic and somewhat emotional temperament, 
so that she readily fell in with the mood of her friend, 
GENEALOGY AND BIRTH 16 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
whether for tears or for laughter, she was a very 
popular lady whom every one greeted kindly. Dr. 
Morrill Wyman, of Cambridge, who knew her well, 
wrote to Dr. Holmes: " Your mother's age, her pleas- 
ant ways, her gentleness, her never-failing inquiries 
for others, all impressed me with a reverential love, 
like that for my own mother." Those who knew some- 
what about the old couple say that in Dr. Holmes 
there was much more of the intellectual quality of 
the mother than of the father. 
One day, in 1868, Colonel T. Wentworth Higginson 
happened upon a letter, which had been written by 
his mother in her girlhood, and which contained the 
following passage, which he copied and sent to Dr. 
Holmes: - 
" Now, Mamma, I am going to surprise you. Mr. 
Abiel Holmes, of Cambridge, whom we so kindly 
chalked out for Miss N. W. is going to be married, 
and, of all folks in the world, guess who to. Miss 
Sally Wendell. I am sure you will not believe it; 
however, it is an absolute fact, for Harriot and M. 
Jackson told Miss P. Russell so, who told us ; it has 
been kept secret for six weeks, nobody knows for 
what. I could not believe it for some time, and 
scarcely can now; however, it is a fact they say. 
" Mamma must pay the wedding visit." 
To this the doctor replied as follows : - 
TO COL. T. WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 
164 Charles St., July 1, 1868. 
My dear Mr. Higginson, - I thank you for the 
curious little scrap of information so nearly involving 
my dearest interests, - whether I should be myself or 
somebody else, - and such a train of vital facts as 
my household shows me. GENEALOGY AND BIRTH 
17 
How oddly our antenatal history conies out! A 
few months ago my classmate Devens told me, that 
he had recently seen an old woman who spoke of 
remembering me as a baby, and that I was brought 
up on the bottle, - which has made me feel as ten- 
derly every time I visit my wine-cellar as Romulus 
and Remus did when Faustula carried them to the 
menagerie and showed them the wolf in his cage. 
Our life is half underground - Quantum vertice, etc. 
Here are two rootlets of mine that accident has 
brought to light, not very important to the race, but 
having an odd sort of interest for one at least. 
From the foregoing pages the reader, assuming that 
he has had the patience to plod through them, has 
learned that Dr. Holmes, to use his own words, had 
" a right to be grateful for a probable inheritance of 
good instincts, a good name, and a bringing up in a 
library where he bumped about among books from 
the time when he was hardly taller than one of his 
father's or grandfather's folios." He was fortunate 
in having social - or genealogical - antecedents pre- 
cisely to his taste. For such a lineage as his was of 
the best that could be had in New England; locally 
speaking, it was aristocratic; and every one who 
knew the Doctor, or his writings, must admit that, 
in his feelings, he was an aristocrat. The Autocrat 
admits openly : " I go for the man with the family 
portraits against the one with the twenty-cent daguer- 
reotype, unless I find out that the latter is the better 
of the two. I go for the man who inherits family 
traditions, and the cumulative traditions of at least 
four or five generations." He also originated the 
phrase, or name, of " the Brahmin Caste " of New 18 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
England, which was a household word for quarter of 
a century, and is now only dying out through a sad 
necessity. But of course the New England aristocrat 
is to be widely differentiated from the American aris- 
tocrat, or plutocrat, from " the untitled nobility which 
has the dollar for its armorial bearing." " Chryso- 
aristocracy," as the Doctor called it, was not to his 
taste ; yet of course he was obliged to recognize that 
wealth brings opportunity, and that opportunity im- 
proved for a sufficiently long time produces what is 
called an aristocrat. On this perilous and delicate 
subject the Autocrat ventures to utter one of his most 
gravely humorous sentences : - 
"We are forming an aristocracy, as you may 
observe, in this country, - not a gratia-Dei, nor a 
jure-divino one,-but a de-facto upper stratum of 
being, which floats over the turbid waves of common 
life like the iridescent film you may have seen spread- 
ing over the water about our wharves, - very splendid, 
though its origin might have been tar, tallow, train- 
oil, or other such unctuous commodities." 
But any ill-starred reader, who cannot account for 
his own existence or justify his own respectability by 
showing a first-rate New England ancestry, may find 
comfort not only in the curt sarcasm of the afore- 
quoted passages from Dr. Holmes's writings, but also 
in this paragraph from a letter which he wrote, July 
22,1865, to Mrs. Caroline L. Kellogg, of Pittsfield: - 
"We have such cases here, some of them really 
pleasant to look upon as illustrating the fair chance 
everybody runs here. , who lived with us seven- 
teen years and whom you have seen at Pittsfield, has 
a house on Pinckney Street hard by, and is now at 
her country seat a few miles out of town. The sons GENEALOGY AND BIRTH 
19 
of a deceased citizen go to our fashionable assemblies, 
whose father I remember a boy that ' lived out.' B.B. 
is A.A. in point of wealth and stylish residence. You 
remember how he began. I like it; I like to see 
worthless rich people have to yield their places to 
deserving poor ones, who, beginning with sixpence or 
nothing, come out at last in Beacon Street and have 
the sun come into their windows all the year round." 
Such were the variously tinted threads which were 
to furnish the warp and woof for the weaving of the 
pattern of man to be shown as well as may be in this 
book. 
No doubt the reader thinks that it is time that 
Dr. Holmes should be born; in good truth, so it is; 
and the occurrence shall be delayed no longer. Though 
Dr. Holmes's own example excuses my prolixity, for 
he only gets Emerson born upon the thirty-seventh 
page of his life of that philosopher, - conceiving it 
important to show fully " of what race he came, and 
what were the conditions into which he was born." 
For, he says, " The nest is made ready long before- 
hand for the bird which is to be bred in it and to fly 
from it. The intellectual atmosphere into which a 
scholar is born, and from which he draws the breath 
of his early mental life, must be studied, if we would 
hope to understand it thoroughly." 
" In the last week of August used to fall Com- 
mencement day at Cambridge. I remember that week 
well, for something happened to me once at that time, 
namely, I was born." It was on the twenty-ninth day 
of August, 1809, that this event befell. Nature was 
active that year, like a stirred volcano, casting forth 
also upon the world Gladstone, Tennyson, Darwin, 20 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
and Abraham Lincoln. An hundred years earlier 
Samuel Johnson was born, or, as Dr. Holmes put it: 
"The year 1709 was made ponderous and illustrious 
in English biography by his birth. My own humble 
advent to the world of protoplasm was in the year 
1809 of the present century." And it used to amuse 
the Doctor somewhat to lay his own progress in life 
alongside that of the great lexicographer, as though 
the two were passing through the world like a pair of 
oxen with the yoke of just a century between them, 
which would keep them swaying alongside each other, 
never letting them either separate farther or draw 
nearer together. He used to take down his Boswell 
and see what Johnson was about, in that year of his 
age to which he himself had then come. Johnson, 
however, died in 1784, and when the Doctor came to 
1884, he said that he felt as though he had had his 
allotment of time and ought to die out of respect to 
the long parallel. Another occurrence, connected with 
his birth, gave him much amusement, as indicating 
what a very trifling incident his coming into existence 
had seemed to his father. " I will tell you," he wrote 
to Mrs. Emma Hubbard, " what my real birthday is, 
with a circumstance. Looking over a pile of old 
almanacs belonging to my father, I took up that for 
the year 1809, - opposite a certain date was an aster- 
isk, and a note below consisting of four letters thus, - 
August 27 
" 28 
" 29* 
" 30 
My father thus recorded my advent; and after he wrote 
* son b. LEAF FROM ALMANAC SHOWING RECORD OF 
dr. holmes's birth 21 
GENEALOGY AND BIRTH 
the four letters, according to his wont, he threw black 
sand upon them to keep them from blotting. I am 
looking at it now, and there the black sand glistens 
still." 
The " old gambrel-roofed house " in Cambridge, the 
birthplace of Dr. Holmes, would seem to-day a pictur- 
esque relic of bygone times. It was not a " colonial 
mansion," but it was sufficiently spacious, and far 
enough withdrawn from the high road, to have the air 
of a gentleman's residence; there was a generous ex- 
panse of quasi-public greensward beside it, and tall 
American elms overshadowed it. In the Doctor's 
writings are many affectionate references to it: - 
Let me, he says, remind the reader, " that the old 
house was General Ward's headquarters at the break- 
ing out of the Revolution; that the plan for fortify- 
ing Bunker's Hill was laid, as commonly believed, in 
the southeast lower room, the floor of which was cov- 
ered with dents, made, it was alleged, by the butts of 
the soldiers' muskets. In that house, too, General 
Warren probably passed the night before the Bunker 
Hill battle, and over its threshold must the stately 
figure of Washington have often cast its shadow." 
Elsewhere he admitted his " 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 to which the story told me in 
childhood laid them." 
In this house the Doctor lived until, in his maturity, 
he left it for independent quarters; in his own phrase 
he struck his tap-root deep down into the soil, and 
the radicles of affection and association entwined 
themselves about everything there, even to the " stone 22 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
with a whitish band " in the pavement of the back 
yard. " Our hearts are held down in 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." 
At last, after the Doctor's mother had died in the 
house, and it had then become one of the investments 
of Harvard University, it was torn down. " The 
slaughter," said the Doctor, " was, I am ready to 
admit, a case of justifiable domicide. Not the less 
was it to be deplored by all who love the memories of 
the past." " Alas," wrote Lowell, " for the Holmes 
House, so dear and sacred in my memory; " and if he 
felt thus, it was natural enough that Dr. Holmes 
should exclaim: " You will see how much I parted 
with which was not reckoned in the price paid for the 
old homestead." He spoke of the tearing down as of 
a death: - 
" The ' Old Gambrel-roofed House ' exists no longer. 
I remember saying something, in one of a series of 
papers published long ago, about the experience of 
dying out of a house, - of leaving it forever, as the 
soul dies out of the body. We may die out of many 
houses, but the house itself can die but once ; and so 
real is the life of a house to one who has dwelt in it, 
more especially the life of the house which held him 
in dreamy infancy, in restless boyhood, in passionate 
youth, - so real, I say, is its life, that it seems as if 
something like a soul of it must outlast its perishing 
frame." 
To Lowell he wrote: " Our old house is gone. I 
went all over it, - into every chamber and closet, and 
found a ghost in each and all of them, to which I said 
good-by. I have not seen the level ground where it GENEALOGY AND BIRTH 
23 
stood. Be very thankful that you still keep your 
birthplace. This earth has a homeless look to me 
since mine has disappeared from its face." 
Dr. Holmes's schooling began early, as was the 
fashion of those times, at a dame's school. No special 
traditions are preserved save the memory of Mrs. 
Prentiss's long willow wand, a " reminding rather 
than a chastening " weapon, says the Doctor. From 
ten to fifteen years of age he was at school at Cam- 
bridgeport, and thence of course was sent to that fac- 
tory for the manufacture of good Orthodox, Phillips 
Academy, at Andover, then presided over by Mr. John 
Adams. There he established a friendship with a lad 
named Phineas Barnes; and though they were soon 
separated, because Barnes did not go to Harvard Col- 
lege, the friendship was maintained with a tenacity 
which, in view of their youth and the brevity of their 
actual contact, was very singular, and at last it was 
severed only by death. The Doctor referred to him 
affectionately in the Pages from an Old Volume of 
Life: - 
" My especial intimate was a fine rosy-faced boy, 
not quite so free of speech as myself, perhaps, but 
with qualities that promised a noble manhood, and 
ripened into it in due season. His name was Phineas 
Barnes, and if he is inquired after in Portland or 
anywhere in the State of Maine, something will be 
heard to his advantage from any honest and intelli- 
gent citizen of that commonwealth who answers the 
question. This was one of two or three friendships 
that lasted." 
The only incident of Holmes's school-days which 
has survived oblivion is referred to in this letter con- 
cerning an article which he had published. 24 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
TO PHINEAS BARNES. 
December 28,1868. 
My dear Barnes, - I was delighted to find that 
you were pleased with the way in which I mentioned 
your name, - the one that comes up first, when I re- 
member my school-days at Andover. 
I meant to have these cinders warm, not burn, 
those who stooped over them. I touched the tender 
points lightly, I hope, remembering that there were 
children and grandchildren of some of our old pro- 
fessors and teachers who might be wounded by too 
searching recollections. My article stirred the mem- 
ories of my old room-mate, N. S. Dodge, who wrote 
me a letter saying that he was pleased with my men- 
tion of him. He spoke of some things I might have 
recalled; for instance, my famous feruling, which I 
suppose you have not forgotten. He did not know 
the sequel - forty years afterwards - which I will 
tell you. A year or two ago, a gentleman entered my 
study, an elderly man, tall, slender, or bent a little 
with a natural stoop, light-complexioned, with pale 
gray or blue eyes, and a somewhat peculiar smile. He 
stood facing me for a moment, and then said: - 
" Do you know me ? " 
"C ?" 
" The same." 
So I received him courteously, and we talked of 
various matters. I knew what had got to come out, 
and sure enough, after a time, there was a pause, and 
he brought up the old story of the feruling and all 
the regrets it had caused him from that day to this. 
Well, somehow or other, I did not feel as expansive GENEALOGY AND BIRTH 
25 
as I should have expected, but I was kindly enough, 
and we parted, he I hope more at ease and I in good 
feeling enough toward the poor man. It was a sad 
mistake he made, - one a boy never gets over, but as 
for malice, it rusts soon out with me, if it belongs to 
my nature. I should not have referred to the ferul- 
ing in this article certainly, at any rate, and especially 
after this scene with old C . 
It is fair to infer that a lad who got through his 
school-days with only one chastisement, in that time 
when the rod was never spared, must have been well 
behaved, and the evidence of one or two school-fellows 
has been given to the like purport concerning Holmes. 
Nothing else, so far as I know, can be said concerning 
his stay at Andover. But a letter sent to him at that 
place by the Rev. Abiel Holmes must not be omitted; 
for it suggests the life of the times and the surround- 
ings of the lad more vividly than could be done by 
many descriptive paragraphs. 
ABIEL HOLMES TO O. W. H. 
Cambridge, 5 January, 1825. 
My dear Son, - We received your letter of 30th 
Dec. and thank you for the wish of a happy New 
Year. We cordially reciprocate the wish, and our 
desire is, that you may improve your time and talents, 
and be attaining those virtues and graces, which will 
make all time pleasant and profitable to you. The 
commencement of a New Year is a suitable time to 
review the past for the correction and improvement of 
the future. Whatever we find to have been wrong in 
thought or feeling, in word or action, let it be our aim 
to correct it; whatever we find to have been favorable 26 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
to an improvement in knowledge and virtue, let us 
cherish it. Your opportunities for such improvement 
are very much greater than those of most others, and 
we shall expect the more accordingly. Be diligent in 
your studies; punctual in your attendance at the 
Academy; and strictly observant of its rules. Avoid 
bad company, and choose the virtuous only for your 
companions. I need not enlarge. You know my 
wishes and advices on the subject, and trust you will 
regard them. Remember daily to ask the guidance 
and blessing of your heavenly Father. 
We are all in good health - and all send love to 
you. M often inquires about you. - We had a 
letter from her a short time since, in which she affec- 
tionately inquires for you. Ann is well and going into 
town with me this morning. John is also well - and 
pleased with the new school-house, which is now occu- 
pied. I saw Mr. Farrar, of Andover, yesterday, and 
expecting to see him in Boston, I write this to forward 
by him - not forgetting "its attendant benefit," ($2.) 
Be prudent. Be more particular when you write next, 
and let us know all about you. Our united regard to 
your aunt Cooper, and Dr. Murdock's family. 
I was in hopes that your mother would have added 
a line, but I must unite her love with mine to you, 
and close. 
Andover did not make a clergyman of young 
Holmes, though his father had exposed him to clerical 
infection not without a willingness that the chance 
should so fall out. It is hard to fancy Holmes as the 
incumbent of a pulpit; yet he says: "I might have 
been a minister myself, for aught I know, if [a certain] 
clergyman had not looked and talked so like an 27 
undertaker." In fact the lad had seen a great num- 
ber of specimens of that calling at his father's house, 
and though he drew his distinctions between them 
somewhat shrewdly even in early youth, and though 
he was greatly pleased and attracted by some of them, 
yet he seems from the outset to have regarded the 
ministry as a perilous profession, in which no man 
could embark without great danger of becoming ex- 
ceedingly disagreeable to others, and even personally 
unwholesome and distasteful in himself, - one " of 
those wailing poitrinaires with the bandanna hand- 
kerchiefs round their meagre throats and a funeral 
service in their forlorn physiognomies." " The mid- 
dle-aged and young men," he says, " have left com- 
paratively faint impressions in my memory, but how 
grandly the procession of the old clergymen who filled 
our pulpit from time to time, and passed the day 
under our roof, marches before my closed eyes! . . . 
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 upstairs, 
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." 
GENEALOGY AND BIRTH CHAPTER II 
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
It has been somewhat widely believed that Dr. 
Holmes, for some time prior to his death, had been 
engaged upon an autobiography. In point of fact he 
left only some disjointed notes and memoranda, in 
which he had not advanced beyond the period of 
youth, nor even covered that period thoroughly and 
consecutively. They were dictated at odd moments, 
without method, connection, or revision. Naturally, 
therefore, they are rambling, disjointed, entirely frag- 
mentary, and often overlap and repeat each other. It 
might be regarded as the biographer's duty to treat 
them as material out of which to construct a narra- 
tive ; but the charm of reminiscences of early days is 
gone when they lose the form of reminiscences, and 
therefore I have decided to give these jottings, the 
amusement of an old man's leisure hours, just as they 
were left by him, with some omissions but no changes. 
" General Considerations. The life of an individ- 
ual is in many respects like a child's dissected map. 
If I could live a hundred years, keeping my intelli- 
gence to the last, I feel as if I could put the pieces 
together until they made a properly connected whole. 
As it is, I, like all others, find a certain number of 
connected fragments, and a larger number of dis- 
jointed pieces, which I might in time place in their 29 
natural connection. Many of these pieces seem frag- 
mentary, but would in time show themselves as essen- 
tial parts of the whole. What strikes me very forci- 
bly is the arbitrary and as it were accidental way in 
which the lines of junction appear to run irregularly 
among the fragments. With every decade I find 
some new pieces coming into place. Blanks which 
have been left in former years find their complement 
among the undistributed fragments. If I could look 
back on the whole, as we look at the child's map when 
it is put together, I feel that I should have my whole 
life intelligently laid out before me." 
" The mysteries of our lives and of ourselves resolve 
themselves very slowly with the progress of years. 
Every decade lifts the curtain, which hides us from 
ourselves, a little further, and lets a new light upon 
what was dark and unintelligible. I have never until 
very recently thought out fully all the elements which 
I can perceive went to the shaping of my character. 
They were somewhat singularly mingled." 
"Early Period. When the chick first emerges 
from the shell, the Creator's studio in which he was 
organized and shaped, it is a very little world with 
which he finds himself in relation, hirst the nest, 
then the hen-coop, by and by the barnyard with occa- 
sional predatory incursions into the neighbor's garden 
- and his little universe has reached its boundaries. 
Just so with my experience of atmospheric existence. 
The low room of the old house - the little patch called 
the front yard - somewhat larger than the Turkish 
rug beneath my rocking-chair - the back yard with 
its wood-house, its carriage-house, its barn, and, let 
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 30 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
me not forget, its pig-sty. These were the world of 
my earliest experiences. But from the western window 
of the room where I was born I could see the vast 
expanse of the Common, with the far-away 'Wash- 
ington Elm ' as its central figure - the immeasurably 
distant hills of the horizon, and the infinite of space 
in which these gigantic figures were projected - all 
these, in unworded impressions - vague pictures swim- 
ming by each other as the eyes rolled without aim - 
threw the lights and shadows which floated by them. 
From this centre I felt my way into the creation 
beyond." 
" Boyhood. My boyhood had a number of real 
sensations. . . . An inspiring scene, which I witnessed 
many times in my early years, was the imposing tri- 
umphal entry of the Governor attended by a light 
horse troop and a band of sturdy truckmen, on Com- 
mencement Day. Vague recollections of a 'muster,' 
in which the ' pomp and circumstance of glorious war ' 
were represented to my young imagination. But my 
most vivid recollections are associated not with war, 
but with peace. My earliest memory goes back to the 
Declaration of Peace, signalized to me by the illumi- 
nation of the Colleges in 1815. I remember well com- 
ing from the Dame school, throwing up my ' jocky,' 
as the other boys did, and shouting ' Hooraw for 
Ameriky,' looking at the blazing College windows, 
and revelling in the thought that I had permission to 
sit up as long as I wanted to. I lasted until eight 
o'clock, and then struck my colors, and was conveyed 
by my guardian and handmaidens from the brilliant 
spectacle to darkness and slumber. 
" Like all children, I began to speculate on the THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
31 
problems of existence at an early age. I remember 
thinking of myself as afloat - like a balloonist - in 
the atmosphere of life. I had come there I knew not 
how, but I knew I had got to come down sooner or 
later, and the thought was not welcome to one who 
enjoyed the present with all the keenness of lively 
boyhood. As for the government of the universe to 
which I belonged, my thoughts were very confused. 
The Deity was to me an Old Man, as represented in 
some of the pictures I had seen. Angels and Demons 
were his subjects, and fellow-inhabitants with myself 
in the planet on which I lived. A most striking 
example of my notions of the supernatural might be 
seen in the way in which I conceived of the two great 
painters, Michael Angelo and Raphael. Their names, 
which I had heard of as belonging to supernatural 
beings, of course suggested the idea that these human 
creatures were exceptional natures, though commonly 
considered as men. A story I heard of unmarried 
maternity completely confounded my teachings as to 
the birth of the Son of Man. I was not without 
apprehensions of the dangerous presence of malignant 
spirits. . . . The bare spots known as the ' Devil's 
Footsteps,' one of which was near Mt. Auburn, another 
in a field very near our own, were objects of serious 
contemplation in my childish thoughts; and even the 
irregular breach in one of the College buildings 
through which the Evil One was said to have made 
his exit from a circle of profane youths, who had 
raised him in their unhallowed orgies, was, to me, full 
of ominous and appalling suggestions. The garret, 
by the door of which I sometimes passed, but whose 
depths I never explored until later in life, was full 
of unshaped terrors. There was an out-house where 32 
old and broken furniture had been stored, which I 
shunned as if it were peopled with living bipeds and 
quadrupeds in the place of old chairs and tables. My 
theology was to the last degree vague. If I might 
say it without irreverence: The Deity was to me the 
Jewish Jehovah - Jahveh - tamed from his barbar- 
ous characteristics into a civilized kind of Deity. 
" Two spectres haunted my earliest years, the dread 
of midnight visitors, and the visits of the doctor. I 
hardly know when I was not subject to fears when I 
was left alone in the dark. These terrors were vague, 
and different at different times. I could not say that 
I believed in ghosts, nor yet that I disbelieved in 
their existence, but the strange sounds at night, the 
creaking of the boards, the howling of winds, the foot- 
fall of animals, voices heard from a distance and 
unaccounted for, - all such things kept me awake, 
restless, and full of strange apprehensions. These 
fears lasted until, on the approach of adolescence, I 
became greatly ashamed of them. I do not say that 
I have got rid of these feelings, and to this day I 
sometimes fear a solitary house, which I would not 
sleep alone in for the fee simple of the whole deserted 
farm. I cannot describe the amount of worry I have 
had from this source. Perhaps the stories I heard 
from the country-bred inmates of our kitchen kept 
this feeling alive. I can remember being told by one 
of the bucolic youths, with the most serious air, that 
the Evil One was wandering around every night, and 
that if one wrote his name in his own blood, and left 
it, the prowling agent of Satan, if not Satan himself, 
would pocket it, if there were pockets in his asbestos 
suit, and the writer would from that day forth become 
his servant and slave. . . . The other source of dis- 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
33 
tress was, as I have said, the visits of the physician. 
The dispenser of drugs that embittered my boyhood 
was Dr. William Gamage. He was an old man, asso- 
ciated principally in my mind with two vegetable 
products, namely: the useful though not comforting 
rhubarb, and the revolting and ever to be execrated 
ipecacuanha. The dread of the last of these two drugs 
was one of my chronic miseries. He designated it by 
a monosyllable, the sound alone of which is almost 
equal to ... I Such causes of unhappiness as those 
I have mentioned may seem trivial to persons of less 
sensibility than myself, but they were serious draw- 
backs to the pleasures of existence, and, added to the 
torture of tooth-drawing, made a considerable sum of 
wretchedness." 
" School-Days. My first school-master, William 
Biglow, was a man of peculiar character. He had 
been master of the Boston Latin School for a num- 
ber of years, and seems to have found his pupils an 
unmanageable set in the early part of his reign. I 
can easily understand how he found difficulties in the 
management of a large collection of city boys. He 
was of a somewhat Bardolphian aspect, red in the 
face, and was troubled from time to time with head- 
aches, which led to an occasional absence from the 
place of duty. He was a good-natured man, a humor- 
ist, a punster; but his good-nature had something of 
the Rip Van Winkle character. He had something 
of a literary talent, and on the occasion of the second 
centennial of Harvard University, he wrote an ode in 
macaronic Latin verse. He signed [it] Guliclmus 
magnus humilis. . . . 
" I do not remember being the subject of any 34 
reproof or discipline at that school, although I do not 
doubt I deserved it, for I was an inveterate whisperer 
at every school I ever attended. I do remember that 
once, as he passed me, he tapped me on the forehead 
with his pencil, and said he ' could n't help it, if I 
would do so well,' a compliment which I have never 
forgotten. After a while, what with his headaches 
and other hindrances, he gave up school-keeping and 
became corrector of the press." 
" Domestic Inmates. We used to receive into the 
family as 'help,' as they used to be called, young 
men and young women from the country. From the 
men and boys, young persons of both sexes, I learned 
many phrases and habits of superstition, and peculiar- 
ities characteristic of our country people. They did 
not like to be called servants, did not show great 
alacrity in answering the bell, the peremptory sum- 
mons of which had something of command in its tone, 
which did not agree with the free-born American. 
. . . Many expressions which have since died out were 
common in my young days, - ' haowsen ' for houses, 
' The haunt ' for Nahant, ' musicianers ' for musicians. 
They had their Farmer's Almanac, their broadsheets 
telling the story of how the ' Constitootion ' took the 
' Guerrier,' and other naval combats. They had their 
specific medicines, of which ' hiry pilcry ' (hiera picra 
- sacred bitters) was a favorite. Some of the coun- 
try customs were retained. ' Husking ' went on upon 
a small scale in the barn. The habits of parlor and 
kitchen with reference to alcoholic fluids were very 
free and hazy. In the parlor cider was drunk as 
freely as water; wine was always on the table at 
dinner, and not abstained from ; and, in the kitchen, 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 35 
cordial, which was simply diluted and sweetened alco- 
hol, whatever was its flavor, was an occasional luxury ; 
while ' black strap,' or rum and molasses, served in 
mowing time or a ' raising.' One of the greatest 
changes of the modern decades has been in the mat- 
ter of heating and lighting. We depended on wood, 
which was brought from the country in loads upon 
wagons or sledges. This was often not kept long 
enough to burn easily, and the mockery of the green 
wood fire was one of my recollections, the sap oozing 
from the ends and standing in puddles around tho 
hearth. 
" Some of my pleasantest Sundays were those when 
I went with my father, who was exchanging pulpits 
with a neighboring clergyman. I remember my visits 
to Dorchester, to Burlington, sixteen miles from Cam- 
bridge, to Watertown, Brighton, Lexington, and other 
places. We jogged off together in one of the old- 
fashioned two-wheeled chaises, behind a quiet horse, 
for the most part. I remember the house at Lexing- 
ton, at which we stayed, had a sanded floor instead of 
a carpeted one. The clergymen with whom my father 
exchanged in those days were, most of them, nomi- 
nally Orthodox, but weak in the theological joints. 
They were pleasanter to meet with, so it seemed to me 
in my boyhood, than were those whom I afterwards 
heard of as Evangelicals, most of them smitten with 
the Sabbath paralysis which came from the rod of 
Moses and killed out their natural spirits, and was apt 
to make them - to childhood - dreary and repulsive. 
" To one of the most distinguished leaders of the 
Orthodox party I had an instinctive dislike from 
early childhood. I was told that I laughed when I 
went to church and heard him preach. I remember 
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 36 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
upsetting his inkstand, which left a very black spot 
in my memory. Another had a twist in his mouth 
that knocked a benediction out of shape, and proved 
afterwards to have a twist in his morals of a still 
more formidable character. 
" I never wanted for occupation. Though not an 
inventor, I was always a contriver. I was constantly 
at work with tools of some sort. I was never really a 
skilful workman, - other boys were neater with their 
jackknives than I. I had ingenuity enough to cut a 
ball in a cage, with a chain attached carved out of 
the same wood ; but my tendency was to hasty and 
imperfect workmanship. I was always too much in a 
hurry to complete my work, as if finished when only 
half done. My imagination helped me into immense 
absurdities, in which, however, I found great delight. 
Thus, before I had a pair of skates, I had made one 
skate of wood, which I had fastened on to my foot, 
and experimented with ' on the ditch,' a narrow groove 
which one could step across, but where I served my 
first apprenticeship in the art of skating. But the 
strongest attraction of my early ' teens ' was found 
in shooting such small game as presented, more espe- 
cially small birds and squirrels. It sounds strangely 
now to say that my achievements as a sportsman were 
performed, not with a gun, such as is carried by the 
sportsman of to-day, not even with the percussion 
lock in use during the greater part of my manhood, 
but with the old flint lock, such as our grandfathers 
used in the Revolution. I do not think I ever used a 
percussion cap, but many a flint have I worn down in 
service. . . . An old ' king's arm ' had been hanging 
up in the store closet ever since I could remember. 
This I shouldered, and with this I blazed away at 37 
every living thing that was worthy of a charge of the 
smallest shot I could employ." 
" Religious and Literary Education. Its condi- 
tions were quite exceptional. My father, - coming 
from the land of steady habits, the grandson of an 
Orthodox deacon bred at Yale College in intimacy 
with the distinguished President Ezra Stiles, whose 
daughter he married, after becoming thoroughly 
imbued with the doctrines of Calvinism, modified 
by the kindly nature in which they were received, - 
after living in the polite society of New Haven and 
spending seven years in the South, most of it in 
Midway, where he had charge of a church and con- 
gregation, found himself obliged to return to the 
North on account of his health. Here he became 
settled in the year ? over the First Church in 
Cambridge. He married the daughter of a much 
respected citizen of Boston, - a man of some prop- 
erty and high social connections, - a member of 
the Committee of Safety in the time of the Revolu- 
tion,- a graduate and a Fellow of Harvard Uni- 
versity. Sarah Wendell, his wife, - mother of 
myself and my brother and sisters, was a lady bred 
in an entirely different atmosphere from that of the 
straight-laced puritanism. Most of the families 
around me, those of the professors and preachers 
in the neighboring towns, were of ' liberal ' ways 
of thought. The influence of his surroundings on my 
father was that which has always been noticed where 
Unitarianism comes into contact with the dehuman- 
ized creeds of the churches. It is not so much in 
making converts to its organization as it is in soften- 
ing the harsh beliefs of those with whom it comes in 
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 38 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
contact, as was long ago pointed out by Mosheim, the 
great historian of the church. My father felt that he 
did his duty in expecting my mother to hear me recite 
the shorter Westminster Catechism. My mother, like 
a faithful wife as she was, sobered her pleasant coun- 
tenance, and sat down to hear us recite of ' justifi- 
cation,' ' adoption,' and ' sanctification,' and the rest 
of the programme. We learned nominally that we 
were a set of little fallen wretches, exposed to the 
wrath of God by the fact of that existence which we 
could not help. I do not think we believed a word of 
it, or even understood much of its phraseology. I am 
quite sure that my father found the application of 
these doctrines very difficult as a matter of personal 
explanation. I was given to questionings, and my 
mind early revolted from the teachings of the Cate- 
chism and the books which followed out its dogmas. 
In the number of my father's exchanges with the 
neighboring clergymen there was a great diversity 
of character in the individuals who occupied his 
pulpit. There were pleasant old men, like Dr. Os- 
good, of Medford, Dr. Forster, of Brighton, who had 
a cheerful look and smile in spite of its being the 
Sabbath day; and there were others of sad and de- 
spondent mien, whose presence lent additional gloom 
to the Puritan solemnity of the holy day. There 
were two classes of preachers, as there are to-day, - 
though one of these classes is comparatively rarely 
met with. One class preached, in their own lan- 
guage, ' as dying men to dying men.' The other, of 
whom Henry Ward Beecher was a typical example, 
'as living men to living men.' Children are won- 
derfully sagacious in detecting their natural friends 
and enemies. The little creatures, whom Jonathan 39 
Edwards described as ' vipers, and worse than vipers,' 
had never quite recovered from the anathema pro- 
nounced upon them by this great exponent of New 
England theology. 
" My notions respecting the Deity - the future, the 
relations of man to his Maker - shaped themselves as 
they best might in the midst of conflicting opinions. 
I had an old worn-out catechism as my text-book on 
the one hand, and a Unitarian atmosphere on the 
other, surrounding me as soon as I stepped out of my 
door, for I was born close to the colleges, and the 
benignant smile of President Kirkland had so much 
more of heaven in it than the sour aspect of certain 
clergymen of the type I have referred to, that it went 
far towards making me a ' liberal ' thinker. An in- 
stinct was working in me which could not be choked 
out by the dogmas of the Assembly's Catechism. 
Much of its language was mere jargon in my ears, - 
I got no coherent idea from the doctrine of transmit- 
ted sinfulness, and the phrases of 'adoption,' 'justifi- 
cation,' and ' sanctification ' had as little meaning for 
me as the syllable by the aid of which we counted 
ourselves ' out ' in our games. When it came to the 
threats of future punishment as described in the ser- 
mons of the more hardened theologians, my instincts 
were shocked and disgusted beyond endurance. Bun- 
yan's Pilgrim? s Progress - that wonderful work of 
imagination, with all its beauty and power - seemed 
to me then, as it does now, more like the hunting of 
sinners with a pack of demons for the amusement of 
the Lord of the terrestrial manor than like the tender 
care of a father for his offspring. No child can over- 
come these early impressions without doing violence to 
the whole mental and moral machinery of his being. 
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 40 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
He may conquer them in after years, but the wrenches 
and strains which his victory has cost him leave him 
a cripple as compared with a child trained in sound 
and reasonable beliefs. 
" I had long passed middle age before I could analyze 
the effect of these conflicting agencies, and I can truly 
say that I believe I can understand them better now 
than when I was at the comparatively immature age 
of threescore years and ten. There are many truths 
that come out by immersion in the atmosphere of expe- 
rience ; which reminds me of an old experiment in 
the laboratory: an irregular lump of alum being 
placed in water dissolves gradually in such a way as 
to expose the crystal in form underlying the shapeless 
outline. It seems to me that hardly a year passes 
over my head in which some point or angle, some 
plane, does not start out and reveal itself as a new 
truth in the lesson of my life. This experience is 
more common than most people would suppose. The 
great multitude is swept along in the main current of 
inherited beliefs, but not rarely under the influence 
of new teachings, of developing instincts ; above all, 
of that mighty impulse which carries the generation 
to which we belong far away from the landmark of 
its predecessors. 
" I read few books through. I remember writing on 
the last page of one that I had successfully mastered, 
perlegi, with the sense that it was a great triumph to 
have read quite through a volume of such size. But I 
have always read in books rather than through them, 
and always with more profit from the books I read in 
than the books I read through ; for when I set out to 
read through a book, I always felt that I had a task 
before me, but when I read in a book it was the page 41 
or the paragraph that I wanted, and which left its im- 
pression and became a part of my intellectual furniture. 
. . . Besides, I have myself written a great many 
books, - there are a dozen or more of them bound, 
upon my shelves, - but my mental library is full of 
books that I have written and never reduced to out- 
ward form. These books would no doubt contain a 
vast amount of repetition, but they would also pre- 
sent a great variety of fresh illustrations and inciden- 
tal comments furnished by the experience of each suc- 
cessive day. . . . My father's library may have held 
between one and two thousand books; among them 
were the great English classics, historians, and poets, 
and many volumes of sermons, and odd volumes of 
periodicals, especially of the Annual Register and the 
Christian Observer, but above all Rees's Encyclopae- 
dia, the American reprint of which was finished dur- 
ing my boyhood. In that work I found a very con- 
siderable part of my reading. My father intended to 
keep from me all books of questionable teaching. I 
remember that many leaves were torn out of a copy of 
Dryden's Poems, with the comment Hiatus baud de- 
fiendus ; but I had, like all children, a kind of Indian 
sagacity in the discovery of contraband reading, such 
as a boy carries to a corner for perusal. Sermons I 
had had enough of from the pulpit. I don't know that 
I ever read one sermon of my own accord during my 
childhood. The Life of David, by Samuel Chandler, 
had adventure enough, to say nothing of gallantry, in 
it to stimulate and gratify curiosity. If I remember 
right, Kimpton's History of the Bible was another 
book that presented some green patches among the 
deserts. 
" Biographies of pious children were not much to 
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 42 
my taste. These young persons were generally sickly, 
melancholy, and buzzed round by ghostly comforters, 
or discomforters, in a way that made me sick to con- 
template. I had a great preference for wholesome, 
rosy-cheeked children, satisfied in the main with the 
enjoyments of nature suited to their time of life. 
" I think my readers ought to be told that one of 
the books that has most influenced me, but not in the 
direction which the author intended, was the Rev. 
Thomas Scott's Family Bible. The narrowness and 
exclusiveness of his views waked me up more than 
anything else to the enormities of the creed which he 
represented. Starting from the fable of Paradise and 
the Fall of Man, as a fact, it represented the unfortu- 
nate race to which I belonged as under the curse of 
its Maker, -disinherited by its Father, - given over 
in the main to that other being, who seemed to have 
the vastly larger portion of the human race as sub- 
jects to his irresponsible treatment. . . . The effect of 
Calvinistic training on different natures varies very 
much. The majority take the creed as a horse takes 
his collar ; it slips by his ears, over his neck, he hardly 
knows how, but he finds himself in harness, and jogs 
along as his fathers and forefathers had done before 
him. A certain number become enthusiasts in its 
behalf, and, believing themselves the subjects of divine 
illumination, become zealous ministers and devoted 
missionaries. Here and there a stronger-minded one 
revolts with the whole strength of his nature from the 
inherited servitude of his ancestry, and gets rid of 
his whole harness before he is at peace with himself. 
A few shreds may hold to him. ... I must own that 
the effect of reading The, Pilgrim's Progress, - that 
wonderful work of genius, which captivates all persons 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
43 
of active imagination - made the system, of which it 
was the exponent, more unreasonable and more re- 
pulsive, instead of rendering it more attractive. It 
represents the universe as a trap which catches most 
of the human vermin that have its bait dangled before 
them, and the only wonder is that a few escape the 
elaborate arrangement made for their capture. The 
truest revelation, it seems to me, which man has re- 
ceived is that influx of knowledge brought about by 
astronomy, geology, and the comparative study of 
creeds, which have made it a necessity to remodel the 
religious belief of the last few thousand years. 
" Thus, though fond of society at times, I have 
always been good company to myself, either by day or 
night. The ' I ' and the ' me ' of my double person- 
ality keep up endless dialogues, as is, I suppose, the 
case with most people, - sometimes using very harsh 
language to each other. One of them, I am sorry to 
say, is very apt to be abusive and to treat the other 
like an idiot, with expressions which, if uttered, would 
make a very bad figure in these pages." 
" The process of extricating ourselves from those 
early influences which we are bound to outgrow is a 
very slow and difficult one. It is illustrated by the 
phenomena of waste and repair in the physical system. 
" It is fortunate for our civilization that our early 
impressions are got rid of with such difficulty. The 
conservative principle is always (except at brief inter- 
vals) largely in excess of the destructive and renewing 
tendencies which go hand in hand with the task of im- 
proving society. The process is like that of respira- 
tion. The oxygen taken into the system preys upon 
its effete material, which is carried out by exhalation 44 
and secretion, at the same time that it adds the vivi- 
fying element to the forming tissues. New ideas act 
upon society as oxygen does on the body, attacking its 
errors, which pass away from the lists of human be- 
liefs, and strengthening the new truth which is building 
in its place. Born near the beginning of the century, 
my mind was early impregnated with beliefs which, 
in the minds of those whom I consider the best think- 
ers of the present, are utterly extinct, and replaced by 
newer thought. The change in my own mind, like 
those of many others born in similar circumstances, 
has been gradual, and to a large extent insensible. . . . 
It was a New England doctrine that a child must re- 
pent of, and be punished for, not only his own sins 
but those of his first parent. This was the foundation 
of the condemnation of unborn and unbaptized chil- 
dren, as taught in the Day of Doom, the celebrated 
and most popular poem of Michael Wigglesworth, the 
minister of Malden (?). The doctrine of inherited 
guilt, held up to scorn in the fable of the ' Wolf and 
the Lamb,' was accepted by the church as in perfect 
harmony with the human reason and the divine char- 
acter. This doctrine of the fallen race was incorpo- 
rated into the food of the New England child as truly 
as the Indian corn, on which he was fed, entered into 
the composition of his bones and muscles. During 
his early years, if he was possessed of an active intelli- 
gence, he struggled against this doctrine contrary to 
all the instinctive convictions which belonged to his 
nature, and which were embodied in the old fable 
referred to. The doctrine of the Fall of Man, and 
all connected with it, was not only wrought into 
the intellectual constitution of a New England child, 
coloring his existence as madder stains the bones of 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 45 
animals whose food contains it, but it entered into his 
whole conception of the universe. The early years of 
a thinking child, who was not subjugated by this doc- 
trine, and those allied with it, were spent in conflict 
enforced by the threat of eternal punishment. 
" What is to become of the reason of a child taught 
to repeat, and believe that he believes, the monstrous 
absurdity which he reads in the lines of the New Eng- 
land Primer, - 
' In Adam's fall 
We sinned all ' ? 
Doctrines like that, introduced into the machinery 
of a young intelligence, break the springs, poison the 
fountains, dwarf the development, ruin the harmony, 
disorganize the normal mechanism of the thinking; 
powers." 
" Ever since I paid ten cents for a peep through 
the telescope on the Common, and saw the transit of 
Venus, my whole idea of the creation has been singu- 
larly changed. The planet I beheld was not much 
less in size than the one on which we live. If I had 
been looking on [this] planet [from] outside its 
orbit, instead of looking on Venus, I should have seen 
nearly the same sight as that for which I was paying 
my dime. Is this little globule, no bigger than a 
marble, the Earth on which I live, with all its oceans 
and continents, with all its mountains and forests, 
with all its tornadoes and volcanoes, its mighty cities, 
its myriads of inhabitants? I have never got over 
the shock, as it were, of my discovery. There are 
some things we believe but do not know, there are 
others that we know, but, in our habitual state of 
mind, hardly believe. I knew something of the relar 
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 46 
tive size of the planets. I had seen Venus. The 
Earth on which I lived has never been the same to me 
since that time. All my human sentiments, all my 
religious beliefs, all my conception of my relation in 
space for fractional rights in the universe, seemed to 
have undergone a change. From this vast and vague 
confusion of all my standards I gradually returned to 
the more immediate phenomena about me. This little 
globule evolved itself about me in its vast complexity 
and gradually regained its importance. In looking at 
oui* planet equipped and provisioned for a long voy- 
age in space, - its almost boundless stores of coal 
and other inflammable materials, its untired renewal 
of the forms Qf life, its compensations which keep its 
atmosphere capable of supporting life, the ever grow- 
ing control over the powers of Nature which its in- 
habitants are acquiring, - all these things point to its 
fitness for a duration transcending all our ordinary 
measures of time. These conditions render possible 
the only theory which can ' justify the ways of God 
to man,' namely, that this colony of the universe is 
an educational institution so far as the human race is 
concerned. On this theory I base my hope for my- 
self and my fellow-creatures. If, in the face of all 
the so-called evil to which I cannot close my eyes, I 
have managed to retain a cheerful optimism, it is be- 
cause this educational theory is the basis of my work- 
ing creed. The churches around me are based upon 
the Fall of Man, a dogma which has spread its gloom 
over the whole world of Christendom. This supposed 
historical fact, based upon what our venerated Bishop 
Brooks called the parable of Eden, is gradually losing 
its hold on the intellects it has so long enslaved. The 
great truths contained in our sacred legends are the 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 47 
stones laid in a cement of human error. The object 
of what is called the higher criticism, which is only 
another phrase for honest criticism, is to pick out the 
mortar from between the stones, - to get the errors 
from between the truths which are embedded in them. 
The stones will remain, for the eternal laws of gravity 
are the basis of their stability." 
" Poetical Influences. My early attempts at rhyme 
were very few and slight, not as good as those on the 
duck which Sam. Johnson trod on. I remember re- 
peating heroic lines to myself, which were imitations 
of Pope or Goldsmith ; but I never wrote them down, 
- perhaps for the reason given by the French poet, 
' Je fis mes premiers vers sans savoir les ecrire.' 
Now and then I made a fanciful comparison, which 
pleased my sisters, who made a note of it. Such was 
that which compared our pretty visitor, A. L., for the 
beauty of her complexion, to the most delicately white 
object with which I was familiar,- slack lime, -by 
which name I always spoke of her. Singularly 
enough many years afterwards I found the same 
similitude had been used by a Welsh poet. A slim 
and stooping theological student, whose hair was of 
a blonde ardente, I remember likening to a slender 
shoot tipped at the end with a red blossom. I have 
often been asked what were the first verses I printed. 
I can't be quite certain on this point; but of one 
thing I am quite certain, that, so far as I know, no 
vestige of talent is found in any one of them. . . . 
My acquaintance with poetry was principally derived 
from the pieces for recitation and elocution contained 
in the school-books of my day. The lines attrib- 
uted to John Rogers, the martyr, and printed in the 
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 48 
New England Primer, always touched me almost to 
tears, especially those in which he sends his portrait 
to his children, 4 that you may see your father's face, 
when he is dead and gone.' Such poems as Cow- 
per's 4 The Rose had been washed, just washed in 
a shower ' were presented to my youthful appetite, 
- literary confections not favorable to the growth 
of sound and wholesome taste; but I had Gray's 
4 Elegy,' and 4 The Spacious Firmament on High,' 
and, by and by, The Galaxy of American Poets, 
Bryant shining among them, and lesser lights, such 
as Percival, Drake, Halleck, and others, twinkling to 
the best of their ability. But my favorite reading 
was Pope's Homer ; to the present time the grand 
couplets ring in my ears and stimulate my imagina- 
tion, in spite of their formal symmetry, which makes 
them hateful to the lawless versificators who find 
anthems in the clash of blacksmiths' hammers, and 
fugues in the jangle of the sleigh bells. 
' Aurora now, fair daughter of the dawn, 
Sprinkled with rosy light the dewy lawn ' 
thrills me with [its] splendid resonance, just as the 
lines from John Rogers's letter touched me with ten- 
der emotion. The low, soft chirp the little bird hears 
in the nest, while the mother is brooding over him, 
lives in his memory, I doubt not, through all the 
noisy carols of the singing season ; so I remember the 
little songs my mother sang to me when I was old 
enough to run about, and had not outgrown the 
rhymes of the nursery. I have been recently asked 
how such and such a poem was born into my con- 
sciousness, and I have answered, it was a case of spon- 
taneous generation or abiogenesis. If it was a good 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
49 
poem, I did not write it, but it was written through 
me. I can only refer it to that ' inspiration of the 
Almighty which giveth understanding ' to all His 
thinking creatures, and sends His spiritual messen- 
gers to them with thoughts, as He sent the ravens with 
food to Elijah in the wilderness. 
" I have written so much verse, amidst which I 
hope there is some fraction of poetry, that I feel 
bound to give an account of the influences which 
tended to make me a poet. In the first place, the 
infancy of every human being born under favorable 
conditions is full of inspiration, which acts in the con- 
sciousness long before it has found words to express 
its exalted and excited emotions. The blue sky over- 
head, the green expanse under foot, the breath of 
flowers, the song of birds, the smile of a mother, the 
voices of loving guardians and friends, the changes of 
day and night, the roll of the thunder, the blaze of 
lightning, - all that makes up the scenery and orches- 
tra of Nature, as yet uninterpreted by language, sink 
into the consciousness, to be remembered only in the 
effects they have produced. All this, I believe, is 
much more literally true than the poetic assertion of 
Wordsworth about the clouds of glory that we come 
trailing from a previous existence. Substitute for 
the ' Heaven which is our home ' the unremembered 
world of our existence before we have learned to label 
our thoughts and emotions with words, and the child 
may be said to possess a wonderful inheritance de- 
rived from his infancy before the time of their articu- 
late expression. Although the spot of earth on which 
I came into being was not as largely endowed by 
Nature as the birthplaces of other children, there was 
yet enough to kindle the fancy and the imagination of 50 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
a child of poetic tendencies. My birth-chamber and 
the places most familiar to my early years looked out 
to the west. My sunsets were as beautiful as any 
poet could ask for. Between my chamber and the 
sunsets were hills covered with trees, from amid which 
peeped out here and there the walls of a summer 
mansion, which my imagination turned into a palace. 
The elms, for which Cambridge was always famous, 
showed here and there upon the Common, not then 
disfigured by its hard and prosaic enclosures ; and 
full before me waved the luxuriant branches of the 
' Washington Elm,' near which stood the handsome 
mansion then lived in by Professor Joseph McKean, 
now known as the Fay House, and the present seat of 
Radcliffe College." 
" College-Days. There were two societies which 
held convivial meetings while I was in college, to one 
of which I belonged. These were the Porcellian 
Club and the Knights of the Square Table. I did 
not belong to the first of these while in college, but 
was afterwards made an honorary member. The two 
at last were joined and became a single association. 
It was a great change from the sober habits of a quiet 
clergyman's family to the festive indulgences and 
gay license of a convivial club. The Goddess of 
Wisdom did not always preside at the meetings, but 
undoubtedly there was refreshment, and possibly a dis- 
guised use in the unrestrained freedom of these occa- 
sions ; sooner or later there was a chance that a young 
man, who had to face the temptations of the wine that 
was red in the cup, or sparkled in the tall wineglass, 
would be betrayed into some degree of excess which 
might lay the foundation of evil habits, but more 51 
probably would pass away like the bubbles on the 
beaker's brim. Fortunately, there were no reporters 
at those meetings, for many tongues forgot the lessons 
they had been taught at the sober family board, and 
indulged in wit, or what passed for it, which would 
have borne chastening to advantage. Oh, this was the 
period of illusions! The supper-table and the thea- 
tre seemed lively as compared with the Assembly's 
Catechism and Saurin's sermons, which I remember 
my father placing in my hands with commendation. 
Wine was very freely drunk in those days, without 
fear and without reproach from the pulpit or the 
platform. I remember, on the occasion of my having 
an ' Exhibition,' that, with the consent of my par- 
ents, I laid in a considerable stock, and that my room 
was for several days the seat of continuous revelry; 
but we must remember what an immense change opin- 
ion has undergone since my time in regard to the use 
of alcoholic stimulants. It was still worse in my 
father's day, for when he went to college his mother 
equipped him with a Dutch liquor-case containing 
six large bottles filled with the various kinds of strong 
waters, probably brandy, rum, gin, whiskey, doubt- 
less enough to craze a whole class of young baccha- 
nalians." 
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES CHAPTER III 
LETTERS TO PHINEAS BARNES 
1828-1831 
January 31, 1828. 
Dear Barnes, -I know very well that I am a lazy 
fellow and a procrastinator, - I am in a terrible fright 
lest the letter you spoke of should arrive before I have 
got this fairly dispatched. Your letter came just at 
the beginning of a term, when I had so many things 
to think of that I could hardly remember to get my 
lessons. At last, though, I have sprung into a chair, 
slapped down a sheet of paper, grasped my trust- 
worthy silver pen, and will soon have a good sheet of 
my ideas ready for you. I would have you remember, 
if you happen to find an ill-chosen word or a badly 
constructed sentence or a few ungraceful sweeps of 
the pen, that I have not time now to attend to the 
graces of style or the elegance of chirography, because 
in truth I have snatched a hasty moment from the 
time when I expected to be skating, and, urged by the 
motive I have before mentioned, I am determined to 
do as much as possible in a certain given time. I am 
glad you liked the catalogue of the Medical Faculty; 
its aim is not so much, however, to caricature absurdi- 
ties as to produce amusement by its mock solemnity, 
and the contrast between its pompous titles and its 
real nature. I shall send you something else in the 
humorous line, but you must not conclude yourself, 53 
nor let others conclude, that there is any bad spirit 
existing between the students and the officers who 
were the objects of its satire, - a mock theatre bill, 
which was got up some time ago under the auspices 
of our old friend F. W. Crocker of blessed memory. 
There were two published before this, quite equal 
to it in wit, though not in execution. Of course 
you cannot understand all the allusions, like us who 
are naturalized to Harvard. Mr. Sykes is the old 
and established nickname for Dr. Ware; the women 
mentioned are the college chamber-maids, and those 
who play the part of " mob, watch, etc." comprise a 
college servant, two negroes, and a proctor. I think 
it may be an object of curiosity to you, though it 
cannot have much interest to one who does not know 
the characters concerned. 
You seem quite a politician for an undergraduate. 
We are almost all here Adams men, except the South- 
rons, and consequently rather down in the mouth, as 
the saying is. 
We are going to have a new president, Mr. Quincy, 
the late mayor of Boston, unless the Overseers reject 
him ; and we shall have great times at his inaugura- 
tion, I suppose, with the illumination and the balls 
and all that sort of thing. 
I will try to give you an account of some of our 
societies some of these days, if you would like to hear 
about them. I had like to have forgotten to tell you 
that I received the paper you sent me containing the 
obituary of Bartlett, which I suppose you wrote. Tell 
me if ever you write in The, Yankee-some of our 
fellows have written in it. I should think your rival 
societies would be great sport. What are you going 
to study ? 
LETTERS TO PHINEAS BARNES 54 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
March 28, 1828. 
Dear Barnes, - I am in a great hurry, for I must 
go into Boston this forenoon ; hut if I do not say 
something now, I cannot this term, I am afraid. My 
vacation begins next Wednesday, the first of April, 
so that if you come here in yours it will be in my term 
time. I will do my best to show you the lions and 
make it pleasant to you, but you need not expect to 
find me any such great things. I am afraid you over- 
rate me on your scale. I have been busy lately in 
getting ready two poems which were assigned me, one 
by the government for a college exhibition, and the 
other by the class for our valedictory exercises. . . . 
We are going to have a grand time at the inaugura- 
tion1 (you see I think of that notwithstanding your 
exclamation at my puerility), - they say that the gov- 
ernment is going to give a dinner to all the students 
and I don't know how many other people. We talked 
of getting up a ball, but could not find a convenient 
place, and so we shall confine our demonstrations of 
joy to the eating of meat, the drinking of wines, the 
smoking of segars, and the lighting of tallow candles. 
I suppose the whole college will be gibbeted in the 
next week's Recorder for the immorality and impiety 
of a public dinner. 
I never wrote for The Yankee in my life, and 
therefore I am not " Clarence." Our people round 
here have got rather sick of it, I believe, and I myself 
am almost tired of the peculiarities which were at first 
amusing. The numbers I have seen lately were dull 
and uninteresting. 
When you come here you must not expect to see in 
me a strapping grenadier or a bearded son of Anak, 
1 Of President Quincy. LETTERS TO PHINEAS BARNES 
55 
but a youth of low stature and an exceeding smooth 
face. To be sure I have altered a little, since I was 
at Andover. I wear my gills erect, and do not talk 
sentiment. I court my hair a little more carefully, 
and button my coat a little tighter; my treble has 
broken down into a bass, but still I have very little of 
the look of manhood. I smoke most devoutly, and 
sing most unmusically, have written poetry for an 
Annual, and seen my literary bantlings swathed in 
green silk and reposing in the drawing-room. I am 
totally undecided what to study; it will be law or 
physick, for I cannot say that I think the trade of 
authorship quite adapted to this meridian. Do you 
ever go mineralizing ? You have a fine country for it, 
and a celebrated professor to direct your studies. I 
would give a good knock about the rocks in Maine 
for some of their excellent specimens. I have paid 
considerable attention to Chemistry and Mineralogy, 
and think them both very interesting studies. The 
towns around Cambridge are utterly destitute of inter- 
est to the mineralogist. C has not left our college, 
nor is he like to until we all go together; he behaves 
very well, though rather exclamatory, to speak mod- 
erately, in his language. Good-morning; I will go to 
Boston now. 
August 15, 1828. 
Dear Barnes, - I suppose I must begin with an 
apology for not writing sooner. I have been away 
from home about a month, or I would not have been 
guilty of such neglect. Your letter was the first token 
of remembrance that I have received from any of my 
old Andover friends or acquaintance, saving certain 
catalogues of the different colleges, in which article I 
have kept up quite a brisk correspondence. . . . With 56 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
regard to myself I am determined that you shall not 
be so much in the dark. I shall therefore describe 
myself as circumstantially as I would a runaway thief 
or apprentice. I, then, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
Junior in Harvard University, am a plumeless biped 
of the height of exactly five feet three inches when 
standing in a pair of substantial boots made by Mr. 
Russell of this town, having eyes which I call blue, 
and hair which I do not know what to call, - in short, 
something such a looking kind of animal as I was 
at Andover, with the addition of some two or three 
inches to my stature. Secondly, with regard to my 
moral qualities, I am rather lazy than otherwise, and 
certainly do not study as hard as I ought to. I am 
not dissipated and I am not sedate, and when I last 
ascertained my college rank I stood in the humble 
situation of seventeenth scholar. You must excuse 
my egotism in saying all this about myself, but I 
wish to give you as good an idea as I can of your 
old friend, and I think now you may be able to form 
an idea of him from this. The class we belong to is 
rather a singular one, and I fear not much more 
united than yours. I am acquainted with a great 
many different fellows who do not speak to each other. 
Still I find pleasant companions and a few good 
friends among these jarring elements. I am sorry 
Bartlett is sick; he used to be an excellent scholar, 
and I should think him a very promising young man. 
It seems to me from what little I have heard, and cer- 
tainly from what I have seen, that our schoolmates 
have not turned out very well. Of six who were 
offered here, C and I were the only ones who 
entered without difficulty. O was turned by 
for the year and has entered the class below me, LETTERS TO PHINEAS BARNES 
57 
and the others made a sufficiently miserable ap- 
pearance. 
I am sorry you feel so sober for want of friends, 
but you need not be afraid that I shall think it silly 
in you to say so, for indeed I have had many such 
feelings myself. I have found new friends, but I 
have not forgotten my old ones, and I think I have 
had quite as pleasant walks within the solemn pre- 
cincts of Andover as I have ever had amidst the 
classic shades of Cambridge. I should like to go 
over some of those places again in the same company; 
you remember how we used to wander about all 
round the old place, and a pretty town it is, too, 
notwithstanding they are rather stiff and formal on 
the hill of Zion, as some of the profane used to call it. 
Dr. M has got into hot water, you know: the 
Board have dismissed him, but the little doctor says 
he won't go, and so they are going to law about it. 
. . . I heard of Tom C pretty lately. In the 
words of my informant, he is what he used to be, a 
lazy little dog, and has not grown any. Tom, how- 
ever, was one of the prettiest, best, funniest little 
fellows that ever lived. I have 'most got to the bot- 
tom of the page, and I am sure I shall omit something 
that I wanted to say. I want to know what you did 
to vex my " peaceable disposition " (I am as cross as 
a wild-cat sometimes, by the way) when I was leaving 
Andover. I shall send you a triennial catalogue with 
this. I have had a part at our Exhibition, an English 
translation. I would send you an Order of Exercises, 
but I have lost them all. I will send you an Order of 
Exercises when I have my next part, if I ever get one. 
I will not read this over, because I shall find mistakes. 
Take it with all its imperfections on its head. 58 
October 23, 1828. 
Dear Barnes, - It is Saturday afternoon - the 
wind is whistling around the old brick buildings, in 
one of which your humble servant is seated in the 
midst of literary disorder and philosophical negli- 
gence. . . . 
You ask me sundry questions, which I will try to 
answer. I have been to the delectable town of An- 
dover and witnessed their last Exhibition, and I will 
tell you what I saw. Imprimis - I saw children in 
petticoats running to and from Phillips Academy; 
next I saw A M that was, who has been 
sick nigh unto death, but is better. Next I saw 
old John Adams in his old blue surtout, and Clement 
in his old cloak, like " a shirt on a handspike." I 
saw Phillips Academy and the Theological Seminary 
and lubberly Academites and long-faced Seminari- 
ans, and C D and J V , and Ann 
S , and the rest of the cattle, and the Mansion 
Hotel and a good dinner and a bad segar. As for 
hearing, I heard the Academy bell, and I went to 
the Exhibition and heard the boys speak, and then 
I heard some most execrable singing and fiddling, 
and then a long, prosing address from Dr. Dana. I 
believe the little reprobate Abraham M is in 
a store in Boston; he was a sad young scapegrace. 
I won't send you any of the Harvard Registers, I 
believe; I don't think they were very great. 
Wednesday - yesterday - was our Exhibition; on 
the whole it was very poor ; sometimes fellows will 
get high parts who cannot sustain them with credit. 
Our Exhibition days, however, are very pleasant; in 
defiance of, or rather evading, the injunctions of the 
government, we contrive to have what they call " fes- 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 59 
tive entertainments" and we call "blows." A fine 
body of academic militia, denominated the " Harvard 
Washington Corps," parades before the ladies in the 
afternoon, and there is eating and drinking and smok- 
ing and making merry. I wish you would tell us 
more particularly about our old school-mates, and how 
you get along at your college. We have not any 
President yet, - there is some talk of making Dr. 
Ware. I ought to have written sooner, - have a great 
many excuses too tedious to mention. I would send 
you a catalogue, if it would do you any good. 
Cambridge, December, 1828. 
Dear Barnes, - I am going to answer part of the 
fifty questions, and I suspect I shall not have much 
room to ask anything in return. And so here I am, 
with your two last sheets before me, like a sheep about 
to be sheared, or a boy to be catechised. 
Imprimis (letter 1st, page 2d). "What do I do?" 
I read a little, study a little, smoke a little, and eat 
a good deal! " What do I think ? " I think that's 
a deuced hard question. " What have I been doing 
these three years ? " Why, I have been growing a 
little in body, and I hope in mind; I have been learn- 
ing a little of almost everything, and a good deal of 
some things. 
I have heard nothing of the Social Fraternity, but 
I should imagine that it could not be well supported 
by a parcel of overgrown lubberly rustics and a flock 
of unweaned bantlings, who now constitute the great- 
est part of Phillips Acad. In my own opinion is 
one of the most bigoted, narrow-minded, uncivilized 
old brutes that ever had the honor of licking into 
shape the minds of two such promising youths as P. 
B. and O. W. H. 
LETTERS TO PHINEAS BARNES 60 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
They are going to have a High School for girls at 
Andover. What a pity it was not instituted when 
we were there; there are very pretty walks and very 
shady groves in the place. 
If ever you come to Boston you will, of course, come 
out to Cambridge. Our town has not much to boast 
of excepting the College; it contains several thousand 
inhabitants, but there are three distinct villages. Our 
Professors are several of them perfect originals. . . . 
I have studied French and Italian, and some Spanish. 
We have been studying this year Astronomy, Good's 
Book of Nature, Brown's Philosophy of the Mind, 
and attended Dr. Ware's Lectures on the Scriptures. 
We have themes once a fortnight, forensics once a 
month, and declamation every week. 
I have seen and read a good many numbers of 
The Yankee, and certainly it is an entertaining paper. 
At the same time that you allow X to be a man 
of some talent, you cannot deny that he is one of 
the most egotistical, impudent, conceited fellows that 
ever lived. Indeed, I believe that his paper owes 
half its popularity to the singular audacity and ef- 
frontery of its editor. A is a booby indeed. I can- 
not conceive what induced B to tack him to his skirts, 
unless it is on the same principle that the lion enters 
into partnership with the jackal. I will send you a 
catalogue of the officers and students, and one of the 
Medical Faculty. This will need some explanation. 
It is a mock society among the students, which meets 
twice a year in disguise, and, after admitting members 
from the junior class, distributes honorary degrees 
to distinguished men. The room where they meet 
is hung round with sheets and garnished with bones. 
They burn alcohol in their lamps, and examine very LETTERS TO PHINEAS BARNES 
61 
curiously and facetiously the candidates for admis- 
sion. Every three years they publish a catalogue in 
exact imitation of the Triennial Catalogue published 
by the college. The degrees are given with all due 
solemnity to all the lions of the day. I thought it 
might afford you a little amusement, although it was 
not intended for wide circulation. Remember, it is 
only a private thing among the students. Perhaps I 
will send you a Harvard Register some time or other. 
September je ne seals pas quoi, 1829. 
Dear Barnes, - I suppose you are looking about 
as much for a roll of papyrus from Memphis, or a 
waxen tablet from Pompeii, as for any communication 
from this lazy latitude of Cambridge. I would make 
a sort of Hibernian request to you, then, that you 
would open this letter, and not take it for granted 
that it comes from some bore of a classmate, or some 
member of a parish school committee gifted with the 
art of shaping interpretable characters, or some mis- 
erable victim of your too fickle erotic propensities, who 
" takes this opportunity " to send you a lock of her 
golden hair and four pages of her bad grammar, or 
some suckling of a Southern college, that sends you a 
doctorate because you are a graduate and a school- 
master, or appoints you a professor in five-and-twenty 
branches of literature and science. It is from none 
of all these. It goes to my heart to think that, not 
knowing where to find you, my poor letter may come 
to no better end than to amuse the Jackson clerks in 
the post-office at Washington. 
I am settled once more at home in the midst of 
those miscellaneous articles which always cluster 
around me wherever I can do just as I please,- 62 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
Blackstone and boots, law and lathe, Rawle and 
rasps, all intermingled in exquisite confusion. When 
you was here, I thought of going away to study my 
profession ; but since Judge Story and Mr. Ashmun 
have come, the Law School is so flourishing that I 
thought it best to stay where I am. I have mislaid 
your last letter, and my not being able to find it has 
been one reason, in addition to my procrastinating 
disposition, why I have not written sooner. And now, 
young man, I have no more conception where you are, 
or how you are situated, than I have of the condition 
of the ear-tickler to his majesty the Emperor of China. 
I can imagine, however, that you are in some queer 
little outlandish Eastern town, with a meeting-house 
the timbers of which bore acorns last autumn, that 
you live in the only painted house in the village, and 
that at this present time you are seated in magisterial 
dignity, holding the rod of empire over fourscore 
little vagabonds, who look up to you as the embodied 
essence of all earthly knowledge. I might go farther 
and fancy some houri of the forest welcoming you 
home from your daily labours with a kiss and a 
johnny-cake and all other sweet attentions that virgin 
solicitude can offer to the champion of education. 
Alas ! I [fear] too much that, where you had fondly 
anticipated a blushing maiden of sixteen, you have a 
good-natured dowdy of forty, or an ill-natured walk- 
ing polygon of fifty. You must write and tell me all 
about these things, if you have indeed persisted in 
your plan of school-keeping. As for Cambridge, 
nothing great has happened here, and even what 
seems great to us can have little interest for you. I 
will just tell you that the Law School has increased 
from one solitary individual to twenty-six. I was LETTERS TO PHINEAS BARNES 
63 
much pleased to learn that you received the first ap- 
pointment in your class. 
Did you ever see such a squabby little lump of a 
letter ? 
[Addressed to Phineas Barnes, A. B., Brunswick, 
Maine, [changed to] " China," and bearing this 
memorandum: -] 
Oct. 24. Brunswick. My dear Son: Samuel came 
home last night with the intelligence that there was a 
letter in the office for me. Not doubting but it was 
from you, I borrowed nine pence and dispatched him 
for it with all possible speed; when, to my inexpres- 
sible regret, it was to you. Excuse me for opening it. 
Why don't you write me ? Do write soon; we are 
all well. Yours, S. Barnes. 
The following letter to James Russell Lowell also 
may be inserted, as relating to this period, and hav- 
ing, perhaps, some little interest: - 
TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
296 Beacon Street, January 28, 1875. 
My dear James, - I can tell you about two 
classes, and I am afraid no more. 
Our class Orator was George H. Devereux, of Sa- 
lem. The opposition candidate was Ben Curtis. I 
was chosen class poet over James Clarke. 
In my son Wendell's class he was poet and N. P. 
Hallowell orator. 
Our class did not cheer the buildings or the pro- 
fessors, so far as I remember. There was some talk 
about planting a tree in the new president's garden, 
and I think one was planted. 64 
We had a great talk about wearing gowns either 
on Class Day or Commencement, I forget which. It 
was all going on swimmingly in that direction, when 
got up, and, in a speech which gave us a higher 
idea of his cleverness than anything else ever had, 
blew the whole project sky high. 
Our class made a fuss about taking a decree of 
A. M. It cost fifteen dollars, they said, and signified 
nothing at all. So a large number of them did not 
take it at the usual time. Some came in afterwards, 
- I never did, and never missed it much. I do not 
remember about dancing round the liberty-tree, - I 
think that must have come in later. There used to 
be punch-drinking in a group of elms between Pro- 
fessor Pierce's house and Holworthy, but whether that 
was a regular institution or not I do not know. . . . 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
January 13 [1830], Wednesday evening, 
immediately after receiving your letter. 
Dear Barnes, - If doing1 a tiling that I never did 
o o 
before is any atonement for unpardonable negligence, 
I am wiping off some of the purgatory I deserve by 
sitting down instantly to answer you. 
I am inclined to think that you are a little disposed 
to be what the ladies call " blue," and the doctors 
" hypochondriacal," and old women " notional." 
What else could have put it into your head to men- 
tion such a vulgar project as getting your brains 
blown out for the sake of those everlasting Greeks, or 
to go teaching your " vermicular " to hard-eyed for- 
eigners. You are really such a thorough-bred, grum- 
bling, discontented Yankee that I expect to hear of 
you on a mission to Cochin China, or colonizing the 
TO PHINEAS BARNES. LETTERS TO PHINEAS BARNES 
65 
North Pole, before you have done with your vagaries. 
That plan a la Goldsmith, though, I like very much ; 
to tell the truth it has always been a favorite hobby 
of mine, and if I could scrape catgut and my country- 
men liked music well enough to pay for it, I should 
try a small tour through a State or two to begin with. 
And now I suppose that you are brooding over your 
involuntary retirement, and thinking what a fine time 
I must have in this focus of literature and refinement. 
Nothing is easier than to make disadvantageous com- 
parisons between ourselves and our neighbors. I will 
tell you honestly that I am sick at heart of this place 
and almost everything connected with it. I know not 
what the temple of the law may be to those who have 
entered it, but to me it seems very cold and cheerless 
about the threshold. And another thing too ; I feel, 
what one of the most ill-begotten cubs that ever en- 
tered college when he was old enough to be a grand- 
father most feelingly lamented, " the want of female 
society." If there was a girl in the neighborhood 
whose blood ever rose above the freezing point, who 
ever dreamed of such a thing as opening her lips with- 
out having her father and her mother and all her little 
impish brothers and sisters for her audience, - nay, 
if there was even a cherry-cheeked kitchen girl to 
romance with occasionally, it might possibly be endur- 
able. Nothing but vinegar-faced old maids and draw- 
ing-room sentimentalists, - nothing that would do to 
write poetry to but the sylph of the confectioner's 
counter, and she - sweet little Fanny has left us to 
weep when we think of her departed smiles and her 
too fleeting ice-creams. I do believe I never shall be 
contented till I get the undisputed mastery of a pet- 
ticoat. . „ o There's nothing like the pathetic. The 66 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
girls used to tell me I wrote very pretty verses in their 
good-for-nothing albums. I will give you a chronicle 
in rhyme now, if I can, and go back to prose if I 
can't: - 
The Praeses has a weekly row,1 
I think they call it a levee, 
And people say it's very fine ; 
I'm sure it's flat enough to me. 
Judge Story's bought a horse in town ; 
The law school every day grows bigger ; 
And Sukey Lenox - I forgot, 
I've told you all about the nigger. 
One fellow lately came from Maine, 
And now there is another comer ; 
And one is Upton called by name, 
And t' other one is christened Dummer. 
The undergraduates have made 
Proposals for a monthly paper, 
Which I am very much afraid 
Will end in something worse than vapor. 
I wish I had a little room, - 
It makes my heart feel very sadly, 
When I have so much news to tell 
To crowd it up so very badly. 
The folks have bolted up the doors, 
And I have bolted down my supper. 
My pony threw me t' other day 
And very nearly broke my crupper. 
Get Blackwood's Magazine and read 
The story of the modern Gyges ; 
And if you ride a coltish steed 
Be careful of your " os coxygis." 
The college servant took some books 
And laid the mischief to the students, 
But as it happened to be false 
We thought him guilty of impudence. 
1 "Row : " "a scrape - a kicking up of the dust." - Johnson, 67 
I have forgotten all the philosophy about content- 
ment I intended to bore you with. I have nothing to 
say about not writing before, but that I am an invet- 
erate lazybones. 
Cambridge, May 8, 1830. 
Dear Barnes, - If you know as much about me 
as I think you do, you are not surprised that I have 
been so long in making my voice heard among the 
antipodes. But I will just tell you that I have been 
very busy for some time past with one kind of non- 
sense and another, and you know the laxity that 
always follows this tension of a man's sinews. In the 
first place I have been writing poetry like a madman, 
and then I have been talking sentiment like a turtle- 
dove, and gadding about among the sweet faces, and 
doing all such silly things that spoil you for anything 
else. And now I have subsided into that lethargy of 
soul which with us men of talent comes as periodically 
as calms upon the ocean. This month of May is too 
good for anything but love, - the air whispers of 
sighs, and the sky looks down upon you like a great 
bright blue eye, and the motion of every leaf is as 
soft as the step of a barefoot beauty, and our pulse 
begins to beat with all the warmth and more than 
all the freshness of summer. If that had been put 
into an ode, it would have run from Maine to New 
Orleans, but I cannot take the trouble to string my 
pearls. Have your icebergs melted ? Have your girls 
begun to thaw out of their wintry iciness ? Have you 
seen such a thing as an opening bud or a flaunting 
fan ? Fill your next letter with sentiment, and seal 
it with a Cupid. What a ridiculous notion that was 
of yours about my amativeness, and your patriarchal 
wish of success in getting a pretty wife and a numer- 
LETTERS TO PHINEAS BARNES 68 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
ous offspring, or some such antediluvian benediction. 
If I am in love now, I had not seen the lady when I 
last wrote to you ; I told you I had been scribbling, 
and now you shall hear the whole of it. The collegers 
got up a little monthly concern called The Collegian, 
and I wrote poetry fiercely for the four numbers which 
have been published. It was silly stuff, I suppose, 
but the papers have quoted some of it about as if they 
really thought it respectable. It is not absolutely im- 
possible but that you may fall in with it somewhere 
or other, and so I will give you a catalogue of what I 
wrote, just as if you wanted to see them. You need 
not look for philosophy or technical " poetry " among 
the lists, perhaps with the exception of one or two 
abortive attempts. Here they are. 
Runaway Ballads. 
The Toad-stool, 
An Enigma. 
The Last Prophecy of Cassandra (doleful). 
Romance. 
Scene from an unpublished play. 
Another Enigma. 
To a Caged Lion. 
The Cannibal. 
To My Companions (not live ones). 
The Dorchester Giant. 
Another scene from an unpublished play. 
The Spectre Pig. 
Reflections of a Proud Pedestrian. 
An invocation, from the Arabic (which was a lie). 
I call that quite savage for an incipient rhymester. 
You will excuse my silly vanity in supposing that 
you care a snap about so insignificant a thing as a 
college periodical. I should like to have sent you the LETTERS TO PHINEAS BARNES 
69 
numbers, if the vagabonds that conduct it had the 
grace to send me a single copy, - but the world is 
ungrateful, as the sonneteers say. 
The people are crowding in so to the Law School 
that we begin to apprehend a famine. . . . Nothing 
is going on but murder and robbery ; we have to look 
in our closets and under our beds, and strut about 
with sword-canes and pistols. The first thing a fel- 
low knows is that he has a rap over his head, and a 
genteel young man fragrant with essences is fumbling 
with white-gloved fingers in his pockets, and concludes 
his operations with kicking him into a jelly or drop- 
ping him over a bridge. Poor old Mr. White was 
" stabbed in the dark," and since that the very air has 
been redolent of assassination. The women have ex- 
hausted their intellect in epithets and exclamations, 
the newspapers have declared it atrocious, and worst 
of all the little poets have been pelting the " villain 
or villains " with verses. 
There is nothing to tell you of here. The president's 
levees have stopped, parties are no longer dreamed of, 
and society seems sinking into annihilation. Kiss the 
pretty girls all round for me on the left cheek, if you 
please, and do not sermonize, or find fault, or wish me 
a wife and a numerous offspring, - but write me a 
letter. 
March, [1831]. 
Dear Barnes, - I should violate the unity of my 
character if I did not open my communication with 
an apology. What a busy world we live in ! The 
turmoil of those bustling around us, the ebb and flow, 
the dash and recoil, of the unceasing tide within us, 
- but I begin to talk fustian. I suppose now that 
whenever you take the trouble to think about me 70 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
your fancy sketches a twofold picture. In the front 
ground stands myself, on one side sparkle the foun- 
tains of Castalia and on the other stand open the 
portals of Nemesis (if that be the name of Law). 
My most excellent romancer, it is not so ! I must 
announce to you the startling position that I have 
been a medical student for more than six months, and 
am sitting with Wistar's Anatomy beneath my qui- 
escent arm, with a stethoscope on my desk, and the 
blood-stained implements of my ungracious profession 
around me. I do not know what you will say, - but 
I cannot help it. I cannot tell what she will think, - 
but I cannot help it. I know I might have made an 
indifferent lawyer, - I think I may make a tolerable 
physician, - I did not like the one, and I do like the 
other. And so you must know that for the last 
several months I have been quietly occupying a room 
in Boston, attending medical lectures, going to the 
Massachusetts Hospital, and slicing and slivering the 
carcasses of better men and women than I ever was 
myself or am like to be. It is a sin for a puny lit- 
tle fellow like me to mutilate one of your six-foot men 
as if he was a sheep, - but vive la science ! I must 
write a piece and call it records of the dissecting- 
room, so let me save all my pretty things, as plums 
for my pudding. If you would die fagged to death 
like a crow with the king birds after him, - be a 
school-master ; if you would wax thin and savage, like 
a half-fed spider, - be a lawyer; if you would go off 
like an opium-eater in love with your starving delu- 
sion, - be a doctor. Whenever I undertake to write 
to you, - and you are the only single person to whom 
I write except my brother-in-law, - I cannot help 
thinking how few things, in which I am interested, LETTERS TO PHINEAS BARNES 
71 
can have any meaning to you, - how each is girded 
by his own horizon and played upon by his own lights 
and shadows. (A) (B) Let A stand for 
yourself and B for me, time and space draw a line 
between our circumferences, and through that void 
must pass the solitary ray from the world of one to 
that of the other. 
There is a murderer of melody on the piano-forte 
in the next room who plays the deuce with my meta- 
physics. To change the subject - I have just now a 
ruse in my head which I am in hopes to put in exe- 
cution this summer. You must be aware, then, that 
there is a young lady, or what sounds sweeter, a girl, 
in Maine - I do not say where. Well, perhaps I am 
in love with her, and perhaps she is in love with me. 
At any rate I made a strapping fellow bite his nails, 
who had the impertinence to think she was pretty. 
I quizzed the caitiff in his remarks, anticipated his 
gallantries, and plagued him till he went about his 
business. Now I have a sneaking notion of coming 
down to Maine to see you, as I shall tell the folks, 
and take a cross-cut over to her log house. I can 
find it. She had so much the air of a human being 
while she was here that I have a curiosity to see her 
wild. Keep quiet. Do not write sixteen pages of 
cross-questions about her name and home and such 
sublunary things. When I am married you shall 
come and see us, and show her this letter. We shall 
breakfast at eight and dine at two precisely. 
I shall come if I can, but you need not positively 
expect me. 
About writing for you, - I have too many million 
things to do here with studying and scribbling to be 
able to do it at present. By the way, if you find any 72 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
floating scraps with O. W. II. to the tail of them, set 
them down to the owner and, I believe, the only one, 
of those preposterous initials. ... I cannot write on 
corners and edges, - and so. . . . 
Boston, July 14, 1831. 
Dear Barnes, - Swear at me two or three times, 
if you please, for not answering you before, and bite 
your bearded lip at the meagreness of my tardy com- 
munication, - but keep your temper, if you can, in 
consideration of my very numerous engagements and 
very forgetful habits. If I have been very negligent 
to you, 1 have at the same time been putting off for 
almost three months answering an invitation from a 
learned society in Boston to become one of their 
members, to say nothing of a thousand little acts of 
forgetfulness and procrastination which have won me 
but too many ill looks for my gentle spirit. This is 
the way I always have begun, - it is the way I always 
shall begin, - it seems as if the genius of preconcerted 
harmony had left me out of his calculations and I was 
limping in the rear of his neatly marshalled phalanx. 
It is past eleven o'clock in the evening, - I am sitting 
in solitude and almost unbroken silence, though in 
the heart of a busy metropolis, and ever and anon 
turning up my eyes from the sheet before me and 
thinking of the pretty little hand which I held so 
quietly but a very little while ago - and the girl who 
was silly enough to let me. 
Pooh! some impish interruption broke me off three 
evenings ago just as I was going on so prettily. It is 
now ten minutes after ten, - at five to-morrow morn- 
ing I set out for the South, - as I indefinitely tell 
my neighbors, - meaning perhaps Philadelphia. LETTERS TO PHINEAS BARNES 
73 
I know, good soul as you are, you will not blame 
me for stopping in my second page when I tell you 
that I have all my things to pack before I go to bed, 
and that I am one of the most somnolent fellows you 
ever met with. . . . 
I shall not come down to Maine probably this sea- 
son, for a reason which implies neither faithlessness 
nor anything else naughty. It is possible that one 
who has been in Boston might make another visit, 
you know. 
Your letter was sent in to me as an appendix to 
some of those villainous necessaries that old families 
are always sending in to young colonies, and so I did 
not see the gentleman who brought it, if indeed he 
came with it, for I have inquired for him and have 
not heard of him. 
I will begin my third page out of spite, although I 
have little to say, and that little hurried enough when 
my empty trunk and my most multitudinous invest- 
ments are staring me so full in the face. I may be 
coming " down your way," as I threatened, another 
time, and just keep quiet for the sake of mercy. 
P. S. Don't take an inventory of all the country 
girls that have come to Boston - there's a good 
creature. 
February 22, 1832. 
Dear Youth, - Of all the days in the year this 
patriotic anniversary is the worst calculated for a man 
to sit down at his writing-desk. They have been 
making such an uproar with their processions and 
stuff that I almost wish we had paid the tea tax and 
remained a colony. But as I am going off to-morrow 
to Providence (to cut up a child), and as I never 
can write with comfort anywhere but in my own 74 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
room, I shall contrive to slice a little parenthesis out 
of this day of tumult. What in the world did you 
make such a fuss about your writing for? I shall 
always be glad to hear from you at reasonable inter- 
vals, not too thick, as I told my lady love when she 
spoke of writing once a fortnight, - but I do not 
think you have been very culpable in frequency. 
It is a lamentable fact that I am pretty much in 
the same situation with you and the scissorsrgrinder, 
- I have no story to tell. If I am engaged, I shall 
not tell you anything about it. However, about this 
taking wives, I think a man who has to swim without 
a cork jacket had better not put lead into his 
breeches' pocket. (Quite apothegmatic.) I wish to 
mercy I could only get on to my hooks. I am not 
tired of studying, and I expect to be no more idle 
certainly when I begin to practice ; but I am tired of 
being a dependent and an underling, a mere append- 
age to the wheels of society. I am tired of living 
here among folks, some of whom are disagreeable and 
some loathsome, - reading just so much medicine, 
eating just so much dinner, writing just so much 
trash. There is a confounded tendency in a man to 
get into a routine every few months, that he hates for 
its sameness. I expect to trot off to Europe some of 
these days, for that reason as well as some better 
ones. In the mean time if you come to Boston I can- 
not promise you much, but I will give you a good 
dinner and a glass of wine somewhere or other, and 
some good cigars, if you smoke, and say " Come in " 
when you knock at the door of my attic. If you stay 
any time, you can board here where I do at a reason- 
able rate enough, if you would like it. But I must go 
to the Hospital and to the Eye Infirmary, and I must LETTERS TO PHINEAS BARNES 
75 
dissect, if you bring the Governor and Senate with 
you. I have met Professor Longfellow, one of your 
" down East " folks, two or three times lately, and a 
very nice sort of a body he seems to be. I should be 
ashamed to send you an unfilled letter if I had not a 
hundred things to do before I go to Providence. 
You shall have three pages next time. CHAPTER IV 
EDUCATION, AT HOME AND ABROAD 
From Andover Holmes came, in the summer of 
1825, to Harvard College, thus becoming a member 
of the class of '29, - " the famous class of '29," as it 
used to be called, and I hope the distinction does 
not seem invidious; at least it is safe to aver that no 
more distinguished class ever emerged from the nursery 
of that productive mother. 
Of his college career there remain only scant memo- 
randa, which have been already given in the paragraph 
of his own reminiscence, and in the few letters to his 
friend Barnes. 
After graduation his membership in the " famous 
class " became a life-long source of pleasure to him. 
Those were the days of " class feeling; " the jarring 
elements, to which he refers, and the quarrels among 
the lads while undergraduates were merely after the 
foolish fashion of adolescence, and as transitory as 
the youth which they indicated. A strong sentiment of 
fellowship succeeded, became the permanent condition, 
and effected a solidarity that few individuals ever 
repudiated. To-day one hears that the loyalty of the 
student is to his club ; then it was to bis class; the 
class and the college remind one of the relationship 
which the Southerner used to establish between his 
State and his country, - the class first, the college 
next. Probably the authorities would laugh now at the EDUCATION, AT HOME AND ABROAD 
77 
idea of treating a class as a unit upon any public ques- 
tion ; but in that era, to treat a class otherwise than 
as a unit would have been a course gravely perilous. 
And the union became closer after graduation than 
before; a man expected his classmates to befriend 
and even aid him in his journey through life, and he 
was rarely disappointed. 
As was usual, the graduates of '29 soon began to 
have annual dinners in Boston, for which there 
certainly was rare social material, - George T. Davis, 
a member of Congress, whom Thackeray declared the 
most agreeable dinner-companion whom he met in the 
United States ; B. R. Curtis, of the Supreme Court of 
the United States, one of the greatest lawyers whom 
this country has ever produced ; George T. Bigelow, 
Chief Justice of Massachusetts; James Freeman 
Clarke, than whom none was more charming; Pro- 
fessor Benjamin Peirce ; Rev. Samuel May, kindliest 
of abolitionists; S. F. Smith, who had the good luck 
to write " America ; " Rev. Joseph Angier, who was 
supposed to sing precisely like an angel; with others 
less publicly known, yet hardly less agreeable mates 
for the annual festival. 
Dr. Holmes naturally enough enlivened one of their 
meetings with an ode, whereof the result was that he 
was expected to do the like ever after. Some of his 
most pleasing " occasional " verses, sometimes con- 
vivial, later on pathetic, were written for these class 
gatherings. Mr. May was custodian of the " Class 
Book," which gradually became valuable by its annals 
and its contributions. In reply to a query from Dr. 
Holmes in January, 1874, he said : " I find . . . that you 
regularly began to furnish us a poem in 1851, - ' The 
summer dawn is breaking.' " And in another letter 78 
he says, " And from that day (1851) to this, no class 
meeting of ' 1829 ' has been without a poem from you, 
- not one ; and several of them have had two, - the 
better luck for us." Generally Dr. Holmes read 
these odes, but we have the word of Mr. May that on 
some occasions he sang them. The following letter, 
also written by Mr. May, in the year after the Doctor's 
death, gives vivid evidence of how deeply Dr. Holmes 
cared for these meetings : - 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
SAMUEL MAY TO F. J. GARRISON. 
Leicester, September 11. 
Dear Frank, - " After the Curfew " was posi- 
tively the last. " Farewell! I let the curtain fall." 1 
The curtain never rose again for " '29." We met 
once more - a year later - at Parker's. But three 
were present, Smith, Holmes, and myself. No poem 
- very quiet - something very like tears. The 
following meetings - all at Dr. H.'s house - were 
quiet, social, talking meetings - the Doctor of course 
doing the live talking. Smith so hard of hearing that 
most things had to be said, or shouted, over again at 
his very ear; and yet he clearly gathered much by his 
eye, for his face constantly moved in expression, and 
the Doctor ever kept his face towards Smith, raising 
his voice slightly; yet seldom making S. hear him, I 
think. At one of these meetings four were present, 
all the survivors but one; and there was more general 
talk. But never another Class Poem. 
When Holmes graduated he was still in some doubt 
as to what should be his calling in life. He went, in 
a tentative way, into the Dane Law School, and stayed 
1 See Over the Teacups, p. 69. EDUCATION, AT HOME AND ABROAD 
79 
there for a year. But he did not take to his studies 
with any ardor, and scanty trace of any influence of 
this twelvemonth is to be noted in his writings. If he 
had cared for it at all, this would not have been the 
case. In fact, however, he had not started on the 
right road; he soon found it out, and stopped at 
the first milestone. In a few fragmentary words in 
his reminiscences he attributes to " the seductions of 
verse-writing " the fact that his year " was less profit- 
able than it should have been." The Collegian, 
edited by John O. Sargent, of the class of 1830, was 
alluringly ready to receive all the poetry which 
Holmes would contribute. Having tried both pur- 
suits, he alleged : " The force which is required for 
continuous and prolonged application is rapidly dissi- 
pated in the act of poetical composition. The labor 
which produces an insignificant poem would be enough 
to master a solid chapter of law, or a profound doc- 
trine of science. I mean, of course, if the poem is 
written with any amount of lyric passion. The mere 
stringing of rhymes together, as is done by so many 
young persons, is hardly an intellectual employment." 
Holmes had already tried his hand at writing 
poetry, or, as he would have preferred to have it said, 
at scribbling verses ; for he was very severe upon 
these Juvenilia. In later years he absolutely forbade 
the republication of most of them, and it was really 
with some difficulty that even such bits as " The Mys- 
terious Visitor," " The Spectre Pig," and others 
escaped his remorseless condemnation. One genuine 
lyric outburst, however, done in this year of the law, 
almost made him in a way actually famous. The 
frigate Constitution, historic indeed, but old and 
unseaworthy, then lying in the navy yard at Charles- 80 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
town, was condemned by the Navy Department to be 
destroyed. Holmes read this in a newspaper para- 
graph, and it stirred him. On a scrap of paper, with 
a lead pencil, he rapidly shaped the impetuous stanzas 
of " Old Ironsides," and sent them to the Daily Adver- 
tiser, of Boston. Fast and fax' they travelled through 
the newspaper press of the country; they were even 
printed in hand-bills and circulated about the streets 
of Washington. An occurrence, which otherwise 
would probably have passed unnoticed, now stirred a 
national indignation. The astonished Secretary made 
haste to retrace a step which he had taken quite inno- 
cently in the way of business. The Constitution's 
tattered ensign was not torn down. The ringing, 
spirited verses gave the gallant ship a reprieve, which 
satisfied sentimentality, and a large part of the people 
of the United States had heard of O. W. Holmes, 
law student at Cambridge, who had only come of age 
a month ago. 
In his farewell address to the Medical School, 
delivered in 1882, Dr. Holmes reverted to these early 
days:- 
" Let me begin with my first experience as a med- 
ical student. I had come from the lessons of Judge 
Story and Mr. Ashmun in the Law School at Cam- 
bridge. I had been busy, more or less, with the 
pages of Blackstone and Chitty, and other text-books 
of the first year of legal study. More or less, I say, 
but I am afraid it was less rather than more. For 
during that year I first tasted the intoxicating pleas- 
ure of authorship. A college periodical, conducted 
by friends of mine, still undergraduates, tempted me 
into print, and there is no form of lead-poisoning 
which more rapidly and thoroughly pervades the EDUCATION, AT HOME AND ABROAD 
81 
blood and bones and marrow than that which reaches 
the yonng author through mental contact with type- 
metal. Qui a bu, boira,- he who has once been a 
drinker will drink again, says the French proverb. 
So the man or woman who has tasted type is sure to 
return to his old indulgence sooner or later. In that 
fatal year I had my first attack of author's lead- 
poisoning, and I have never got quite rid of it from 
that day to this. But for that I might have applied 
myself more diligently to my legal studies, and car- 
ried a green bag in place of a stethoscope and a ther- 
mometer up to the present day. 
" What determined me to give up law and apply 
myself to medicine I can hardly say, but I had from 
the first looked upon that year's study as an experi- 
ment. At any rate, I made the change, and soon 
found myself introduced to new scenes and new com- 
panionships." 
So from law Holmes turned to medicine. He says, 
in his reminiscences : - 
" At the end of the first year in the Dane Law 
School, I took up the new study which was to be my 
final choice. There is something very solemn and 
depressing about the first entrance upon the study of 
medicine. The white faces of the sick that fill the 
long row of beds in the hospital wards saddened me, 
and produced a feeling of awe-stricken sympathy. 
The dreadful scenes in the operating theatre - for 
this was before the days of ether - were a great shock 
to my sensibilities, though I did not faint, as students 
occasionally do. When I first entered the room where 
medical students were seated at a table with a skel- 
eton hanging over it, and bones lying about, I was 
deeply impressed, and more disposed to moralize upon 82 
mortality than to take up the task in osteology which 
lay before me. It took but a short time to wear off 
this earliest impression. I had my way in the world 
to make, and meant to follow it faithfully. I soon 
found an interest in matters which at the outset 
seemed uninviting and repulsive, and after the first 
difficulties and repugnance were overcome, I began to 
enjoy my new acquisition of knowledge. 
" The head of the private school at which I studied 
was Dr. James Jackson,1 a very wise and a very good 
man, whose influence on the minds of the students 
who followed him in his visits to the hospital, and 
who listened to his teaching as professor, was of the 
soundest and best character. . . . Dr. Jackson never 
talked of curing a patient except in its true etymo- 
logical sense of taking care of him. I think we may 
say, in general, that the doctor who talks of curing 
his patients belongs to that class of practitioners 
known in our common speech as ' quacks.' It is in 
medicine as in surgery, - nature heals, art helps, if 
she can ; sometimes hinders, with the best intentions; 
oftener is entirely ignored by the great remedial 
agencies ordained by the shaping intelligence which 
gives form and life to mortal organization." 
Holmes attended two courses of lectures in this pri- 
vate school. But of course if he was to be anything 
better than a rural dispenser of pills and powders, he 
had to pass at the very least two years in the Euro- 
pean hospitals. Practically this must have been in- 
corporated in the programme when his choice of the 
medical profession was made. Yet so large a part of 
the " consideration " received by clergymen in those 
days was " good " rather than " valuable," that this 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
1 See Medical Essays, p. 424. EDUCATION, AT HOME AND ABROAD 
83 
foreign education would have been wholly impossible 
had it not fortunately so happened that the daughter 
of the prosperous Boston merchant had brought with 
her into the clerical household a purse not altogether 
empty; and even with this aid, it would seem that 
some effort had to be made in order to send the 
young student to Paris with funds enough in his 
pocket to enable him to live comfortably and becom- 
ingly, - " like a gentleman," as he jealously expressed 
it. But his father and mother, like true New Eng- 
land parents of that day, came gallantly to the mark, 
made such sacrifices as they had to make, and 
equipped him. 
On March 30, 1833, Holmes was in New York, 
seeing for the first time in his life a real city, and 
awaiting the sailing of the packet Philadelphia. " I 
do believe," he writes, " that half Boston is going out 
in the packet: Dr. and Mrs. Bigelow, Mr. and Mrs. 
Whitwell, Mrs. John Gray, Mr. and Mrs. Curtis, 
Bob Hooper, Tom Appleton, and Mr. Young, and 
Mr. Nobody-knows-who-besides. ... You cannot 
imagine the pleasure which my falling into this little 
party has given me. . . . Last night I went to see 
Fanny Kemble, the daughter of Charles Kemble (who 
also played) and the niece of Mrs. Siddons. She was 
a very fine affair, I assure you." 
On April 26th, from the "neat parlour of the 
Quebec Hotel" in Portsmouth, he reported his arrival 
after a passage of twenty-three days in the " superb 
ship," during which he " was not seasick very badly." 
Stormy weather was holding him back from crossing 
the Channel, but the ill wind blew him the good of 
enabling him to get to Salisbury. There, he says, 
"on Sunday we attended service at the Cathedral, 84 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
and had the luxury of a benediction from a lord 
bishop who receives <£15,000 a year." Such was 
the first news sent home to the worthy clergyman who 
was dispensing the red-hot truths of Calvinism at a 
price suited to the shortest purses, and snugly paring 
the family expenses in order to educate his son ! For- 
tunately, however, that clergyman knew full well that, 
in a world which was sure to come, the great princi- 
ple of compensation or average would be at work with 
vindictive efficiency. 
Holmes also made report of a visit to the ruins of 
Carisbrook Castle, and to " the Earl of Radnor's seat, 
Longford Castle, where Queen Elizabeth stayed once 
and left some of her duds, which they showed us." 
" In a fly (as they call it) with two mules " the lads 
went out to visit Stonehenge, which " stands on Salis- 
bury Plain where once lived a shepherd, according to 
Hannah More." One of the party " had a letter to Mr. 
McAdam, son of the Colossus of Roads," and by virtue 
of this they were " carried over the estate of the Earl 
of Pembroke." During their stay in Portsmouth, 
Dr. Holmes says: " We passed ourselves off for 
Englishmen (!) and went all over the dock-yard, which 
no foreigners are allowed to visit." Then, the storm 
abating, the youths went over to Havre, and there 
resumed their proper nationality, of which they had 
so artfully - or artlessly - divested themselves at 
Portsmouth. " By giving the custom-house officers a 
hint that we were Americans, our baggage was passed 
over very lightly," says the young traveller, who later 
in life might not have found these officials so amiably 
accepting a " hint " as a douceur / 
The annals of the stay in Europe are somewhat 
scanty, - a few allusions in Dr. Holmes's published EDUCATION, AT HOME AND ABROAD 
85 
writings, a page in the reminiscences, and a bundle 
of the letters which were sent home pretty regularly 
by the weekly mail packet to the parents in the 
gambrel-roofed house. The earlier letters are not 
especially interesting, being largely taken up with 
descriptions of the common sights. Thus, he draws 
a map of the " odd vehicle " called a diligence, and 
describes the conducteur as " a man dressed up like 
a jackanapes, who sits on top." His next letter be- 
gins like Caesar's Commentaries De Bello Gallico,- 
"Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres,"- "the Seine 
divides Paris into two parts," and so on, guide-book 
like. He talks about the narrow, dirty, sidewalk-less 
streets, the chiffonnieres, the shops, - " the windows of 
many are very large, of fine plate glass, and crowded 
as if the clouds had hailed jewelry upon them." 
" There are shops of engravings, countless - of old 
books, innumerable - of skulls and skeletons and 
small children in bottles, and nobody knows what," 
and so on. But erelong, of course, this phase passes, 
and the letters become more entertaining. He very 
soon found lodgings in the Latin quarter, Numero 
55, Rue M. Ie Prince, where "many of the old nobility 
and most of the scientific people," and " of course all 
the medical students," resided. But though he enu- 
merates the public buildings with conscientious accu- 
racy, he certainly gives to the good people at home 
a description of this famous neighborhood much less 
vivacious and entertaining than may be found in the 
pages of some of our novelists. 
He had not been a fortnight in Paris before he 
wrote that he was "at last quietly established and 
almost naturalized ; " and in a short time he asserted 
that he was " quite absorbed " in study. This was 86 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
straightforward and satisfactory enough, and for that 
matter so were all his letters. Yet his father had 
the natural parental misgivings, and conceived of 
Paris not alone as a seat of learning where Louis, 
whom young Holmes reassuringly declared to be " one 
of the first pathologists in the world," gave priceless 
lectures, but also as a place where the Devil, about 
whom he had a much fuller knowledge than he had of 
Louis, gave gratuitous instruction with alluring illus- 
trations. But the young man was compounded of 
good spirits and good sense in very fortunate propor- 
tion ; he took his work and he took his pleasure, but 
he took his work with all his might, and his pleasure 
very moderately. At half past seven o'clock every 
morning he was at the hospital of La Pitie, and gen- 
erally stayed there until ten o'clock, when he went to 
breakfast. On June 6th he writes, as of a specimen 
day: " It is no trifle to be a medical student in Paris. 
I had attended a lecture of an hour and a half, and 
gone through a tedious dissection this morning before 
breakfast, - that is, I left my bed at half after six, 
and did not sit down to breakfast till after eleven." 
After breakfast study continued until five o'clock 
in the afternoon. Then came a pleasant dinner with 
a knot of fellow-students, Bostonians all, at some cafe, 
and many a time he refers with much gusto to the 
tasteful viands and the pleasing wines. They un- 
doubtedly were different from the crude joints, the 
massive puddings, the depressing pies, and the hard 
cider or Medford rum, which marvellously nourished 
New England and tempered it, not sweetly, in its era 
of development. Then sometimes of course came the 
theatre, yet not so very often, for he does not seem 
especially addicted to this amusement. Indeed, he Dr. Holmes's Paris Lodgings EDUCATION, AT HOME AND ABROAD 
87 
writes: " I must own that I feel rather guilty in not 
having attended the theatres more than I have - first, 
because it betrays a want of taste, and second be- 
cause it argues a neglect of the best means of learn- 
ing the language." But he pleads, as if in extenua- 
tion, that at the opera " he has heard some famous 
singers and seen some famous figurantes." He has 
also seen " another amusement of a ruder nature, . . . 
essentially a vulgar exhibition, and of course to be 
seen by everybody except petits maitres who travel in 
white gloves; and so Hooper, Warren, and I took a 
box one day at the Combats des Animaux, which 
take place twice a week just in the outskirts of the 
city. A great number of bull-dogs fought with each 
other in succession, each pair fighting until one was 
killed or fairly beaten ; and, of course, I suppose, 
bets being laid upon them. Then a wolf was tied 
to a post and worried by bull-dogs, and afterwards a 
bear - and a wild boar - and a bull - and last of all 
a jackass. The wolf and bear were poor concerns 
and got worse than they gave; the wild boar ran 
round the ring making a great noise and trying to get 
out; the bull had his horns sawed off, but he tossed 
the dogs up into the air after each other like so many 
coppers; and the poor jackass got into a corner and 
kicked the dogs and jumped upon them with real 
ferocity. And in the middle of my description 1 am 
obliged to break off in order to get my letter in, in 
season " - which sudden snapping off may account for 
the absence of comment upon this singular display. 
The packet sailed only once a week, and it was the 
age of " mail days." 
In his reminiscent notes occurs the following pas- 
sage : - 88 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
"I was busy enough during the time I spent in 
Paris, but saw little outside hospital and lecture 
rooms. If I had known how much literature would 
occupy my time in later years, I should have taken 
the pains to meet the historians Thiers and Guizot, - 
Balzac, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Beranger,- George 
Sand, Comte, and others of the celebrities in politics, 
letters, and science. I saw the great actors, singers, 
and dancers, Mlle. Mars, Ligier, Frederick le Maitre, 
Lablache, Tamburini, Grisi, and Taglioni. The Dc- 
jazet was the particular star at the Palais Royal. I 
remember her well about the middle of her perennial 
existence, the stability of which was the keenest satire 
on the perpetual changes of the government under 
which she lived. I remember Arago, a man of singu- 
larly fine presence, Poisson the mathematician. . . . 
But I never went lion-hunting as I might have done. 
" I wish I could have foreseen the future clearly 
enough to induce me to lay up a store of memories 
which would have been precious to me in after years. 
One of my delights in Paris was to flaner, as the 
French call it; to roam about the streets using my 
eyes to see everything that life had to show on the 
quais or on the bridges. To stand on the Pont Neuf 
and look in the yellow waters of the Seine, with the 
barges and boats; with the patient anglers on its 
margin, who lived in hopes, apparently as happy as if 
they had been sharers in a miraculous draught of 
fishes; to watch for the priest, the soldier, and the 
white horse, who were said always to be passing on 
the bridge - was occupation enough for an idle hour. 
But I had an especial pleasure in hunting among the 
books exposed for sale on the wall of the quais, and 
for prints in the portfolios open at the doors of the EDUCATION, AT HOME AND ABROAD 
89 
small dealers. Now and then I would see at the road- 
side, sitting with her household goods about her dis- 
played for sale, a pathetic little show which oftentimes 
excited my sympathies." 
The truth certainly was that Holmes was absorbed 
in the study of his profession, and that his interest in 
it increased as he advanced in knowledge. By way 
of an example of the vein in which he often wrote, 
here is a passage from a letter of November 14, 
1833: - 
" I am more and more attached every day to the 
study of my profession, and more and more deter- 
mined to do what I can to give my own country one 
citizen among others who has profited somewhat by 
the advantages offered him in Europe. And let me 
tell you, this they have not all done who might have 
done it, partly because they were contented with an 
equality or a moderate superiority to those they left 
behind them, and partly because they found other 
things pleasanter than following hospitals and lectures 
and autopsies. The whole walls round the Ecole de 
Medecine are covered with notices of lectures, the 
greater part of them gratuitous ; the dissecting-rooms, 
which accommodate six hundred students, are open ; 
the lessons are ringing aloud through all the great 
hospitals. The students from all lands are gathered 
together, and the great harvest of the year is open to 
all of us. The consequence is that I am occupied 
from morning to night, and as every one is happy 
when he is occupied, I enjoy myself as much as I 
could wish." 
It is entertaining also to come across the following 
passage: - 
"The young men, and especially young students, 90 
perhaps were never so important a part of the com- 
munity as at the present time. The arbitrary govern- 
ments are occupied half their time in checking that 
class of their subjects, - the same class which excited 
the insurrection in Poland and headed the revolution 
in France. To tell the truth, the young men here are 
more feared and perhaps more respected than with us. 
I can say more particularly in scientific matters that 
there is nothing at all resembling the patriarchal 
authority which so often has held, and has such a 
tendency to acquire, the place of sound reason. There 
is this misfortune about it, that a man who lives to an 
advanced age in Paris, however great may have been 
his eminence during his prime, is very certain to be 
exploded, to be considered as used up, the moment 
that he falls behind the improvements of his time ; 
whereas with us, when a man has once acquired a 
reputation, it is still sustained by a kind of vis inertice 
twenty [years] after a new impulse has carried another 
generation in advance." 
" How strange it is," he remarked in his later days, 
" to look down on one's venerated teachers, after 
climbing with the world's progress half a century 
above the level where we left them."1 He himself, 
in thus looking backward, gave a few happy sketches 
of some of the instructors of his youth. Easily the 
foremost among these was, of course, the famous Louis, 
who, however high was his place in the knowledge 
and practice of medicine, held a yet higher place as 
an inspirer of youth. In a rare degree he had this 
priceless quality of an instructor, so that those who 
followed him among the beds of the hospitals became 
filled with an ardent ambition. Holmes says that he 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
1 Hundred Days, p. 164. EDUCATION, AT HOME AND ABROAD 
91 
was " of serene and grave aspect, but with a pleasant 
smile and kindly voice for the student with whom he 
came into personal relations ; " he was the " object of 
our reverence, I might almost say idolatry," and he 
adds: " 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." 
But the result of this personal charm was admitted to 
be that his students gave themselves up perhaps too 
exclusively to his methods and theories. " I devoted 
myself too exclusively," said Dr. Holmes in his remi- 
niscences, " to the teachings of Louis. No one man 
could perhaps have been so useful to me; but I wish 
I could have better remembered the mdlius addictus 
jurare in verba magistri of Horace. Many a long 
and wearying hour I have passed on the stone floor of 
the autopsy-room at La Pitie, wasting my time over 
little points which, a few years later, would have been 
easily settled by the microscope." 
Less attractive but more picturesque were others, 
among whom " Andral was by far the most eloquent 
and popular. He lectured in the same room, immedi- 
ately after Broussais. Towards the close of Broussais's 
lecture, the doors began to bang as the audience 
expecting Andral began to gather. The old man was 
savage and looked almost carnivorous at these inter- 
ruptions ; but that is the way the new theory treads 
on the heels of the old, and the new generation crowds 
upon the retreating forms of that which is passing 
from the stage." In his remarks on " Some of my 
Early Teachers," he says that " Broussais was in those 
days like an old volcano, which has pretty nearly used 
up its fire and brimstone, but is still boiling and bub- 92 
bling in its interior, and now and then sends up a 
spirt of lava and a volley of pebbles." 
And Lisfranc, " I can say little more of him," says 
Dr. Holmes, " than that he was a great drawer of 
blood and hewer of members. I remember his order- 
ing a wholesale bleeding of his patients, right and left, 
whatever might be the matter with them, one morning 
when a phlebotomizing fit was on him. I recollect 
his regretting the splendid guardsmen of the old 
Empire, - for what ? - because they had such mag- 
nificent thighs to amputate. I got along about as 
far as that with him, when I ceased to be a follower 
of M. Lisfranc." 
Then there was " the short, square, substantial man 
with iron-gray hair, ruddy face, and white apron; " 
this was " Baron Larrey, Napoleon's favorite surgeon, 
the most honest man he ever saw, - it is reputed that 
he called him. To go round the Hotel des Invalides 
with Larrey was to live over the campaigns of Napo- 
leon, to look on the sun of Austerlitz, to hear the 
cannons 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. Larrey was still strong and sturdy 
as I saw him, and few portraits remain printed in 
livelier colors on the tablet of my memory." 
At the Hotel Dieu there " ruled and reigned the 
master-surgeon of his day, at least so far as Paris and 
France were concerned, - the illustrious Baron Du- 
puytren. No man disputed his reign, - some envied 
his supremacy. Lisfranc shrugged his shoulders as 
he spoke of ce grand homme de V autre cote de la 
riviere, - that great man on the other side of the river; 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES EDUCATION, AT HOME AND ABROAD 
93 
but the great man he remained, until he bowed before 
the mandate which none may disobey." He was, as 
the Doctor recalled him, " a square, solid-looking 
man, with a fine head. With his white apron girt 
around him, he marched through the wards of the 
Hotel Dien like a lesser kind of deity, - soft-spoken, 
undemonstrative, unless opposed or interfered with, 
when he would treat his students, I have heard, as a 
huntsman does his hounds. But of this I never saw 
anything, except, when they piled up on his back as 
he overlooked a patient, he would shake them off 
from his broad shoulders like so many rats and mice." 
There was also " the vivacious Ricord, whom I 
remember calling the Voltaire of pelvic literature,- 
a skeptic as to the morality of the race in general, 
who would have submitted Diana to treatment with 
his mineral specifics, and ordered a course of blue 
pills for the vestal virgins." 
And there was " the famous Baron Boyer, author of 
the great work on surgery in nine volumes; " and 
Velpeau, who looked " as if he might have wielded 
the sledge-hammer rather than the lancet." 
So many famous professors of medicine or surgery, 
with others less well remembered, or less temptingly 
lending themselves to description, were bringing their 
contributions of knowledge to the Yankee student, - 
and he, a quick-witted, keenly observant, earnest youth, 
slackened not, but fatigued himself with incessant 
gathering. In his reminiscences he says that much 
of his " time in Paris was lost in ill-directed study. 
Still I gained the same familiarity with disease which 
the keeper of a menagerie does with the wild beasts 
he feeds and handles. I there learned the uncertain- 
ties of medical observation. The physician is like a 94 
watchmaker having charge of watches that he cannot 
open ; he must make the best guess he can, yet it 
is fair to say that the exploration of the interior of 
the human body has reached a degree of perfection 
which was not dreamed of at the time when I was 
a student." 
Holmes says that the students, becoming admirers 
of one or another of these several teachers, created a 
condition of things like that which subsisted in the 
cities of the Middle Ages, when each baron had his 
following ready in feud on his behalf. 
In the spring and summer of 1834, the courses of 
medical instruction being over, Holmes and some of 
his friends started forth to travel. Before leaving the 
Continent they took the conventional trip down the 
Rhine, and devoted a liberal allowance of time to 
the Low Countries. Thence they crossed to England. 
In his earlier letters Holmes had spoken very dis- 
respectfully of that country. In June his friend 
" Tom Appleton, son of Nathan," came from London 
to Paris, bringing such tales of the former capital 
that Holmes was moved to declare : " If what he says 
of London is true I almost hate to go there, - exor- 
bitant expense and little comfort are no temptation 
after the paradise of Parisian life." 
In October, 1833, he wrote: "As for the science 
of England and France, or rather Paris and London, 
- to judge by their books and their students, and 
the reports of the intelligent young men who have 
seen both, - the Frenchmen have half a century in 
advance." 
I think his letters from England, and upon his 
return to France, do not show that his personal 
experiences dissipated this prepossession. He stayed 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES EDUCATION, AT HOME AND ABROAD 
95 
a few weeks in London, saw something of English 
hospitals, and got some idea of English teaching. 
Then the party moved northward, saw Edinburgh 
and liked it, and of course visited and enjoyed those 
neighborhoods which owe a little to nature and a 
great deal to Walter Scott, - Abbotsford, Melrose, 
Loch Katrine, Loch Lomond, The Trosachs, and so 
on. There is no doubt as to how young New Eng- 
landers in the year 1834 were affected by these 
scenes. From them the travellers came down to the 
English Lakes, and saw somewhat more of the Eng- 
lish country, before the mill began to grind again in 
Paris. But I think that Holmes preferred working 
in Paris to amusing himself in England; he was 
young; later in life the opposite would have been 
true, at least as regards the localities ; though for the 
matter of labor and amusement he was deeply infected 
with the feverish industrial propensity of his native 
State. 
About this time money matters began to exhibit 
those symptoms familiar to the memories of most per- 
sons who have been young in Europe. The purse was 
nearly empty, not because Holmes had been extrava- 
gant, but because it had never held any very great 
sum. The letters which he wrote asking for rees- 
tablishment were very dignified, sensible, and self- 
respecting, though they held some strenuous pleading, 
certainly, and showed, perhaps, a person rather self- 
centred and absorbed in his own strong purpose. 
But unfortunately it so happened that just at this 
time there developed between France and the United 
States a relationship so strained that war might ensue 
at any moment. France had agreed by treaty to pay 
our " French claims," but the legislature would n't 96 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
find the money, and General Jackson was raging 
furiously, and flinging epithets which sounded like 
cannon-balls. England kindly pulled us out of the 
scrape, or there would have been bloodshed. 
The parents at home were evidently greatly dis- 
turbed by conditions which might endanger the safety 
of their son, besides of course breaking up those 
studies which were costing so much beyond the fore- 
casting. Betwixt alarm and economy they began to 
think that he might as well come home. He was 
thrown into despair by the suggestion. His sense of 
the loss which he would suffer is really heart-rending, 
even at this distance of time, and when we know that 
ultimately he escaped it. But while the decision 
hung uncertain, and seemed likely to go against him, 
his letters are very intense and pathetic. 
Moreover, he had been looking forward eagerly to 
a trip to Italy, with all that it promised of pleasure 
and education ; he expected to take it as a fairly 
earned reward at the end of a winter of hard study. 
" All the other fellows did," and every one who 
remembers his own youth knows what a sledge- 
hammer argument that is. 
Discussion moved tardily to and fro during the 
winter passages made by the weekly packets across 
the stormy Atlantic. Holmes would send a burning, 
anxious letter, well knowing that its ardor must be 
chilled during storm-tossed weeks before it could reach 
his parents ; and then their reply would be as long 
in reaching him. The suspense was a severe ordeal. 
All the winter he worked desperately hard, under 
pressure of the apprehension that the end of his 
opportunity might be brought by any incoming 
packet. Apparently it was not until the middle of Rev. Abiel Holmes EDUCATION, AT HOME AND ABROAD 
97 
June that he was assured of the Italian journey. 
Then right joyfully, early in July, he packed for 
shipment to Boston all his accumulated belongings, a 
select little professional library, a modest stock of 
instruments, and a box, " with two skeletons and some 
skulls, etc. One of the skeletons is for Dr. Parsons. 
I paid 135 francs for the large one and 90 for the 
little one, - which last I bought for myself, as I 
supposed the Doctor would like the more showy one." 
In the autumn of 1835 he returned home. His 
voyage was a long one, forty-three days, and he landed 
in New York on December 14th. Besides the skele- 
ton in the box it is probable that he brought no other 
skeleton. He had used time and money conscien- 
tiously, had gathered memories both useful and pleas- 
ant, knew the French language almost like his own, 
and had as much professional knowledge and skill as 
hard work could master in two winters. This was 
much, yet it was not quite all. It is reasonable to 
presume that when the young man left home, the 
relationship between his father and himself was like 
that between most fathers and sons in that genera- 
tion. This relationship may be represented by a per- 
pendicular line, having the Rev. Abiel Holmes at the 
top and the lad O. W. Holmes at the bottom, each 
accepting his position as a matter of course. But 
Europe had disturbed this line, had made it pivot 
upon its central point, and had even given such an 
impetus to its gyration that O. W. Holmes seemed to 
have come round to the top, while the good clergyman 
of Cambridge had swung to the nether end. In a 
trifle less than quarter of a century moral and intel- 
lectual independence had been achieved, - fortu- 
nately without any disturbing conflict, for respect 
and affection survived subordination. CHAPTER V 
LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
TO HIS PARENTS 
Paris, June 14, 1833. 
Dear Father and Mother, - James Jackson 
has just come up to my room to write home a letter, 
and reminded me that I must have one ready for the 
next packet. My weeks run along now in a pretty 
uniform manner. The hospital, - breakfast, - 
study, - a walk of an hour or two, - dinner at five 
o'clock, and evening sometimes bringing my French 
master, and sometimes some amusement or other, - 
make up a day which is pleasantly, and not unprofit- 
ably spent. Well, here we are, Jackson at my desk 
and I at my table, both of us in a little hurry, but not 
willing to let the day pass without our weekly tribute. 
I must as usual sketch off a little description of some- 
thing which I have seen, and among these objects are 
many with which I already feel as familiar as I do 
with the gate of our front yard, or the little shelf at 
the right as you go into the upper wood-house. 
The Palais lloyal. You have heard of this very 
often, but have probably no idea of it at all. The 
building which forms its boundary is of this figure. 
... A is the courtyard of the palace, formerly oc- 
cupied by the Duke of Orleans (citizen Egalite), and 
B is the courtyard of the larger division called the 
gallery of the Palais Royal, - in the centre of which 99 
is a garden with a fountain, and around which are the 
most brilliant shops, cafes, and restaurants of Paris. 
You are to know, then, that what Paris is to France 
the Palais Royal is to Paris. It is the radiating cen- 
tre of novelty, which in one word comprises almost 
everything that is interesting to Parisians. The 
most splendid articles of dress, the richest jewelry, 
the rarest delicacies and the most delicate rarities 
crowd to profusion the broad and glaring windows of 
this immense amphitheatre. The area, if I might 
form a conjecture, would contain a hundred thousand 
people, and it is always gay with the multitude of 
strangers and Parisians that go there to dine or to 
walk or to game, - or any of the thousand occupa- 
tions or amusements which give to this Vanity Fair 
its unceasing stir and glitter. I find that I cannot 
describe this place, simply for the reason that I have 
no terms of comparison or illustration. It is essen- 
tially Parisian, - it could not exist perhaps were it 
peopled by any others, - and lastly, if enjoyment is 
the object of life, as many old and modern philoso- 
phers have believed, no one spot in the world offers 
more varied sources than may be found within its 
precincts. 
The, Louvre. I went to see it for the first time 
yesterday, -and as I have made an engagement to 
go and see it again to-day, I must hurry my letter a 
little for the sake of keeping my engagement. The 
gallery of the Louvre extends from the palace of the 
Louvre to that of the Tuileries, and is more than a 
quarter of a mile long. It is full, I suppose you 
know, of paintings, and was the storehouse of the 
spoils of Napoleon. When I went yesterday it was 
almost the hour for the gallery to shut, and I had 
LETTERS FROM EUROPE 100 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
scarcely an opportunity to walk from one end to the 
other before the soldiers hinted that it was time to 
retire. Besides the pictures of the French school, - 
among which are those of Poussin and Claude Lor- 
raine, - there are nearly one thousand by the old 
masters of the Flemish, Dutch, German, and Italian 
schools. Among them are a large number by Raffael 
and his master - by Titian - by Rubens - Guido - 
Salvator Rosa - in short, paintings by all the masters 
of celebrity with whose names we are familiar - 
transmitted from the times of Francis I, Henri IV, 
and Louis XIV. I have hitherto seen nothing which 
seemed to me so royal as this gorgeous hall. Its 
extent is so great that the eye can hardly appreciate 
it, and yet from the oaken floor to the arched and 
gilded ceiling there is not a spot which the eye of a 
king might not repose upon with pleasure. There are 
more than 900 pieces of statuary in the hall beneath 
this gallery. This collection of paintings and statues 
is open to the public every Sunday; but strangers 
are admitted every day - except Monday - from ten 
to four, by showing their passports. So you see that 
I, like all foreigners, have treasures enough thrown at 
my feet, for delight as well as instruction, to make me 
forget in some measure that I am in the land of 
strangers. I have not as yet had any letter. I shall 
mention this whenever I write, to let you know if 
youi' letters come when you write, and to make you 
more attentive to this part of your duty. Love to all. 
TO HIS BROTHER JOHN. 
Paris, June 21,1833. 
Dear John, -I just send you two words by Sulli- 
van Warren, who went so much sooner than I ex- LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
101 
pected that I had only a moment to write to James 
Bussell and Park Benjamin, - and have just a minute 
left for you. This will be of little consequence if you 
have got my letters, for I have written every week 
since I have been in Paris. I admire the French so 
far as I have seen them, - indeed the only very dis- 
agreeable people one meets with are generally Eng- 
lishmen. I had observed one fellow, who attended at 
the same hospital with me, for his vulgar, bustling 
air, and because he had his sleeve turned up in an 
important and business-like kind of way. He was a 
man about thirty years old, and resembled so much 
one of our own conceited country practitioners, in the 
confidence of his remarks as well as their stupidity, 
that I might have mistaken him for a Berkshire 
County luminary. I found out afterwards that he 
was Sir . And I can tell you that a 
man with a title may be just as great a booby as a 
republican, - and as for the English students here, 
so far as I can learn and observe, they cannot com- 
pare with the American. 
I hope by this time you have taken hold of law or 
some business. When a body has got to your age he 
should give up all his idle fancies and notions and 
apply himself to some practical use, pleasantly if he 
can - odiously if he must. In about thirty years he 
will have money and character, and then he may go 
again to his cat's-cradles and speculation. But just 
put off the age of action a little too long, and there 
is a great chance that you evaporate into " general 
knowledge," or dribble down into a half intellectual 
harlequin like . I say it once more, that I have 
found no difficulty whatsoever from not having my 
degree. They are not taken the least notice of, - 102 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
nobody uses the title of Doctor, and I would not give a 
copper for any advantages it would give me. In this 
as in many other things I have found that my own 
opinion, after examining the evidence of things, is a 
much better guide for me than anybody's advice. 
Take no clothes to Paris, said some wiseacre or other 
to me. I did so, and was of course made a fool of, 
- for people dress here with the same variety that 
they do with us, and for my own part I was much 
more of a dandy in Boston than I am here. For in- 
stance, if I had brought that black coat, it would have 
saved me twenty dollars, and so of many other things. 
Well, I feel now as if I had known Paris from my 
childhood. I am as much at home, day and night, in 
the streets as in Boston, or almost so. I am so com- 
pletely naturalized that it seems as if Boston must be 
only about twenty miles to the west, and I feel as if 
some of you would be calling up at my room some of 
these mornings. M. Breschet, to whom Mr. Warden 
gave me a letter, has been very useful to me. I hope 
you have remembered certain little matters which I 
spoke to you about, - such as the Sydenham, which 
Hook has, - and my notes at the Hospital. I intend 
to write expressly some of these days to Dr. Parsons 
- and to Mr. Upham. With regard to professional 
advantages I can only say that, great as I had sup- 
posed them to be, the standard of medical instruc- 
tion, the opportunities to embrace every variety of 
[illegible], the facility with which all is obtained, and 
the rapidity with which instruction is acquired, convince 
me that the attentive student may return a sounder 
physician at twenty-five than many who slumber til] 
sixty in our own languid scientific atmosphere. 
I understand my French lectures almost as per- 103 
fectly as English. So on the whole I am getting 
accomplished. - I have had no letter yet. 
Give my love to Father and Mother,-and all 
their descendants and connections. 
LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
TO HIS PARENTS. 
Paris, June 29, 1833. 
Dear Father and Mother, - Not a sign of a 
letter from home yet, and I have been away three 
months ' I go on one invariable principle, that no- 
body who leaves many friends behind him need be 
worried in such circumstances ; for if anything hap- 
pens to one, that is the very reason why another should 
write immediately. If you have received all ray let- 
ters, there have been seven, I believe, or eight, - 
and I am just sitting down to this in surprise to find 
the week come round so soon again. The truth is, I 
live at Paris just as if I had been there all my life, 
and indeed I can hardly conceive of anybody's living 
in any other way, so completely have I naturalized 
myself. It seems hideous to think of more than 
two meals a day; how could I ever have dined at 
two o'clock ? How could I have put anything to my 
mouth but a silver fork ? How could I have survived 
dinner without a napkin ? How could I have break- 
fasted without drinking white sugar and water ? It 
is very narrow and ridiculous, and yet it is very com- 
mon, to bear people taking the standard of their own 
fancy for that of necessity. One will tell you that he 
prefers a separate plate from his neighbor, but has 
no idea of any napkin but the tablecloth, - another 
would shudder at an iron tumbler, but is astonished 
that his neighbor has an aversion to an iron fork. 
Now as for napkins and silver forks, the most ordi- 104 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
nary, meanest eating-houses in Paris consider them as 
indispensable, - and so with regard to many things 
which we consider as luxuries, they make a part of 
ordinary existence with the Parisian. And yet a 
young man goes abroad, and perhaps lives for years 
among strangers, at that part of his life when tastes 
and habits are forming; but if, when he returns, he 
would modestly adopt a foreign custom at his table, 
or venture an opinion even that his countrymen want 
refinement in such or such a point, sober people shake 
their heads at the travelled monkey, and old people 
draw the corollary that their gawky offspring will be 
made a puppy by crossing the Atlantic. The more I 
see of French character, the more I am delighted with 
it. I have hardly heard an - As I was writing 
this, Waldo Emerson came up to see me. He had 
been sitting some time when I heard another knock, 
and in walked - James Russell! I never was so as- 
tonished in my life ; but as he is here, and I must 
attend to him, without ceremony I shall take the lib- 
erty to conclude my letter. . . . Give my love to 
everybody. 
Paris, July 14, 1833. 
You will not say or think anything hard of me for 
omitting to write the last time the packet went, be- 
cause on the whole I have set you an example of punc- 
tuality which unhappily has not been followed. Not a 
sign of a letter from any living body. ... I will rake 
for a little Parisian news. Janies Russell has been 
here for the last fortnight, and he and Tom Appleton 
set out a day or two ago for Switzerland. James 
Jackson left Paris for England day before yesterday, 
where he will stay a week or two and then return 
home. Hooper and Mason Warren go in about a LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
105 
month to Italy, and I remain quiet for the present. 
The Americans had a dinner as usual on the Fourth 
of July, where that inextinguishable old gentleman 
M. Lafayette and his progeny stirred up our patriot- 
ism with their presence. The partridges stuffed with 
truffles were good, no doubt, and the fifty wines 
worthy of praise, but the toasts were stale and the 
speeches farcical, to say nothing of the scrape's cost- 
ing seven dollars to each enthusiastic republican. 
There was an incident which threatened mischief. 
Alter a few toasts had been drunk, there jumped up 
a naval officer at one end of the table. " Mr. Presi- 
dent," said he, " I should like to know if this is a 
meeting of the Hartford Convention or of citizens of 
tne United States ? " He went on to say that the 
health of the President of the United States had been 
drunk without the requisite number of cheers ! He 
was interrupted with hisses and other noises. But 
loudest and fiercest was Russell, who sat next to me 
but one. He got up - his moustaches curling like a 
sultan's - hissed in his very eyes - called on the com- 
pany to cut off the buttons of his uniform and turn 
him out; and this to an officer, a dead shot, who had 
killed his man already. He expected, and all those 
about him expected, that he would be challenged for 
the next morning ; but the table was very long, and 
the lieutenant's attention was taken up by another 
gentleman directly opposite him, whom he did chal- 
lenge, and who refused on the score that he was a 
blackguard. The fellow was not in fact considered a 
gentleman, as we found out afterwards, and Russell 
got much credit for his spirit in resisting such an 
atrocious insult to the company. 
The French are a restless people, - perhaps not 106 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
more so than others, but they are never quiet. Not* 
withstanding they made the government of Louis Phi- 
lippe, there is no lack of grumblers against it. There 
is a notion that the old gentleman, who is said to be a 
cunning fellow, Jias slackened a little in his zeal for 
liberal principles. The papers talk without the slight- 
est ceremony about his defection from the principles 
of the revolution of July. But nothing has excited 
more remark than the project of the government for 
erecting a large number of detached forts around tlie 
city. It appears from the plan that has been submit- 
ted that these forts, which are pretended to be for the 
defence of tlie city, are to be so placed as to command 
all its principal quarters, so that in the event of what 
kings call insurrection and people revolution, they 
may knock Paris to pieces with her own cannon. Tlie 
king is caricatured without mercy. If you have ever 
seen his portrait you know that he has a narrow fore- 
head and large fat cheeks. This has been ingeniously 
imitated by the outline of a pear ; so that on half the 
walls of Paris you will see a figure like this, done 
in chalk or charcoal, with inscriptions, etc. 
In a more elaborate caricature, the people, 
under the shape of a porter, is represented 
as groaning under an enormous pear. I saw 
one the other day where the pear was 
cut open, - there was a great hollow, in which were 
the favorite ministers. These, however, are nothing, 
for they caricature everything and everybody. It is 
very likely that in the course of time they will have a 
sober revolution and a republic. 
I do not think of anything of particular interest in 
the last week or two except what I have mentioned, 
and indeed Paris is the most retired place in the 107 
world to live in if a man is busy. I think it strange 
you have not written, but I should not think of wor- 
rying myself about it. . . . Love to all. 
Paris, August 13, 1833. 
I cannot conceive why I have had no letters. I 
suppose you must have written ; be sure and direct 
right, for I should really love to have a few words 
from home. I am going on as usual, except that for 
the present I dine in a French family, breakfasting 
at the Cafe Procope, - the cafe of Voltaire, Rous- 
seau, and Fontenelle. It is said that Rousseau used 
to go there twice a week when his funds were in good 
order, and once a week when he was low in the 
pocket. Voltaire used to affect a particular table, 
the place of which is pointed out. You must know 
that the cafes are filled with little tables covered with 
marble slabs and fixed to different parts of the room, 
some for one person, some for two, some for four. 
My most pleasant and original classmate, Morse, of 
New Orleans, is living close to me at present - he and 
a Philadelphian by the name of Stewardson, whom 
Jackson introduced me to, and I frequently breakfast 
together. I attend Louis at the Hospital of La Pitie 
regularly at half after seven every morning. Mon- 
sieur, seeing me taking notes this morning, did me 
the compliment to say, "Vous travaillez, monsieur, 
c'est bien <ja," -- " you are working, sir, it is well, 
that," whereat I was pleased. I showed him, a week 
or two ago, a little medical contrivance of John 
Jackson's which he requested me to mention, and 
which pleased him so much that he has used it every 
morning since. Our physicians of the old school 
have not the slightest idea of the confidence and cer- 
LETTERS FROM EUROPE 108 
tainty with which such a man as Louis speaks of his 
patients. If I was asked: Why do you prefer that 
intelligent young man, who has been studying faith- 
fully in Paris, to this venerable practitioner who has 
lived more than twice as long ? I should say : Because 
the young man has experience. He has seen more 
cases, perhaps, of any given disease; he has seen 
them grouped so as to throw more light upon each 
other; he has been taught to bestow upon them far 
more painful investigation; he has been instructed 
daily by men whom the world allows to be its most 
competent teachers ; by men who know no master and 
teach no doctrine but Nature and her laws, pointed 
out at the bedside for those to own who see them, and 
for the meanest student to doubt, to dispute, if they 
cannot be seen; he has examined the dead body 
oftener and more thoroughly in the course of a year 
than the vast majority of our practitioners have in 
any ten years of their lives. True experience is the 
product of opportunity multiplied by years, until we 
come to a certain point, when years become a minus 
quantity. The product is in proportion to both ele- 
ments : If I have enjoyed opportunity (and improved 
it) = 10 for ten years, my product may be stated at a 
hundred ; if for forty years, it will be greater, but not 
four hundred; if my opportunity = 100, and I have 
enjoyed it five years, I have five hundred for my 
product, minus a slight discount, if you are very math- 
ematical. I have written a page to show that it was 
worth while in a professional point of view for me to 
come to Paris. If I say more, I may get technical. 
But merely to have breathed a concentrated scientific 
atmosphere like that of Paris must have an effect on 
any one who has lived where stupidity is tolerated, 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 109 
where mediocrity is applauded, and where excellence 
is deified. The only difference between my present 
opinions and those I have often expressed on this 
subject before I left America is that I compared 
many of our physicians with what they ought to be, 
and now with what I see others are. There is not so 
much as might seem at first to be angry at; we are 
too far from the scientific centres of Europe, and the 
impulse given thirty years ago by the French pathol- 
ogists to the severe study of medicine, accumulating 
up to the present moment, falls more fully on us than 
on our fathers, as it may leave us behind when it falls 
redoubled upon our children. These remarks are sub 
rosa, and I expressly exclude from them a small 
number of individuals, among whom are more than 
one of " my very worthy and approved good masters." 
However, I have more fully learned at least three 
principles since I have been in Paris: not to take 
authority when I can have facts ; not to guess when 
I can know; not to think a man must take physic 
because he is sick. 
I am getting more and more a Frenchman. I love 
to talk French, to eat French, to drink French every 
now and then (these wines are superb, and nobody 
gets drunk, except as an experiment in physiology) ; 
and I do believe, if Napoleon was alive, and I stayed 
here much longer, I should want to fight a little ; but 
he is at St. Helena, and I must take off cases at 
the ward St. Charles. I meant to have given you a 
formidable account of some of the oddities of Paris, 
but I have no room. I was driven into a shop in a 
shower this morning, where I picked up three exqui- 
site old engravings of Madame de Maintenon, Rous- 
seau, and Moliere. One's taste soon becomes refined 
LETTERS FROM EUROPE 110 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
here about such matters; I think myself quite a con- 
noisseur. I pique myself on not cramming my letters 
with French words. Give my love to all, collateral 
and descending. 
Paris, August 30, 1833. 
I begin this letter as I have all of late with a com- 
plaint of not receiving letters. I cannot suppose but 
that you write, and am entirely unable to conceive 
why I hear nothing from you. Although I go on the 
principle of not worrying myself, I confess it is not 
comfortable to be so long without one word from 
home. I like the family where I dine very well in- 
deed. A good many of the Americans have boarded 
there before me, - Jackson, Greene, Warren, Hooper, 
and others. Morse has left Paris for Spain within a 
few days. Stewardson, the Philadelphian I have men- 
tioned, is the only civilized countryman I see much of 
at present. The Englishmen we meet at the hospital 
every morning have grown quite communicative and 
civil, and Sir , who appears as honest and 
profound an ass as is extant, extends his sagacious 
remarks in the most paternal manner to us untitled 
republicans. There are two or three incidental ad- 
vantages in living in Europe that are not to be 
forgotten, particularly by promising young men not 
exactly on a level with the information of the times. 
One must pick up some notions on geography, for 
instance, and on politics. One must get a few scat- 
tered ideas on history. And a foreigner has this 
advantage, that when he is cornered on a weak point 
he cannot " shift his trumpet and only take snuff " - 
but find a difficulty in understanding the voluble 
Frenchman and shelter himself under an amiable 
ignorance of the language. As for politics, as the LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
111 
journals make a part of breakfast universally at the 
cafes, it is impossible not to become gradually interested 
in their daily current. At the present moment the 
affairs of Portugal of course are absorbing the atten- 
tion of everybody, and as we have the accounts every 
few days in Paris, our sensations are almost as vivid 
as mine used to be when I stood on the Common and 
heard the guns rattle and felt the air shake in those 
formidable sham fights that echoed from the plains of 
Watertown and Waltham. I have told you before 
that the present government of France was by no 
means free from opposition. The legitimists are for 
putting the young duke of Bordeaux, grandson of 
Charles X, on the throne; the young men are repub- 
licans ; the polytechnic students want to fight; the 
people count up more than thirty thousand arrests 
that have taken place under Louis Philippe, and scowl 
at the power that decimates its own creators; every 
day fires squibs at the government from the journals 
and fills the windows with caricatures. Well, it is 
fortunate for me that I do not happen to take a revo- 
lutionary turn, or I might have had the pleasure, like 
a young man who boards at the same place with me, of 
being kept under lock and key at St. P^lagie through 
all the fine doings of July, and of having my room 
entered and finding myself and my friends in the 
guard-house under the name of a political association, 
as he did a few days ago. 
The peaches, grapes, apples, and pears are as plenty 
as pebbles in Paris. It is a luxury to a Bostonian to 
find at one season the finest apricots and at another 
the most beautiful grapes at the corner of every street. 
They have a little sweet purple grape, which I saw 
selling this morning at three sous (or cents) the 112 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
pound. The large white grapes, like those we have 
at home, are getting every day more abundant; in 
their full season they are not considered a luxury, but 
form part of the food of the laborers. You have no 
idea of the use or necessity of bread at home, but 
here it is the principal food of a large part of the 
population. They bake it in loaves of about a yard 
long, which would be no despicable weapons in the 
case of an invasion, for they are almost as strong as, 
and larger than, the clubs of the New Zealanders. I 
must again express my surprise at not receiving any 
letters, and if you have written, assure you that there 
is some error in your way of directing or sending. 
Give my love to all. 
Paris, September 28, 1833. 
I am unwilling to let the packet go without taking 
advantage of it, and I shall therefore send you a few 
lines, the principal object of which is to let you know 
that I am well, and to inquire again why I hear 
nothing from you. If the post has done its duty, you 
have received more than a dozen letters from me, and 
I have not had the shadow of an answer. I am 
entirely unable to account for it. I cannot but sup- 
pose you have written several times, and what is the 
reason I receive nothing is beyond my comprehension. 
Everybody else is having news almost weekly from 
home, and I am left as destitute of them as if I were 
going to the North Pole out of the region of post- 
offices. There is no reason in the world why I should 
not have letters every week with as much certainty as 
if I were at New York. The consequence is that I am 
obliged to insist upon it, time after time, that every 
letter may remind you how far my patience has been 
taxed. If I could only have news from home I should 
be perfectly contented. LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
113 
The more I become acquainted with the advantages 
and the comforts of life in Paris, the more I am de- 
lighted with it. I have now become familiar enough 
with the language to make out a conversation without 
much difficulty. I have become acquainted with 
some intelligent French students who are of assistance 
to me in one way and another, and I acquire every 
day the little practical matters of experience which 
teach one how to make the most of such a city as 
Paris. An American or an Englishman, when he first 
comes to Paris, grumbles because his windows open 
like folding-doors instead of up and down ; he wakes 
up in the morning and frets because his breakfast is 
not ready until ten o'clock ; he is unable to compre- 
hend the graceful variety of his dinner, which, instead 
of gorging him with a single dish until he loathes the 
sight of it, presents a succession of pleasures which 
it requires some cultivation to appreciate, as do the 
results of all the other fine arts. Again, when our 
stranger first comes to Paris he is always extrava- 
gant, and this for two reasons : first, because he is 
under an excitement to find himself in a strange place, 
and indifferent to the bare motive of economy; and 
next, because he is totally ignorant of the thousand 
expedients for avoiding expense which have sprung 
from the philosophy of the Parisians. Thus he pays 
his garqon (servant) double what he ought to - he 
gives money to the little rascally beggars who never 
dare to ask it of a Frenchman - he takes a cabriolet 
when he should take an omnibus - he calls for twice 
as much at the restaurateur's as he wants - ignorant, 
poor creature, that while the Englishman values every- 
thing in proportion to its price, the Frenchman's 
eulogy is magnijique et pas cher ! When I first came 114 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
to Paris I found my mind almost entirely dissipated, 
with my voyage and my trip in England and the new 
situation in which I found myself. It took me a good 
while to bring it back to its centre of equilibrum. 
However, I began immediately to attend my hospi- 
tal through thick and thin, at first not understand- 
ing a word and by degrees getting a little insight into 
matters, and by perseverance and punctuality at my 
morning visit I soon found my interest in medicine 
become even stronger than before I left home. At 
present I am quite absorbed in my profession. I 
mean to take advantage of the museum and collec- 
tions at the Garden of Plants to become somewhat 
acquainted with natural history. 
A week ago we thought the cholera was about to 
make another serious irruption into Paris, but since 
it appears to have declined, and has passed out of 
notice. I am still at the same boarding-house. This 
living in a French family has had an admirable effect 
upon my proficiency in the language. I say it once 
more that I am living in every respect very happily, 
that I have every advantage of improvement, and that 
if I could only hear from home I should have nothing 
to complain of. I feel as if it was in vain to write, 
for I have no means of knowing whether my letters 
are received or not, but I shall do it and remind you 
that there is something a little neglectful in this obsti- 
nate silence. If you have written by the post and 
your letters miscarried, send them in future to Mr. 
Welles in Boston and he will transmit them. Give 
my love to all. 
Paris, October 22, 1833. 
I always find myself in a little hurry when I sit 
down to write, - partly because I am generally pretty LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
115 
busy, and partly because I always put off writing on 
purpose as nearly as I can to the time of the packet's 
leaving. I have macle out in a week to get tolerably 
over my chagrin at that most intolerable business 
which prevented me from having my letters. So I 
mean to wait in a philosophical spirit until you have 
got the letter which precedes the one I am writing, 
and our epistolary diplomacy has arrived at a stable 
conclusion. I will explain to you in a few words 
how it happened. When I called on Mr. Welles, 
or rather at his counting-room, soon after coming to 
Paris, I asked for letters ; was told there were none, 
- that if there were they would be sent to me. Soon 
afterwards I changed my lodgings, and it was my 
impression that I gave them my new address. How- 
ever, they say I did not, and they ought to know. I 
asked once or twice more for letters and received the 
same answer, that they would be sent to me. This 
put me entirely at rest, because I knew that the other 
young [men] were receiving letters at their own 
houses in the same way, - and I went on in perfect 
confidence that, if they had letters, the men of busi- 
ness would not fail to send them to me; therefore, as 
they did not send, there were none. In the mean time 
I was going to the counting-room about once every 
other week, - as I do not draw a great deal at a time, 
- and they were accumulating letter after letter for 
me, without ever taking the trouble to mention it to 
me, or to inquire my address. At last I became out- 
rageous, went to the general post-office, found no- 
thing, and then determined to go to Welles's and see 
if it was possible they could have kept letters for me 
and neglected to mention it, and at any rate to take 
measures immediately for having some news from 116 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
home by their means. What was my astonishment 
when the clerk - one of two who speak English - 
opened a common drawer and, pulling over a single 
pile of letters, took out five for me, - four from home, 
and one from James Russell at Amsterdam ! I must 
have been ten or twelve times at the counting-room 
since the first was received, and they had given me 
my money and suffered me to go away wondering 
what was the reason why I had no letters like others, 
and never asking the question - not through careless- 
ness, but because I supposed it a matter of course 
that a banker took cognizance of letters as much as 
of other property intrusted to him for the benefit of 
those who deal with him. I sent for the head clerk 
and expressed my astonishment to him ; his excuse 
was an impudent one, -that it was a matter of favor 
on their part to take charge of letters. In other 
words, I consider it as a conviction of gross negligence 
of the interests which the custom of business has 
trusted to the banker's protection. Having read my 
letters and found that everything was going on well 
and pleasantly at home, I made up my mind not to 
worry myself at all about the series of complaining 
letters that must necessarily pass between us for a 
month or six weeks, but to wait like a martyr until 
my first letter should have time to cross the Atlantic 
and settle the whole affair quietly. 
You cannot have any idea of what a difference your 
letters made in my feelings. I labored under a 
double difficulty, - I had no news from home, and I 
was uncertain whether or not you had received a single 
letter from me. I wish to stop all your disagreeable 
reflections, and attendrissements, as the French say, by 
just remarking that time flies so fast here, and I have 117 
been so much occupied, that I have had incalculably 
little time to torment myself. So that it is rather 
by the general quiet that hearing from America gives 
one all day long than by any momentary sensations, 
that we owe so much happiness to the packets and 
post-office. Our news here does not amount to much. 
The cholera has entirely subsided so far as I can see 
or hear, - it was very slight in its prevalence. Day 
before yesterday I had a letter from Hooper who, with 
Mason Warren, was at Rome. I think I must contrive 
to get into Italy before I leave Europe, - that is, if it 
is in any way possible. I intend, however, to spend a 
strictly, studiously, devotedly professional year before 
I think of even tripping across the Channel for Lon- 
don. As for the science of England and France, or 
rather Paris and London, - to judge by their books 
and their students, and the reports of the intelligent 
young men who have seen both, the Frenchmen have 
half a century in advance. - George Crowninshield 
has been here two or three weeks - George Gardner, 
my old friend, about a week. I have amused myself 
with giving them lessons in the art of eating French 
dinners at the restaurants occasionally. The longer I 
stay, the more facilities do I find to acquire instruc- 
tion. When I write to Dr. Parsons, which I will do 
when I can write to my own satisfaction, tell him he 
may find some new notions, but that they come fresh 
from the clinique and the dissecting-rooms of Paris. 
I desire my best love to Mr. Upham, to Ann and the 
young ones - to Dr. Parsons and Charles. 
Paris, October 30, 1833. 
My room is all up in a heap, - my gar^on being in 
the commencing stage of an operation he performs 
LETTERS FROM EUROPE 118 
occasionally - that of setting it to rights. I am sit- 
ting here like Marius at Carthage in the midst of my 
chaotic magnificence. It is very fortunate for you 
indeed, for otherwise you might have had a letter with 
more French in it than you could have managed with- 
out the help of old Boyer. -Je me flatte que je suis 
bien fort la-dessus a present, mais comme je suis un 
peu presse, il faut que je parle cette bete d'Anglais - 
parole d'honneur, il me fache, mais, 'ere nom d'un 
chien I n' importe. Everything is going on nicely here. 
George Gardner, I believe I told you, is here - I see 
him very often - the fellows are not back from Italy 
- the winter lectures are just commencing - in a few 
days. The king of Belgium and his queen, Louis 
Philippe's daughter, are here. I met them both in 
the rue Richelieu as they were entering Paris - two 
kings in one coach - the guest, and the host who went 
out some miles from Paris, and escorted him in. 
Whereby there was a great military ball at the 
Tuileries last night, and whereupon George Crownin- 
shield and I, as we were returning from a visit to 
George Gardner, looked at the illuminated palace and 
drew invidious comparisons. However, they say the 
Belgians hate King Leopold, and perhaps these newly 
got up kings are not over pleasantly situated. I 
have not read the papers much lately ; the last thing 
interesting I saw was the declaration, or report, of the 
society of the " Rights of man." Among the com- 
mittee whose names were affixed to it was a young 
man who boarded at the same house I did, and whom 
I have mentioned to you before as having had solitude 
and seclusion added to his aids of reflection during 
the three days of July, by the cares of the de facto 
government, which is rather indifferent to the progress 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 119 
of political metaphysics. These good folks - the 
society - are the legitimate descendants of the ancient 
Jacobins, quote M. Robespierre with respect, reprint 
the works of Marat, kicked up a row at the funeral of 
General La Marek a year ago, and have a great dis- 
position to disarrange the ordre des choses. Their 
last sentence is something like this, - " Kings, Ty- 
rants, Aristocrats, whoever they may be, are slaves 
revolted against the monarch of the earth, which is 
the human race, and against the legislator of the 
universe, which is nature." So you see they have no 
contemptible talent at manufacturing aphorisms. 
And speaking of such matters, I went the other 
night to see Mlle. Mars for the second time, - in 
Moliere's Tartuffe. She is now about fifty-eight years 
old and, as you well know, the most celebrated living 
actress in her line. She had left the stage some years 
ago, but having lost a good deal of money by specu- 
lating in the funds, she returned to it once more. 
Although she shows the effects of years, her face has 
still great sweetness and dignity, her voice is perfectly 
clear and pure, her pronunciation perhaps the best 
model of classic French that exists, and all her deport- 
ment on the stage such as you might expect from the 
unrivalled favorite for thirty or forty years, of the best 
judging and most intellectual population of Europe. 
There are nearly twenty theatres in Paris, and eight 
or ten of them very large and beautiful. Their prices 
are generally moderate - their scenery fine - their 
music excellent. But perhaps in nothing are they 
more preeminent than in the richness and truth of 
costume, - a branch which has been entirely regener- 
ated by the influence of Talma. The other night at 
the Theatre Franqais, for instance, the costumes of 
LETTERS FROM EUROPE 120 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
the seventeenth century were exceedingly striking, -< 
so much so that from that moment I shall date an 
accurate idea of the gentleman under Louis XIV. A 
theatre like that is indispensable to the intelligent 
foreigner, as an amusement, as giving him just notions 
of past and present French manners in the different 
classes, and as the best standard of the language. 
There is no need of cutting or tearing off this 
last page about theatres ; where society is far ad- 
vanced they must exist and are a blessing; they are 
cherished and improved in proportion as it is enlight- 
ened, and the outcry of civilized Europe would ex- 
plode their assailants, were they not, in Europe, con- 
fined to an inappreciable body of the community. For 
the rest, observe that I have not been zealous to send 
home proofs every week that I had ideas different 
from many that I love; but as generations change if 
they do not degenerate, you must excuse these little 
remarks, and not waste your next letter in refuting 
them. ... I will tell my garqon that I have finished 
my letter, and that he may go on setting things to 
rights. If George Gardner goes home in a month or 
two, I will try to send some gimcracks. Love to all. 
P. S. Best love to J. Jackson, and respects to his 
father. Can't have letters shown. I will write a 
show letter some day. 
Paris, November 29, 1833. 
I know you must respect me for writing short let- 
ters in a hurry, because it shows that I have my hands 
full of business. It is true enough that I am avari- 
cious of my time, because I want to learn more than 
knows, and beat out and out in the nice 
scientific touches. I am, as usual, all medicine, get- 
ting up at seven and going to hospitals, cutting up, 121 
LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
hearing lectures, soaking, infiltrating in the springs 
of knowledge. There is a great deal more to be done 
than I was inclined to suppose, but the more the 
better, when one gets into good working trim. I sup- 
pose of course you wonder, in looking over my meagre 
letters, not to find them full of Parisian talk and gar- 
dens and statues and such ; but to tell the plain truth, 
I see no more and hear no more of those things than 
you do. If you get discontented, send me word, and I 
will give up following the diseases of the skin at the 
Hospital St. Louis, cut off a slice from my daily 
anatomy, drop Broussais's lectures, take a fashionable 
journal, a box at the Italian opera, and become as 
amusing as possible. Well, you may depend upon it 
that we never gain without losing, and I suppose if I 
should make verses nowadays (which heaven forbid!) 
my readers would think I had not grown much the 
better poet for crossing the water. . . . Mr. W 
was polite enough; told me he met you, and that you 
had rather formidable ideas of Paris, and that you 
had some rather funny anxieties about my not getting 
money, and all that. Believe me, my untravelled 
reader, whatever clerk in a post-office you may be, 
that there is much humbug in the notions which vege- 
tate in the twilight of villages. And, most of all, 
there is humbug in the notions of the difficulty of 
travelling and its arrangements. I should never want 
more than a day's notice to leave America for Europe, 
so far as fixing is concerned. Our fellows here get 
up from dinner some day and go off to Italy; in a 
month or two they come back again with their heads 
full of long stories to tell their grandchildren; or to 
Russia or Spain, and there is no more fuss about it 
than a Boston cockney would make about an excur- 122 
sion to Fresh Pond, and about as little risk, if so be 
that the cockney become mystified as usual, and has a 
horse with the propension of the late Diamond or 
Dolly. I shall stop. My letters are crisp, and snap 
short off. I shall stop, first because I must break- 
fast, and, second, because I have a million of things 
to do afterwards. . . . Give my love to all, and ex- 
cuse me for hurrying to the Cafe Procope. 
Paris, December 13, 1833. 
I must send you a few lines by the packet, al- 
though, as I have told you, my weeks have how very 
little interest about them except such as is connected 
with my studies. I received your letter of 7th No- 
vember, and sympathized with your vexation, which I 
hope was quieted before I got it. I told you my reso- 
lution,- not to worry or fret, but to wait quietly 
until you should find that I had got all your letters 
and was receiving them regularly. I have made out 
to keep it very well, and as I am now old and tough, 
- as the skim milk sentiment of my younger days has 
hardened into the white oak cheese of maturity, you 
need not suppose I allow myself to be disconcerted by 
such matters. However, I was very sorry that you 
should have been worried, and very glad that it was 
all right at last. We are all very anxious about 
James Jackson, whose sickness you have not men- 
tioned, but who was in a very dangerous state when 
our last account came. No one could excite a greater 
interest in our minds on all accounts, - no young man 
could be wrorse spared by his friends or by science. 
The winter here is not very cold, but the streets are 
all mud and trash. It is like walking on wet bar 
soap. Wood is enormously dear. I have told you 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
123 
that it was all humbug about living over cheap in 
Paris. I will say now that I cannot get along, and 
that none of us do get along, without spending at the 
rate of about six or seven thousand francs a year. 
But in the mean time I am getting a library which 
forms part of my stock in trade. It is clear that I 
shall be obliged to use my letter of credit before the 
first year is out. And what better can be done with 
money than putting the means of instruction - the 
certain power of superiority, if not of success - into 
the hands of one's children ? Besides, economy, in 
one sense, is too expensive for a student. For my 
part, I say freely that a certain degree of ease con- 
nected with my manner of living, - a tolerably good 
dinner, a nice book when I want it, and that kind 
of comforts, are in the place of theatres and parties, 
for which I have less taste than many good fellows of 
my acquaintance. ' I can go home, if I must, but 
while I am here I will not eat a dinner for twenty-five 
sous and drink sour wine at a shabby restaurant. In 
this point I agree with the experience of the first 
young men we have had here - Jackson - Gerhard 
- Stewardson - all hard, very hard students, but who 
utterly exploded the idea of getting along for less 
than I have mentioned. But let me say that I have 
no disposition to extravagance, and that probably I 
spend less money on pure gratification than most of 
the young men with whom I associate. To speak 
definitely, you may consider my expenses as at least 
twelve hundred dollars a year - books - instruments 
-private, instruction (which costs a good deal), and 
everything included. I tell you that it is not throw- 
ing away money, because nine tenths of it goes 
straight into my head in the shape of knowledge. 124 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
And once for all I say that you may trust me, and I 
beg you to remember that, in being in Europe for my 
good, I am here for yours. If I should think best to 
go to Italy - let me go. If I should choose to spend 
a few months in London - let me go. I have told 
you all this about money matters beforehand, - as I 
was and am abundantly supplied without touching my 
letter for several months to come. I will only men- 
tion, as folks at home have odd notions sometimes, 
that I never risked a franc at any game in Europe, 
and that none of us Boston boys take to that amuse- 
ment. To conclude, a boy is worth his manure as 
much as a potato patch, and I have said all this be- 
cause I find it costs rather more to do things than to 
talk about them. Love to all. I suppose most of 
the family see my letters, or part of them. 
Paris, December 29, 1833. 
I just write to tell you that I am quite well and 
wish you a happy new year, which will come rather 
late to be sure for the beginning of 1834. Nothing 
particular new in Paris. Lectures going on as usual, 
- new year is coming, and all Paris is getting ready 
to make presents. The shop windows are full of 
everything which can do duty as a new year's pres- 
ent. It is really cheerful to see such a tumult of 
preparation, - the whole city seems to have received 
an impulse from it. It is the custom here for gentle- 
men to call upon ladies on the new year's day with 
some gallant offering or other, and get a kiss for their 
trouble. Everybody whom you have the habit of 
employing, -par exemple your gargon at the board- 
ing - house - at your cafe - your restaurant - the 
man that brings you letters, etc., expect to be remem- LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
125 
bered, and it is said they always make the first ad- 
vances by offering you sweetmeats or some such mat- 
ter. The display of bon-bons, that is to say sugar 
things, is tout a fait magnifique. I do not know any- 
thing that would be more characteristic to send home, 
but it is a good deal of trouble. The crack shops in 
Paris cut out Washington Street; particularly their 
contents show off - as in several of them - through 
a window formed of a single plate of glass as big as a 
moderate sized barn door. 
I have no time to write you a letter to-day - but I 
just learned that it was the day for writing, which I 
had forgotten, and so I determined to send a sheet of 
paper at any rate. 
I suppose of course at this season you receive my 
letters very irregularly because the winds are gen- 
erally unfavorable for ships returning; but we get 
our letters from twenty to thirty days after they are 
written. 
I am obliged to go straight to the Ecole de Mede- 
cine, and must snip the thread of my document. 
Paris, January 13, 1834. 
I received yesterday your two very nice and kind 
letters of December 3d and December 13th. This 
morning I had a letter brought me from Dr. Parsons 
dated December 8th. I am very happy to find that 
you are all well and cheerful. I am delighted at 
several circumstances mentioned in these different 
communications. First, I am delighted at the mutual 
charity of the parish and their former minister. I 
am delighted to hear that the young man and the 
boys behave themselves and study. ... I am delighted 
to hear that they had a slight row in the prints about 126 
phrenology. (This is from the Doctor's letter.) I 
am delighted to know that you know, that I have 
received your letters - as you will soon be delighted 
to know that I know that you know, that I have re- 
ceived your letters. I am delighted at the Doctor's 
advice to go to Italy in the spring, for I have thought 
for some time of going with Bowditch. There are 
many reasons in favor of this: first to refresh my 
body and mind after such a campaign of labor and 
confinement - next to see the world - and lastly to 
go in good company; for Bowditch is an excellent fel- 
low, and there are not probably a dozen young men in 
the country whose name is so powerful an introduc- 
tion in Europe. This is the gay season and lots of 
fun going, of course. Did you ever go to the Italian 
opera? Did you ever hear Julie Grisi? Or Rubini? 
Or Tamburini ? Or Santini ? Did you ever go to a 
masked ball at the Royal Opera ? Did you ever see 
a row at the Odeon ? But I forget, - you are proba- 
bly not even aware that the obelisque of the Luxor is 
now lying just beyond the Pont de la Concorde. And 
by the way I suppose this is the first great obelisque 
brought to Europe from Egypt since the time of the 
old Romans. The officious betes here are getting up 
a ball to be given by the American gentlemen to the 
American ladies. I suppose I shall be pulled in with 
the rest to spend some fifty francs for a parcel of 
folks I do not know or care much about. ... I sup- 
pose I shall add a few lines to-morrow morning and 
hurry off my letter 
. . . but half made up 
And sent into the post before its time. 
Morning of the 14th. Must hurry as usual. I 
want you to tell me all about J F ; try to 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
127 
get up a match between him and his prototype, widow 
. I think I shall write to John the next time. 
I shall have to root up his prejudices as an elephant 
might be supposed to twist out turnips. ... I think 
by the time I go to London, after a good training in a 
first-rate Parisian clinique, I shall be fort enough on 
pathological anatomy to make myself intelligible to 
the conservator? of the Hunterian museum. . . . 
It rains forever here. . . . The last caricature in 
the Charivari was as follows: France, as a fair 
maiden with a mural crown upon her head, is walking 
in a storm, - Louis Philippe holds out over her his 
famous revolutionary umbrella (an old-fashioned, re- 
publican-looking one, such an one as Dunnum used 
to carry his aunt home with) ; she turns mildly 
round, - "Vous me crottez, mon cher." You will 
hardly believe it, but the universality of the joke 
about the pear is such that if you ask for a pear at 
a restaurant you are liable to have your head cut off 
for high treason, or at least create a stare and a smile 
in the whole company. . . . Love to all. 
Paris, February 14, 1834. 
I have been so idle or so busy that I have not writ- 
ten by the last two packets. But I wrote a monstrous 
professional letter to Dr. Parsons a fortnight ago, and 
I told him to send you word that he had received 
mes nouvelles, as the French, my worthy compatriots, 
call it. There has been a good deal of fun going 
on lately here. I believe I have not told you of the 
American ball. Well, I did not go to it; first, be- 
cause I did not want to - and second, because I did not 
choose to spend seventy-five francs for a parcel of 
folks of whom I knew little more than that they were 128 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
raised on the same side of the water as I was. Two 
things happened: there was a row as usual, - Mr. 
Barton, secretary of the legation, was refused admit- 
tance because he did not bring his card; he had his 
wife with him ; he saw fit to knock down, which bein<r 
translated means to strike, the servant - to talk hard 
at the managers - and there were some probabili- 
ties of a duel between him and one of the managers. 
The next thing was that the managers found their 
ball cost more than the subscription amounted to, and 
"would be glad of a little assistance," to which the 
non-subscribers said they did not encourage mendi- 
cants and requested them to apply to the parish. 
Some proposed a cent society to be instituted, others 
were for a Dorcas sewing association. Speaking of 
duels, I suppose you have heard of the famous one 
about a fortnight ago between two members of the 
Chamber of Deputies, - M. Ie general Bugeaud and 
M. Dulong. One of Dulong's seconds was George 
Washington Lafayette. M. Dulong was shot through 
the head - the ball striking on the external part of 
the orbital process, etc., as said M. Jules Cloquet in 
his interesting report la-dessus. Dulong was a great 
republican; the government were afraid of mischief 
at his funeral, - for they remembered that of La 
Marek, - and took their precaution. The procession 
was embedded in a mass of soldiery, and at differ- 
ent points artillery-men stood over their cannon with 
lighted matches in their hands. The people did nothing 
but unharness Lafayette's horses and drag his coach 
in triumph. You know, I suppose, that he is alienated 
from the present government; but it can hardly seem 
credible to you that a man, whose life seems to belong 
to a preceding age, is still an idol of the people, and LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
129 
that, if the circumstances of the nation should require 
it, he must be called upon once more to act as the 
dictator in their emergency. 
The carnival days have just passed, and I believe it 
is Lent now, according to the almanack, for the people 
think a good deal more of the fun that precedes than 
of the fasting that follows. Last Tuesday was Mardi 
Gras. On that occasion a fat ox is carried about in 
a stately procession, and all the world, masked or un- 
masked, appear in their equipages on the boulevards. 
It is doubtless one of the most brilliant shows in the 
world. I suppose several hundred thousand people 
must have been on the boulevards. Among the masks 
were two people in a barouche dressed as white bears ; 
but perhaps the best was a caricature of an English 
lady on horseback; it was annihilating. One coach 
with four horses had its whole harness and reins 
richly gilded; some of the barouches were full of 
masks, who pelted the people with bon-bons. One of 
the most striking differences in Europe and our own 
country with regard to little matters is in the appear- 
ance of servants. In an English inn the head waiter 
appears to you sometimes as an elegant and courtly 
young man; at others with a gravei' aspect, much 
that of a professor in one of our higher colleges on a 
public occasion. The livery servants, as I saw them 
on the coaches the other day, were fine, tall, hand- 
some men with rich uniforms, chapeaux bras, and 
stately plumes. I saw Mlle. Mars again over here at 
the Odeon the other evening. A fine old gentleman 
in one of the boxes, who seemed to be an Englishman, 
cried like a baby. Oh, if Talma were alive! But all 
this is nothing to medicine. Lectures are going on as 
usual, and I am working as hard as ever. In my next 130 
letter I must contrive to give you some hints from 
the hospital St. Louis on certain matters. In the 
mean time, bad correspondent as I am, you must con- 
trive to prevent any of my dear friends and relations 
from getting outrageous, by the customary phrases, 
" much engaged in his profession," " time entirely 
occupied," and the rest. Love to all. 
Paris, April 30, 1834. 
As there is not any packet for the first of this 
month, I shall leave these few words to go by the 
next. To-morrow, Hooper, Mason Warren, and my- 
self set out for Strasbourg to make a little tour in 
Belgium, Holland, perhaps Prussia, and then to Eng- 
land. I have only time to say a few words. I have 
spent a year, within a few weeks, in Paris. In that 
time my expenses have been seven thousand francs, - 
that is to say, about as much as those of my compan- 
ions. I have lived comfortably, liberally if you 
please, but in the main not extravagantly. I have 
employed my time with a diligence that leaves no 
regrets. My aim has been to qualify myself so far as 
my faculties would allow me, not for a mere scholar, 
for a follower of other men's opinions, for a depend- 
ent on their authority, but for the character of a man 
who has seen, and therefore knows; who has thought, 
and therefore has arrived at his own conclusions. I 
have lived among a great, a glorious people; I have 
thrown my thoughts into a new language; I have 
received the shock of new minds and new habits. I 
have drawn closer the ties of social relation with the 
best-formed minds I have been able to find from my 
own country ; and, few though they have been, I think 
I may say that I have friends in at least two of our 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 131 
cities and a home at least in one. I hope you do not 
think your money wasted. For my own part, I am 
perfectly certain that I might have lived until I was 
gray without acquiring the experience I have gained 
in part, and hope still farther to improve by changing 
the scene of my life and studies. 
The papers will have told you what the tumult in 
Paris after the affairs in Lyons amounted to. A few 
barricades were raised, but no general movement was 
made by any party. The rioters were all killed up 
without ceremony. On the Sunday morning, when 
they were anticipating some formidable occurrence, 
there was a review of the troops, who were mustered 
around the Tuileries. The soldiery make a most 
superb appearance. It is something I never expected 
to find realized in my own sight, something of which 
a militia muster can give you no idea, to see the long 
line of cuirasses glittering on the bosoms of tall, 
broad, stately Norsemen, and the lancers with their 
little tri-colored pennons floating from their unamiable 
weapons, and those dense masses of infantry with their 
bayonets undulating and sparkling under your win- 
dow ; and all this with the music of a hundred in- 
struments ringing and rolling around you. There 
are other ideas to be got of the French people and 
the French soldiers besides those in Hogarth's pic- 
tures, or Goldsmith's poor soldier, or Mr. Coleridge's 
cockneyisms. 
Mais c'est assez, je m'en vais, et il faut finir. I 
shall write next from London, perhaps; perhaps from 
Strasbourg; I do not know. 
It is late, and I am sleepy. I must ride three days 
and three nights in succession to get to Strasbourg, 
and I therefore bid you good-night. 
LETTERS FROM EUROPE 132 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
Love to all. Much letter-writing is out of the 
question except for gentlemanly young folks that do 
not get tired with study before evening. I am not 
half as communicative as I expected to be. 
London, June 13, 1834. 
Although I have not quite finished my continental 
story, I must put off the sequel and tell you what I 
have been about in London. We arrived on Sunday, 
somewhere about the 20th of May, I suppose, for 
I scorn chronology, and having piled our baggage 
upon that beast of burthen which men call a porter, 
we trudged to find St. Paul's coffee-house, where we 
were advised to go by an erratic Dutchman we twice 
fell in with on our travels. Of course after the gayety 
of a Parisian Sunday, there was somewhat of the aus- 
tere, not to say the repulsive, in the bald streets and 
set faces which form such a contrast with the exhala- 
tion of happiness that hovers around the sister capital 
when the seventh day dawns, - rather jocundly, but 
welcomed in their fashion by a great people, who have 
as much right to their opinions as this nation of sulky 
suicides. Now with London you are perfectly familiar. 
You know the Thames runs east and west, as one may 
say, and I will gorgeously illustrate the matter on the 
top of the next page, if you will forgive my " flare- 
up " about Sunday in London. . . . The London of 
story-books is the city, but the London of fashionable 
novels nowadays is Westminster, and only the west 
part of that. In the city proper are the Tower and 
St. Paul's, and shops, and counting-houses, and every- 
thing vulgar. Finally, on the southern side, or in 
Southwark and the neighboring parts, I suppose there 
may be something interesting, but I have not heard of LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
133 
anything but Vauxhall, I believe. . . . Well, of course 
you understand that the distinctions of these different 
parts are more in name than reality, for the whole is 
one " tarnation lot of housen." So under the shadow 
of St. Paul's, in that saint's coffee-house, did we de- 
pose ourselves on that memorable Sunday, choosing 
to make our debut in that humble spot rather than in 
the saloons of the Clarendon, or beneath the pillared 
domes of Regent Street. After abiding in the same 
place a day or two we proceeded to look for lodgings, 
and having looked at several, and being in a par- 
oxysm of the economical, we at last subsided upon the 
floors of the interesting Mrs. Peters, beneath whose 
wings we have remained until now, so much pleased 
that we present her with two pounds ten a week, con- 
jointly, and intend to do so while we remain with her. 
For this money we have our sty - but we must fill 
our own trough - or to speak less irreverently, we pay 
besides for the abominable breakfast we insult our- 
selves with, and we dine at some hotel or chop-house. 
For a fortnight, I believe, we did nothing but grumble. 
Well, now it is enough to say that, in a great meas- 
ure through the kindness of Mr. Clift, which I owe 
to Dr. Parsons's letter, we have entrance to almost all 
the hospitals, and attentions from their physicians. 
At the present moment my letter is clipped by being 
obliged to whistle down to St. Thomas to see Mr. 
Green operate, and my letter must go, clipped or not 
clipped. However, I shall write somewhat liberally 
while I am here, and I will try to send you two letters 
while I am here. . . . Though I am living pretty rea- 
sonably, I should feel comfortable to know that I had 
a little longer credit on this side the water ; but this 
I have told you, and I have no doubt you will do your 
best. Love to all. 134 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
June 21,1834. 
I have no very particular story to tell of the last 
week. I have been at different hospitals looking at the 
different manifestations of the English spirit of quack- 
ery. I will say that some of the medical people have 
been very polite to us - and indeed without the 
personal interest of somebody it is impossible to see 
anything in this country. . . . About medical matters 
you do not much care, I suppose; so I will say what 
sights I have seen, and then briefly bring up the his- 
tory of my late travels. . . . And, first, let me tell 
you that one soon acquires a wonderful apathy to 
sights, and that one, after a while, goes still farther 
and avoids all sightseeing where he has no particular 
fancy for the thing to be seen, and where he dares to 
leave it unseen. 
Sights I have seen. Westminster Abbey. A great 
gothic church, not half as handsome as Notre Dame 
outside, but finer in the interior, - the gothic arches 
remarkably narrow, - fine monuments, - Poet's Cor- 
ner, - Is. 3d. to pay, etc. See all tourists. One of 
the finest monuments is to the memory of an Ad- 
miral Holmes, - not the Dryden one, I think. . . . 
Henry the 7th's chapel, - a piece of stone filigree 
work as big as Holden Chapel, - surpassingly fine. 
Do you know what a flying-buttress is ? Well, on 
the flying-buttresses of this chapel are figures of ani- 
mals,- lions, bears, and hippogriffic monsters, as if 
crawling down. This is the oddest thing about it, - 
the most wonderful is the extent and delicacy of the 
carving all over the outside of the building. ... I 
heard the Bishop of Gloucester preach a stupid sermon 
the other day in Westminster Abbey. 
Mr. Irving. I heard this notorious preacher the LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
135 
other Sunday. He is a black, savage, saturnine, long- 
haired Scotchman, with a most Tyburn-looking squint 
to him. He said nothing remarkable that I remember, 
and I should suppose owes much of his reputation to 
a voice of great force and compass, which he man- 
aged nearly as well as Macready. The charlatan he 
most resembles is Mr. , w'hose yell is, however, 
instinct with a profounder expression of vulgarity 
and insolence. Mr. Irving and his flock have given 
up the unknown tongue, and confine themselves to 
rolling up their eyes so as to show the whites in a 
formidable manner. I would ask for no better pic- 
ture than has been presented by these poor enthusi- 
asts, drunk with their celestial influences and bab- 
bling paltry inanities. 
The, royal family. I went last night to the royal 
opera, where they were to be in state. I had to give 
more than two dollars for a pit ticket, and had hardly 
room to stand up, almost crowded to death. The 
Duchess of Kent and the Princess Victoria - a girl of 
fifteen, and heir of the throne - came in first on the 
side opposite the king's box. The audience applauded 
somewhat - not ferociously. . . . The princess is a 
nice fresh-looking girl, blonde, and rather pretty. 
The king looks like a retired butcher. The queen is 
much such a person in aspect as the wife of the late 
William Frost, of Cambridge, an exemplary milk- 
man, now probably immortal on a slab of slatestone 
as a father, a husband, and a brother. The king 
blew his nose twice, and wiped the royal perspiration 
repeatedly from a face which is probably the largest 
uncivilized spot in England. ... I have a disposition 
to tartness and levity which tells to the disadvantage 
of the royal living and the plebeian defunct, but it is 
accidental and must be forgiven. . . . 136 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
St. PauVs. Admittance two pence, but additional 
fees required by the banditti who show the different 
parts of the house, - " but ye have made it a den of 
thieves." I suppose it is necessary ; so I took two 
pence worth of the magnificence. It is monstrous 
high to look up to the interior of the dome. The tri- 
umphal flags are no great things, and I thought the 
statue of Nelson rather a poor concern, but I will 
look again. The outside is very fine, which is more 
than can be said of most of the public buildings. . . . 
Bridges. These are the finest structures of the 
metropolis, " worthy of the days of Semiramis and 
Ninus," or Cheops, as somebody says. The Tower 
and the tunnel I have not yet seen. I am off for 
Scotland or Ireland about the first of July to make 
a little excursion, which I shall render as short and 
cheap as I can, for otherwise I shall get out of money. 
... I shall try to get back to Paris as soon as I can, 
where I hope I shall find something to replenish my 
pockets, which are melting away somewhat. Travel- 
ling is necessarily an extravagance. Some remarks 
on Dutchmen in my next letter may be expected. 
I have only had one letter for the last month, but I 
expect a packet from Mr. Welles before long. . . . 
Give my love to all. 
London, July 25, 1834. 
In my history of our late tour we had got to Rot- 
terdam, which was the first place we arrived at in 
Holland, and to which we returned from Amsterdam 
in order to sail for London. Though possessing great 
interest, the history of our Dutch experience may be 
brief. 
Scenery. Alike throughout, - wide plains, cut as 137 
true as if made by a spirit level, bursting with a most 
riotous vegetation, intersected by dikes of all sizes, 
and sprinkled with cattle, the most beautiful from 
their shape and their almost invariably mixed or calico 
colors I have ever seen. In the background wind- 
mills ad libitum, -here and there a boat that seems 
as if it were pushed along on the grass, as you are 
unable to distinguish the ditch it is in. 
Windmills. In immense numbers; I counted jf/Zy 
from the coach window in a single part of the land- 
scape, and it is said that around Saardam, or in it, are 
several thousand. 
Canal-Boats. Very neat things, and may often be 
seen in a canal parallel to the road, but are soon left 
out of sight by the coach. The horse draws them by 
an awfully long rope. 
Flower Gardens. We saw some pretty ones, but 
the best sight of that kind was the collection of tulips 
at Haarlem, which were very fine. Every now and 
then at the side of the road we saw a country-seat 
with a lawn separating you from the house, which 
looked very beautiful and English. The aspect of a 
Dutch town is much as I expected, and of course 
quite peculiar. Brick houses with sharp roofs, green 
blinds, generally small and not more than two or three 
stories high, with remarkably pretty iron fences be- 
fore them, - odd names and signs up at the windows, 
- here and there the inscription, " Dis haus is te 
huur," which we supposed meant: this house is to let, 
■- at intervals the figure of a man opening his jaws as 
if to bolt a score of pills, the sign of the apothecary 
shops, - here a street and there a canal, - here a 
hackney coach on wheels, and there one which is 
dragged over the smooth flagstones on runners, - 
LETTERS FROM EUROPE 138 
such are the images that rise to my mind when I think 
of Rotterdam or Amsterdam. 
Dutchmen and Dutchwomen: they do not differ so 
much from other folks as one might suppose, - they 
are not much broader or shorter. We did not see 
half so much smoking as in Germany. Our opinion 
with regard to the attractions of the Dutch vraws or 
fraus was far from unfavorable. Their style of beauty 
is more like that of the English than the French,- 
and indeed the Dutch folks look generally somewhat 
like them. 
While at Amsterdam we made two excursions, - or 
rather both in one, for it was all in one ride. The 
first was to a village called Broek. This place con- 
tains between one and two thousand souls, who, or 
their bodies, are engaged principally in making cheese 
and buttei' and in scrubbing down. No vehicle ever 
is allowed to enter this town. You leave your equi- 
page at a tavern just outside, and walk into the vil- 
lage. The streets are every day washed and look like 
a clean brick hearth. In every house you perceive a 
door of rather a large size for the building, and gener- 
ally ornamented with architectural decorations. This 
door is never opened except at christenings, marriages, 
and funerals, and the room into which it opens is only 
visited to be kept in order, excepting on the same 
occasions. In this room are collected the valuable 
furniture - the pictures and memorials of the family. 
We had the good fortune to have admittance to one 
of these - a blind being partially opened to throw a 
dim religious light on the solemn chamber, with its 
broad and bright tables and stately wardrobe, its 
dainty chairs, its quaint china, and all its unsunned 
relics. 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
139 
Tt is a sweet village - still as the tomb, for the jar 
and noise of wheels cannot reach it, - and all that 
is not luxuriant greenness is pure and still water, 
with a little boat here and there on it, - and then 
the arbors, with strange wooden figures to cheat the 
stranger - of a parson with his book, of an old 
woman at her spinning-wheel, - it is a rum place to 
look at and an odd one to live in. 
Well, one thing more and I must be off to St. Bar- 
tholomew's Hospital. This is Saardam. It was here 
that Peter the Great worked as a ship carpenter for 
some years, and his room and the closet where he slept 
are still shown, and indeed were visited a few years 
ago by the Emperor Alexander, who had a brick build- 
ing put around the wooden house, and commemorated 
his visit by a tablet in the walls of Peter's room. 
Well, as I said, I must be off to the hospital, and try 
to find something more interesting for the next time. 
Love to all. 
Paris, September 3, 1834. 
Me voila revenu. Once more in the gay, the glo- 
rious city, where I have passed so many happy days. 
I wrote you last, I believe, from Liverpool. I strolled 
about the city in the evening, and next morning got 
upon the coach for Birmingham. However, as I am 
not certain whether I told you, I will say once more 
that I arrived at Manchester, intending to go straight 
to London, but the idea of the railway was so tempt- 
ing that I ordered a hasty dinner, clapped my lug- 
gage and myself upon one of the steam carriages, and 
was in Liverpool in an hour and a half, having gone 
considerably more than twenty miles an hour, and not 
making a very short passage either, for they have been 
the whole distance (thirty-two or thirty-four miles) in 140 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
an hour. Well, then, after seeing Liverpool, the next 
day I rode about a hundred and twelve or fourteen 
miles to Birmingham, and the next day a hundred more 
to London. I always ride, you know, on the outside. 
This is much cheaper and pleasanter. The coaches 
carry but four inside passengers, and eleven outside. 
But the macadamized roads are so perfectly hard and 
smooth that coaches rarely overturn or break down. 
In going down hill they always shoe one of the hind 
wheels. Eh bien! I was once more at London. 1 
stayed three days, and was delighted beyond measure 
at finding' two letters for me, for I had begun to feel 
desolate at remaining so long without any news from 
home. I was set at ease at once by finding all were 
well and cheerful, and I have got another letter of 
July 24th since my arrival which was equally pleas- 
ant. I took it into my head to return to Paris by the 
Dover and Calais road. So on the first day I rode to 
Dover. As we passed by Gravesend we saw the royal 
yacht, escorted by two steamboats, returning up the 
Thames with the Queen on board, who had been 
on a visit to her cousins of Germany. We passed 
through Canterbury, too, when, in defiance of the 
coachman's orders, I took a peep at the cathedral. I 
slept that night at Dover, and the next morning got 
into the steamboat, which carried us across the Chan- 
nel in a couple of hours. There was quite a heavy 
swell, so that the poor wretches round me said their 
breakfast backwards - many of them, - but we old 
sailors, who have seen whales and icebergs and such 
like, are not so extravagant of our victual. Now I, 
who have read Sterne's Sentimental Journey, deter- 
mined to see the scene of his adventure at Calais. 
And, sure enough, AI. Dessein keeps the same hotel LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
141 
that Sterne has immortalized; therefore, I had my 
luggage carried to the Hotel Dessein, and, inquiring 
for the remise, etc., I got upon a coach-box, and read 
the " Preface in the desoblig eante." M. Dessein, who 
is a meek-looking little man, answered all my ques- 
tions very civilly, which plainly accounted for the 
wine's costing just three times as much as in the 
Palais Royal. 
Once more upon the diligence • once more 
The horses jog before me like a flock 
That knows no leader. 
The cathedral at Amiens was the only remarkable 
thing upon the route. After riding two days and two 
nights, the morning found us close to Paris. But 
before we reach Paris, at a distance of five or six 
miles, we pass through St. Denis, where is the church 
which has received for centuries the remains of the 
French monarchs. There is the spire that so sick- 
ened the heart of Louis XIV that he left his palace 
of St. Germains and founded that of Versailles, in a 
spot where he might look from his window without 
seeing his sepulchre in the horizon. And now we are 
on the road which St. Denis, the headless martyr, 
walked over, to lay his mutilated body on the spot 
where the church now stands, and over which St. 
Louis bore the body of his royal father to its burial- 
place, and over which passed the footsteps of that 
fierce multitude who tore the relics of their kings from 
the tombs, and tossed side by side into a single pit 
the bones of Carlovingian, Merovingian, and Capetian. 
. . . And there is the Dome of the Invalides, and to 
the left is the Pantheon, and there rise the square, 
solemn towers of Notre Dame. N'est-ce pas que c'est 142 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
tres bien fait tout cela? Voila une description vrai- 
ment magnifique. 
I hope Mr. Upham is not seriously out of health. 
Give my love to all. Mr. Welles let me have what 
money I wanted, but I do not like to borrow. 
P. S. ... As for abridging my stay in Paris, a few 
reasons will soon convince you on that matter. I am 
just going to become a member of a society of medical 
observation, which comprehends some of the most intel- 
ligent young French and foreign students. I have 
free access to the wards of M. Louis, a favor which he 
has granted only to a few ; James Jackson was one of 
them; and, besides, there are subjects which I have 
scarcely touched, and which I must study in Paris. 
It is not a selfish matter ; I am devoted to my pro- 
fession, and I wish to return second to no young man 
in it. I think I shall be much more moderate in my 
expenses ; I will try, at any rate. 
Paris, October 6, 1834. 
I know you will not find fault if I send a short 
letter now and then, when you know that it shows I 
am occupied. Paris is full of good news just now. 
Hooper and Warren have got back from England, 
and so I am no more alone; and yesterday John's 
classmate, or sophomore, Inches, who has taken his 
degree, arrived in Paris, and we all dined together in 
jubilee at the Cafe de Paris. 
Everything is now perfectly favorable to my prog- 
ress in my studies. I am master enough of the lan- 
guage to take a case from a patient, write it off, read 
it uncorrected, and defend it against criticism, in a 
society of Frenchmen. There will be no difficulty in 
my obtaining any advantages I may desire here. My Professor Lottis LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
143 
belonging to the society I have mentioned brings 
me into contact with young men in confidential sta- 
tions in most of the hospitals, lays their experience 
before me, and puts me under the obligation to be 
exact, methodical, and rigorous. Besides, as I told 
you before, I have undisputed entrance at all times 
to two wards, containing together a hundred beds, 
generally full, where I examine and pound and over- 
haul the patients before even Louis or his interne 
have seen them. Nothing but private personal favor 
would give anybody this extraordinary privilege. I 
owe it in a great measure, perhaps, to the favorable 
introduction given me by poor Jackson, and to the 
very high character which he and one or two others of 
a similar stamp have established for the better class 
of American students. . . . 
I wish you would tell me something of my most 
excellent and very dear instructor, Dr. Jackson. 
Next to my own family, there is no one in the world 
that I long so much to see. I beg, if you should see any 
of the family, you would offer them the kindest remem- 
brances from one who has lost one of his most es- 
teemed friends in the son, and who can never forget 
and never repay the advantages he has derived from 
the inestimable instructions of the father. 
I have not heard of Mr. Upham for a good while, 
and Dr. Parsons has not written to me. But give my 
love to them and all. 
October 22, 1834. 
Short letters, - jammed, crowded like an ill-packed 
portmanteau with a few things of consequence so 
hustled together as to seem to fill it. These are all 
you are like to get at present from your most obedient 
and occupied correspondent. We have two acces- 144 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
sions to our Parisian society, - Inches, whom I be- 
lieve I mentioned before, and the individual com- 
monly designated as the elder B . He began, the 
first day of his arrival, to rectify our opinions on the 
French wines, - of which he had just thirty-six hours' 
experience, - and will probably soon establish a school 
for the education of children in the French language. 
This is only a scandal - the youth no doubt is 
estimable, and besides when only three of us dined 
together we did not eat up all the soup - so it is a 
great pleasure to have a fourth corner of our table 
filled up. There is no very particular news except 
the burning up of parliament, and a terrible quarrel 
between some doctors, with a duel or two, and three 
pamphlets la-dessus - which dropped from the press 
in as rapid succession as leaves from the forest. I 
had no particular interest in any of the parties con- 
cerned, much to my satisfaction. 
I received this week a letter from my old friend 
John Sargent, which I shall answer tout de suite. 
He wants me to write in the New England Magazine 
which he and Dr. Howe - the Grecian and blind- 
compelling Dr. Howe - have bought. I have en- 
tirely relinquished the business of writing for journals 
and shall say No, though Minerva and Plutus come 
hand in hand to tear me, the Cincinnatus of Science, 
from the ploughtail she has commanded me to follow. 
How much I must learn - how hard I must work, 
before I have wrought this refractory ore into good 
tough, malleable, ductile, elastic iron. 
Have you got any news - any scandal - any fun, 
from the ancient seat of learning ? How come on the 
bourgeoisie of the community ? What offspring of 
the classic soil has been baptized in Castaly, through 145 
the munificence of the departed Hopkins ? How 
flourish the red and white roses of orthodoxy and het- 
erodoxy ? What is the success of ? How are 
the numerous wall-flowers, or rather stock-gilly flow- 
ers, that garnish the trim garden edges of Cambridge 
society ? - Answer such questions and similar such. 
Give my love to all, and tell Dr. Parsons that he 
has not written to me. Say to Mr. Upham that 
when I think of the Japan cigar box and the slight 
indisposition which used to justify him in his unusual 
indulgence in its luxuries, - when I think of the long 
talks over the fire and all the doctrines therein held, 
I should like to have something to remind me of them 
in the shape of a letter. 
Tell Ann to measure exactly the height of the prin- 
cipal children, and send it to me, together with that of 
Charles, that I may mark them against the wall. Do 
not make the children study too hard, and remember 
that if they grow up stout and healthy they can learn 
as much as they will want by and by, if they have the 
proper habits of acquiring knowledge, which are 
better than any quantity of ill-packed knowledge 
itself - as is well remarked by Zoroaster. 
LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
TO JOHN O. SARGENT. 
Paris, November 2, 1834. 
Dear John, - I am sorry that a year and a half of 
absence, in the midst of circumstances which are very 
favorable to some faculties of the mind, have so 
weaned me from some of my old habits that I may 
be less useful, I hope not less agreeable, to one who 
has so often borne me company - shoulder to shotdder 
- quill to quill - paragraph to paragraph - in more 
than one aspiring periodical. Alas, my dear editor I 146 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
the blossoms of my flaunting youth have fallen, and 
I am watching day and night over the cold, green, 
unripened fruit that must supply their places. The 
nature of the studies which I am pursuing, the sin- 
gular advantages which I am at present enjoying, and 
the number of the objects which absolutely require 
my attention have induced - have forced me rather, 
to forbid myself any diversion from the path of my 
professional studies. I am very unwilling to desert 
you, and I will not do it without giving you the best 
reasons for doing it, even at the double risk of over- 
rating the importance of any literary services I could 
render, and of trumpeting my own ardor of applica- 
tion. I am at the present moment living not merely 
the most laborious, but by far the most unvaried and 
in its outward circumstances most unexciting mode 
of life that I have ever lived. Nearly five hours in 
the day I pass at the bedside of patients, and you 
may imagine that this is no trifling occupation, when 
I tell you that it is always with my note-book in my 
hand; that I often devote nearly two hours to investi- 
gating a difficult case, in order that no element can 
escape me, and that I have always a hundred patients 
under my eye. Add to this the details and laborious 
examination of all the organs of the body in such cases 
as are fatal - the demands of a Society of which I 
am a member - which in the course of two months 
has called on me for memoirs to the extent of thirty 
thick-set pages - all French, and almost all facts 
hewn out one by one from the quarry - and my out- 
of-door occupations have borne their testimony. 
You may suppose, then, that if I can devote three 
or four hours every day to my books - which I always 
endeavor to do - the electricity for that day is pretty LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
147 
thoroughly drawn off, and in fact if I, who somewhat 
labor in literary parturition, were to attempt that 
which invariably exhausts my powers, I should wrong 
myself for too small a matter. No, John, a heavier 
burden from my own science, if you will, but not 
another hair from the locks of Poesy, or it will be 
indeed an ass's back that is broken. I am not 
ashamed of the ambition of being distinguished in my 
profession ; but more than that, I have become at- 
tached to the study of truth by habits formed in severe 
and sometimes painful self-denial. For, trust me, the 
difficulties in the investigations of our profession, the 
carelessness and stupidity - often the obstinacy - of 
patients, the cold and damp and loathsomeness of 
the dissecting-room, are exceedingly repulsive to the 
beginner; and I am sorry to say are sufficient to pre- 
vent the great majority of students from becoming 
properly acquainted with the science they profess to 
cultivate. I have said enough, and I am afraid too 
much, and you will do as I have done in running over 
the leaf before you. If some poor feeling of vanity 
should appear in my justification, remember that there 
are waters enough between us to wash it out. 
I promised myself, when I left America, to write a 
great many letters to my friends, and you among the 
first, and I write none except to my own family. All 
the novelty of European life soon dies away upon the 
eyes and ears of those long in the midst of it, assimi- 
lated to the mind of the individual as his daily food 
is assimilated to his body, with like ease whether it 
be bun or brioche, roast chicken or poulet a la 
Marengo ; and so one soon has lost the power of writ- 
ing a letter of impressions - it becomes a matter of 
analysis - of reflection - and that is study, a study 148 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
which I shall not attempt until I write a rigmarole 
for my children or the family library. I desire all 
manner of success to your enterprise, and regret that 
I must not participate in it. You have taste and 
talent. If you have calculated your chances, and if 
you have perseverance, I have no doubt that you will 
do well. 
to his parents. 
Paris, November 4, 1834. 
Dear Father and Mother, - I write, because I 
suppose you love to see a sheet of paper with the 
Paris postmark upon it, rather than because I have 
anything very particular to say. In short, if I de- 
pended on the incidents only that surround me, I 
never passed a time more without excitement than 
the present. Hard work - " digging," as we used to 
say - oscillation from three or four fixed points back- 
wards and forwards - make up my existence. As 
for all of the great city that I trouble myself with, 
you might almost put it in a vignette. But I am get- 
ting formidably wise, and that is the main thing. 
Lectures are just beginning, and all the gigantic 
machinery of the Parisian Ecole de Medecine is 
about to shake the " quartier Latin " with its thrill 
of activity. French is a second mother tongue to me 
almost. On many subjects I not infrequently think 
in it, - and how can it be otherwise when a man is so 
immersed in the atmosphere of it, and when so many 
of his ideas come through its mediation ? It is quite 
pleasant to multiply in this way the medium of solu- 
tion for one's thoughts - and, to express an idea to 
yourself with exactness, to be able to make change as 
it were by means of two different metals. . . . 
Our little set here are on the most amiable terms LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
149 
together, and, as you know, the Boston party is the 
predominant one so far as there is any such division. 
If I should class the young men who have been out 
here from our three great cities, I should say that I 
consider that Boston went first, Philadelphia second, 
and after a long, long interval comes limping in New 
York. However, Philadelphia may dispute us the 
palm, and I for one will try to make her work for it. 
One of the greatest pleasures of living abroad is to 
meet in such an easy, pleasant sort of a way people 
from all quarters of the world. Greek and Barba- 
rian, Jew and Gentile, differ much less than one thinks 
for at first, and this you never learn from books - 
or never believe. They know it well here, and you 
may see what we should call nigger people - that is, 
young black Egyptian students, of a shade between 
ink and charcoal, arm in arm with God's image cut 
in ivory. 
I have not had any new letters since my last to 
you, - but I am on the lookout. Love to all. 
Paris, December 28, 1834. 
I am afraid it is a prodigious while since you have 
heard from me, but I am so occupied that the weeks 
slip by me almost unperceived. However, as I wrote 
a long letter to Dr. Parsons last week, in which I re- 
quested him to let you know that he had heard from 
me, I trust you will not be in despair. I believe I 
told you I had received your letter of October 28th 
- I do now at any rate. My studies are going on 
magnificently. I have every opportunity, and try to 
make all possible use of them. I had the pleasure 
two or three days ago of a tete-a-tete dinner with the 
gentleman whom Dr. Marshall Hall, of London (a 150 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
professor in one of their medical institutions, and a 
man whose name is well known in our country), has 
called the " first physician of the present day " - M. 
Louis. He even has trusted me with the analysis of 
a work which he is going to make use of in a publi- 
cation he is employed upon. . . . 
I say nothing about coming home. It is the invari- 
able precedent to stay at least until the autumn of the 
second year, - and I told you that Dr. Warren sent 
out word to Mason to finish his third winter, - a great 
self-denial, under the circumstances, and an additional 
opportunity which will make the imp doubly danger- 
ous. - If I had my own way, I own I would never 
return until I could go home with the confidence of 
placing myself at once at the head of the younger part 
of the profession, - as much for your sake as my own, 
for I am not only ambitious, but I long to pay for 
my tedious and expensive education. - I need not 
say that I have the fondest desire to see my parents 
and my relations and friends - but I keep my heart 
light in keeping my mind busy, and you must do the 
same. . . . 
Paris, May 14, 1835. 
I hardly know how I have contrived to miss writing 
for a fortnight, but I have been so occupied that the 
days passed away without my counting them. I have 
received no new letter from you since the one in which 
you spoke of my coming home sooner than I had 
expected. Since that letter one of the ideas that 
troubled your imagination - that of war - is re- 
moved, and I suspect a little uneasiness on your part 
has been alleviated by the complaisance of the French 
ministry. And in the mean time I cannot give you 
an idea of the zeal and profit with which I have been LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
151 
applying myself to certain branches which I had hith- 
erto neglected. Among other things I have turned 
my attention to operating, and in the course of a 
few weeks I have become an expert and rapid oper- 
ator. To give you an idea of how this is possible, I 
will tell you how I have occupied my time during this 
time. On the site of the ancient cemetery of Cla- 
mart, about a mile from my room, there now stands 
another receptacle for the defunct, where they are 
consigned to the open hands of science. This estab- 
lishment is not one of the little infernal suffocating 
holes in which the unhappy native of our uncivilized 
land is often obliged to pursue his labors, but a spa- 
cious courtyard with several neat white halls, and a 
garden and fountain in the middle. In these precincts 
hundreds of students dissect during a part of the year 
and operate during another. After having taken our 
lessons in operative surgery, a Swiss friend of mine, 
- whose intimacy has been enjoyed successively by 
poor Jackson, by Bowditch, and now by myself, - the 
Swiss student and myself, I say, bought a few cheap 
instruments together, and began to make ourselves 
operators. It is an odd thing for anybody but a medi- 
cal student to think of, that human flesh should be 
sold like beef or mutton. But at twelve o'clock every 
day, the hour of distribution of subjects, you might 
have seen M. Bizot and myself - like the old gentle- 
men one sometimes sees at a market - choosing our 
day's provision with the same epicurean nicety. We 
paid fifty sous apiece for our subject, and before even- 
ing we had cut him into inch pieces. Now all this 
can hardly be done anywhere in the world but at 
Paris, - in England and America we can dissect, but 
rarely operate upon the subject, while here one who 152 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
knows how to use his hands, and who gives his atten- 
tion exclusively to the subject for a time, may, as I 
have said I have done, become an expert operator in 
a few weeks. I have told you all this to let you know 
that I am not staying at Paris for nothing ; and my 
letter must stop, for it is time to go to the hospital St. 
Louis, which is a couple of miles off - and I am here 
writing in bed like the author of the Seasons. . . . 
Milan, August 16,1835. 
Since I wrote you from Geneva I have been 
through a large part of Switzerland and crossed the 
Spliigen - a passover the Alps - into Italy. This 
tour we have made partly in carriages, partly on 
mules, and a good deal on foot. At Geneva we bought 
knapsacks, and having filled them with the most 
necessary articles, we sent our trunks on to Milan by 
the baggage-wagon. In walking we generally had a 
guide who carried two of our knapsacks, and took the 
other alternately on our own shoulders. I have been 
of course very much delighted with the novel aspect 
of the wonderful country we have passed through, but 
glad to finish this part of my trip in order to get 
through with Italy the sooner. You do not ask from 
me a description of all I have seen, because I am not 
a professed traveller, and such only have the time and 
inclination for this kind of labor, which requires a 
great deal of elaboration to offer any peculiar value. 
The majesty and beauty of the scenery of Switzerland, 
as you know, have made it a thoroughfare of travelling 
Europe, and especially of the English, who swarm in 
it to the most outrageous extent. And yet so vast 
and so varied, so savage in some regions and so lovely 
in others, is the country we have been through, that LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
153 
the steamboats on the lakes, and the great hotels and 
splendid roads, which one meets with from time to 
time, leave too slight traces on the face of Nature to 
take away the sense of freshness and wildness that 
characterize it. From the peaks of the mountains 
down into the fertile valleys you meet with all cli- 
mates ; the shores of the lakes offer every variety, 
from bald and broken rocks to the softest green of the 
southern vineyards; their waters vary from the deep- 
est green to a blue as clear as that of the brightest 
sky, and all along their shores are scattered the little 
villages which seem shut out from all the world, like 
Rasselas's happy valley, by walls that lose themselves 
in a region too ambitious for the clouds to make any 
pretensions to reach. I have seen more than a dozen 
such lakes. I have been at the top of the Righi, 
where I could see down to more than a dozen at once, 
even. I have clambered up mountains and sat down 
to rest on a moss-bank. I have walked nine leagues 
in one day, and ten in another. I have been to the 
famous monastery of St. Bernard, where they keep 
the dogs that pick up people lost in the snow, where 
the monks give everybody that comes a dinner and a 
bed for nothing, with monstrous Catholic bottles of 
good wine. I counted twenty skulls of poor wretches 
that had been lost in the snow, in their charnel-house, 
besides some cartloads of odd human bones. I have 
been at Goldau, where a slide of the mountain 
sponged out a village of four hundred and fifty inhab- 
itants in a single moment, some thirty years ago. I 
have seen the falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen, and 
these and a thousand other recollections are all set in 
my mind in a gigantic frame of snowy summits and 
^rrowy peaks, which close around the picture still warm 154 
in my memory. And here I am at Milan, and all day 
to-day and all day yesterday I have been seeing sights, 
the most tedious of occupations, whatever one thinks 
at home. Oh! but this marble cathedral, which 
the labors of four centuries have not fully completed, 
with its hundreds of spires and its thousands of stat- 
ues, is the most glorious piece of embroidery in stone 
that man might wish to see. They talk of Henry the 
Tth's chapel in Westminster Abbey; it would make a 
very pretty pigeon-house for the Milan cathedral, 
and that is all. I saw the original of Leonardo da 
Vinci's Last Supper yesterday, but it is [illegible]. 
I have met the Channings three times since we were 
at Geneva. I found no letters here, but shall proba- 
bly get some at Florence, where I expect soon to be, 
as I mean to do Italy as fast as I can. I shall write 
next from Venice or Florence. Love to all. 
Rome, September 8, 1835. 
I have seen almost all there is to be seen in the 
Eternal City, and mean to leave it in a few days. 
Since I wrote you from Milan, I have seen Venice, 
Bologna, and some less important, but interesting 
cities, and I have now been a week in Rome. I hope 
we shall get back to Paris early in October, and I 
shall take my passage for New York immediately 
after returning. You have no idea of the infinite 
wealth of Italy in architecture, painting, and sculp- 
ture. All that elsewhere is most rare and precious is 
found here in such profusion that the eye is fatigued 
and the susceptibility worn out with over exercise. 
Venice prepares one very well for the riches of Rome 
by the fine churches and rich paintings it possesses, 
but after all nothing at all approaches what we have 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES LETTERS FROM EUROPE 
155 
seen here. If modern Rome did not exist, still the 
world would come here to look at the monuments of 
antiquity, and if all the traces of ancient Rome were 
effaced, the great masters of the arts in modern times 
would have been enough to have made it a centre of 
the schools of all Europe. It is not until seeing 
Rome that one gets the perfect idea of having seen 
the very noblest objects of art; but now I can say I 
have seen the Colosseum and the Pantheon - and the 
most splendid cathedral of modern times - and the 
Laocoon and the Apollo Belvidere and the Dying 
Gladiator and the Transfiguration. And after study- 
ing these grand works of art one's taste and notions 
are essentially different from 
September 12th. 
Something interrupted me the other day, and I have 
been so occupied since that there my sentence rested. 
This morning I have been to see the baths of Titus, 
- which were built on the ruins or site of Nero's 
golden palace. The arabesques executed in fresco on 
the ceilings are so beautiful in their design that they 
quite surprised me - but I did not know that Ra- 
phael himself did not disdain to copy them in paint- 
ing the Vatican. I saw also this morning the beauti- 
ful little antique group of Cupid and Psyche, of which 
I remember that there are three engravings in Rees's 
Encyclopedia, - and the famous Venus of the capi- 
tol. As I was saying when I left off, one's taste and 
notions become essentially different after seeing the 
best works of the old masters. But I can say with 
regard to statues that I found the ideas given me by 
copies and casts essentially correct, whereas it is but 
here and there that the finest copies or engravings 156 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
come at all up to the standard of a splendid painting. 
With regard to the magnificence of the ancient 
Romans, it surpassed all the ideas I had entertained 
so far that I can hardly yet believe my own eyes. 
The immense numbers of pillars of precious marbles, 
of polished granite and porphyry - the gorgeous 
vases and gigantic baths sculptured often from a 
single mass of jasper or granite or porphyry - the 
innumerable statues and busts - the tremendous ruins 
of the Colosseum - of the baths of Caracalla - the 
triumphal pillars and arches, astonish altogether any 
one who has formed his ideas of antiquity from a few 
old copper coins and a collection of broken earthen- 
ware. 
We have pretty much done up Rome, and intend to 
leave it as soon as possible. I have, as I said, only 
one plan in this journey, - to see as much and as fast 
and as cheap as I can. I have not received any let- 
ters since I left Paris, but I hope I shall shortly. 
Love to all. 
New York, December 14, 1835. 
I have just arrived, after a passage of forty-three 
days from Havre, sound and safe. I have only time 
to tell you that I am nicely, and that I shall come on 
directly, - that is, to-morrow or day after. I am 
delighted to see my own country again, and if I 
can only find all well shall have every reason to be 
thankful. Love to all. CHAPTER VI 
DR. HOLMES PRACTISES MEDICINE, AND MARRIES 
At last, with the opening of the year 1836, it was 
time for Dr. Holmes to set his foot upon the initial 
rung of that ladder to the top of which he had ex- 
pressed his ambition to climb. His sign duly indi- 
cated to the diseased among his neighbors their oppor- 
tunity to assist his ascent; but it is safe to suppose 
that one of the earlier uses made of that publication 
of his presence was not altogether gratifying; for the 
Autocrat's friend, the Professor, is said to have had 
this provoking experience: " Behind the pane of plate- 
glass which bore his name and title burned a modest 
lamp, signifying to the passers-by that at all hours of 
the night the slightest favors (or fevers) were wel- 
come. A youth who had freely partaken of the cup 
which cheers and likewise inebriates, following a 
moth-like impulse very natural under the circum- 
stances, dashed his fist at the light and quenched the 
meek luminary." 
In May, 1836, he invested himself with professional 
respectability by joining the Massachusetts Medical 
Society; and if membership in that body helped him 
at all, he repaid the debt, with great accumulations 
of usury, in later years. But well equipped, ambi- 
tious, trustworthy as was this young aspirant, he did 
not escape the lot of youth, - youth that has enough 
pleasures without that only one which is reserved for 158 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
maturer years, - success. lie had not that flattering 
experience which we are told was enjoyed by the angel 
who came to work miraculous healing at the pool of 
Bethesda; for when Dr. Holmes came to Boston he 
did not find "a great multitude of impotent folk, of 
blind, halt, withered, waiting for " him. To tell the 
truth, a brilliant career in the way of practice not only 
did not begin with him early, but it never developed 
at all. He built up a very fair business (if the word 
is permissible), but hardly more. For this there were 
many reasons. Probably he did not find the toil of 
the visiting physician quite so consonant to his taste 
as he had anticipated; I have been told that he never 
could become indifferent to the painful scenes of the 
sick-room, and of course when friends and neighbors 
were the sufferers he did not find his heart hardened. 
In after life he admitted that he did not "make any 
strenuous efforts to obtain business." He acknow- 
ledged, in his gay way, that, after all, the thing which 
pleased him best about practising medicine was, that 
he had to keep a horse and chaise. In this he found 
indeed much joy, and his friends found not less fear. 
In one of the clumsy great vehicles of that day, 
swung upon huge C springs, vibrating in every direc- 
tion, the little gentleman used to appear advancing 
along the road, seeming at once in peril and a cause 
of peril, bouncing insecurely upon the seat, and driv- 
ing always a mettlesome steed at an audacious speed. 
Furthermore, it was of course a hindrance to be a wit 
and a poet; for some reason, or no reason, the wise 
world has made up its mind, that he who writes 
rhymes must not write prescriptions, and he who 
makes jests should not escort people to their graves. 
In Nux Post-Coenatica he wrote plaintively: - PRACTISES MEDICINE, AND MARRIES 
159 
Besides - my prospects - don't you know that people won't 
employ 
A man that wrongs his manliness by laughing like a boy ? 
And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot, 
As if wisdom's old potato could not flourish at its root ? 
It's a vastly pleasing prospect, when you 're screwing out a 
laugh, 
That your very next year's income is diminished by a 
half, 
And a little boy trips barefoot that your Pegasus may go, 
And the baby's milk is watered that your Helicon may 
flow. 
His students he forewarned more gravely: " Medi- 
cine is the most difficult of sciences and the most la- 
borious of arts. It will task all your powers of body 
and mind if you are faithful to it. Do not dabble in 
the muddy sewer of politics, nor linger by the en- 
chanted streams of literature, nor dig in far-off fields 
for the hidden waters of alien sciences. The great 
practitioners are generally those who concentrate all 
their powers on their business." I think that he 
never did this act of concentration, or at least not 
very persistently. He had learned the truth of these 
rules not by the practice of them, but by suffering 
for the breach of them. When he said that the 
smallest fevers were thankfully received, the people 
who had no fevers laughed, but the people who had 
them preferred some one who would take the matter 
more seriously than they thought this lively young 
joker was likely to do. In this they were in error; 
for a more anxious, painstaking, conscientious physi- 
cian never counted pulse nor wrote the mystic ty. 
To this the writer has earned the right to bear per- 
sonal testimony, having in years long gone by made 160 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
wry faces over many a nauseous drug administered by 
the orders of Dr. Holmes. 
If anything could be worse even than being a wit, 
that worse thing was being a poet; better to be a 
libertine or a hard drinker, which might seem a valu- 
able experience, or bond of sympathy, with not a 
few patients. So it militated seriously against this 
respectable and abstemious physician that he had 
actually published a volume of poetry. This reck- 
less act was perpetrated in the latter part of the year 
1836, only about twelve months after his return from 
Europe. The book contained " Old Ironsides," of 
course, and " The Last Leaf " (of which latter I shall 
have a word to say later on), and the $ B K poem 
which he delivered at the meeting of the society that 
summer. For the most part, however, the short 
poems were marked by little else than the exuberant 
jollity of youth. The natural ear for melody, the 
happiness of expression, the just feeling for propor- 
tion, might be noted; but the impression left was that 
the writer regarded life as a sort of rosary of the gay- 
est kind of jokes, the most absurd extravaganzas of 
wit. There was abundant and wholesome provoca- 
tion to rollicking laughter, but only a very prescient 
critic would have seen much else. Unfortunately the 
Doctor's avowed function was not to amuse but to 
heal his fellow-citizens; doubtless he felt a youthful 
thrill of gratification at seeing his name on the back 
of a printed book, - not quite so commonplace an 
affair in those days as it is now; but worldly wisdom 
would have dictated suppression as the shrewder part. 
It was flattering, in a certain way, of course, to be 
invited to deliver the B K poem; but it was a poor 
advertisement. For hindrances thus incurred Holmes PRACTISES MEDICINE, AND MARRIES 
161 
consoled himself by reflecting that Haller lost his elec- 
tion as physician to the hospital in his native city of 
Berne, principally on the ground that he was a poet. 
But, then, was he himself going to be another Haller? 
If not, he must seek some other consolation to which 
he could more logically lay claim. 
His active mind and industrious temperament would 
not permit him to be idle; and the hours which were 
left to his free control were busily employed. For 
three seasons he was one of the physicians at the Mas- 
sachusetts General Hospital. But now, in looking 
back, it is easy to see that he was predestined more 
for the academic than the practical side of his profes- 
sion. In 1838 he was "mightily pleased," as he 
said, to receive the appointment of Professor of Anat- 
omy at Dartmouth College; it called for his presence 
there only during August, September, and October, 
and he held the place for the years 1839 and 1840. 
He busied himself also with writing for the Boylston 
and other prizes, and he recorded the smile of For- 
tune in this note to his brother-in-law. 
TO CHARLES W. UPHAM. 
Boston, August 4, 1836. 
My very dear Sir, - The lesson of humility 
which you were anxious I should receive has found 
some other customers. The Boylston prize was al- 
most unanimously awarded to my dissertation. The 
committee, however, have determined to pay for 
and publish two others, which they were anxious the 
public should see, - they are by Dr. Haxall, of Vir- 
ginia, and Dr. Bell, of New Hampshire. This is what 
they have never done before, and it is somewhat pleas- 
ant to have cut out a fifty-dollar prize under the guns 162 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
of two old blazers, who have each of them swamped 
their competitors in preceding trials. 
In the following summer he again notified the same 
friend, more briefly: - 
Boston, August 3, 1837. 
Dear Mr. U . Both prizes unanimously. 
All very well at Cambridge yesterday. 
Of these essays the one on "Intermittent Fever in 
New England " still retains value as a careful collec- 
tion of all the evidence concerning malaria in that 
region up to that time. It represented very great 
labor in inquiry and investigation; the Doctor even 
examined the works of the old colonial writers page 
by page (by reason of the imperfection of the indices), 
save, as he said, the sermons and theological treatises 
of Cotton Mather, which he passed by, on the ground 
that they were "more likely to cause a fever than to 
mention one." 
Probably enough, the mere existence of the volume 
of Medical Essays is a fact unknown to the "general 
reader," - that ill-starred being who is to the book- 
sellers what the refuse-barrel is to the household, a 
receptacle for all transitory rubbish, whither the sil- 
ver fork or other article of value finds its way rarely 
and by accident. Yet this collection of papers is 
delightful reading, sparkling with cleverness in the 
Doctor's best vein. The earliest papers, two lectures 
on homoeopathy, bear the date of 1842; they cannot 
fairly be recommended to believers in that art, for 
their wit and wisdom are administered in by no means 
homoeopathic doses; but the rest of the world may 
rejoice in them. The good Doctor hated homoeopa- PRACTISES MEDICINE, AND MARRIES 
163 
thy with a whole-souled hatred, and from an intel- 
leetual standpoint he regarded it with utter contempt. 
He spoke against it as one speaks who feels that he 
is rendering good service to his fellow-men. It led 
him, in his earnestness, to utter some of the happiest 
of his brilliant sentences, however distasteful they 
may be to some readers. He always spoke of it as a 
"pseudo-science."1 He admitted that some patients 
might "have been actually benefited through the in- 
fluence exerted upon their imaginations," which must 
also be conceded "to every one of those numerous 
modes of practice known to all intelligent persons by 
an opprobrious title." But "the argument founded 
on this occasional good would be as applicable in jus- 
tifying the counterfeiter in giving circulation to his 
base coin, on the ground that a spurious dollar had 
often relieved a poor man's necessities." 
The defensive argument which homoeopathists drew 
from the action of the tiny particle of vaccine matter, 
and which they applied to some of their minute prepa- 
rations of minerals, he disposed of as follows: " The 
thoughtlessness which can allow an inference to be 
extended from a product of disease possessing this 
susceptibility of multiplication when conveyed into 
the living body, to substances of inorganic origin, 
such as silex or sulphur, would be capable of arguing 
that a pebble may produce a mountain, because an 
acorn can become a forest." 
Later on, the French Academy gave out as the re- 
sult of an experiment, that the ten-trillionth part (or 
1 Later, in The Professor at the Breakfast-Table, he said : "So 
while the solemn farce of over-drugging is going on, the world 
over, the harlequin pseudo-science jumps on to the stage, whip 
in hand, with half-a-dozen somersets, and begins laying about 
him." 164 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
thereabouts!) of a drop of septicaemic poison would 
kill a guinea-pig. This was naturally turned into 
an argument in favor of the homoeopathic dose. But 
Dr. Holmes wrote: "The argument from the effect 
of animal poisons in small quantities to medicinal sub- 
stances in general, is like saying that because a spark 
will burn down a city, a mutton chop will feed an 
army." 
In 1843 he published his essay on the "Contagious- 
ness of Puerperal Fever." Upon this, preeminently 
if not alone, rests his claim to having made an origi- 
nal and a greatly valuable contribution to medical 
science. There had already been suspicions of the 
fact rather than belief in it, with consequent sporadic 
assertions and suggestions, which had fortunately led 
to the recording of a useful amount of evidence. Dr. 
Holmes now announced his theory, carefully but very 
positively, in an article published in a short-lived 
periodical of little note, the New England Quarterly 
Journal of Medicine. That the paper, thus ill placed, 
was not overlooked or forgotten was due to the indig- 
nation which it excited. Dr. Holmes was handled 
with something worse than the fair severity of hostile 
argument by "the two leading professors of obstetrics 
in this country,"1 both of Philadelphia, Hodge (the 
elder) in 1852, and Meigs in 1854. The latter espe- 
cially used language so abusive that the medical dis- 
cussion might easily have lost itself in a personal quar- 
rel. But fortunately for multitudes of women who 
were to become mothers, - fortunately, too, for these 
assailants, though they do not deserve sympathy, - 
1 Letter of Dr. Holmes, quoted by Professor Osler in his 
liemarks made at the Jolins Hopkins Medical Society, October lo, 
1894, p. 9. PRACTISES MEDICINE, AND MARRIES 
165 
the Doctor had the good sense to keep his temper. 
He knew that "every real thought on every real 
subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other. 
As soon as his breath comes back, he very probably 
begins to expend it in hard words." Therefore he 
contented himself with reprinting his essay in 1855, 
with an introduction which held no anger, but an 
appeal, earnest to the point of being touching, that 
his arguments might be fairly considered. He said, 
very beautifully: "I take no offence, and attempt no 
retort. No man makes a quarrel with me over the 
counterpane that covers a mother, with her new-born 
infant at her breast. There is no epithet in the vo- 
cabulary of slight and sarcasm that can reach my per- 
sonal sensibilities in such a controversy." "Let it be 
remembered that persons are nothing in this matter; 
better that twenty pamphleteers should be silenced, 
or as many professors unseated, than that one mother's 
life should be taken." The odds of prestige and au- 
thority were heavily against him. Medical students, 
he said, "naturally have faith in their instructors, 
turning to them for truth and taking what they may 
choose to give them; babes in knowledge, not yet 
able to tell the breast from the bottle, pumping away 
for the milk of truth at all that offers, were it nothing 
better than a professor's shrivelled forefinger." "The 
teachings of the two professors in the great schools 
of Philadelphia are sure to be listened to, not only by 
their immediate pupils, but by the profession at large. 
I am too much in earnest for either humility or 
vanity, but I do entreat those who hold the keys of 
life and death to listen to me also for this once. I 
ask no personal favor; but I beg to be heard in behalf 
of the women whose lives are at stake, until some 166 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
stronger voice shall plead for them." His argument 
had been prepared with such care that he could add 
little to it by entering into controversy; if it were a 
seed of truth it would grow, while the assaults watered 
it. Thus very soon it did grow, and in good season 
became an accepted and familiar principle; and then 
the Doctor was accorded enrolment among the practi- 
cal benefactors of mankind. He gathered a natural 
satisfaction from the reflection. He doubted much 
whether he should "ever again have so good an op- 
portunity of being useful;" and in The Professor at 
the Breakfast-Table he said: "When, by the permis- 
sion of Providence, I held up to the professional pub- 
lic the damnable facts connected with the conveyance 
of poison from one young mother's chamber to an- 
other's, - for doing which humble office I desire to 
be thankful that I have lived, though nothing else 
good should ever come of my life, - I had to bear 
the sneers of those whose position I had assailed, 
and, as I believe, have at last demolished, so that 
nothing but the ghosts of dead women stir among the 
ruins." 
These essays indicate some mental traits which 
are not often associated with Dr. Holmes. Wit and 
poetry, a capacity to write novels and a fitness for 
the production of entertaining literature in many va- 
rieties, are not customarily regarded as naturally co- 
ordinating with powers of constructing close, clearly 
put, well-proportioned arguments, weighing and stat- 
ing evidence, and generally doing in a very skilful 
and forcible manner that which lawyers call "present- 
ing a case." But Dr. Holmes achieved precisely this 
sort of work in the papers which have been mentioned, 
and he did it with an ability which would have been PRACTISES MEDICINE, AND MARRIES 
167 
marked even among distinguished members of the 
rival profession. If instead of having homoeopathy 
on trial before the bar of public opinion on the charge 
of being a counterfeit science, there had been going 
forward the trial of J. S. for uttering forged notes, 
and conducted before one of the established high tribu- 
nals of justice, Dr. Holmes, as prosecutor, would have 
won the distinction of having made one of those mas- 
terly forensic efforts which pass into history, or rather 
into tradition. In the paper on "Puerperal Fever," the 
reader will be not less struck by the Doctor's admira- 
ble clearness and accuracy of statement, by his signal 
skill in marshalling his evidence, by his appreciation 
of the just weight of the several items, by his accurate 
perception of precisely what logical conclusions could 
be drawn from them, of how far some of them went in 
establishing probability, and of how near the whole 
came to sustaining the severer burden which is called 
proof. Later, in an introduction to a re-publication 
of the essay, the Doctor excused himself for stating 
a few points so simple that they might have been 
deemed superfluous, by saying : " It affords a good 
opportunity, as it seems to me, of exercising the un- 
trained mind in that medical logic, which does not seem 
to have been either taught or practised in our schools 
of late, to the extent that might be desired." After 
reading these Medical Essays one can understand 
the impulse which at first led Holmes to enter the 
Law School. One can also see the influence of his 
beloved teacher, Louis, whose chief and favorite motto 
Dr. Holmes was never tired of repeating: - 
" Formez ton jours les idees nettes. 
Fuyez les a peu prfes." 168 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
"No better proof of his spirit can be given than 
that, just a year from the time when he began to 
practise as a physician, he took that eventful step, 
which, in such a man, implies that he sees his way 
clear to a position; he married a lady blessed with 
many gifts, but not bringing him a fortune to para- 
lyze his industry." Thus spoke Dr. Holmes concern- 
ing Dr. James Jackson, the uncle of the lady whom 
he himself was soon to marry; and his own action 
was like unto that which in another he thus highly 
commended. In fact, he had the domestic instinct 
very strongly developed, and was as sure to woo and 
wed as any man could be. The following, to his old 
school-friend, contains premonitions: - 
TO PHINEAS BARNES. 
February 3, 1838. 
My dear Barnes, - I received your letter yes- 
terday, and contrary to my usual procrastinating hab- 
its I will give you a prompt answer, - a little hurried, 
perhaps, for I am a busy mortal, and I am just now 
agonizing between my patients, clamorous for their 
morning doses, and a poem with which I have been 
saddled for an approaching medical dinner. 
And first, with regard to my book, I have two or 
three questions to ask you. Did you suppose that, 
after my boring you with letter after letter, taking 
advantage of your good-nature to lead you from your 
proper pursuits into the region of miasms and fevers, 
quoting whole pages from your communications, and 
reprinting the letters you obtained from others,1 - 
1 Mr. Barnes had collected a great deal of evidence for use by 
Dr. Holmes in writing his essay on " Intermittent Fever in New 
England," which took the Boylston prize. Phineas Barnes 169 
you must make a fuss about asking me for a paltry 
volume which, but for you and a few other kind 
friends and professional brethren, would not have 
been worth writing? And in the next place, did you 
think me such an ungrateful vagabond as to forget 
not only past friendship, but recent kindness? and 
such a calculating miscreant as to grudge a friend a 
book, although I could have made up my mind to let 
him have a pamphlet? The truth is this, that having 
been much occupied since my Essays were published, 
- two or three weeks ago, - I have but just had time 
to distribute a few copies to a few friends in the neigh- 
borhood, and have hardly yet thought how to get 
them to such as live at a distance. You may be very 
certain that one shall go to Gould, Kendall & Lin- 
coln's, for you, this very morning; and instead of 
taking it as such a mighty favor, please to remember 
that the obligation is altogether and a hundred-fold 
on my side. Your information was of great value and 
assistance to me; especially as I had no other means 
whatsoever of getting at many parts of your State to 
which it referred. 
And so you are married. I wish I were, too. I 
have flirted and written poetry long enough, and 
I feel that I am growing domestic and tabby-ish. I 
have several very nice young women in my eye, and 
it is by no means impossible that another summer or 
so may see my name among the hymeneal victims. . . . 
I do indeed congratulate you on changing your iso- 
lated condition into the beatific state of duality. The 
very moment one feels that he is falling into the old 
age of youth -which I take to be from twenty-five 
to thirty, in most cases - he must not dally any 
longer; the first era of his life is not fairly closed, 
PRACTISES MEDICINE, AND MARRIES 170 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
and he may live half his bright days over again if 
"woman's pure kiss, sweet and long," comes only to 
his lips before it is too late. If he waits till the next 
epoch of life begins, there is great danger lest he 
marry his wife as a jockey buys a horse, -sensibly, 
shrewdly, and merely as a convenience in his domestic 
operations. Such are my sentiments on this matter; 
and two years will give me - a certain age, I shud- 
der to repeat. My best respects to your lady, - and 
may the state into which you have ventured prove to 
you a prolific source of happiness. 
That "certain age''which Holmes "shuddered to 
repeat " found him, of course, in the matrimonial 
way. On June 15, 1840, he married Amelia Lee 
Jackson, the third daughter of Hon. Charles Jack- 
son, of Boston, an Associate Justice of the Supreme 
Judicial Court of the Commonwealth. This lady, 
whose memory is enshrined in my affection and admi- 
ration, I shall not attempt to depict, lest the reader 
should suspect me of extravagance, and refuse to give 
credit to the praise which I should utter. Every esti- 
mable and attractive quality of mind and character 
seemed to be hers; all who knew her loved her, and 
respected her not less than they loved. The kindest, 
gentlest, and tenderest of women, she had the chance 
given her, when her eldest son was three times 
wounded in the civil war, to show of what mettle she 
was; and she did show it, as all who knew her would 
have foretold of her. For Dr. Holmes she was an 
ideal wife, - a comrade the most delightful, a help- 
mate the most useful, whose abilities seemed to have 
been arranged by happy foresight for the express pur- 
pose of supplying his wants. She smoothed his way PRACTISES MEDICINE, AND MARRIES 
171 
for him, removed annoyances from his path, did for 
him with her easy executive capacity a thousand 
things, which otherwise he would have missed or 
have done with difficulty for himself ; she hedged 
him carefully about and protected him from dis- 
tractions and bores and interruptions, - in a word, 
she took care of him, and gave him every day the 
fullest and freest chance to be always at his best, 
always able to do his work amid cheerful surround- 
ings. She contributed immensely to his success, as 
all knew who came near enough to have any know- 
ledge of the household. If in thus ordering all things 
o o o 
alike within and without the daily routine with such 
careful reference to the occupations and the comfort 
of her husband, she often gave herself in sacrifice, - 
as no doubt she did, - she always did so with such 
amiable tact that the fact might easily escape notice, 
and the fruit of her devotion was enjoyed with no dis- 
quieting sense of what it had cost her. She eschewed 
the idea of having wit or literary and critical capa- 
city; yet in fact she had rare humor and a sensitive 
good taste, which could have been infallibly counted 
upon for good service, if on any occasion these quali- 
ties could bring assistance to the Doctor, - and as to 
this no man probably knows. 
Though this lady had not "a fortune," her father 
was very "well off," as the Boston people of his day 
would have said. Otherwise Dr. Holmes's nuptials 
would hardly have taken place so soon. Yet even 
thus he had committed himself to a life of hard work, 
and to a moderate scale of living for some time to 
come. The children of this marriage were three. 
The eldest, Oliver Wendell, has since had an illus- 
trious career; entering the twentieth Massachusetts 172 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
Regiment among the early volunteers in the civil 
war, he was severely wounded in three engagements, 
but each time returned to the field. He became 
a lieutenant-colonel in the service. He afterward 
studied law, won distinction by his writings, and has 
now been for many years an Associate Justice of the 
Supreme Judicial Court. The second child, a daugh- 
ter, named after her mother, married Mr. Turner 
Sargent. After his death she was the companion of 
her father during his "Hundred Days" in Europe. 
She died in 1889. The third child, Edward Jack- 
son, inherited much of his father's wit and humor; 
but unfortunately also inherited the asthma; this ham- 
pered him in the practice of the law, gave him, in 
fact, no chance at all in life, and finally so under- 
mined his constitution that he died, untimely, in 1884. 
He left a son, who alone represents the name in the 
third generation. CHAPTER VII 
LECTURES, MEDICAL AND LITERARY 
In 1847 Dr. Holmes received the appointment of 
Parkman Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in 
the Medical School of Harvard University. Occa- 
sionally also he overstepped the strict boundaries of 
these departments to give instruction in microscopy, 
and to dabble in psychology or in matters akin thereto. 
The variety of his functions led him to say that he 
occupied not a professor's chair in the school, but a 
whole settee. In 1871, however, the overloaded con- 
dition of the chair, or settee, became so apparent that 
a separate professorship was established for physiol- 
ogy, and Dr. Holmes thereafter had charge only of 
anatomy. The position was of moderate emolument, 
but he felt great pride and interest in it, and held it 
for thirty-five years. So long an incumbency in such 
an office had serious perils, which fortunately the 
Doctor fully appreciated, and appreciating avoided. 
"The professor's chair," he said, "is an insulating 
stool, so to speak; his age, his knowledge, real or 
supposed, his official station, are like the glass legs 
which support the electrician's piece of furniture, and 
cut it off from the common currents of the floor upon 
which it stands." Further, in this connection, may 
be quoted an entertaining passage in one of the Doc- 
tor's letters to his friend Dr. Weir Mitchell, the dis- 
tinguished Philadelphian: "I am much pleased to 174 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
find that you are going on in that path of research 
which you entered so auspiciously. I could have 
wished that you had obtained the place we tried to 
aid you in obtaining; but such labors as yours will 
sooner or later find their reward. Perhaps it is 
hardly desirable that an active man of science should 
obtain a chair too early; for I have noticed, as you 
doubtless have, that the wood of which academic fau- 
teuils are made has a narcotic quality, which occa- 
sionally renders their occupants somnolent, lethargic, 
or even comatose. Hoping that you will get seated 
soon enough for your comfort, and not too soon for 
your reputation, and thanking you very sincerely for 
your admirable essay, I am," etc. 
Of Dr. Holmes as a medical instructor I do not, 
of course, feel myself competent to speak from my 
own knowledge. But by taking the liberty of using 
freely what has been well said by eminently com- 
petent judges, I hope to present a fair sketch of him 
in this part of his life. His death, of course, called 
forth many articles in the way of reminiscence and 
criticism from the physicians who had sat under his 
instruction, or had worked with him at the school. 
Notable among these were articles by Dr. David W. 
Cheever, who had been one of Dr. Holmes's "demon- 
strators," and by Dr. Thomas Dwight, also one of 
his "demonstrators" and his successor as Professor 
of Anatomy. By the kind permission of these gen- 
tlemen I shall slash freely with my scissors into their 
excellent papers. 
Doctor Cheever writes:1 - 
"It nears one o'clock, and the close work in the 
1 Harvard Graduates' Magazine, vol. iii. No. 10, December 
1894. LECTURES, MEDICAL AND LITERARY 
175 
demonstrator's room in the old Medical School in 
North Grove Street becomes even more hurried and 
eager as the lecture hour in Anatomy approaches. 
Four hours of busy dissection have unveiled a portion 
of the human frame, insensate and stark, on the 
demonstrating-table. Muscles, nerves, and blood- 
vessels unfold themselves in unvarying harmony, if 
seeming disorder, and the ' subject ' is nearly ready 
to illustrate the lecture. . . . The room is thick with 
tobacco smoke. The winter light, snowy and dull, 
enters through one tall window, bare of curtain, and 
falls upon a lead floor. The surroundings are singu- 
larly barren of ornament or beauty, and there is 
naught to inspire the intellect or the imagination, 
except the marvellous mechanism of the poor dead 
body, which lies dissected before us, like some com- 
plex and delicate machinery whose uses we seek to 
know. 
"To such a scene enters the poet, the writer, the 
wit, Oliver Wendell Holmes. Few readers of his 
prose or poetry could dream of him as here, in this 
charnel-house, in the presence of death. The very 
long, steep, and single flight of stairs leading up from 
the street below resounds with a double and labored 
tread, the door opens, and a small, gentle, smiling 
man appears, supported by the janitor, who often has 
been called on to help him up the stairs. Entering, 
and giving a breathless greeting, he sinks upon a 
stool and strives to recover his asthmatic breath. . . . 
"Anon recovering, he brightens up, and asks, 
' What have you for me to-day ? ' and plunges, knife 
in hand, into the ' depths of his subject,' - a joke he 
might have uttered. Time flies, and a boisterous 
crowd of turbulent Bob Sawyers pours through the 176 
hall to his lecture-room, and begins a rhythmical 
stamping, one, two, three, and a shout, and pounding 
on his lecture-room doors. A rush takes place; some 
collapse, some are thrown headlong, and three hun- 
dred raw students precipitate themselves into a bare 
and comfortless amphitheatre. Meanwhile the pro- 
fessor has been running about, now as nimble as a 
cat, selecting plates, rummaging the dusty museum 
for specimens, arranging microscopes, and displaying 
bones. The subject is carried in on a board; no au- 
tomatic appliances, no wheels with pneumatic tires, 
no elevators, no dumb-waiters in those days. The 
cadaver is decorously disposed on a revolving table in 
the small arena, and is always covered, at first, from 
curious eyes, by a clean white sheet. Respect for 
poor humanity and admiration for God's divinest 
work is the first lesson and the uppermost in the poet- 
lecturer's mind. He enters, and is greeted with a 
mighty shout and stamp of applause. Then silence, 
and there begins a charming hour of description, anal- 
ysis, simile, anecdote, harmless pun, which clothes 
the dry bones with poetic imagery, enlivens a hard 
and fatiguing day with humor, and brightens to the 
tired listener the details of a difficult though interest- 
ing study. We say tired listener because - will it 
be believed? - the student is now listening to his fifth 
consecutive lecture that day, beginning at nine o'clock 
and ending at two; no pause, no rest, no recovery for 
the dazed senses, which have tried to absorb Materia 
Medica, Chemistry, Practice, Obstetrics, and Anat- 
omy, all in one morning, by five learned professors. 
One o'clock was always assigned to Dr. Holmes be- 
cause he alone could hold his exhausted audience's 
attention. 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 177 
"As a lecturer he was accurate, punctual, precise, 
unvarying in patience over detail, and though not an 
original anatomist in the sense of a discoverer, yet a 
most exact descriptive lecturer; while the wealth of 
illustration, comparison, and simile he used was un- 
equalled. Hence his charm; you received informa- 
tion, and you were amused at the same time. He 
was always simple and rudimentary in his instruction. 
His flights of fancy never shot over his hearers' 
heads. ' Iteration and reiteration ' was his favorite 
motto in teaching. ' These, gentlemen, ' he said, on 
one occasion, pointing out the lower portion of the 
pelvic bones, ' are the tuberosities of the ischia, on 
which man was designed to sit and survey the works 
of Creation.' But if witty, he could also be serious 
and pathetic; and he possessed the high power of 
holding and controlling his rough auditors. . . . 
"And how he loved Anatomy! as a mother her 
child. He was never tired, always fresh, always 
eager in learning and teaching it. In earnest him- 
self, enthusiastic, and of a happy temperament, he 
shed the glow of his ardent spirit over his followers, 
and gave to me, his demonstrator and assistant for 
eight years, some of the most attractive and happy 
hours of my life." 
Professor Thomas Dwight1 bears testimony to the 
same purport as Dr. Cheever: - 
"During that autumn I frequently recited to Dr. 
Holmes, and saw the great patience and interest with 
which he demonstrated the more difficult parts of the 
skeleton. In November began the dreary season of 
perpetual lectures, from morning till night, to large 
classes of more or less turbulent students. The lec- 
LECTURES, MEDICAL AND LITERARY 
1 Scribner's Magazine, vol. xvii. No. 1, January, 1895. 178 
tures began usually at nine, sometimes at eight, and 
continued without interruption until two, old students 
and new for the most part attending all of them. 
The lecture on anatomy came at one o'clock five days 
in the week. I lack power to express the weariness, 
the disgust, and sometimes the exasperation, with 
which, after four or five hours of lectures, bad air, 
and rapid note-taking had brought their crop of head- 
aches and bad temper, we resigned ourselves to an- 
other hour. No one but Dr. Holmes could have been 
endured under the circumstances." 
Professor Dwight describes the older quarters much 
as Dr. Cheever does: - 
"The amphitheatre, the seats of which were at a 
steep pitch, was entered by the students from above, 
through two doors, one on each side, each of which 
was approached by a steep stairway between narrow 
walls. The doors were not usually opened until some 
minutes after the hour. The space at the top of 
these stairs was a scene of crowding, pushing, scuf- 
fling, and shouting indescribable, till at last a spring 
shot back both bolts at once, and from each door a 
living avalanche poured down the steep alleys with an 
irresistible rush that made the looker-on hold his 
breath. How it happened that during many years no 
one was killed, or even seriously injured, is incom- 
prehensible. The excitement of the fray having 
subsided, order reigned until the entrance of the pro- 
fessor, which was frequently the signal for applause. 
He came in with a grave countenance. His shoulders 
were thrown back and his face bent down. No one 
realized better than he that he had no easy task be- 
fore him. He had to teach a branch repulsive to 
some, difficult for all; and he had to teach it to a 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES LECTURES, MEDICAL AND LITERARY 
179 
jaded class which was unfit to be taught anything. 
The wooden seats were hard, the backs straight, and 
the air bad. The effect of the last was alluded to by 
Dr. Holmes in his address at the opening of the new 
school in 1883: - 
So, when the class I was lecturing to was sitting 
in an atmosphere once breathed already, after I had 
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-re- 
straint 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.' 
"To make head against these odds he did his utmost 
to adopt a sprightly manner, and let no opportunity 
for a jest escape him. These would be received 
with quiet appreciation by the lower benches, and 
with uproarious demonstrations from the ' mountain,' 
where, as in the French Assembly of the Revolution, 
the noisiest spirits congregated. He gave his im- 
agination full play in comparisons often charming 
and always quaint. None but Holmes could have 
compared the microscopical coiled tube of a sweat- 
gland to a fairy's intestine. Medical readers will 
appreciate the aptness of likening the mesentery to 
the shirt ruffles of a preceding generation, which from 
a short line of attachment expanded into yards of 
complicated folds. He has compared the fibres con- 
necting the two symmetrical halves of the brain to the 
band uniting the Siamese twins. . . . 
"One would think, from Dr. Holmes's wonderful 
facility of expression, that lecturing year after year 
on the same subject, the lectures would have been as 180 
child's play. But I am convinced that this was not 
so. ' You will find, ' said he to me at the time that 
I succeeded him, ' that the day that you have lectured 
something has gone out from you.' To his sensitive 
organization I imagine that the trials incident to the 
tired, and in early years more or less unruly, class 
were greater than his friends suspected. I remember 
once his telling Dr. Cheever and myself, how exceed- 
ingly annoying it is to the lecturer to have any one 
leave the room before the close. I often marvelled at 
the patience he displayed." 
That Dr. Holmes should have selected anatomy 
and dissection as his province of labor may seem a 
little odd to the reader who has just been told that he 
was too tender-hearted to practise medicine. Here is 
what the two good witnesses, who have been placed 
upon the stand, depone as to this point. Dr. Cheever 
says: "Too sympathetic to practise medicine, he soon 
abandoned the art for the science, and always mani- 
fested the same abhorrence for death and tenderness 
for animals. When it became necessary to have a 
freshly killed rabbit for his lectures, he always ran 
out of the room, left me to chloroform it, and be- 
sought me not to let it squeak." 
Professor Dwight says: - 
"In spite of the attention bestowed on dissection, 
I do not think that he much fancied dissecting, him- 
self, though our Museum still has some few specimens 
of his preparation. Once he asked me which part 
of anatomy I liked best, and on my saying: ' The 
bones, ' he replied: ' So do I; it is the cleanest. ' 
Still he usually gave the class the time-honored joke 
that bones are dry. . . . Almost the only topic on 
which he could not speak with patience was the cruelty 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES LECTURES, MEDICAL AND LITERARY 
181 
often practised in vivisection. Like all sensible men, 
he recognized the necessity of vivisection. He has 
called it ' a mode of acquiring knowledge justifiable 
in its proper use, odious beyond measure in its 
abuse,' but I am sure that in his heart he hated it 
bitterly. But if in physiology he eschewed vivisec- 
tion, believing, perhaps, with Hyrtl, ' that nature will 
tell the truth all the better for not being put to the 
torture,' he did some work which now would be dig- 
nified with the name of experimental psychology. 
' I have myself, ' he writes, ' instituted a good many 
experiments with a more extensive and expensive 
machinery than I think has ever been employed, 
- namely, two classes each of ten intelligent stu- 
dents, who had joined hands together, representing 
a nervous circle of about sixty-six feet, so that a 
hand-pressure transmitted ten times around the circle 
traversed six hundred and sixty feet, besides involving 
one hundred perceptions and volitions. My chro- 
nometer was a horse-timer, marking quarter-seconds.' 
He varied these experiments by having the trans- 
missions made from hand to foot and from hand to 
head." 
An Englishman, writing a very good article in the 
Quarterly Review, says: "Into all his professional 
studies he carries the same kindly, tender heart. He 
utters his Laus Deo that he assisted at no scientific 
cruelties; and thirty years afterwards there is still 
a sob in his throat when he speaks of the little child 
in the hospital cot, whose fresh voice yet rang in his 
ears like ' the reedy trill of a thrush's evening song.' " 
In The Professor at the Breakfast- Table Dr. Holmes 
himself says: "You may be sure that some men, even 
among those who have chosen the task of pruning 182 
their fellow-creatures, grow more and more thought- 
ful and truly compassionate in the midst of their cruel 
experience. They become less nervous, but more 
sympathetic. They have a truer sensibility for oth- 
ers' pain, the more they study pain and disease in 
the light of science. I have said this without claim- 
ing any special growth in humanity for myself, though 
I do hope I grow tenderer in my feelings as I grow 
older." 
Concerning Dr. Holmes's scheme of instruction 
Professor Dwight says: "Any one who has experience 
in lecturing recognizes that he must decide whether 
he will address himself to the higher or lower half of 
the class. Dr. Holmes lectured to the latter. It 
was a part of his humanity to do so. He felt a sym- 
pathy for the struggling lad preparing to practise 
where work is hard and money scarce. ' I do not 
give the best lectures that I can give,' he said on sev- 
eral occasions; ' I should shoot over their heads. I 
try to teach them a little and to teach it well.' " As 
to this Dr. Holmes's own testimony is: "My advice 
to every teacher less experienced than myself would 
be, therefore: Do not fret over the details you have 
to omit; you probably teach altogether too many as 
it is. Individuals may learn a thing with once hear- 
ing it, but the only way of teaching a whole class is 
by enormous repetition, representation, and illustra- 
tion in all possible forms. Now and then you will 
have a young man on your benches like the late 
Waldo Burnett, - not very often, if you lecture half 
a century. You cannot pretend to lecture chiefly for 
men like that, - a Mississippi raft might as well take 
an ocean-steamer in tow. To meet his wants you 
would have to leave the rest of your class behind, and 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES LECTURES, MEDICAL AND LITERARY 
183 
that you must not do. President Allen, of Jefferson 
College, says that his instruction has been successful 
in proportion as it has been elementary. It may be 
a humiliating statement, but it is one which I have 
found true in my own experience." 
To know really and with thoroughness something, 
be it more or less, seemed to him the thing chiefly 
desirable. It was a reminiscence of the old influence 
of Louis, who had impressed on his pupils that accu- 
racy was the first and highest of what may be called 
the virtues of the intellect. Smatterings, and the con- 
ceit of half knowledge, were odious to Dr. Holmes; 
and as in this country they rise to the dignity of a 
national characteristic, he had to wage unresting war 
against them. He said: "Our American atmosphere 
is vocal with the flippant loquacity of half knowledge. 
We must accept whatever good can be got out of it, 
and keep it under as we do sorrel and mullein and 
witchgrass, by enriching the soil, and sowing good 
seed in plenty; by good teaching and good books, 
rather than by wasting our time in talking against it. 
Half knowledge dreads nothing but whole knowledge." 
And again: " The difference between green and sea- 
soned knowledge is very great." 
Dr. Holmes was one of the early microscopists, and 
was a very good one. The instrument was not among 
the tools of the instructing physicians when he was 
studying in Paris, but soon afterward it came into 
general use. He brought one home with him from 
Europe. It fascinated him, as indeed it did many 
another. He had a great taste for everything ingen- 
ious, and playing with this new machine devoured 
many an hour. He was forever taking his own to 
pieces and putting it together, and trying all sorts of 184 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
experiments with it, both as to the mechanism itself, 
and as to the subjects of examination. How well 1 
recollect the intense absorption with which he would 
thus pass long hours I - hours which were not wasted, 
for "he was no mean authority on this subject in his 
day," says Dr. Cheever. 
The Doctor was a great lover of the old writers upon 
medicine; those men, of whom the better educated 
physicians knew the names and the less educated ones 
knew nothing, were familiar to him. They appealed 
doubtless to his literary sense by their quaintness; 
but he justified his study of them by stoutly maintain- 
ing that the study of anatomy had undergone no great 
change since they wrote. The venerable folios which 
embalmed their wisdom gladdened his eyes. "He 
cuddled old books, and hugged them close," says Dr. 
Cheever; and the purchase of them sometimes led 
him to the verge of extravagance, or even beyond that 
annoying frontier. The excellence of the old illus- 
trations charmed his skilled eye; such work, he said, 
could not be had in these days, when big editions are 
cheaply prepared. He handled his volumes affection- 
ately, turned to these engravings with delight, and 
dilated upon them in the spirit of the bibliophile, 
which he really was in the matter of medical books. 
This dearly loved collection - " 965 volumes and 
many pamphlets" - he finally gave to the Boston 
Medical Library, an institution which, Dr. Cheever 
says, "was largely due to his name and influence." 
For thirteen years he was its president, and upon re- 
signing his office he made the gift. "These books," 
he said, in his tender way, "were very dear to me as 
they stood upon my shelves. A twig from some one 
of my nerves ran to every one of them. . . . They 185 
marked the progress of my studies, and stood before 
me as the stepping-stones of my professional life. I 
am pleased that they can be kept together, at least 
for the present; and if any of them can be to others 
what they have been to me, I am glad to part with 
them, even though it costs me a little heartache to 
take leave of such old and beloved companions."1 
The period of Dr. Holmes's incumbency in his 
medical professorship was, of course, one of change 
and advancement. When the younger men demanded 
novelties, and were sustained by the new President of 
the University, Dr. Cheever tells us that Dr. Holmes 
"was at heart favorable to advance, but he was timid 
as to the losses and dangers of radical changes, al- 
though not a violent opponent." Among Dr. Holmes's 
letters there are some passages which state clearly that 
he was pleased with the ways of Mr. Eliot, and that 
he contemplated with amused satisfaction the rattle 
and clatter with which that vigorous gentleman 
knocked the respectable antiquities about, and threw 
out of the collegiate windows and thrust out of the 
doors the comfortable old habits, customs, and preju- 
dices, - let us stop short of adding abuses, because 
there had hardly been time for real abuses to estab- 
lish themselves. 
During his day there took place a famous and des- 
perate engagement between the friends and the foes 
of the admission of women to the Harvard Medical 
School. His friend Dr. Henry J. Bigelow led with 
characteristic strenuousness the opponents. But, 
though Dr. Holmes was so situated that he could not 
be altogether a neutral, he would not become an 
active combatant. Dr. Cheever says that his "kindly 
1 Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. cxxxi. No. 24, p. 584. 
LECTURES, MEDICAL AND LITERARY 186 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
nature inclined him to the claims of the other sex, but 
he voted with the majority [in the negative] for pru- 
dential reasons." It is "interesting as an index of his 
delicacy and purity, that he affirmed that he was will- 
ing to teach women anatomy, but not with men in the 
same classes; and, above all, that he should insist on 
two dissecting-rooms, which should strictly separate 
the sexes." Dr. Dwight says that Dr. Holmes had 
"inclined to the losing side," but does not "remember 
that he ever showed much enthusiasm in the cause." 
A short time afterward, when the smoke of this 
battle was lifting, if not quite all gone, at the open- 
ing of the new building of the Harvard Medical 
School, Dr. Holmes delivered an address, and Pro- 
fessor Dwight tells the following anecdote: - 
"On this occasion, after speaking in his most per- 
fect style on woman as a nurse, with a pathos free 
from mawkishness which Dickens rarely reached, he 
concluded: ' I have always felt that this was rather 
the vocation of woman than general medical, and es- 
pecially surgical, practice.' This was the signal for 
loud applause from the conservative side. When he 
could resume he went on: ' Yet I myself followed the 
course of lectures given by the young Madame La- 
chapelle in Paris, and if here and there an intrepid 
woman insists on taking by storm the fortress of 
medical education, I would have the gate flung open 
to her, as if it were that of the citadel of Orleans and 
she were Joan of Arc returning from the field of vic- 
tory.' The enthusiasm which this sentiment called 
forth was so overwhelming, that those of us who had 
led the first applause felt, perhaps looked, rather fool- 
ish. I have since suspected that Dr. Holmes, who 
always knew his audience, had kept back the real 
climax to lure us to our destruction." 187 
Dr. Cheever and Professor Dwight ought to be better 
informed than I am on this subject, therefore I hardly 
venture to say that I should think Dr. Holmes "in- 
clined " against the practice, at least the general prac- 
tice, of medicine by women. In 1871 (before the 
great marshalling of hosts and arguments, it is true) 
he wrote to Professor Arthur M. Edwards: "Accept 
my thanks for the pamphlet you have sent me, . . . 
and the interesting address of Miss Dr. Ward. I £o 
for women in women's diseases and midwifery, and 
am always glad to see a real expert, like yourself, 
helping them in his department." So likewise in A 
Mortal Antipathy he writes: "I am disposed to agree 
with your friend, that you will often spoil a good 
nurse to make a poor doctor. ... I am for giving 
women every chance for a good education, and if they 
think medicine is one of their proper callings, let them 
try it. I think they will find that they had better at 
least limit themselves to certain specialties, and always 
have an expert of the other sex to fall back upon. 
The trouble is that they are so impressible and imagi- 
native that they are at the mercy of all sorts of fancy 
systems," - with more, which I refrain from quoting, 
lest the women should take offence!1 
Literature never really weaned Holmes from the 
science of medicine, though in time it put a conclusive 
end to his practice as a physician. I think that it 
was by no means alone the salary which induced him 
to continue his lectures at the Medical School so 
long as he did; but that he would not sever the con- 
nection which kept him still a genuine member of that 
profession, which had won the love of his youth and 
still held the loyalty of his mature, even his declining 
LECTURES, MEDICAL AND LITERARY 
1 See, also, Aledical Essays, Riverside Ed., pp. 299, 317. 188 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
years. Pleasant evidence of the respect in which he 
held it, and the faith he had in its elevating influence, 
is furnished by his remark that "Goldsmith and even 
Smollett, both having studied and practised medicine, 
could not by any possibility have outraged all the 
natural feelings of delicacy and decency as Swift and 
Zola have outraged them." His brethren of the call- 
ing appreciated and returned his feeling, and always 
warmly and rightly counted him as one of their bro- 
therhood. Professor William Osler1 said: "He will 
always occupy a unique position in the affections of 
medical men. Not a practitioner, yet he retained for 
the greater part of his active life the most intimate 
connection with the profession. . . . The festivals at 
Epidaurus were never neglected by him; and as the 
most successful combination which the world has ever 
seen of the physician and the man of letters, he has 
for years sat amid the JEsculapians in the seat of 
honor." 
From 1847 to 1853 he was Dean of the Medical 
School. In 1852 he was Anniversary chairman at 
the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Medical 
Society. In 18G0 he was the orator at the annual 
meeting of the same society. 
During the early years of Holmes's married life the 
famous lecture-habit of the country, of New England 
and New York more especially, was in its prime and 
heyday. It is difficult for persons, who know that 
system only in its later development, to picture to 
themselves what it then was. Now some third-rate 
1 Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, - in 
some " Remarks " made before the Medical Society of that Uni* 
versity, October 15, 1894. LECTURES, MEDICAL AND LITERARY 
189 
person is "managed" about the country, not himself 
illustrious, but with an illustrated lecture, like an 
itinerant picture-book with simple text for good peo- 
ple not too much grown up. In those days, on the 
other hand, the best men of the time gave out their 
best thoughts upon the lyceum platform. Emerson 
tried his finest wisdom upon many audiences before 
he offered it in print; for many years James Rus- 
sell Lowell found his way to the minds of his coun- 
trymen through their ears not less than through their 
eyes; the scholarly eloquence of Wendell Phillips 
and the strenuous iconoclasm of Theodore Parker 
were familiar far and wide; Dr. Kane thrilled many 
a listening crowd with his tales of Arctic adventure 
before he printed his exciting volumes; even Thack- 
eray came from England to talk about the "Four 
Georges;" and in a lighter strain Alfred Bunn, the 
Englishman, with his reminiscences of the English 
stage, and Gilman, with his droll dissertations on 
Yankee humor, gave more entertainment if less in- 
struction than the graver talkers. These were a few, 
only; how long and varied a list will the old lecture- 
goers recall 1 Everybody went to the lectures in 
those days; they were fashionable as well as popular. 
Not a few of the more conservative citizens still looked 
askance upon the theatre, and entered it not at all or 
rarely; but the lecturer always found the benches 
before him full, and if he were a man of any note 
from whom really good things could be expected, his 
audience was a gathering of the men and women whom 
it was best worth while to address among all the 
community. The demand was not less throughout 
the smaller cities, the country towns, and even the vil- 
lages. Thus there was working an immense educa- 190 
tional machine, which produced great and valuable 
results. 
Among the lecturers Dr. Holmes was a favorite with 
the bureaus, and had no lack of engagements. Phy- 
sically he certainly lay under some disadvantages 
upon a first introduction; but these were quickly for- 
gotten. His voice was not good in sound, but it had 
much variety, was very expressive, and was skilfully 
controlled; his countenance responded with apt and 
lively change to each passing phase of thought; and 
his whole air, bearing, and presence were visibly per- 
meated by a quick attractive sympathy with the audi- 
ence, and with what he was saying to it. 
The most important work of this kind which he 
did was the delivery of a course of twelve lectures on 
the English poets, before the Lowell Institute. I 
remember these well; the hall was crowded with the 
best auditors that Boston could furnish, and the lec- 
turer was most cordially received. He ventured at 
once on the novel scheme of closing his lecture with 
some verses of his own, which were so kindly taken 
that he continued it, and afterwards he extended the 
idea to the Breakfast-Table Series. This sort of 
lecturing was all very well; for, after the legiti- 
mate labor of composition was over, he had only to 
walk comfortably round from Montgomery Place into 
Washington Street, and talk for an hour or two to 
the elite among his friends and neighbors, and receive 
their generous applause. But this came like an oasis 
amid the dreary waste of country lecturing. No one 
who tried that, in those days, is upon record as liking 
it. First there was the stifling super-heated railway 
car, devoid even of modern pretences at ventilation; 
next, the cold darkling drive, usually about the drearj 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 191 
sunset hour; then the chilly "best bedroom," per- 
chance tireless, or perchance heated with an air-tight 
stove. For sustenance, to fortify one's self against 
these ills, there was that dyspepsia-breeding meal 
called "tea," with its glutinous breadcakes, its viscous 
pastry, all its various awful sweetened impossibili- 
ties. Bad enough for any one, these discomforts were 
especially bad for Dr. Holmes; his sensitive con- 
stitution suffered from the meals; and his dreaded 
asthma, stimulated by the exposure, often kept him 
painfully awake a good part of the long and desolate 
night. James Russell Lowell spoke of this sort of 
thing, as he experienced it at the West, with some 
acerbity: "To be received at a bad inn by a solemn 
committee, in a room with a stove that smokes but 
not exhilarates, to have three cold fish tails laid in 
your hand to shake, to be carried to a cold lecture- 
room, to read a cold lecture to a cold audience, to be 
carried back to your smoke-side, paid, and the three 
fish tails again - well, it is not delightful exactly." 
In New England, the hospitality of some ambitious 
villager usually displaced the inn; nevertheless it 
wasn't pleasant. "Family men," said Dr. Holmes, 
"get dreadfully homesick. In the remote and bleak 
village the heart returns to the red blaze of the logs 
in one's fireplace at home. 
' There are his young barbarians all at play,' 
- if he owns any youthful savages. No, the world 
has a million roosts for a man, but only one nest." 
It was of her creator, of course, that the Autocrat's 
landlady said, that he generally came home from a 
lecturing1 excursion "with a cold in his head as bad 
as a horse distemper." 
LECTURES, MEDICAL AND LITERARY 192 
Then, too, the country audiences, though usually 
intelligent, were rarely either genial or congenial, and 
in time their "awful uniformity" begat a deadly 
weariness. "I have sometimes felt," the Doctor said, 
"as if I were a wandering spirit, and this great un- 
changing multi-vertebrate, 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!" There are several charming pages 
about this lecturing business in this sixth paper of 
The, Autocrat, of which these remarks are a part; but 
it is significant that, with the exception of these pas- 
sages, Holmes referred rarely and charily to his lec- 
turing experiences, though it was his wont otherwise 
to use freely all the incidents of his life. It is evi- 
dent that the reminiscences of the travelling and 
touring about the towns and villages had a flavor too 
disagreeable for toleration. Nevertheless, in spite of 
those sleepless nights, those dyspepsias and colds and 
aching joints, and although he might reasonably pre- 
fer "nateral death to puttin' himself out of the world 
by any such violent means as lecterin'," the work had 
to be done. For worse than any or all these ills was 
that old classic difficulty, with which he was afflicted, 
the urgens eg estas, which was epidemic in New Eng- 
land in those days, and could only be cured by very 
hard work; and though this "lecture-peddling," as 
he called it, "in competition with the cheapest itin- 
erants, with shilling concerts and negro - minstrel 
entertainments," was indeed "a hard business and 
a poorly paid one," yet one "could get a kind of liv- 
ing out of it if he had invitations enough." In this 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES LECTURES, MEDICAL AND LITERARY 
193 
point of finances Dr. Holmes was in the like condition 
with pretty much all his friends and neighbors; the 
few who were called rich were only less poor than the 
others, and all alike, rich gentlemen or poor gentle- 
men, took work for granted as the inevitable lot of 
man and entirely in accord with the highest preten- 
sions to gentility. Those who were lazy only worked 
a little less hard than the others. It is true that the 
lecturing part of Dr. Holmes's work, in addition to 
being hard, was disagreeable; and the pay certainly 
was meagre, - ridiculously meagre, by any modern 
standard. Still he had no right to consider, and did 
not consider, his lot an especially bad one in compar- 
ison with the average of his compeers. 
Here is a letter sketching his family matters at this 
time: - 
December 4, 1842. 
My dear Barnes, - I am sorry to have to say in 
reply to your kind invitations on behalf of the Com- 
mittee of the Lyceum, that I have felt obliged to 
decline all invitations to lecture during the present 
season, on account of my other occupations. If I 
had not made up my mind on this point, I should 
have [been] tempted to Portland by the desire to see 
an old friend and what would be to me a new city. 
I will not let my answer go without taking the op- 
portunity to give a rub at that old chain which was 
once bright enough, but which in the lapse of time 
has got a little rusted, as everything must that is not 
in daily use. Can you believe that it is almost twenty 
years since we took our strolls together beneath the 
trees, and dipped our slender limbs in the waters of 
TO PHINEAS BARNES. 194 
Andover? What a difference between the micro- 
scropic view of years at fifteen and the telescopic look 
of them at thirty! I believe you learned, when you 
were here, that there was a second edition of your old 
acquaintance, an o. w. h., who now numbers the 
goodly period of twenty months. I think, too, that 
you are more abundant in olive branches than myself 
■- if I remember your domestic record. I may, per- 
haps, come on an exploratory tour to your oriental 
regions some time or other, and ascertain for myself. 
When you were here, I believe I was living as a 
temporary bachelor, and so you only saw the worse 
half, or third rather, of my interior. The time has 
gone away very fast, and with the exception that my 
then rusticating companion is scribbling fearfully in 
a great book of visiting accounts at my side, every- 
thing goes on much as it did then. I am getting a 
little more practice as I grow older, but rather slowly, 
- taking rather more interest in my profession, - 
gradually depositing the turbid particles of juvenility, 
- not sitting up quite so late, - drinking, singing, 
smoking in a more subdued vein, but on the whole 
cheerful and comfortable. I am afraid you will not 
meet our friend Roby in your quarter of the globe 
very soon, for two reasons: one that he is sitting in 
a professional chair at Baltimore, - the other that he 
has in the calmest and quietest manner possible gone 
and engaged himself to a fine, rosy, buxom, and de- 
lightful young lady who will, I suspect, make him 
rather more stationary in his habits. 
So if you wish to know anything about me or mine, 
you must come and ask me, as the Spartans said -• 
or pretty near it. The great book is shut up, and 
the silk gown is put on, and the bonnet is forthcoming 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES LECTURES, MEDICAL AND LITERARY 
195 
for an evening sally to an aunt's of that name, and in 
order to avoid that most severe trial of woman's affec- 
tion, - ten minutes' delay after she is armed and 
equipped for a tea fight or other social struggle, - I 
shall bid you good-night with a thousand good wishes 
and kind recollections. 
When Dr. Holmes was married he bought a house 
in Montgomery Place, No. 8. But the shrine-hunter 
will now look for it to little purpose; for well did the 
Doctor say: "We Americans live in tents." January 
1, 1885, he wrote to Mrs. Kellogg: "Yesterday morn- 
ing I passed through Montgomery Place, and found 
workmen tearing out the inside of No. 8, where we 
lived for eighteen years, and where all my children 
were born. -Not a vestige is left to show where 
our old Cambridge house stood. -We must make our- 
selves new habitations - that is all; and carry our 
remembrances, associations, affections, all that makes 
home - under the new roof." Montgomery Place 
afterward became Bosworth Street, a purlieu not sa- 
vory, though much given over to eating-houses; it is 
now for a third time being revamped. 
From this house the Doctor moved to Charles 
Street, on the river-side, near Cambridge bridge. 
The house had a beautiful outlook over the estuary of 
the Charles to the range of hills which made the 
western horizon, and the Doctor greatly enjoyed the 
years spent here; he was in the heyday of his fame, 
and life seemed full of happiness. In time, however, 
never-ending "progress," the fell destroyer of all 
comfort in the United States, "improved" him out 
of this place also; and Charles Street became a noisy 
thoroughfare for business traffic. So in 1870 the 196 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
Doctor pulled up his tent-stakes again, and fled far 
down Beacon Street, still, however, clinging to the 
river-bank. In this third house he lived the rest of 
his days; for "improvement" was only threatening, 
not achieved, at the time of his death. He became 
much attached to this house, which was much larger 
and handsomer than its predecessors. He told, with 
glee, how the sun lay all day long in its front win- 
dows, and what a grand view he had from his library 
in the rear. He wrote to Motley: "We have really 
a charming house, and as I turn my eyes to the left 
from this paper I seem to look out on all creation, 
Bunker Hill, and the spires of Cambridge, and Mount 
Auburn, and the wide estuary commonly called Charles 
River, - we poor Bostonians come to think at last 
that there is nothing like it in the orbis terrarum. - 
I suppose it sounds, to one who is away, like the 
Marchioness with her orange-peel and water." 
It is an interesting circumstance that many long 
years before Dr. Holmes came to live in this house, 
its site was a small patch of dry land rising amid the 
waters of the Charles River estuary, which no one 
had then dreamed of "filling" and using for building 
purposes; and the Doctor in his early days used to 
look at the little island and say to himself that he 
should like to have a house on it. This reminiscence 
was one of the motives which led him to select this 
especial situation. 
Every one who saw Dr. Holmes in Boston would 
have had difficulty in imagining him as other than a 
city-denizen, so completely did he look and seem that 
character. Yet he almost indignantly repudiated the 
idea, as though an incapacity to enjoy country life 
indicated a shortcoming in character. He said that LECTURES, MEDICAL AND LITERARY 
197 
his city life was a necessity by reason of asthma, and 
the exactions of labor. For a while he owned a place 
at Pittsfield, to which he went in the spring of 1849, 
and where he passed the next seven summers. He 
wrote to Mr. Holker Abbott: " The place on which I 
lived during seven summers, 1849-1856, was in Pitts- 
field on the road leading to Lenox. The place con- 
tained 280 acres, and was the residue of a section six 
miles square bought of the State - or Province, more 
properly - by my great-grandfather, Jacob Wendell. 
The Province held it directly from the Indians. All 
of the present town of Pittsfield, except one thousand 
acres, was the property of my great-grandfather, 
whose deed used to hang in the entry of my house. 
It was dated in 1738." 
The Doctor constantly referred to his life at Pitts- 
field, not only in his letters but in his writings, and 
always with affection. He made many friends there, 
especially Mrs. Caroline L. Kellogg, whose pleasant 
letters of reminiscences cheered him in his old age, 
and called forth lively responses so long as he could 
write. The place bore the old name of Canoe Meadow. 
"From those windows at Canoe Meadow," he says in 
Elsie Venner, "among the mountains, we could see 
all summer long a lion rampant, a Shanghai chicken, 
and General Jackson on horseback, done by Nature 
in green leaves, each with a single tree." And in The 
Autocrat he speaks of "that home where seven blessed 
summers were passed, which stand in memory like the 
seven golden candlesticks in the beatific vision of the 
holy dreamer." In 1885 he wrote to Mrs. Kellogg: 
"When you meet any one who you think remembers 
me, tell them that I am loyal to the place where I 
passed seven blessed summers of my life, and that 198 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
the very stones of it are precious to me as those of 
Jerusalem to an ancient Hebrew." This letter to his 
mother gives a pleasant glimpse of the daily life: - 
TO MRS. ABIEL HOLMES. 
Pittsfield, August 17, 1849. 
My dear Mother, - I received a very pleasant 
and facetious letter from mine ancient brother John, 
full of right merrie quips and jollities, for the which 
he will please accept my best thanks and acknowledg- 
ments, with the request, in the words of the razor- 
strop man, for a few more of the same sort. Since I 
wrote you we have had a week of weather, which, if 
we were not interested greatly in the greenness of 
grass and clover, would have been hard to bear. But 
mark you - no east winds - and after a very gentle 
touch of dog-days it has come out clear and cool, the 
mountains sharply defined, and my lawn (that is to 
be) so amazingly restored, regenerated, and rejuve- 
nated, that my eyes can hardly believe the change. 
In the mean time we have been reading and doing 
indoor work. I work in the woods sometimes, for 
they are habitable in all weather, - and have even got 
so far as a quiet game of backgammon, in which it 
proves that the grey, etc., etc., is the better, etc., etc. 
To-day Amelia went out in the forenoon with the 
"kerridge," while I rode my little horse over to 
Lenox to see Mr. and Dr. Neil. Mr. 's 
place, which we propose to visit again soon in proper 
style, is one of the most beautiful spots I ever saw 
anywhere. I visited it some years ago when it was 
building, and it appeared to me perfect almost to a 
miracle. One of Mr. 's daughters - a great 
lover of the picturesque and beautiful - the celebrated LECTURES, MEDICAL AND LITERARY 
199 
Miss " ," having married a young slip of philoso- 
phy and poetry whose terrestrial name is , is 
about to build another house alongside of ; and 
Mrs. Butler - the tragedy queen herself - has se- 
lected another spot, on the margin of the same lake 
which he overlooks, as the seat of her future residence. 
All this is within an hour's ride of where I am, and 
many of the same beauties they come so far to seek 
are round me here in Canoe Meadow, with others 
peculiar to this place. So that I am contented enough 
with my own locality, though I can do homage to the 
marvellous charms of the more remote and secluded 
nook which they have chosen. . . . 
This letter to his sister also has pleasant references 
to the place: - 
8 Montgomery Place, October 16, 1849. 
My dear Ann, - It gave me more pleasure to 
find that you were pleased with my versicles than you 
can have had in reading them. I was all the more 
gratified because I liked them myself, and could not 
help thinking beforehand that others might also. 
They were written at one sitting, and I, who am 
apt to be a slow coach, have rarely done so much 
without a break or two in the work of composition. 
I cannot promise, but I hope we shall be able to 
run down to Salem in the course of a week or two. 
We shall be very glad, you may be sure, to see you 
all after so long an absence, which has been indeed 
singularly happy to us in everything but separation 
from our friends. I hope some time we shall see you 
at Pittsfield, where we have better appliances for hos- 
TO MRS. CHARLES W. UPHAM. 200 
pitality than in town, and where it takes a great deal 
less to make a visitor contented than in Boston. I 
must say it comes a little hard to take up the burden 
of work and obligation which has been so long laid 
down,-but here I am - the hills, the greenfields, 
the streams, the magnificent woods, all beyond the 
sunset, and my table covered with papers, my hand 
at this moment cramped with writing, and everything 
in bustling preparation for a new campaign of lectur- 
ing. Well, I have earned a rijrht to a share of labor 
by a long and glorious vacation of ease, and I mean 
to go at it as my ploughmen went at their patches the 
other day. 
I have a great many things to tell of country expe- 
rience and pleasures, which I can do better by word 
of mouth than on this scrap of paper, and so, till I 
see you, good-by, with many thanks for your praises 
and kindest wishes to all. 
In 1883 he wrote to John O. Sargent: "I am 
glad, my dear John, to know that you are taking your 
comfort in the midst of your own acres in my dear 
old Berkshire, where I once thought I should have a 
permanent summer home. I have never regretted 
my seven summers passed in Pittsfield, and never had 
the courage, though often asked, to visit the place 
since I left it. I have one particularly pleasant re- 
membrance about my place, - that I in a certain sense 
created it. The trees about are all, or almost all, of 
my planting, - many of them not more than a foot 
high from English nurseries, others transplanted by 
myself and my tenant. Look at them, as you pass 
my old place, and see how much better I have deserved 
the gratitude of posterity than the imbecile who only 
accomplished a single extra blade of grass." 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES LECTURES, MEDICAL AND LITERARY 
201 
And later still, to Mrs. Kellogg: - 
"A happy New Year, my dear Mrs. Kellogg, and 
as many such as you can count until you reach a 
hundred, and then begin again, if you like the planet 
well enough. 
"But how good you are to send me all those excel- 
lent and to me most interesting photographs! I de- 
light in recalling the old scenes in this way; changed 
as they are, I yet seem to be carried back to the broad 
street - East Street, down which I - we - used to 
drive on our way to the 'Four Corners ' and 'Canoe 
Meadow, ' as my mother told me they used to call our 
old farm. I wonder that Pittsfield is not a city by 
this time. It seems almost too bad to take away its 
charming rural characteristics, - but such a beauti- 
ful, healthful, central situation could not resist its 
destiny, and you must have a mayor, I suppose, by 
and by, and a common council, and a lot of aldermen. 
But you cannot lose the sight of Greylock, nor turn 
the course of the Housatonic. I can hardly believe 
that it is almost thirty years since I bade good-by to 
the old place, expecting to return the next season. 
We passed through the gate - under the maple which 
used to stand there, and is probably in its old place, 
took a look at the house, and the great pine that 
stood, and I hope stands, in its solitary beauty and 
grandeur,- rode on - passed the two bridges, reached 
the station - the old one, - I think you have a better 
since - and good-by, dear old town - well, that is 
the way." 
Probably the reason why the Doctor left Pittsfield 
is indicated by this extract from a letter published by 
Mrs. Fields in her article in the Century Magazine .• 
"But a country house, you will remember, has been 202 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
justly styled by Balzac une plaie ouverte. There is 
no end to the expenses it entails. I was very anx- 
ious to have a country retreat, and when my wife had 
a small legacy of about two thousand dollars a good 
many years ago, we thought we would put up a per- 
fectly plain shelter with that money on a beautiful 
piece of ground we owned in Pittsfield. Well, the 
architect promised to put the house up for that. But 
it cost just twice as much, to begin with; that was n't 
much ! Then we had to build a barn; then we 
wanted a horse and carryall and wagon; so one thing 
led to another, and it was too far away for me to look 
after it, and at length, after seven years, we sold it. 
I could n't bear to think of it or to speak of it for 
a long time. I loved the trees, and while our children 
were little it was a good place for them; but we had 
to sell it, and it was better in the end, although I felt 
lost without it for a great while." 
In 1870 Miss Harriet Putnam (now Mrs. II. J. 
Hayden, of New York), sent him an apple "stolen" 
from a tree which overhung the road in front of his 
old house, and he replied thus: - 
We owe, alas ! to woman's sin 
The woes with which we grapple ; - 
To think that all onr plagues came in 
For one poor stolen apple ! 
And still we love the darling thief 
Whose rosy fingers stole it; - 
Her weakness brought the world to grief, 
Her smiles alone console it I 
- I take the " stolen " fruit you leave, - 
(Forgive me, Maid and Madam,) 
It makes me dream that you are Eve, 
And wish that I were Adam ! The " Pine-Tree " at Pittsfield CHAPTER VIII 
THE ATLANTIC: THE AUTOCRAT 
Thus the years drifted along until only a couple 
more were required to bring Dr. Holmes to the sober- 
ing line of the half-century, to the " five-barred gate," 
as he called it. He wrote afterward of Dudley Ven- 
ner, that "he had entered that period which marks 
the decline of men who have ceased growing in know- 
ledge and strength: from forty to fifty a man must 
move upward, or the natural falling off in the vigor 
of life will carry him rapidly downward." He him- 
self was near the exit from the period which he thus 
described, and his name had scarcely been heard out- 
side of the New England corner. In Boston his friends 
knew him only as a clever man, a medical professor 
who lectured creditably, a poet whose lines were good 
enough to have been once or twice gathered into a 
volume, a shrewd humorist, a merry wit, delightful 
in the chance encounter, not to be surpassed at the 
dinner-table, and of much usefulness upon so-called 
"occasions." It was a sufficiently pleasant and sat- 
isfactory life, from day to day and year to year, if 
one had no especial ambition; and, for this matter, 
nothing indicates that Dr. Holmes had been disturbed 
in his contentment by any notion that he had in him 
unexploited value. Yet the discovery was about to 
be made, as unexpectedly to himself and others as 
when the ordinary pasture is suddenly discovered to 
be pregnant with gold. 204 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
The country was without a first-rate, purely literary 
magazine. Putnam's Magazine, which by its merit 
had deserved to live and prosper, had unexplainably 
died. Now the publishing firm of Phillips, Sampson 
& Co., established in Winter Street in Boston, un- 
discouraged by the fate of this predecessor, gallantly 
resolved to renew the experiment, and invited James 
Russell Lowell to act as editor. Ue accepted, but 
" made it a condition precedent " that Dr. Holmes 
should be " the first contributor to be engaged."1 
" I," said the Doctor long afterward, " who felt myself 
outside of the charmed circle drawn around the scholars 
and poets of Cambridge and Concord, having given 
myself to other studies and duties, wondered somewhat 
when Mr. Lowell insisted upon my becoming a con- 
tributor." "I looked at the old Portfolio, and said 
to myself, ' Too late! too late. This tarnished gold 
will never brighten, these battered covers will stand 
no more wear and tear; close them, and leave them 
to the spider and the bookworm.' " But Lowell, with 
shrewd insight, pertinaciously applied a friendly pres- 
sure, and Holmes yielded. As he afterward said: 
Lowell "woke me from a kind of literary lethargy 
in which I was half slumbering, to call me to active 
service." His usefulness began at once, for he chris- 
tened the unborn babe; and the name of The Atlan- 
tic, since so famous, was his suggestion. That he 
engaged thus early in this undertaking was most for- 
tunate, not only for himself and for the reading world, 
but for the enterprise, which had been projected in 
a most unpropitious time, - the disastrous year of 
1857. Only once before, in 1837, had the country 
1 Letter to Holmes, December, 28, 1884. Lowell's Letters, 
ii. 292. THE ATLANTIC .' THE AUTOCRAT 
205 
been tried by such financial ruin. Even the twenty- 
five-cent piece, which was the price of a single number 
of rhe new magazine, was now jealously regarded by 
many a one, who had heretofore spent his dollars 
carelessly. That the craft launched into such stress 
of weather survived the storm was by many attributed 
to the attraction of Holmes's spirited and witty pa- 
pers, which brought cheer and liveliness to worn 
minds sadly in need of such wholesome influences. 
Howells well said that Dr. Holmes " not named, but 
made, The Atlantic." 
The nom de plume, under which the new writer 
appeared, was happily chosen. The Autocrat of 
the Breakfast- Table, now for more than a generation 
a household word, was odd enough to attract curiosity 
when it first struck upon the public ear. "L'Auto- 
crate a la table du dejeuner, titre bizarre! " exclaimed 
a puzzled Frenchman, writing in a land where they 
have no breakfast-tables. And it was a joke, which 
may have been also a truth, that "the proprietor of 
a well-known religious weekly " assumed it to be a 
cookery-book. But the writers for the religious pa- 
pers depreciated it from the start, and indicated an 
opinion that its writer might himself in the dread 
hereafter become the subject of cookery. 
Yet though the Autocrat seemed a new birth, he 
was in fact already past his majority. "I was just 
going to say, when I was interrupted," he now be- 
gan. The interruption had lasted somewhat more 
than quarter of a century; for in the New England 
Magazine, which lived briefly from 1831 to 1835, 
Dr. Holmes had published two papers under this same 
name and of much this same plan, - papers which 
Jie would never afterward permit to be reprinted. Now, 206 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
he said, "the recollection of these crude products of 
his uncombed literary boyhood suggested the thought 
that it would be a curious experiment to shake the 
same bough again, and see if the ripe fruit were better 
or worse than the early windfalls." 
It is not worth while to discourse in the vein of 
the literary critic concerning The, Autocrat; if all the 
discussions which have been written concerning the 
book should be gathered together, they would make 
another volume as large as itself, and anything which 
can be said now can be only commonplace repetition. 
To speak of the "epigrammatic wisdom and tender 
fancies of The Autocrat" would be quotation; to 
dwell upon the abundance and the rare originality, the 
wit, beauty, and infinite variety of its similes, would 
be like calling; attention to the logic of Plato or the 
dramatic gift of Shakespeare. George William Cur- 
tis said, with his wonted skill: "The index of The 
Autocrat is in itself a unique work. It reveals the 
whimsical discursiveness of the book, the restless 
hovering of that brilliant talk over every topic, fancy, 
feeling, fact; a humming-bird sipping the one hon- 
eyed drop from every flower, or a huma, to use its 
own droll and capital symbol of the lyceum-lecturer, 
the bird that never lights. There are few books that 
leave more distinctly the impression of a mind teem- 
ing with riches of many kinds. It is, in the Yankee 
phrase, thoroughly wide-awake. There is no languor, 
and it permits none in the reader, who must move 
along the page warily, lest in the gay profusion of the 
grove, unwittingly defrauding himself of delight, he 
miss some flower half-hidden, some gem chance- 
dropped, some darting bird." After all the literary 
dissectors had had and used their chance, as best they THE ATLANTIC : THE AUTOCRAT 
207 
could, Dr. Holmes himself said, as usual, the best 
thing: "This series of papers was not the result of 
an express premeditation, but was, as I may say, 
dipped from the ntnning stream of my thoughts." 
Let it not, however, be supposed that the admira- 
tion for the essays of the Autocrat was a stream which 
broke against no stone, encountered no snags. The 
critics, that strange class of men who never cease from 
pronouncing opinions, wholly undiscouraged by the 
fact that in a large percentage of cases they prove to 
be wrong, suggested various reasons for holding the 
new writer cheap. Some cried out that he was un- 
dignified; others would have it that he was nothing 
more than an "inordinate egotist;" another didn't 
think that his puns were very good; another was 
offended at his use of slang; and some one suggested 
that the poems, which were scattered among the 
pages, though brilliant, "showed as ill as diamonds 
among the spangles of the court fool."1 But after 
all, the critic is only the mosquito of the literary 
world, he may sting an author into momentary dis- 
comfort, but he cannot kill a book. And by the way 
it is pleasant to think that Dr. Holmes, though often 
thereto solicited, as the gentlemen of the law like to 
express it, obstinately refused to become a critic and 
reviewer. He said that he disliked such work. He 
did, indeed, review The Light of Asia, but his paper 
consisted wholly of sentences of praise and quotations 
from the poem; and if he did other work of the kind 
it has escaped me. Perhaps in criticism he encoun- 
tered the same difficulty which had interfered with 
1 See the article by Francis H. Underwood, writing as a good 
witness from his own knowledge, in Scribner's Illustrated Mag- 
azine, May, 1879, vol xviii. No. 1, p. 121. 208 
his professional practice, - an antipathy to cutting up 
people. 
The majority vote has long ago established it that 
The, Autocrat is the best of Dr. Holmes's prose work. 
It is somewhat uneven; the two or three numbers 
which followed the brilliant opening one were hardly 
equal to it; the writer seemed not quite settled to his 
new work; but immediately thereafter he caught the 
pace again and held it steadily to the finish. It is 
probably true that the best things in The Autocrat are 
the best things that Holmes ever wrote. Yet it is 
difficult to judge accurately in such a matter. When 
a writer makes a genuinely new departure in litera- 
ture, gives the world something which, however it 
may be compared in any one or another single point 
to something which has gone before, yet is as a whole 
original, the atmosphere of freshness and piquancy 
will seem always thereafter to cling around it, so that 
a reader will fancy that he would single it out as the 
first-born of genius even if he were ignorant of the 
chronology. 
One thing Dr. Holmes's neighbors could allege 
with pride and with truth: The book could have 
been written only in New England, and by a New 
Englander. The audience which was present to the 
mind's eye of the writer, whom instinctively he ad- 
dressed, was made up from the people whom he met 
daily in the streets of the town. The flavor was as 
local, as pungent, as unmistakable, as that of a cran- 
berry from the best bog on Cape Cod. It was not 
even "American," in any possible meaning of that 
most vague and perplexing of national adjectives; it 
belonged to the little northeastern corner of "Amer- 
ica; " and was almost as local as the "pudding-stone v 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES THE ATLANTIC : THE AUTOCRAT 
209 
of that neighborhood, which had once been the topic 
of some of the Doctor's lively stanzas.1 It is said! 
and litera scripta manet, - although that dread word 
"provincial" fills the air with its damning sound. I 
know that some excellent men have been in a great 
taking of late about this matter of provincialism; they 
say that the people of the United States were "pro- 
vincial " until somewhere about the time that Rich- 
mond fell and Lee surrendered, - events which, it 
would seem, wrought a change in this particular and 
eliminated the unpleasant quality; yet they are so 
worried lest this elimination should escape the notice 
of Europe, nay even of the very people of this coun- 
try, that they cannot open their mouths or take their 
pens in hand, without proclaiming the glad tidings of 
our emancipation with that surplusage of protestation 
which is always so disturbing. Was, then, Dr. 
Holmes indeed "provincial"? He was so in precisely 
the same way in which - let us say, for example - 
Sir Walter Scott was so. In fact, he was racial. 
When the first settlers came to Massachusetts, they 
were, as everybody knows, the Lord's " peculiar peo- 
ple," and tolerably, or intolerably, peculiar in worldly 
ways also. During the many generations which suc- 
ceeded, they lived in much isolation; immigrants 
rarely invaded the uninviting region; it is true that 
the Irish invasion had set in before Dr. Holmes began 
to write; but at that time these new-comers had been 
1 An Englishman, though so far removed from the locus, got 
an inkling of this, ami wrote in the Spectator: " The Auto- 
crat of the Breakfast-Table, besides his perfectly marvellous 
insight into the good side of his countrymen - not the Ameri- 
cans, understand, but the born New Englanders-had in him, 
in a full degree, the power of expressing their drift, of revealing 
to themselves the line upon which their minds are travelling." 210 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
chiefly laborers and servants; their gifts in the way 
of statesmanship were not suspected, and the condi- 
tion of Hibernocracy was not yet foreseen. All this 
time the descendants of the Puritans had had New 
England to themselves, had been free to develop along 
such lines as their idiosyncrasies suggested, and had 
availed themselves of the opportunity. If they were 
a little less picturesquely singular at the end of two 
centuries, if they had lost some traits which were dan- 
gerously near to the grotesque, they were not the less 
individual. In religion and in thought, in a philoso- 
phy of life, in their views of what men should strive 
to do and to be, they had moved very independently 
according to views of a quite local scope, working out 
theories and principles which were all their own. 
Morally and intellectually they were easily to be dif- 
ferentiated from all other communities of the world; 
they were even supposed to have developed a new 
physical type; they were tolerably homogeneous; they 
had for many generations kept for themselves a con- 
siderable territory. Not ethnologically or in a scien- 
tific sense of the word, of course, but for all social, 
moral, and intellectual purposes they had thus become 
a race. Dr. Holmes now appeared as one of their 
best exponents. He was a New Englander from the 
central thread of his marrow to his outermost rind; 
he could have made himself nothing else; he knew 
this, and accepted it not as a limitation, but with a 
just pleasure, and sense of power. He believed that 
it was worth while - that it could fill any reasonable 
ambition - to give expression to New England, the 
place and the people. They were in him and he in 
them. He has had co-laborers rather than competi- 
tors in the same field, a few of whom have done truth- 211 
ful and vivid work. The Autocrat is not a picture 
of New Englandism; it is an actual piece of New 
England, a sample cut solidly out of the original 
body. Elsie Venner and The Guardian Angel are 
different in this respect: they contain pictures; they 
are more like the work of other writers distinguished 
in arraying the like scenery and dramatis personae. 
Such, as it seems to me, was Dr. Holmes's real lit- 
erary relationship to mankind; he certainly was not 
cosmopolitan - fortunately, for after Shakespeare has 
been excepted,what creative genius in fiction, who has 
been cosmopolitan, has really made himself a place in 
the hearts of mankind? Some critic will perhaps reel 
off half-a-dozen names of writers who seem to him to 
contradict this position; but still I believe that to be 
cosmopolitan in the literature of fiction is perilous. 
A writer in The Atlantic seems to agree with this 
view, saying that Holmes is "another witness, if one 
were needed, to the truth, that identification with a 
locality is a surer passport to immortality than cos- 
mopolitanism is." 
If Dr. Holmes was not even national, it is probably 
because there was such a lack of moral, intellectual, 
and social solidarity in the United States that the 
quality of nationality was not reasonably within 
reach; the South, the West, New England, the mid- 
dle seaboard States, differed too widely for any one 
person to give expression to them all in the manner 
in which Dr. Holmes gave expression to one of these 
four quarters; for it would, of course, have been im- 
possible to do this by bringing together characters 
from different neighborhoods, like specimens in a mu- 
seum. So it may be said that Dr. Holmes's function 
in literature was to present New England to the rest 
THE ATLANTIC: THE AUTOCRAT 212 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
of the world in his own day, and to all the world in 
future days. He did it admirably, so as to leave 
nothing to be desired. So far as New England was 
worth presenting and preserving, his work merits cor- 
responding eulogy. 
In this same connection a word may be given to, or 
wasted upon, sundry persons who have busied them- 
selves in writing about Dr. Holmes, apparently with 
little other purpose than to maintain that he was like 
somebody else. This began as soon as The Autocrat 
had fairly made his success. There are those who, 
whenever any one in the United States does anything 
noteworthy, find out and publish that he is " an Ameri- 
can somebody-or-other." For these people, Cooper 
has been "an American Scott," Bryant, "an Ameri- 
can Wordsworth," and so on; every American is 
some European, and is expected to accept the pseudo- 
nym as a compliment. So at once the friendly critics 
began to say that Dr. Holmes was "an American 
Goldsmith," and regarded the likeness as exceedingly 
striking, because Goldsmith once studied medicine in 
a perfunctory sort of way. Later on, when this com- 
parison became stale, some one remembered that 
charming old physician Sir Thomas Browne, who was 
then forced to do service for some time. By degrees 
the list was extended; I cannot pretend to remember 
it in full, but a small percentage includes Burton, 
Addison, Steele, Sterne, Dr. Johnson, Smollett, Dr. 
Brown, Father Prout, Praed, Hood, Sydney Smith, 
Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Cobbett, Dryden, Pope, Moore, 
Wilson, Horace Walpole, Gay, Bogers, Thackeray, 
Montaigne, Goethe, Lamb, Coleridge, even Renan, 
and - may it be believed! - one writer has discovered 
a resemblance to Macaulay! One would think that Dr. Holmes was, in modern literature, what croute- 
au-pbt is in a French peasant's menage, -scraps of 
everything boiled together. Could one who had so 
many prototypes have furnished anything at first 
hand? Yet one of the few sentences worth remem- 
bering, which the critics have written, was this: that 
Dr. Holmes "was in no sense a writer inspired by 
his culture." The unknown newspaper writer who 
said this expressed the truth very cleverly. If these 
suggested likenesses amuse any one, they are for the 
most part as harmless as they usually are absurd; and 
yet it does excite a certain amount of indignation to 
see the fair reputation for individuality, which is as 
much an author's property as his hat or his coat, 
thus whittled away, and pared off until there seems 
little left of that which nevertheless we all know to 
be a real thing and fact. Nevertheless, while no one 
of the multitudes of comparisons which I have read 
ever struck me as having the slightest value, I must 
come under my own ban, and confess that one day, 
reading what Emerson said of Montaigne (after I had 
passed the first half-dozen words), the thought of Dr. 
Holmes at once arose in my mind: " There have been 
men with deeper insight, but, one would say, never 
a man with such abundance of thought; he is never 
dull, never insincere, and has the genius to make the 
reader care for all that he cares for. The sincerity 
and marrow of the man reaches to his sentences. I 
know not anywhere the book that seems less written. 
It is the language of conversation transferred to a 
book. Cut these words, and they would bleed; they 
are vascular and alive. Montaigne talks with shrewd- 
ness; knows the world and books and himself, and 
uses the positive degree," - with more almost equally 
THE ATLANTIC ! THE AUTOCRAT 
213 214 
applicable. In spite, however, of the fact that all 
this, which is said of Montaigne, might be said of 
Holmes, if any one says that Holmes is "an Ameri- 
can Montaigne," he must be contradicted, absolutely. 
Holmes was Holmes ! 
In speaking of Dr. Holmes's individuality it may 
be worth while, in passing, to remark upon his liter- 
ary solitude. He has told us that, when The Atlan- 
tic was founded, he felt himself " outside the charmed 
circle drawn around the scholars and poets of Cam- 
bridge and Concord." In fact, he never in any part 
of his career allied himself with any school, and never 
had any comrades pledged, by fellowship in aim or 
purpose, to sustain and praise him. As has been re- 
marked (by George William Curtis, if my memory is 
correct), the waves of abolition and transcendentalism, 
which for a time swept through the land, did not 
carry him along with their tide. Neither had he fol- 
lowers or imitators. To a degree which was singu- 
lar, considering the somewhat peculiar surroundings, 
habits, and influences of the time, he stood by him- 
self. Thus, whatever of success and commendation 
he achieved was genuine and all his own. No claque 
applauded him; no band of fellow-thinkers proclaimed 
and exaggerated his merits and demanded that he 
should be worshipped as the preacher of new truths. 
All that came to him was of his own unaided winning. 
Dr. Holmes's New-Englandism, as the scope and 
field of his genius, is of course an entirely different 
thing from his Bostonianism, and yet the thought of 
the former naturally calls up also the latter. In times 
past Boston has been a city which has stimulated the 
affection and the pride of New Englanders, perhaps 
even more strongly than Edinburgh used to inspire 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES THE ATLANTIC : THE AUTOCRAT 
215 
the like sentiments in Scotchmen. Off in a corner, 
"side-tracked," out of the route of travel, as she is, 
the old town has not only filled the hearts, but has 
even satisfied the aspirations of her citizens. Whether 
she will continue to excite such loyalty now that her 
children are no longer allowed to have her to them- 
selves, but must be diluted or swamped by the swell- 
ing current of dregs and sediment setting thither from 
those trans-Atlantic regions which certain Americans 
always speak of as "effete monarchies" and "worn- 
out civilizations," though all the while welcoming 
their worst scourings, is a question which the Bosto- 
nian would rather shun than answer. Dr. Holmes, 
contemplating this unsavory foreign flood in his later 
days, and writing as an " inveterately rooted Ameri- 
can of the Bostonian variety," expressed his "hope 
that the exchanges of emigrants and re-migrants will 
be much more evenly balanced by and by than at 
present." Happily during most of his lifetime he was 
spared this painful spectacle. The good old town had 
its homogeneous population of pure-blooded Yankees, 
whom he understood, and whose daily haunts he 
dearly loved. "I have bored this ancient city through 
and through in my daily travels," he said, "until I 
know it as an old inhabitant of a Cheshire knows his 
cheese." Of course the Autocrat's boarding-house 
was in Boston, and it is pleasant to see that, little as 
any of the local names and associations meant to the 
rest of the world, Dr. Holmes found them quite good 
enough for his use. Boston Common is the favorite 
scene in his drama. The school-mistress takes the 
"Long path" there. Hard by was the Great Elm, 
under which other lovers lingered. Nay, the loyal 
gentleman even writes of that small pool - so small 216 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
that it has thus far escaped the national mania for 
vast names, and is still "the Frog Pond" - as if he 
were talking of the famous Serpentine in the heart of 
the world's great capital. He recalls the days "when 
there were frogs in it, and the folks used to come 
down from the tents on 'lection and Independence 
days with their pails to get water to make egg-pop 
with." Over it glittered the dome of that State 
House, now tottering in decay and death, but which, 
for Dr. Holmes, was ever " the centre of his little uni- 
verse." He creates "Little Boston" for the express 
purpose of saying through him, as the Greek actors 
through their masks, in a certain exaggerated or ex- 
travagant way, things which he will utter, but which 
can only be wisely said in this manner. Thus the 
emphatic little man exclaims: - 
"A new race, and a whole new world for the new- 
born human soul to work in! And Boston is the 
brain of it, and has been any time these hundred 
years! That's all I claim for Boston,-that it is 
the thinking centre of the continent, and therefore of 
the planet." 
"It's a slow business, this of getting the ark 
launched. ... I love to hear the workmen knocking 
at the old blocks of tradition, and making the ways 
smooth with the oil of the Good Samaritan. I don't 
know, sir, - but I do think she stirs a little, - I do 
believe she slides; and when I think of what a work 
that is for the dear old three-breasted1 mother of 
American liberty, I would not take all the glory of 
all the greatest cities in the world for my birthright 
in the soil of little Boston! " 
1 The unfortunate persons who do not know Boston may be 
told that the city is, or was, built upon three hills. THE ATLANTIC .' THE AUTOCRAT 
217 
Yet in spite of all his supreme satisfaction in Bos- 
ton, it is not to be supposed, and it is not true, that 
Dr. Holmes resigned himself altogether willingly to 
such an out-of-the-way abiding-place for a lifetime, 
without occasional painful twinges at the thought of 
the great world without, of which he had had no 
glimpse since his youth, and could now know only by 
hearsay. He was not so narrow-minded as that I 
More than once in his letters to Motley and to Lowell 
he refers, not bitterly, but with something of regret 
and humility in his tone, to his own restricted "pro- 
vincial" career and surroundings as compared with 
what they were doing and enjoying in those brilliant 
capitals, where all that was best in the world seemed 
to be brought together. Doubtless he felt that he 
too could win admiration in London society, and 
could drink deep - and with how great relish I - of 
its fascinations. "I have lived so long stationary," 
he wrote one day to Motley, "that I have become in- 
tensely local, and doubtless in many ways narrow. 
I should like to breathe the air of the great outer 
world for a while, but I am so sure to suffer from 
asthmatic trouble, if I trust myself in strange places, 
that I consider myself as a kind of prisoner for life, 
and am very thankful that my condemned cell is so 
much to my liking. There are some valuable quali- 
ties about an old provincial friend like me, to a cos- 
mopolitan like yourself. He keeps the home flavor, 
a whiff of which from his garments is now and then 
as pleasant, I am willing to believe, as the scent of 
the lavender in which fair linen has been laid away in 
old bureau drawers. It is not the fragrance of the 
garden, but there is something which reaches the 
memory in it and sets us thinking of seasons that are 218 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
dead and gone, and what they carried away with 
them." 
To Miss Robins, a friend of his daughter, he vigor- 
ously said one day, when he was over seventy-five 
years old, that he should like to live another life, 
[not this same life over again, but another life] of 
equal length, and in it to do the things which he had 
not done in this one; among these things he espe- 
cially spoke of travel. "I don't want to leave the 
world," he said, "before I have seen it." It was 
somewhere near the same time that he wrote: " If in 
a future state there shall be vacations in which we 
may have liberty to revisit our old home, ... I 
think one of the first places I should go to, after my 
birthplace, the old gambrel-roofed house, - the place 
where it stood, rather, - would be that mighty, awe- 
inspiring river," the Nile. 
Yet though such disappointments occasionally made 
the Doctor grave, they never made him discontented. 
He stayed in his out-of-the-world home, hearing 
rather than seeing the great mad torrent of life rush- 
ing and swirling by through the nations, and he re- 
mained quite cheerful, partly because it was his tem- 
perament always to be so, partly because he had such 
a multiplicity of interests that discontent could find 
no chink to force an entrance amid his occupied 
hours. No man, I believe, ever so refrained from 
a murmur at any part of his lot in life as did Dr. 
Holmes. 
Having launched his barque upon The Atlantic, 
and achieved so brilliant a trial trip thereon, Dr. 
Holmes never afterward allowed himself to be lured 
to tempting ventures upon strange waters. Profes- 219 
sional papers of course floated towards professional 
publications; and I remember that he yielded to the 
teasing persistence of kinship and friendship suffi- 
ciently to contribute two or three articles to The Inter- 
national Review, when Henry Cabot Lodge and I 
were trying in vain to keep that very heavy craft 
afloat. When The Atlantic went from the hands of 
its projectors (whose business career was not prosper- 
ous) into the control of Ticknor & Fields, who had 
formerly been Dr. Holmes's publishers, at that " Old 
Corner Bookstore " which has been famous in Boston 
annals, he stayed with the magazine, - part of its 
" tackle, apparel, and furniture," in the phrase of the 
admiralty courts. The publishers of the magazine 
were always his publishers, and his connection with 
the successive firms remained ever cordial. Relations 
so long-maintained, so exclusive, and so friendly are 
not of such frequency between author and publisher 
that they do not deserve notice. Mr. Fields was for 
many years a next-door neighbor of Dr. Holmes, and 
proximity and community of interests built up a con- 
siderable intimacy between them. Dr. Holmes placed 
great reliance upon the judgment of Mr. Fields, who 
was well known to have rare skill in his calling. 
Merely as a trifling example, here is one of the Doc- 
tor's notes, written to Mr. Fields : - 
164 Charles Street, February 1, 1870. 
My dear Mr. Fields, - I send this letter to you 
immediately on its receipt, because you are my best, 
I may say my only literary adviser. 
You have now plenty of young blood for The At- 
lantic, and it is a question with me whether others 
cannot do better for you than I can. 
THE ATLANTIC : THE AUTOCRAT 220 
I do not at this moment wish to undertake any new 
continuous labor, but my ambitions are not quite ex- 
tinguished, and I love to cherish the idea that I may 
at some future time - not very remote, of course - 
make one or two more literary ventures. 
My preference, I do not hesitate to say, is for The 
Atlantic. But if you think it might be worth my 
while to try a different audience one of these days - 
that is, if I could make a good thing of it - I should 
listen to your advice. 
At any rate, I want a word or two from you with 
reference to this and any similar proposals. 
Naturally Mr. Fields did not think it desirable that 
his contributor, who probably upon a purely mercan- 
tile scale of value stood at the top of The A tlantic's 
roll-call, should "try a different audience." There- 
fore somewhat later on in the same year came this: - 
164 Charles Street, August 18, 1870. 
My dear Mr. Fields,-I am just beginning to 
clear the decks for autumn action. I think we had 
better talk the matter over any evening that you will 
appoint, either at youi' house or mine - any time 
after eight or half past eight, - inasmuch as we sit 
an hour or so after tea at the west window to enjoy 
the recollection of sunset, - which is premature now- 
adays, - and dig up the roots of remembrances that 
flowered and went to seed in the old summers and 
autumns. 
Won't you come in any evening it suits you, and 
talk me into a fine frenzy of ambition and composi- 
tion ? 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 221 
The connection continued unbroken, so far as was 
possible through some changes of firm make-up, and 
when Houghton, Mifflin & Co. emerged into ultimate 
and permanent occupancy, it was reestablished with 
them and endured to the day of the Doctor's death, 
so that one of his last visits, if not actually the last, 
was made to the parlors of these publishers. In 1885 
he manifested the closeness and sincerity of his inter- 
est in their affairs by interceding thus in their behalf 
with Mr. Lowell: - 
THE ATLANTIC : THE AUTOCRAT 
October 7,1885.. 
My dear James, - Calling on Mr. Houghton this 
morning on business of my own, he expressed the 
strongest wish that you could be induced to write for 
The Atlantic. I told him that I supposed you had 
received, or would receive, liberal offers from the New 
York periodicals. He does not want to bid against 
other publishers ; but, to use his own language, it 
would not be money that would stand in the way of 
your writing for The Atlantic. How much he or 
others would pay you I do not know, but I do know 
that Mr. Houghton has treated me very liberally, that 
he is an exact man of business, that he takes a pride 
in The Atlantic, which I suppose in a literary point 
of view is recognized as the first of the monthlies, 
and that he is very anxious to see you again in the 
pages of the old magazine you launched so long ago. 
I represent his wishes, and I need not say my own. 
You know your own value as an article of commerce 
- forgive me, I mean you know what the market will 
pay you for your writings, and of course must consult 
your own interests as well as your natural predilec- 
TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 222 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
tions in choosing a publisher. Other things being 
equal, you might perhaps prefer to publish in Boston, 
and add to the prestige of the city and the Univer- 
sity. But it is not for me to strike the balance. Mr. 
Houghton did not ask me to write to you, - in a very 
hesitating way he said he would like to have me speak 
to you about it, seeming to doubt if I should be will- 
ing to do it. I told him I should write, which seemed 
to please him, and which cannot hurt you in any way, 
as it does not oblige you to answer this letter or take 
any special notice of its suggestions. 
Only in making your plans please remember that 
we have a first-class publisher here in Boston, whose 
proposals may prove worth your consideration. Please 
lay this note by among theyhiVs pour servir in deter- 
mining where you will send your literary fruits to 
market. 
In June, 1890, when upwards of eighty years old, 
he showed his spirit and vigor by suggesting to Mr. 
Houghton that he should like to "enter into a new 
written engagement for the next five years, or such 
portion of that time as I may live." In this letter he 
speaks of their business relations as having "always 
been so satisfactorily arranged," and goes on to 
say: - 
"I have written very briefly, simply, and frankly 
to you, having entire confidence in your candor and 
always kind consideration of my interests, where they 
are involved with your own. You have been my pub- 
lisher for a long time, and I do not wish to listen to 
any outside temptations, even when they come in so 
attractive a form as that of The Forum. My nature 
is a very loyal one, and (in Prior's words): - 223 
' I hold it both a shame and sin 
To quit the good old Angel inn.' 
" Please think my letter over and write to me at your 
convenience." 
These words lead to a reflection: that, apart from 
inferences as to the temper and character of the par- 
ties who so long dealt amicably together, the peaceful 
preservation of this sort of literary and publishing 
partnership was an indication of Dr. Holmes's sagacity 
in business affairs. There used to be a theory among 
his friends of the down-town regions that he was an 
absurdly helpless gentleman in the practical depart- 
ment of life, especially in what they vaguely but im- 
pressively called "money matters." It was altogether 
a mistake. He had a shrewd, Yankee capacity and 
a soundness of judgment for which he never received 
credit, chiefly because he never concerned himself 
with the prices of stocks and bonds, or the prospects 
of mills and railroads. Yet it was noticeable that he 
was never duped in such matters, and if he did not 
always know the best investment, he knew and se- 
lected the man who was best able to inform him con- 
cerning it. So in this matter of publishing his books, 
he had the good sense to avoid that jealous and quar- 
relling habit of authors, which leads them so often to 
the flattering fancy that their publishers are growing 
rich on the product of their brains, while they them- 
selves are put off with a scanty paring of their just 
rewards. It was sound worldly, or practical, wisdom 
which made him believe, and consistently act on the 
belief, that in the long run he could do better by 
keeping the interests of the publishers and himself 
permanently united, than he could do by squabbling 
THE ATLANTIC : THE AUTOCRAT 224 
about payments or copyrights, by seeking competitive 
bids, and splitting up his allegiance, so that no one 
firm should have that sense of loyalty, good-feeling, 
and a common interest, which means more in business 
than is sometimes supposed. 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES CHAPTER IX 
POETRY: THE SATURDAY CLUB: THE PROFESSOR: 
THE POET 
Before the Autocrat's second advent, Dr. Holmes, 
in his literary character, was known only as a writer 
of poetry; thereafter he was much better known as a 
writer of prose; and, indeed, he himself seemed to 
make his poems subsidiary by scattering them through 
the papers of the Breakfast-Table Series. It was in 
the fourth paper of The, Autocrat that "The Cham- 
bered Nautilus" appeared, - "booked for immortal- 
ity," said Whittier when he read it. The author 
himself and the critics are agreed that it is the best 
poetry that he ever wrote. It was his highest notch, 
his "record," as the sporting fraternity would express 
it; and the sporting fraternity understands distinctly, 
through long experience, that the only way to measure 
competitors is by their respective "records; " averages 
cannot be so accurately established. 
Once, being asked whether he derived more satis- 
faction from having written his "Essay on Puerperal 
Fever," which had saved so many lives, or from having 
written the lyric which had given pleasure to so many 
thousands, Dr. Holmes replied: - 
"I think I will not answer the question you put 
me. I think oftenest of ' The Chambered Nautilus,' 
which is a favorite poem of mine, though I wrote it 
myself. The essay only comes up at long intervals. 226 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
The poem repeats itself in my memory, and is very 
often spoken of by my correspondents in terms of 
more than ordinary praise. I had a savage pleasure, 
I confess, in handling those two professors, - learned 
men both of them, skilful experts; but babies, as it 
seemed to me, in their capacity of reasoning and ar- 
guing. But in writing the poem I was filled with a 
better feeling - the highest state of mental exaltation 
and the most crystalline clairvoyance, as it seemed to 
me, that had ever been granted to me - I mean that 
lucid vision of one's thought, and of all forms of ex- 
pression which will be at once precise and musical, 
which is the poet's special gift, however large or 
small in amount or value. There is more selfish 
pleasure to be had out of the poem - perhaps a nobler 
satisfaction from the life-saving labor." 
Was, then, Whittier right, and was "The Cham- 
bered Nautilus," and of course Dr. Holmes with it, 
really starting on so long a journey into futurity? 
Moreover, is it always by his best verses that a poet 
reaches that moderately remote time which is, of 
course, intended by the word "immortality," a word 
inconveniently expressive in its accurate sense? This 
may be doubted. Is some of a man's work to be 
found in all the "Selections," all the "Anthologies"? 
Do the school-children learn his verses, and is it safe 
to quote them in a familiar way to the adult promis- 
cuous public? These are pertinent queries, upon this 
point of long survival; and some of Holmes's lyrics 
will stand these tests. But among all that he wrote, 
if a gentleman of the betting fraternity were to pro- 
pose placing a stake with me on "the favorite " in the 
race for the "Immortality cup," I should name - in 
spite of all the wise grooms in the stables of Art and POETRY: THE SATURDAY CLUB: ETC. 
227 
Poetry - not " The Chambered Nautilus," hut " The 
Last Leaf." Edgar Allan Poe transcribed this with 
his own hand; Abraham Lincoln knew it by heart; 
the publishers selected it from all Dr. Holmes's poetry 
for printing by itself in an elaborately illustrated edi- 
tion. Hundreds of persons can repeat every line of it. 
Such facts mean much. 
Dr. Holmes himself was more ambitious to be thought 
a poet than anything else. The fascination of that 
word of charm had bewitched him as it has so many 
others. It implied genius, inspiration, a spark of the 
divine fire, - embellishments not regarded as neces- 
sary for the full equipment of the best man who ever 
wrote mere prose. It signified that he was one of a 
very small band. Moreover, it was pleasant to think 
that no true poet had yet been known to glide down 
the sloping road to oblivion. So beyond a doubt Dr. 
Holmes wanted to be esteemed a genuine poet; and 
in the moments in which he pictured himself to him- 
self in the most pleasing light, it was as a poet. He 
occasionally spoke of his manner of writing poetry, 
- to the effect that when he took his pen in hand, he 
knew not whither it would carry him; he became 
but a voice for the thought which was sent to him. 
Such is the formula for poetic inspiration. He 
who receives it is called a genius. Was there such 
inspiration for Holmes? Was he a genius? One 
can imagine his spirit awaiting with what supreme 
anxiety the answers which may come to these queries 
from one and another of his readers. Let, then, each 
of them make his own answer. I shirk the responsi- 
bility of guiding any one's judgment in so momentous 
a matter. 
Sainte-Beuve once wrote: " The greatest poet is not 
he who has done the best; it is he who suggests the 228 
most; he, not all of whose meaning is at first obvious, 
and who leaves you much to desire, to explain, to 
study; much to complete in your turn." It is safe 
to say that Sainte-Beuve would not have ordered Dr. 
Holmes to a very giddy altitude on Parnassus. The 
Doctor was always entirely intelligible upon the first 
reading, - a very comfortable trait, surely, if not the 
most lofty. He was neither transcendental, nor mys- 
tical, nor a purveyor of sensations without ideas, like 
a fleshly form without a real skeleton. If his jolly 
fun, his wit, his humor, his not unkindly yet keen 
satire, his epigrammatic wisdom, his humanity, his 
genuine and tender pathos, failed to be apparent at 
once and easily to any reader, one can only say that 
really it was hardly worth while to have made that 
man able to read. 
There may, therefore, be doubt whether or not 
Holmes was a great, inspired poet; but there is no 
doubt at all that he was a charming singer, according 
to a distinction which, it must be admitted, would 
affect the standing of some of the most delightful ver- 
sifiers from the days of Sappho and Anacreon down 
to this current year. A song, half occult, but not 
less delicious for its lurking semi-concealment, nestled 
in a very large proportion of his short poems, - which 
means his best poems, since there can be no question 
that lyric poetry was his proper field. Truly the lyre 
was never far away from him in his happiest moods. 
His melody was absolutely perfect; he could take any 
form of rhyme ever devised by song-makers, and ren- 
der perfect music with it. He was a consummate 
master of all that is harmonious, graceful, and pleas- 
ing in rhythm and in language. He played with meas- 
ures with such light natural mastery as Hawthorne 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 229 
tells us that the Faun displayed in dancing. In all 
respects his literary finish defied fault-finding. His 
perfect taste could never be deceived. He had more 
even than taste, or judgment, or discretion; he had a 
quality which must be called tact. Is there in all 
literature a lyric in which drollery, passing nigh unto 
ridicule yet stopping short of it, and sentiment be- 
coming pathos yet not too profound, are so exquisitely 
intermingled as in "The Last Leaf"? To spill into 
the mixture the tiniest fraction of a drop too much of 
either ingredient was to ruin all. How skilfully, how 
daintily, how unerringly, Dr. Holmes compounded it, 
all readers of English know well. It was a light and 
trifling bit, if you will; but how often has it made 
the smile and the tear dispute for mastery, in a rivalry 
which is never quite decided! It was the best, but 
not the only instance of his power in this way. The 
like rare capacity may be seen, especially, in some of 
the later of the poems written for the meetings of the 
class of 1829. It was the best proof of how truthful 
the Doctor's sensitiveness was, - so delicate and so 
unerring that it reminds us of some scientific instru- 
ment of the most exquisite mechanism. 
That Dr. Holmes was easily chief among the writers 
of vers d'occasion will be readily admitted. No mat- 
ter what the occasion, he could meet it with a spirited 
poem in the note of perfect sympathy. What a Poet 
Laureate he would have made! Yet he was not 
wasted in a republic. Such was his good nature that 
he did enough of this kind of writing, - for his own 
reputation almost more than enough. "These ' occa- 
sional poems ' are fatal to any poet save Dr. Holmes," 
said Whittier ; and certainly there seems to be a pop- 
ular suspicion that "occasional " poetry cannot be the 
POETRY: THE SATURDAY CLUB : ETC. 230 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
best poetry. It rarely is, but there is no intrinsic 
reason why it cannot be. If all the "occasional" 
poetry were extracted from the Odes and Epodes of 
Horace, how the world would be robbed and the 
school-boys would rejoice! I do not mean to suggest 
an equation between Dr. Holmes and Horace; that, 
I fear, would hardly pass! Yet it may be justly said 
that Horace had not any very different kind of genius 
and inspiration from that of Dr. Holmes, of however 
much rarer quality these may have been in the Ro- 
man ; and Horace has already lived some eighteen 
hundred years, and is not yet moribund, - a tolerably 
fair finite "immortality."1 
That Dr. Holmes was quite conscious of the peril 
he was led into by his singular facility is made evi- 
dent by the following letter: - 
TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
August 3, 1865. 
My dear James, -Here is the slipshod jeu (Tes- 
prit which you had a fancy to look at. 
Please not let it get out of your hands, as I saw the 
other day a poem of mine in the papers which I had 
considered as a private manuscript, - I mean some 
lines read at a dinner given to Farragut, of which I 
gave a copy to Mrs. , and to nobody else that 
I remember. 
It seems to me that I have done almost enough of 
this work; too much, some of my friends will say, 
perhaps. But it has been as much from good nature 
1 Among the numerous criticisms upon Dr. Holmes's poetry, 
one of the fairest is to be found in an article - in other respects 
also very good - which was published in the Quarterly Review, 
and reprinted in Littell's Living Age, No. 2643, March, 1895. 231 
as from vanity that I have so often got up and jangled 
my small string of bells. I hold it to be a gift of a 
certain value to be able to give that slight passing- 
spasm of pleasure which a few ringing couplets often 
cause, read at the right moment. Though they are 
for the most part to poetry as the beating of a drum 
or the tinkling of a triangle is to the harmony of a 
band, yet it is not everybody who can get their lim- 
ited significance out of these humble instruments. 
I think, however, that I have made myself almost 
too common by my readiness to oblige people on all 
sorts of occasions. At any rate, many of the trifles, 
which served their turn with the bouquets and the 
confectionery, ought to have withered and crumbled 
with them. 
But am I a woman, that I should fill eight pagelets 
with less than nothing? 
At this place, as appropriately as anywhere, may 
be mentioned a little matter not altogether without 
interest, in connection with the very attractive poem, 
"Dorothy Q." 
Dr. Holmes's sister, Mrs. Upham, had a son who 
was named after his uncle, Dr. Holmes. This gen- 
tleman, living at Salem, and marrying, became the 
father of a little girl whom he named after the hero- 
ine of the portrait and the verses, Dorothy. When 
Dr. Holmes heard of this he wrote and sent to his 
little grand-niece a couple of stanzas, which make a 
pretty pendant to the original poem: - 
Dear little Dorothy, Dorothy Q., 
What can I find to write to you ? 
You have two U's in your name, it's true, 
And mine is adorned with a double-u, 
POETRY : THE SATURDAY CLUB : ETC. 232 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
But there's this difference in the U's, 
That one you will stand a chance to lose 
When a happy man of the bearded sex 
Shall make it Dorothy Q. + X. 
May Heaven smile bright on the blissful day 
That teaches this lesson in Algebra ! 
When the orange blossoms crown your head, 
Then read what your old great-uncle said, 
And remember how in your baby-time 
He scribbled a scrap of idle rhyme, - 
Idle, it may be - but kindly, too, 
For the little lady, Dorothy Q. ! 
Here, too, is another scrap. A gentleman, famous 
for a generation as "Tom " Appleton, wit, raconteur, 
and comrade of all the literary Bostonians of his day, 
in a lottery at a fair drew an album, of which the 
alternate sheets bore prettily painted flowers and foli- 
age. He passed it about to Longfellow, Emerson, 
Holmes, and the rest, asking each to select his page 
and write something upon it; and they, recognizing 
the claims of friendship, did so. Holmes took a page 
bearing a cluster of wild autumnal leaves, and 
wrote: - 
Who that can pluck the flower will choose the weed, 
Leave the sweet rose and gather blooms less fair ? 
And who my homely verse will stay to read, 
Straying enchanted through this bright parterre, 
Where morning's herald lifts his purple bell 
And spring's young violet wooes the wanderer's eye ? 
Nay ! let me seek the fallen leaves that tell 
Of beggared winter's footstep drawing nigh ; 
There shall my shred of song enshrouded lie, 
A leaf that dropped in memory's flowery dell ; 
The breath of friendship stirred it, and it fell, 
Tinged with the loving hue of Autumn's fond farewell. 
Boston, February 22, 1874. 
On one of the "occasions" at which the Doctor's 233 
muse was invoked, quite a tempest was stirred up in 
the academic teapot of Harvard, of which the story is 
sufficiently told in the following letters. The Uni- 
versity seal, it may be remarked, still bears the more 
modern motto, though popular opinion does not link 
the University and the Church in exceeding close 
comradeship to-day. 
POETRY: THE SATURDAY CLUB : ETC. 
TO WILLIAM AMORY. 
296 Beacon Street, March ^th. 
My dear Mr. Amory, - I enclose the two son- 
nets. If you will look in President Quincy's His- 
tory of the University you will see that Veritas dates 
from 1643, and Christo et Ecclesice came in some- 
how towards 1700. 
JOHN O. SARGENT TO DR. HOLMES. 
202 Madison Avenue, New York, 
January 24, 1878. 
My dear Wendell, -We have a Harvard Club 
here - numbering about two hundred members -■ 
and, for the want of an older man, I suppose, they 
made me president of it last week. Now we have an 
annual dinner, -and the next one is the 21st of Feb- 
ruary. I want to make it a grand success, so I 
propose to advise dropping the clergymen, who have 
generally been in the majority of the invited guests, 
and asking some representative gentlemen in the va- 
rious careers for which men are educated at Harvard, 
or ought to be. Law, medicine, and priestcraft are 
not the only "liberal" professions nowadays, but we 
have "professional " architects, agriculturists, paint- 
ers, sculptors, editors, and what not. I've left out 
the poets! and don't mean to leave them among the 234 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
what-nots. Of course there will be great competition 
to capture you for everything going on in the neigh- 
borhood of the 22d of February, but the Dining 
Committee of the Harvard Club will send you an 
invitation which I beg you to give the preference to. 
President Eliot will be there as usual; but if you'll 
come, we 'll sink presidents of all sorts to their proper 
level and make you the feature of the evening. You 
shall represent just what you please,-only let me 
know your selection of role. I believe pretty much 
all your professors have been at our table, but I 
think you have not yet honored us; so for the sake of 
Harvard, if not for my sake, when you receive your 
invitation formally from the committee, don't decline 
it without first writing me in the premises. 
TO JOHN O. SARGENT. 
January 26, 1878. 
My dear John,-You will not be surprised, 
even if you should fancy that you are a little disap- 
pointed, when I tell you that I do not feel quite up to 
the winter expedition you so kindly and warmly sug- 
gest. I only keep well by avoiding exposure, and I 
am afraid of the risks I should run in the trip to New 
York, mild as the season is and promises to be. It 
is this fear of travelling about which has led me to 
decline all lecturing invitations for some years and 
content myself with my official work at the college in 
Boston. I am more particularly cautious during my 
lecture season, as I must keep well, and am apt to find 
my duties, with the accidental labors, social and lit- 
erary, which crowd upon me, somewhat fatiguing, - 
something more so, let me confess, than they were 
twenty or even ten years ago. POETRY : THE SATURDAY CLUB : ETC. 
235 
Another trouble is that I am tired out, completely, 
of getting on to my legs in response to a sentiment 
more or less complimentary, and turning the winch of 
that old hand-organ of which you remember some 
of the first discords. I was asked to a dinner of one 
of the more recent literary associations here in Boston 
the other day, and I told them I would come only on 
one condition - no copy of verses or speech. Oh, 
John, John, dear John! I would almost crawl to 
New York to please you, old friend and constant 
friend as you are, but there are times when the "hop- 
per-grass," as we country boys used to hear him called, 
is a burden, and I do feel just at this minute as if an- 
other cicada-song before the hyacinths are out would 
be more than I could carry on my old shoulders. 
Next June I have promised to go to Andover, where 
they have a centennial, and give them a poem of some 
kind or other. Before that time I do not mean to be 
tempted. The Sirens don't sing to me, confound 
'em, but waggle their wings and tails and try to make 
me sing. For all that I say, if I could just be popped 
down in the midst of the Harvard nurslings and see 
the faces of so many that I remember so well and hear 
their voices and shake their hands, and more espe- 
cially sit somewhere near you on your throne as Mas- 
ter of the feast, how two or three hours - nay, four 
or five, for I am still up to so much on great occasions 
- would reel off into the infinite, staggering under 
their weight of enjoyment! 
I have not been at New York since I had the 
great pleasure of meeting you there, and passed alto- 
gether a most charming week. I hope I shall get 
there again some time or other, for it de-oxydizes and 
de-Bostonizes me, and I suppose I am as much of a 236 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
provincial in many of my ways and feelings and pre- 
judices as one who lives in the centre of the solar 
system can well be. . . . 
February 19, 1878. 
My dear John, - Here you are - letter and son- 
nets - may you have fifty better things to please your 
company with! I would not have done this for any 
other President of the Harvard Club, but it has been 
a great pleasure to do my best, however small my 
contribution, to help you through the evening. And 
so God speed you, and may you wake up happy the 
morning after. 
Boston, February 19, 1878. 
My dear Sir, - I regret very much that I cannot 
accept the polite invitation of the Harvard Club to 
be present at their Annual Dinner on Thursday next. 
To show my cordial interest in the Association and its 
anniversary I send you a couple of sonnets, which I 
should have read if I could have been with you, ask- 
ing for them the indulgence which I feel sure would 
have been granted to me personally had I been one of 
the band of brothers gathered about the table. 
As the construction of the sonnet often renders it 
somewhat difficult to follow perfectly, when listened 
to, I have had a few copies struck off, in case any of 
the company should care to understand what many 
of them may have heard with more or less dim per- 
ception of its significance. 
A few words of explanation. At the first meeting 
of the Governors of the College under the Charter of 
1642, held in the year 1643, it was "ordered that 
there shall be a College seale in forme following," 
namely, a shield with three open books bearing the POETRY : THE SATURDAY CLUB : ETC. 
237 
word Veritas. This motto was soon exchanged for 
In Christi gloriam; and this again shortly super- 
seded by the one so long used, Christo et Ecclesice. 
The latter change took place, as President Quincy 
believed, " during the Presidency of Increase Mather, 
when a violent struggle was making to secure the 
College under the influences of the old established 
Congregational church." The date (1700), which I 
have assigned to this last motto, must be considered 
as only approximative. 
The Harvard College of to-day wants no narrower, 
no more exclusive motto than Truth, - truth, which 
embraces all that is highest and purest in the precepts 
of all teachers, human or divine; all that is best in 
the creeds of all churches, whatever their name; but 
allows no lines of circumvallation to be drawn round 
its sacred citadel under the alleged authority of any 
record or of any organization. 
This is what I mean to express in these two squares 
of metrical lines wrought in the painful prolixity of 
the sonnet, a form of verse which suggests a slow 
minuet of rhythms stepping in measured cadences over 
a mosaic pavement of rhyme, and which not rarely 
combines a minimum of thought with a maximum of 
labor. 
May I venture to remind you, Mr. President, that 
it is nearly fifty years since you, as Editor of a Col- 
lege Magazine, gave a kindly welcome to the earliest 
printed verses known as coming from my pen? I 
was as a bird on the wing then, hardly knowing 
whither I was flying, with the morning sun behind 
me, with all the wide world and the unmeasured years 
before me. Now I am on my nest, and the evening 
shadows are fast falling around me. I am sure that 238 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
you at least will be as indulgent to my failing as you 
were to my forming voice; and, for those around you, 
I will trust their hearts and their memories, for we 
are children of the same mother, and to-day we forget 
all else in the one feeling of brotherhood. 
February 26, 1878. 
My dear John,-Many thanks for your letter. 
It rejoiced me to hear that the dinner over which you 
presided was a success, as it ought to have been with 
you at the head of the table. It made me wish I 
could have been there; but I was quite right in stay- 
ing at home, where I had a good deal to keep me be- 
sides my habitual great unwillingness to go anywhere 
in the winter season, - I had almost said at any sea- 
son. I got two copies of the New York Times this 
morning, which I was glad to see, and read my own 
letter which I had pretty nearly forgotten. I was 
quite pleased with my description of a sonnet, - 
haven't we a right to like our own babies? I want 
very much to see the pamphlet, to know all that was 
said, and to live over in imagination that brilliant 
scene at Delmonico's. 
It never occurred to me that any of our own people, 
even the oldest, would quarrel with the sentiment of 
my sonnets. I thought that possibly I might get a 
hit from some outsider, but inasmuch as Veritas is 
already sculptured over the door of Memorial Hall (if 
I remember rightly), I had a feeling that there was a 
willingness to return to the older motto. It seems 
that my bouquet was like the one I saw Modjeska 
smell of the other evening in Adrienne Lecouvreur - 
had some subtle poison in it - at least for certain 
idiosyncrasies. It will do no harm, though, and there 239 
is a good deal to be said in favor of truth, although 
it poisons some people who have lived too long upon 
the opposite kind of diet. You will send me the 
pamphlet as soon as it comes out, I know, and I shall 
look forward to it with great interest. 
March 6, 1878. 
My dear John, -I had no idea of my sonnets1 
making such a stir. It was rather with the idea that 
Veritas should be recognized as the understood motto 
of the College, than with that of having it cut upon 
a new die as the College seal, that I wrote the verses. 
It is only fair to say, in Mr. Quincy's words: "This 
is the only College seal which has the sanction of 
any record." I suppose it is a matter of expediency 
whether to make the change or not. Old habits are 
very tenacious, - you remember the old clerk's mump- 
simus for sumpsimus, which he had hung on to so 
long that he would not change it for any Latin 
scholar. 
As for O 's talk, I do not think much of that. 
Of course he would rather have Ecclesice than Veri- 
tas, and so, perhaps, would a good many of the older 
and more clerical lot like him. 
My dear John, I do not care very much which seal 
they have, provided it is understood that the animus 
of the College is with the grand motto which includes 
the other and everything else worth having. Eliot 
has not said anything about it to me, beyond the 
mere fact that O wrote him a letter. I should 
not think it worth while to quarrel over the seal, if 
it is a matter likely to excite much feeling. The Col- 
POETRY : THE SATURDAY CLUB : ETC. 
1 The sonnets referred to may be found in volume iii. of the 
Poetical Works, Riverside Ed., p. 77. 240 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
lege has taken such a firm stand and gone on so boldly 
with its changes, that I want it to settle itself firmly 
in the position it has reached, and not excite needless 
prejudices. If the majority of its well-wishers should 
be of opinion that the old seal is the true seal and re- 
store it on that ground, I suppose the minority would 
acquiesce with a tolerable grace. 
But my sonnets and my letter are all the contribu- 
tion I expect to make to the matter in question. 
" They have invented a new mode of torture, - 
readings from one's poems, by Dr. Holmes and me, 
for the benefit of charities of one kind or another. 
We bow our necks to the yoke like patient oxen, and 
leaning away from each other as oxen will, strive to 
retrace our ancient furrows, which somehow will not 
gleam along the edge as when the turf was first 
broken." Thus grumbled James Russell Lowell; but 
Lowell was apt to be somewhat impatient under the 
burdens which are laid upon the favorites in litera- 
ture. Dr. Holmes, on the other hand, with good- 
natured satire, said: " Poets read their own composi- 
tions in a singsong sort of way; but they do seem to 
love 'em so, that I always enjoy it. It makes me 
laugh a little inwardly to see how they dandle their 
poetical babies, but I don't let them know it." 
Betwixt lectures, and "occasions," and these numer- 
ous pressing invitations of charity-mongers and oth- 
ers, Dr. Holmes certainly dandled his poetical babies 
in public very often; partly because he was really 
obliging, and partly, perhaps, because he was con- 
scious that he and his offspring appeared in company 
to much advantage. For he certainly read his own 
poetry very effectively, not at all after the fashion of POETRY : THE SATURDAY CLUB : ETC. 
241 
the trained rhetoricians, but like a gentleman; that 
is to say, with much simplicity, yet with a sympathy 
of expression in voice and feature which was very 
charming. The music of his poems got into his read- 
ing; and he could be spirited, pathetic, or humorous 
by turns, with equal and certain mastery, being able 
to present upon the platform all the variety which he 
could conceive at his desk. He always carried his 
audience with him surely, easily, and entirely - and 
even in his old age, when he could hardly trust his 
voice, he still held a great deal of this power. 
Nearly coeval in birth with The Atlantic Monthly 
was the beginning of the Saturday Club, - an institu- 
tion very famous in Boston. Dr. Holmes says: " At 
about the same time [with the establishment of the 
magazine] there grew up in Boston a literary associa- 
tion which became at last well known as the ' Saturday 
Club,' the members dining together on the last Satur- 
day of every month. The magazine and the Club . . . 
have often been thought to have some organic connec- 
tion, and the ' Atlantic Club ' has been spoken of, as if 
there was or had been such an institution, but it never 
existed."1 The seed which thus sprouted was, he says, 
a trio, or quartette, consisting of Emerson and two or 
three of his admirers, who fell into a habit of dining 
together occasionally at "Parker's," an hotel which 
the Doctor rather fancifully calls the "Will's Coffee- 
House of Boston." This nucleus "gathered others to 
itself and grew into a club as Pome grew into a city, 
almost without knowing it." Mr. Underwood, in a 
letter to Dr. Holmes, took him to task for having 
somewhere spoken of the "Atlantic Club" as "sup- 
1 Life of Emerson, 221, where there is more on the same topic. 242 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
posititious." "You remember," he writes, "that the 
contributors met for dinner regularly. It was a 
voluntary informal association. The invitations and 
reminders were from my hand, as I conducted the 
correspondence of the magazine. I have hundreds of 
letters in reply, and it is my belief that the associa- 
tion was always spoken of either as the Atlantic Club 
or the Atlantic Dinner. . . . Your very decided state- 
ment seems to me (in the ordinary use of phrases) 
erroneous." But the Doctor would not accept the 
correction and stuck to his colors very positively, 
though the weight of evidence is against him. In his 
Life, of MotleyA he says: "The Club came into exist- 
ence in a very quiet sort of way at about the same 
time as The Atlantic Monthly, and, although entirely 
unconnected with that magazine, included as mem- 
bers some of its chief contributors;" and these state- 
ments he never amended. The discussion is of little 
moment unless perchance this Club shall become pic- 
turesque and interesting for posterity as did the Club 
of Johnson and Garrick and the rest, -which I fear 
will hardly come to pass. Certain it is that nearly 
all the frequent (male) contributors to the magazine, 
who lived within convenient reach of the Parker 
House, were members of the Club, or doubtless might 
have been so had they desired; and that for a long 
while a multiplicity of nerves and filaments tied the 
magazine and the Club closely together. Equally 
certain it is that from the outset a few members of 
the Club were never contributors to the magazine, 
and that all these nerves and filaments have long ere 
the present day been entirely severed. 
Some outsiders furnished still another name for 
1 Appendix A. Emerson 
Motley 
Hawthorne 
Holmes 
Whittier 
Lowell 
Longfellow .rfr//w - rr/rr y 243 
this much-entitled Club. They called it "The Mu- 
tual Admiration Society," and sometimes laughed a 
little, as though the designation were a trifle deroga- 
tory. Yet the brethren within the pale were nowise 
disturbed by this witticism. "If there was not," 
says Holmes, "a certain amount of ' mutual admira- 
tion ' among some of those I have mentioned,1 it was 
a great pity, and implied a defect in the nature of 
men who were otherwise largely endowed." Possibly 
one or two of these gentlemen might have been criti- 
cised for admiring themselves, but it did seem hard to 
blame them for being sufficiently intelligent and gen- 
erous to admire each other. Would the scoffers have 
been better pleased to see them openly abusing or 
slyly depreciating each other ? There are enough such 
spectacles elsewhere in literature. 
Outside the sacred penetralia which were shut 
within his own front door, nothing else in Dr. Holmes's 
life gave him so much pleasure as did this Club. He 
loved it; he hugged the thought of it. When he was 
writing to Lowell and Motley in Europe, he seemed 
to think that merely to name " The Club," was 
enough to give a genial flavor to his page. He would 
tell who were present at the latest meeting, and where 
POETRY : THE SATURDAY CLUB : ETC. 
1 Besides himself, whom he did not mention, his list was : 
Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Motley, Whipple, 
Whittier; Professors Agassiz and Peirce; John S. Dwight, Gov- 
ernor Andrew, Richard H. Dana, Jr., and Charles Sumner. 
The Club has also had among its members, President Eliot; 
Professors Felton, Norton, and Goodwin; William H. Prescott, 
T. G. Appleton, J. M. Forbes, J. Elliot Cabot, Henry James, 
W. D. Howells, T. B. Aldrich, William M. Hunt, Charles Fran- 
cis Adams, Francis Parkman, James Freeman Clarke, Judge 
Lowell, Judge Hoar, George F. Hoar, Bishop Brooks, and many 
more scarcely less well known. 244 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
they sat. He would recur to those who used to come, 
and mention their habitual seats, - matters which his 
correspondents already knew perfectly well. But the 
names were sweet things in his mouth; and in fact, 
he was doing one of the deepest acts of intimacy in 
thus touching the chord of the dearest reminiscence 
which their memories held in common. By this he 
seemed sure that he would make his letter welcome, 
however little else of news or interest it might con- 
vey. In the later days there came to be something 
pathetic about his attachment to that which still had 
existence and yet for him was almost all a memory. 
In 1883 he wrote to Lowell: " I go to the Saturday 
Club quite regularly, but the company is more of 
ghosts than of flesh and blood for me. I carry a 
stranger there now and then, introduce him to the 
members who happen to be there, and then say: 
There at that end used to sit Agassiz, - here at this 
end Longfellow, - Emerson used to be there, and 
Lowell often next him; on such an occasion Haw- 
thorne was with us, at another time Motley, and 
Sumner, and smaller constellations, - nebulae, if you 
will, but luminous more or less in the provincial firm- 
ament. We degenerate laudatores temporis acti,- 
we or they, for I am getting patriarchal, and since 
my son is ' His Honor, ' I feel as if I belonged to the 
past, - we oi' they must keep the Club up until you 
come back and bring some fresh life to it." There 
are many passages in this same strain. 
In 1885, when all the old faces save two or three 
must have been gone, he wrote, in his vein mingled 
of wit and pathos, to John M. Forbes: - 
"I should like to see Tom Hughes at the Club; it 
is a long while since I have met him. You will 245 
POETRY : THE SATURDAY CLUB: ETC. 
come, and if nothing hinders I shall be there; and, 
if tres faciunt collegium, duo faciunt clubbum." 
Brilliant indeed must those gatherings have been, 
when, out of the dazzling bewilderment of London 
society, which he so dearly loved, Lowell wrote: "I 
have never seen society, on the whole, so good as I 
used to meet at our Saturday Club." But these were 
words of appreciation rather than of affection; and I 
fancy that few members of the Club felt towards it 
quite as Holmes did. Partly his sentiment was the 
result of the limited sphere of his life; had he ever 
travelled, seeing foreign lands, mingling with their 
distinguished people, and becoming in any degree 
cosmopolitan, the Club would have assumed propor- 
tions more accurately adapted to the universe in gen- 
eral. But in the little narrow Boston routine these 
monthly gatherings were like nuggets of glittering 
gold scattered in a gravel-field. The joy of such 
treasures sank deep into heart and memory. 
Dr. Holmes could not, of course, say for himself 
what some of these " mutual admirers " magnanimously 
said for him: that of all who sat at that Saturday table 
he was by far the most brilliant talker. It is as impos- 
sible by any string of descriptive adjectives to convey 
the charm of his talk to those who never heard him 
at his best, as it is to place the tones and gestures of 
a dead actor before the mind's eye of those who never 
saw him. Therefore it is best not to try to tell how 
Dr. Holmes talked. Only it may be remarked that the 
pages of The Autocrat give some notion of it, for he 
talked in much the general fashion in which he wrote 
these papers. Yet he talked better than he wrote. 
The Autocrat held his talk crystallized, but those 
who heard it gushing fresh and fluid from his lips, 246 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
liked it much better in this form than after the forma- 
tive process had taken effect. For, however charm- 
ingly he might talk with his pen, the tongue remains 
the natural instrument for talking. Ue wrote, one 
day, to his friend, Thomas G. Appleton: " Of course 
your worst rival is your own talk, with which people 
will always compare whatever you write; and I do 
not know that I can say more of this book than that 
it comes nearer your talk than anything else you have 
written." It was his own case; The, Autocrat came 
near to his talk, but did not reach it. Moreover, a 
man of his genial temperament was immensely aided 
by an audience present in the flesh, listening with 
pleased faces. Then talk seemed like throwing a ball 
against a wall, and striking it at each rebound until 
0'0 
the game reached the highest pitch of lithe excite- 
ment. He was, I fancy, the first person to express 
a profound respect for talk. "Remember," he said, 
"that talking is one of the fine arts,-the noblest, 
the most important, and the most difficult, - and that 
its fluent harmonies may be spoiled by the intrusion 
of a single harsh note." 
lie had also a curious theory about his talking. 
"The idea," he said, "of a man's 'interviewing' 
himself is rather odd, to be sure. But then that is 
what we are all of us doing every day. I talk half 
the time to find out my own thoughts, as a school- 
boy turns his pockets inside out to see what is in 
them. One brings to light all sorts of personal prop- 
erty he had forgotten in his inventory." And again: 
"Talk, to me, is only spading up the ground for crops 
of thought. I can't answer for what will turn up." 
But the wise men thought that this "spading" was 
more fascinating to witness than was the subsequent 
reaping of the crop in the shape of printed words. Hoar 
Agassiz 
Appleton 
Sumner 
A nave™ 
Whipple 
Fields ■ 'itu/rda/Us Y' /fjA' 247 
Sometimes lie spoke of it more lightly: "People 
■- the right kind of people - meet at a dinner-party 
as two ships meet and pass each other at sea. They 
exchange a few signals; ask each other's reckoning, 
where from, where bound; perhaps one supplies the 
other with a little food or a few dainties; then they 
part, to see each other no more." But the pleasant- 
est incident on a voyage is to exchange greetings with 
another vessel; and those who met Dr. Holmes in his 
prime, in mid-passage, were likely to treasure the 
memory of few more delightful episodes. 
Some persons used to charge him with talking too 
much, - a singular charge, for it was an unreceptive 
mind that could have too much of such talk. Still 
this was sometimes said, and he himself occasionally 
penitentially declared, after he had charmed a dinner- 
table for a whole evening, that he wished that he had 
been more silent and gathered more from his convives. 
In a letter to Dr. Fordyce Barker, speaking of hav- 
ing met Dr. Carpenter at the Saturday Club, he 
said: " He is a great talker, and I sometimes have to 
watch for my innings. I guess he has to, once in a 
while, for I have a tendency, myself, to linguacity." 
Mr. Edmund Gosse, however, brings good evidence 
for the defence on this point: " Perhaps no man of 
modern times has given his contemporaries a more 
extraordinary impression of wit in conversation. We 
are told that he never overpowered his companions, 
never held the talk in monologue, but that he listened 
as brilliantly as he spoke, taking up every challenge, 
capping every anecdote, rippling over with an illumi- 
nated cascade of fancy and humor and repartee." In 
fact, Dr. Holmes was of so eager, ardent, impetuous a 
temperament, that undoubtedly he did sometimes un- 
POETRY: THE SATURDAY CLUB: ETC. 248 
wittingly monopolize conversation. Uis thoughts, his 
humor, his similes rose as fast, as multitudinous, as 
irrepressible, as the bubbles in the champagne, and 
nothing could prevent their coming to the surface. 
It was in the nature of things that, if there were nine 
men at table. Dr. Holmes would do more than a 
mathematical ninth of the talking. In his character 
as The, Professor he described himself with humor- 
ous truth: "I won't deny that sometimes, on rare 
occasions, when I have been in company with gentle- 
men who preferred listening, I have been guilty of the 
same kind of usurpation which my friend openly jus- 
tified. But I maintain, that I, the Professor, am a 
good listener. If a man can tell me a fact which sub- 
tends an appreciable angle in the horizon of thought, 
I am as receptive as the contribution-box in a congre- 
gation of colored brethren." 
If his comrades gave him the stimulus of sympathy 
and appreciation, if from time to time they interjected 
the spur of clever interruption, they could make him 
strike any pace that they chose. Yet he did not seri- 
ously think that it was always better to give than to 
receive. All who met him must remember the keen 
expectant gaze with which he would fasten his eye 
upon them, attentive to get the full value or beauty of 
whatever they might seem about to say. He greatly 
liked the battledore and shuttlecock of talk, and could 
play the game with skilful adroitness, keeping all his 
marvellous quickness under perfect control. But if 
the other man was a bungler, the expert Doctor was 
likely to find more enjoyment in keeping the feathered 
cork climbing into the air without assistance. 
Colonel T. Wentworth Higginson said once that in 
his visits to London he had never met two men whose 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 249 
talk was so habitually brilliant as that of Hohnes and 
Lowell, but that they had not learned the London art 
of repression, and often monopolized the conversation 
too much; and he had a reminiscence of a dinner 
given to Dr. and Mrs. Stowe, at which Lowell endeav- 
ored to convince Mrs. Stowe that the best novel ever 
written was Tom Jones, while Hohnes at the other 
end of the table was endeavoring to convince Profes- 
sor Stowe (a clergyman) that all swearing owed its 
origin to the pulpit. The story is as characteristic 
as it is amusing. 
Here is an anecdote which may or may not be ac- 
curately true, but has, I believe, a substantial foun- 
dation. The "Bohemian Club," celebrating a festal 
evening in San Francisco, chose Dr. Holmes to mem- 
bership, and at once dispatched a telegram to notify 
him of the honor. The message reached Boston in the 
dead of night, and no reply was expected. What 
was the astonishment of the club when, before ad- 
journment, a messenger boy brought the following 
responsive dispatch: - 
Message from San Francisco ! Whisper low - 
Asleep in bed an hour or more ago. 
While on his peaceful pillow he reclines, 
Say to his friend who sent these loving lines : 
" Silent, unanswering, still to friendship true, 
He smiles in slumber, for he dreams of you." 
February 23, 1874. 
He had a great admiration for Professor Agassiz, 
and used to call him "Liebig's Extract" of the wis- 
dom of ages. And once when the professor was away 
upon one of his scientific excursions among some re- 
mote, semi-civilized peoples, the Doctor said: "I can- 
pot help thinking what a feast the cannibals would 
POETRY : THE SATURDAY CLUB: ETC. 250 
have, if they boiled down such an extract! " A gen- 
tleman once commented very unfavorably upon this 
little jest, explaining, with more than British gravity, 
that it was a poor one, because cannibals don't care 
for wisdom, and would only have relished Agassiz 
because he was plump! 
He used to say that he always liked to listen to 
clergymen whose belief was stronger than his own, - 
a desire which it was probably not difficult to gratify. 
In his old age he often fell asleep at church, and 
when a friend once poked a little fun at him apro- 
pos of such an occasion, he explained, with much ear- 
nestness, that it was out of no disrespect for the 
ministry that he had fallen asleep; and then, with a 
twinkle in his eye, he added, "But when I woke up, 
the clergyman was preaching very well." 
It happened once that a considerable body of lion- 
hunters made an attack in force, so that it was by 
no means one of the ordinary occasions. The Doctor 
was asked whether he did not enjoy it. "Enjoy it! " 
he exclaimed. "Why, I felt like the small elephant 
at the Zoo, with a cheap excursion party on his 
back! " 
It seems one of the grievous blunders of the order 
of things that the brilliant talker, pouring forth 
thoughts, comparisons, humor, and wit from an eter- 
nal horn of plenty, must become, like a great actor, 
a mere tradition. By and by, perhaps, some of the 
new word-catching machines will be stowed away in 
the corners of dining-rooms where the shining heroes 
of conversation are to be among the guests; but the 
day of our Agamemnon is past, and what is war with- 
out Agamemnon? With no better apparatus than 
tradition, there is as yet no means of measuring the 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES POETRY: THE SATURDAY CLUB: ETC. 
251 
talkers and the actors of one generation against those 
of another. We do not know whether we are getting 
better things or poorer than those which fired the 
enthusiasm of our forefathers. Yet there are actors, 
for example Garrick, whose equal few persons flatter 
themselves that they have seen in their own day and 
generation; and Dr. Holmes was a talker of this cali- 
bre and quality. He gathered not the reputation which 
he deserved, because he stayed at home in a little 
out-of-the-way town, and talked only to his neigh- 
bors, and to the stranger who might occasionally 
stray thither. But we know his height on the scale, 
we know that we were not deceived in our valuation 
of him; and we listen with tranquil faith when many 
competent judges, who met him and met the other 
best talkers of his generation, tell us that our Bosto- 
nian had no superior; and we agree when some of 
them declare that he had not even any peer. 
Mr. Gosse hopes "that much of the Autocrat's 
priceless table-talk has been preserved." Alas, that 
such is not the case I No Boswell attended him, to has- 
ten away from the display and jot down for posterity 
the rare things he had heard. If Dr. Holmes's talk 
had been remembered in quotable shape anywhere, it 
would have been so in Boston, and if there were such 
reminiscences here, I think that I should be familiar 
with them; but I know of nothing of the sort. His 
talk is remembered as the scenery of the clouds is re- 
membered, a picture dwelling in the mind but never to 
be produced to eyes which looked not upon it. How 
doleful this is no one appreciates more keenly than 
does the unfortunate writer of this memoir. I know 
full well that readers have been expecting to find the 
pages of this volume sparkling with the hitherto unpub- 252 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
lished gems of Dr. Holmes's famous talk; they have 
looked for choice new bits of his shrewd wisdom, for 
some of his marvellous similes which they have never 
heard before, for anecdotes embalming his exquisite 
wit. They have expected a fish, - nay, a miraculous 
draught of many fishes, - but the net comes almost 
empty. Ah, disappointed reader, your disappointment 
at not receiving these things is nothing in compari- 
son with mine at not being able to furnish them to 
you. But they do not exist, - they have sunk away 
and disappeared like the raindrops which fall into the 
ocean; they are irrecoverable. No! save the letters 
herein contained, there is absolutely nothing left of 
Dr. Holmes which is not in formal print under pro- 
tection of the laws of copyright. 
The sparkling current of the Autocrat's printed 
talk, which flowed so spontaneously, so exuberantly, 
seemed the outburst of an inexhaustible spring. 
Twelve bucketsful bailed out of it in twelve months 
for the use of The, Atlantic were as nothing. So forth- 
with, that which every one was looking for appeared, 
and the waters gushed afresh, only the new stream took 
a new name, and it was now the Professor who spoke 
at the Breakfast-Table. Probably enough, the Doc- 
tor, who was ever buoyant and sanguine, did not, in 
the bottom of his heart, feel much doubt that he was 
going to score another success; but he began with a 
delightfid sentence which may be described as a sort 
of modest compliment to himself: "The question is 
whether there is anything left for me, the Professor, 
to suck out of creation, after my lively friend (the Au- 
tocrat) has had his straw in the bung-hole of the 
universe." This newcomer did not talk quite in the 253 
vein of his predecessor; lie chose more serious topics, 
he was much graver, and exacted closer attention 
from his hearers; I think the "young man John" 
could hardly have been pleased at the change of dy- 
nasty. There was a great deal of discussion about 
creeds and tenets, which have been the subjects of 
religious controversy. Dr. Holmes said that he han- 
dled these matters "only incidentally." His readers 
will hardly agree with him, - they will think of the 
case of the tail wagging the dog. Of course the lively 
conversational style was retained, and the flashes of 
wit and humor were never far apart. By this means 
the Professor held many auditors who otherwise would 
have found him dull. But his hand was ever light, 
sprightly, and varied in its touch, so that no one 
fagged under it. Because the Professor was less en- 
tertaining than the Autocrat, he has been less famous, 
and less widely popular; yet, being more thoughtful 
and more profound, he has pleased some people bet- 
ter. After the first number was published, Lowell 
wrote to Dr. Holmes that he was " getting his second 
wind." "I like the new Professor better than the 
old Autocrat. . . . The ' Old Boston ' is an inspira- 
tion." Mr. Lowell doubtless meant " Little Boston," 
and every one will agree with his estimate of that 
spirited and original creation. 
After the Professor became silent, eleven years 
elapsed before the landlady of the famous boarding- 
house had another boarder whose talk was up to the 
printing standard. Then, in 1871, the Poet took the 
vacant chair at the Breakfast-Table. He was a very 
charming fellow, yet not quite so agreeable as his 
predecessors had been. When the Doctor undertook 
to compete with himself he met a formidable rival. 
POETRY : THE SATURDAY CLUB: ETC. 254 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
He was like the great race-horses who come to the 
pole, matched to beat their own best time: he trotted 
gallantly, but his "record " was too much for him. If 
The Autocrat and The Professor had not been writ- 
ten, The Poet would have been esteemed a brilliant 
piece of work; but they had been written, and in the 
way of comparison their new comrade brought just a 
trifle of disappointment. The three volumes stand as 
the Breakfast-Table Series, like the three successive 
pressings of the grapes from an illustrious vineyard. 
The premier cru is the best; the second is very nearly 
as good; but by the third squeezing the difference in 
quality cannot escape notice, - still even then one 
says: "They were indeed grapes from a rare good 
soil." 
Doubtless Dr. Holmes himself saw a difference, 
if not between the books, at least in the reception 
which they severally met with. In December, 1872, 
in a letter to Motley, he said (note the force of the 
But in the passage): - 
"I have had some pleasant words in the Spectator 
and the Examiner about my new book, The Poet at 
the Breakfast- Table. But I wrote it to please myself 
(independently of the more vulgar motive) by saying 
some things which I should feel better for getting rid 
of. A man must talk himself into the current of 
opinion, or write himself into it, - I mean so as to 
let his individuality - his way of looking at things - 
tell in some way or other on its movement. I am 
curious about the future course of things. It looks 
to me as if my old formula of Rome or Reason was 
fast working itself out, and I think Rome and its off- 
shoots are to be one of the main dependences of the 
coming generations. The anchor of the church is POETRY : THE SATURDAY CLUB : ETC. 
255 
fastened in the mud of legend and superstition, but it 
will hold a good while yet, and our children or grand- 
children are going to need it, or they will see some 
grand overturn, and Caleb Cushing's ' Man on horse- 
back ' sitting on the heap of bloody ashes to bring 
order back again. The absurdity of my playing pro- 
phet to a student of the cycles and epicycles of the 
past, like yourself! Forgive me, and think instead 
of our warmest Christmas wishes which we send to 
you and all yours." 
In point of fact he always did watch the symptoms 
of the age with close interest, and though he was dis- 
trustful of his capacity to read them aright, as being 
somewhat apart from his province, yet he occasionally 
ventured his forecast. I remember his saying to me 
that the vast fortunes heaped up by the "magnates" 
of oil and sugar, etc., seemed to him to involve the 
perils which might result in the destruction of modern 
civilization. CHAPTER X 
THE DOCTOR'S NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 
No attentive reader of The Professor could fail 
to foresee what would be Dr. Holmes's next literary- 
venture, for these papers held the skeleton of a story 
and some very well-drawn characters. Accordingly 
in due period Elsie Venner was born, wearing at 
first the title of The Professor's Story, but later 
taking her own name. 
The critics - the trained professional ones, I mean 
- have dealt severely with the book. They admit 
that it abounds in brilliant passages, and that it is 
generously impregnated with New Englandism ; they 
can hardly deny that local coloi* was never shed upon 
paper with more truth and skill than in the descrip- 
tion of the party at " the elegant residence of our 
distinguished fellow-citizen, Colonel Sprowle." But 
having said these things, some go on to say that the 
book has too much monologue by the author, - 
though in this Holmes sinned in the good company of 
Thackeray; and so good a critic as George William 
Curtis wrote : " This colloquial habit is very winning, 
when governed by a natural delicacy and an exquisite 
literary instinct." Others think that the characters 
are not real and lifelike, and that the incidents are 
but indifferent inventions. The crowning objection, 
taken by all alike, is, that it is that hybrid creation, 
condemned by the inexorable canons of literature, a NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 
257 
novel with a purpose. Whether these canons are 
dogmas or truths, it is probable that a novel written 
for a purpose will rarely survive the elimination of the 
purpose from popular interest, either by its achieve- 
ment or defeat. Certain it is, however, that whether 
Elsie Venner was or was not justly entitled to popu- 
larity, she enjoyed it, and for many years was widely 
read, and eagerly discussed, nor is it yet time to be 
composing an epitaph for her tombstone. 
It was sufficient evidence of the popularity of the 
story that an effort was made to dramatize it. The 
scheme was hopelessly absurd, in view of the difficult 
moral purpose of the book, and the Doctor regretted 
that the attempt should be made. It signified utter 
incapacity to appreciate his work. It was tried, how- 
ever, and the play was brought out in 1865 at the 
Boston Theatre; of course the result was absolute 
failure. There was published in the Pall Mall Ga- 
zette, in 1894, this account of an interview between 
Dr. Holmes and another person who seems to have 
revived the same project: - 
" And so you want to put Elsie Venner into a 
play. Years ago, I remember, some one dramatized 
the novel. I went to see it. It was bad, very bad. 
I stood at the back of the box and watched it care- 
fully. It was not Elsie Venner - my Elsie Ven- 
ner ; they had made it into a melodrama, and the 
psychology was not there. 
" But times have changed, Doctor; the psychological 
drama is fast becoming popular - 
" Oh, yes, I know that, though I don't often go to 
the theatre nowadays. I remember seeing Mr. Irving 
when he was here last time in ' The Bells,' which is a 
psychological play. I was greatly interested; it was 258 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
a wonderful performance, as wonderful as Booth in 
' The Fool's Revenge.' But still (and he shook his 
head), - but still I do not think a psychological play 
with Elsie as its heroine would be more successful to- 
day than it was thirty odd years ago. It was a great 
shock to me, that performance, - a great shock. It 
was the novel vulgarized, and I should not like to see 
it again. You may imagine Elsie, with her strange 
eyes and the snake look in them, but you cannot see 
her on the stage: the illusion will not hold there; 
and besides, it would not be easy to find an actress 
who could look like her. The one who acted it in the 
old days did not look like Elsie as I saw her. Nobody 
could. No - no (in the softest voice imaginable), 
Elsie was written as the outcome of a theory which 
I held very strongly at the time; and I want to ask 
you to let her remain where I put her - in the 
book." 
With the exception of the legend of Eve, Elsie 
Venner is, par excellence, the snake-story of literature. 
Yet in spite of the high and ancient precedent, some 
people felt so repelled by this element that they de- 
clared it a fatal artistic defect. Dr. Holmes does not 
seem to have anticipated this feeling. The snake was 
not repulsive to him; while writing the book he was 
so desirous to have the rattlesnake vividly present to 
his mind as a living reptile rather than a mere bit of 
natural history, that he procured a live one of pretty 
good size from Berkshire County, and kept it for 
many weeks at the medical school. He had a long 
stick arranged with a padded kid glove at one end 
and a prodding point at the other, and he used to 
excite the creature, and watch its coiling and its strik- 
ing, study its eyes and expression, its ways, its char- NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 
259 
acter. The result of the sort of personal familiarity 
thus established between himself and his prisoner 
certainly made itself felt in his book, where the rattle- 
snake sensation, so to speak, is marvellously, almost 
horribly lifelike, - no critic ever found fault with 
that! 
His scientific research explored all printed know- 
ledge concerning the reptiles and their venom. His 
friend Dr. Weir Mitchell was an authority on the 
subject, and Dr. Holmes gathered information from 
him, and wrote to him: - 
" I received from the Smithsonian Institution your 
very interesting Researches on the Venom of the Rat- 
tlesnake. I have read a great part of it with singular 
interest, having kept one of these beasts during the 
past summer and watched his ways with great satis- 
faction. 
" My fellow would not eat or drink. He killed a 
rat or two, but at last one killed him. I could n't 
find he took offence at the leaves of the white ash, 
according to the common notion." 
The subject continued for a long while to interest 
both men, and ten years later the Doctor wrote: - 
TO S. WEIR MITCHELL. 
May 15, 1870. 
Dear Dr. Mitchell,- 
I am reminded that I was questioned some weeks 
since, and again this afternoon, as to whether rattle- 
snakes are oviparous or viviparous. I was somewhat 
puzzled, and much inclined to compression, or ovo- 
viviparous. Can you not tell me how it is from your 
experience? In your ophidian fold there must, or 260 
may, have been Crotalae in an interesting situation, 
and upon whom the sacred obligations of maternity 
devolved while you were their shepherd. Dear little 
helpless innocent creatures I Did they come naked 
from their mother's womb into this cold and cruel 
world, or under the shelter of a calcified - an egg- 
shell, in short? 
This is the question with which I wish to tax your 
knowledge, which I believe is more extensive and 
exact with regard to these interesting fellow-creatures 
of ours than that of any other living person. 
A dozen years later still the same topic called forth 
further interchanges, and Dr. Mitchell sent to Dr. 
Holmes the skin of a rattlesnake of such vast propor- 
tions that it almost appeared to be the overcoat which 
some boa-constrictor might have taken off on an un- 
bearably hot day. These notes were a part of the 
transaction: - 
January 13, 1883. 
My dear Dr. Mitchell,- 
I am mightily interested in your snake-experiments, 
and hope to have a full account of them by and by. 
Do send me that snake-skin you speak of, and per- 
haps I will wear it as a necktie. 
Don't let 'em bite you ! Remember poor Dr. Wain- 
wright, and how near you came to being crotalized 
into Hades by that fellow that turned round in his 
box. If you play any such tricks with your " worms," 
as Bacon calls 'em, I won't write your obituary for 
G. W. C.'s paper. Good luck to you and the var- 
mints. 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 
261 
March 1, 1883. 
My dear Dr. Mitchell, - I am reminded of 
Pope's line: - 
Pleased with a - rattler - tickled, etc. 
I don't think I have it quite right, but anyhow I 
am both pleased and tickled with my rattler's integu- 
ment. It is magnificent,-not Tofana or Madame de 
Brinvilliers in all her glory of silks and satins was 
clad like one of these. But what a parlous worm it 
was, to be sure ! I did n't know that pizon sarpents 
ever grew so big as that. He must have shed venom 
as a milch cow does her amiable secretion. I have 
got him hung up on my revolver (book-shelves, that 
is), and he hides a library of volumes. And when he 
rattled, how he must have waked the slumbering watch- 
men, if any such were within range ! I should greatly 
enjoy a short biography of this individual specimen of 
a race which owes so much to your pious labors. 
Well, well, - asps and vipers and copperheads, and 
cobras and rattlesnakes of reasonable dimensions I 
know, but a crotalus with the length and circumfer- 
ence of a boa-constrictor is a new acquaintance whose 
bark, if I may so call his integument, is much more 
welcome than his bite would be. 
Always, and this time thankfully, yours. 
March 15, 1883. 
Dear Dr. Mitchell, - I swallowed your little 
poison-pamphlet at a mouthful. There is something 
wonderfully fascinating about these venomous beasts, 
and I can never read too much about them. 
Everybody admires the wonderful snake drapery. 
If my wife was a little taller I would have her wear 
it along the back of a cloak - the head coming up as 262 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
to a hood, - what a sensation it would make, to he 
sure, as she walked along Beacon Street ' 
I am really very proud of it, and keep it displayed 
in my library, where it is a great attraction. 
I have thanked you for this most piquant and wel- 
come gift before, but I hardly knew what an object 
of curiosity and admiration it would prove to be both 
to myself and others. We all want to know where it 
came from - I don't think you have told me. 
May 11, 1883. 
My dear Dr. Mitchell, - Have I ever thanked 
you for the Preliminary Report on the Venoms of 
Serpents ? I read every word of it with the greatest 
interest, and I want to know what comes of your fur- 
ther investigations. It is a most fascinating subject 
every way, chemically, biologically, and theologically, 
- such a strange manifestation of creative animus. 
The snake-skin continues to be admired, and the rid- 
dle to be read and praised by all whose eyes fall on 
the great scimetar. 
The possibility that Elsie's story might really have 
a foundation in fact excited the imaginations of many 
persons, and the Doctor had numerous letters of 
inquiry. He had, however, no instance to quote. 
" I do not know," he wrote to Dr. Edwards, of Mon- 
treal, " that such a pre-natal poisoning might not 
affect the disposition, etc., but I do not assert it." 
Yet he told a gentleman that he " was amazed after- 
wards to receive letters from two men of character 
and position, one of them, I think, a Confederate 
official, describing similar cases in their families, and 
wondering how he had heard of them." 1 
1 Lippincott's Magazine. Januarv. 1895. n. 110 NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 
263 
The book had been many years before the public 
when the Doctor wrote that he had never forgiven a 
" still cherished and charming friend " for calling his 
tale " a medicated novel." The witty word travelled 
fast and far, but it was, as the Doctor felt, not only 
an incorrect but an unfair description. The medical 
element was altogether secondary, a mere basis or 
introduction for a much profounder problem of the- 
ology. The possibility of pre-natal poisoning was 
interesting, but what Dr. Holmes had in mind was to 
raise the question of its effect upon the moral respon- 
sibility of the unhappy recipient of the envenomed 
instincts. To Mrs. Stowe, whose beliefs he might 
well fancy himself to be rudely shocking, he wrote 
this very interesting letter: - 
TO MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 
September 13, 1860. 
Dear Mrs. Stowe, - Your letter gave me great 
pleasure and encouragement. To have interested one 
who has made the world her own audience is in itself 
a reward for undertaking my perilous experiment. 
You see exactly what I wish to do : to write a 
story with enough of interest in its characters and 
incidents to attract a certain amount of popular at- 
tention. Under cover of this to stir that mighty 
question of automatic agency in its relation to self- 
determination. To do this by means of a palpable 
outside agency, predetermining certain traits of char- 
acter and certain apparently voluntary acts, such as 
the common judgment of mankind and the tribunals 
of law and theology have been in the habit of recog- 
nizing as sin and crime. Not exactly insanity, either 
general or partial, in its common sense, but rather an 264 
unconscious intuitive tendency, dating from a power- 
ful ante-natal influence, which modifies the whole 
organization. To make the subject of this influence 
interest the reader, to carry the animalizing of her 
nature just as far as can be done without rendering 
her repulsive, to redeem the character in some meas- 
ure by humanizing traits, which struggle through the 
lower organic tendencies, to carry her on to her 
inevitable fate by the natural machinery of circum- 
stance, grouping many human interests around, her, 
which find their natural solution in the train of events 
involving her doom, - such is the idea of this story. 
It is conceived in the fear of God and in the love of 
man. Whether I am able to work out my delicate 
and difficult problem or not is not of so much conse- 
quence. A man may fulfil the object of his existence 
by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempt- 
ing a task he cannot achieve. Still I can truly say 
that the whole course of the story, and the resolution 
of all its studied discords, is as clear at this moment 
in my mind as the spires of Cambridge seen from 
my window against the morning sun; - not all the 
details, of course, but the disposal of all the charac- 
ters, and the effects which are to harmonize all that 
goes before. 
I thank you very much for your kind hints. I will 
endeavor not to hurry, and to develop my leading 
characters so that you shall know - I dare not say 
remember - them. Perhaps I can contrive to lengthen 
my instalment somewhat, but I have a good many other 
things to do besides writing my story. - I have stolen 
this half hour from chapter xxi., which is not yet 
begun, to thank you for your very kind and welcome 
words, and to lift the lids of my story and of my heart 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 265 
just enough to give you a moment's look into them. 
I write the thoughts which are given me, by a kind of 
necessity, and I cannot hope that you or any friend 
will always agree with that which I must say, if I 
speak at all. But when I have the happiness of be- 
ing approved in any aim by the woman who has taken 
the world captive, and to whom it has been granted 
more than to any other to reach the heart of the race, 
colonizing her thought in all civilized and even half- 
barbaric tongues, - it is indeed a deep delight. 
I may not always please your taste or exactly meet 
your judgment. But one thing I am sure : I have, in 
common with yourself, a desire to leave the world a 
little more human than if I had not lived; for a true 
humanity is, I believe, our nearest approach to Divin- 
ity, while we work out our atmospheric apprenticeship 
on the surface of this second-class planet. 
I may startle you some fine morning, when I am 
strolling about Andover, by a knock or a ring, and 
steal an hour of your time, for which posterity would 
never forgive me, if indeed it happened to know of 
my existence. 
With my best respects to the Professor, I am, dear 
Mrs. Stowe, faithfully yours. 
Dr. Holmes allowed the public half a dozen years, 
or more, to mull over the startling doctrines in this 
" inartistic " story of Elsie, Venner, and then gave 
them another novel which moved along the same line 
of moral speculation. Properly viewed, this was a 
step forward, because Elsie Venner had based its 
problem on an abnormal, if not an impossible, instance, 
and therefore had left open a back door, whereby one 
could sneak away from giving a decisive answer to the 
NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 266 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
questions raised. But Myrtle Hazard's case was a 
simple one of heredity, as easy and natural a thing as 
a ghost to have in any family with ancestors. In a 
literary way, too, the second book far surpassed the 
earlier. If it was less weird and picturesque, - or 
shall we say fantastic, - it was also far more artistic. 
Evidently Elsie, Venner is going always to be re- 
garded as Dr. Holmes's most " important canvas," to 
borrow the language of the painter fraternity; but 
The Guardian Angel is much better work. In the 
earlier half every page sparkles with the gems of wis- 
dom, wit, and humor; the reader is dazzled, and, how- 
ever alert he may be, cannot look back without finding 
that he has missed something fine. Take a pencil, 
read carefully, and mark on the margin every striking 
sentence, and see how closely the marks follow each 
other; then you will have ocular demonstration of 
what the volume holds. It is true that the latter half 
is not quite so good as the beginning; but this is nat- 
ural, for characters develop in the first half of a novel 
and plots in the latter half, and Dr. Holmes could 
draw characters but could not work out plots. As a 
picture of New England people at or shortly before 
the time when the book was written, nothing could be 
more graphic, and the mise en scene was worthy of 
the men and women who moved in it. The rural town 
of Massachusetts in the middle third of this century 
is as well drawn as the country society of England 
was drawn in the fascinating novels of Jane Austen. 
It was not until 1884-85 that Dr. Holmes gave to 
the world his third and last novel, A Mortal Anti* 
pathy. He was then far past the creative age, and the 
book showed the fact too plainly. From Elsie Ven- 
ner, with her mysteriously envenomed nature, to that NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 
267 
absurd young man Maurice Kirkwood, who could not 
bear the sight of a young girl because his pretty 
cousin had caused him to fall from a balcony in his 
babyhood, the downward step was indeed a long one ; 
and as for "The Terror" and "The Wonder" and 
the boat-race and the fire, and all the rest of the ap- 
paratus, human and other, these won't do at all. The 
problem, too, though akin to that of the other novels, 
was, in comparison, weak and uninteresting. The 
Doctor was " young for his years," but too old to do 
any more work in fiction. He himself seems to have 
been aware in a measure, though not fully, of the dif- 
ference between this and his previous work. 
TO ALEXANDER IRELAND. 
April 5, 1886. 
My dear Mr. Ireland, - 
I think you told me you had read my story, A 
Mortal Antipathy, and found something to like in it, 
and I was thankful to think that it pleased you. I 
had no exalted anticipations about it; in fact, I was 
a little afraid that it would be scouted as altogether 
beyond the bounds of credibility ; and so I shored it 
up with scientific evidence of one kind and another. 
Oddly enough, whatever fault has been found with it, 
not one of its critics has accused it of improbability, 
- not one, so far as I have seen, at least. 
Dr. Holmes and Religion. When his more famous 
books were publishing, these words would have headed 
the most important chapter of a memoir. To-day, 
prudent limitations of due proportion to the present 
interest of the topic must be respected. In this age 268 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
the questionings of one generation are the faith of the 
next. Yet, even knowing this, it is difficult to real- 
ize that a few still linger above ground of those who 
used to call Dr. Holmes by any name of opprobrium, 
from freethinker to atheist; and that people now in 
middle life were, in their youth, forbidden to read The, 
Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, because it was a 
work of irreligious tendency. None the less, these 
things are, or were, facts; and when Elsie Venner 
appeared there was an outcry as if this quiet gentle- 
man, with the amiable face and kindly manner, were 
the very Antichrist of old, deceptively averting sus- 
picion by appearing in the coat and trousers of the 
period. 
Dr. Holmes loved medicine, and found deep pleas- 
ure in literature, but more than by either medicine 
or literature he was attracted by theology. His 
thought, his talk, his writing, in whatever direction it 
might set out, was sure soon to oscillate towards this 
polar topic. It was this which lent the dignity of a 
persistent and serious purpose to his work. His own 
theories of heredity would indicate that this irresist- 
ible propensity might be attributed to that potent in- 
fluence ; but if so, it was a curious instance of what 
must probably be called reactionary heredity ; for the 
Doctor made it his business to show that those beliefs 
which his ancestors had held for a bunch of divine 
keys to heavenly mansions were really a cluster of 
instruments of torture fashioned by misguided human 
intellects. 
Every age and every nation makes its own religion. 
Christianity has been the same since the days of 
Christ. But various communities in divers centuries 
have called by its name the widely varying religions NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 
269 
which they have constructed to suit their own several 
and mutable, moral and intellectual, even political and 
social conditions. The puritans of New England, not 
at the outset a collection of very gentle souls, placing 
themselves in moral and social antagonism with the 
established order of things in Europe, and in physical 
antagonism with the stern aspect of Nature in New 
England, naturally sought to strike a vindictive bal- 
ance in their scheme for another world; it was to be 
expected, a priori, that they would make cruelty the 
corner-stone of their religious edifice, and they did so. 
In time they took Christ out of the Bible and put 
Jonathan Edwards in ; they made a hell of immeasur- 
able spaciousness and indescribable terrors, and over- 
crowded it; and they made Heaven hardly so big as a 
modern hotel. They damned the heathen who had lived 
before the advent of Christ, and the latex* heathen who 
had never heard his name, and the poor babies who died 
before the minister could get to the bedside to baptize 
them I They damned every one who did not agree with 
them, and they damned each other, too, pretty freely. 
Now all this is not very ancient history; for when Dr. 
Holmes fell first under the ban of the religious world, 
it was because he was laying his lance, or his pen, in 
rest against precisely this promiscuous damnation. 
He was one of the early comers in that period of 
broad human humaneness, now present, but which was 
only approaching during his youth and middle age. 
He was a singularly humane man, - kindly and gentle, 
though with virility and courage to fight for kindliness 
and gentleness. It was these barbarisms, these grafts 
of thorns fastened by clergymen into the tree of Chris- 
tianity, which he set himself to cut away. " Any 
decent person," he said, and it was a favorite remark 270 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
with him, " ought to go mad, if he really holds such 
or such opinions. . . . Anything that is brutal, cruel, 
heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of 
mankind and perhaps for entire races, anything that 
assumes the necessity of the extermination of in- 
stincts which were given to be regulated, no matter 
by what name you call it, no matter whether a fakir, 
or a monk, or a deacon believes it, if received, ought 
to produce insanity in every well-regulated mind. 
That condition becomes a normal one, under the cir- 
cumstances. I am very much ashamed of some people 
for retaining their reason, when they know perfectly 
well that if they were not the most stupid or the most 
selfish of human beings, they would become non 
compotes at once." Therefore it was the religion of 
Orthodox clergymen, not the religion of Christ, that 
he attacked ; and the clergymen of course fought for 
their own, and declared that Dr. Holmes was an infi- 
del, when in fact he had only declared infidelity as 
to certain inferences which they had drawn from the 
Bible. Yet the Doctor, a mettlesome man himself, 
even while encountering them felt a certain admira- 
tion for these rigid, merciless, hard fighters of the old 
theology. " Whatever fault we may find," he wrote, 
" with many of their beliefs, we have a right to be 
proud of our Pilgrim and Puritan fathers among the 
clergy. They were ready to do and to suffer any- 
thing for their faith, and a faith which breeds heroes 
is better than an unbelief which leaves nothing worth 
being a hero for." 
Thus endowed with inherited ecclesiastical pug- 
nacity,- and the brethren of the church are so pugna- 
cious that they have monopolized for their literature 
the word polemics, which is only the Greek word for 271 
war, as of course every one knows, so that it should 
not be mentioned except that it is so suggestive, - 
thus endowed, I say, the Doctor was not at all over- 
awed by doctrines and interpretations of the Bible 
which were of human origin and authority, and he 
conceived Jonathan Edwards to be no more infallible 
than the supreme Pontiff at Rome. Was not his, 
Dr. Holmes's, errand in theology as good as that of 
his colonist forefathers, who had made it their busi- 
ness "to diabolize the deity," as he expressed it? He 
wrote to Rev. James Freeman Clarke: "You are 
doing noble work in humanizing 'Theology,' which 
has been largely diabology. My testimony is not 
needful to you, who are the leader of a great wing 
of the Christian army, but it is a kind of pleasure to 
give it while we see so much that is shrivelling up and 
fading out among our contemporaries." 
He believed that condition of change which had 
existed for eighteen centuries would continue, and that 
it was wholesome. He advocated discussion, and while 
he preached the new idea of humaneness, he did not 
even desire that every one should accept his teaching. 
He said: - 
" What we want in the religious and in the political 
organisms is just that kind of vital change which takes 
place in our bodies, - interstitial disintegration and 
reintegration; and one of the legitimate fears of our 
time is that science, which Sainte-Beuve would have 
us think has destroyed faith, will be too rapid in its 
action on beliefs. So the doubter should be glad that 
he is doubted; the rationalist respect the obduracy 
of the dogmatist; and all the mighty explosives with 
which the growth of knowledge has furnished us should 
be used rather to clear the path for those who come 
NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 272 
after us than to shatter the roofs which have long pro- 
tected and still protect so many of our humble and 
trusting fellow-creatures." 
"We cannot fail to see," he said again, " that just 
as astrology has given place to astronomy, so theology, 
the science of Him whom by searching no man can 
find out, is fast being replaced by what we may not 
improperly call theonomy, or the science of the laws 
according to which the Creator acts." And again: 
"As if faith did not require exercise as much as any 
other living thing, and were not all the better for a 
shaking up now and then. I don't mean that it would 
be fair to bother Bridget, the wild Irish girl, or J oyce 
Heth, the centenarian, or any other intellectual non- 
combatant ; but all persons who proclaim a belief 
which passes judgment on their neighbors must be 
ready to have it ' unsettled,' that is, questioned, at all 
times and by anybody, - just as those who set up bars 
across a thoroughfare must expect to have them taken 
down by every one who wants to pass, if he is strong 
enough." And still again he exclaims : " Besides, to 
think of trying to water-proof the American mind, 
against the questions that Heaven rains down upon it, 
shows a misapprehension of our new conditions! " 
In the same connection may be taken this sentence : 
" Can any man look round and see what Christian 
countries are now doing, and how they are governed, 
and what is the general condition of society, without 
seeing that Christianity is the flag under which the 
world sails, and not the rudder that steers its course ? " 
But it was a question of considerable consequence 
what sort of a change he was introducing; was he 
making Hell hotter and more populous, or cooler and 
less crowded ? So many excellent old-fashioned peo- 
ple believed that he was doing the former 1 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 
273 
It was natural that many shook their heads very 
gravely when he talked, in language which seemed to 
them light and irreverent, of Americanizing Chris- 
tianity. Here are his words, which smote like blas- 
phemy on many good little ears : " Our religion has 
been Judaized, it has been Romanized, it has been 
Orientalized, it has been Anglicized, and the time is 
at hand when it must be Americanized ! Now, Sir, 
you see what Americanizing is in politics; - it means 
that a man shall have a vote because he is a man, - 
and shall vote for whom he pleases, without his neigh- 
bor's interference." And like unto the foregoing was 
this paragraph, which sounded terrible to the peo- 
ple who had not learned that the creatures fashioned 
their Creator as much as He fashioned them, though 
in a somewhat different sense, and only by making 
variations of the same prevalent image : " Every age 
has to shape the Divine image it worships over again, 
- the present age and our own country are busily 
engaged in the task at this time. We unmake Presi- 
dents and make new ones. This is an apprentice- 
ship for a higher task. Our doctrinal teachers are 
unmaking the Deity of the Westminster Catechism 
and trying to model a new one, with more of modern 
humanity and less of ancient barbarism in his com- 
position." Again: " Men are idolaters, and want 
something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw them- 
selves down before ; they always did, they always 
will; and if you don't make it of wood, you must 
make it of words, which are just as much used for 
idols as promissory notes are used for values." In 
conversation, one day in his later life, he said: 
" Every age has its way of representing its idea of 
God. Far back, it was the rude mass of metal, iron 274 
or bronze. Then came the Greek with his finer ideal 
expressed in beautiful images of pure white marble. 
We select adjectives, the most beautiful and sublime 
in our language, and with these we make our God." 
But matters were to reach a much worse stage than 
this. In good season Dr. Holmes began to talk of the 
obligations of the Creator to his creations ! " If a 
created being has no rights which his Creator is bound 
to respect, there is an end to all moral relations between 
them." Words were insufficient to express the horror 
of the religious world at this. The duties of God 
to man / Such audacious and awful profanity might 
tempt the Divine wrath as the rod tempts the light- 
ning. It seemed really dangerous to live in the age 
and nation where such words might well provoke the 
activity of One who could destroy ! 
When Elsie Venner came, the Doctor found him- 
self in hotter water than ever before. For " the 
imaginary subject of the story obeyed her will. But 
her will obeyed the mysterious ante-natal poisoning 
influence." In the book the Doctor set forth this 
cluster of opinions, any one of which was fuel for a 
martyr's fire. We read that the liberal-minded cler- 
gyman " went so far in defence of the rights of man, 
that he put his foot into several heresies, for which 
men had been burned so often, it was time, if ever it 
could be, to acknowledge the demonstration of the 
argumentum ad ignem. He did not believe in the 
responsibility of idiots. He did not believe a new- 
born infant was morally answerable for other people's 
acts. He thought a man with a crooked spine would 
never be called to account for not walking erect. He 
thought if the crook was in his brain, instead of his 
back, he could not fairly be blamed for any conse- 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 275 
quence of this natural defect, whatever lawyers or 
divines might call it. He argued that, if a person 
inherited a perfect mind, body, and disposition, and 
had perfect teaching from infancy, that person could 
do nothing more than keep the moral law perfectly. 
But supposing that the Creator allows a person to be 
born with an hereditary or ingrafted organic tend- 
ency, and then puts this person into the hands of 
teachers incompetent or positively bad, is not what is 
called sin or transgression of the law necessarily in- 
volved in the premises ? Is not a Creator bound to 
guard his children against the ruin which inherited 
ignorance might entail on them ? Would it be fair 
for a parent to put into a child's hands the title-deeds 
to all its future possessions and a bunch of matches ? 
And are not men children, nay, babes, in the eye of 
Omniscience? The minister grew bold in his ques- 
tions. Had not he as good right to ask questions as 
Abraham? " 
Neither, if Dr. Holmes's theory was true, could 
these pre-natal influences be wholly eradicated by 
education : " There are people who think that every- 
thing may be done, if the doer, be he educator or phy- 
sician, be only called ' in season.' No doubt; but in 
season would often be a hundred or two years before 
the child was born, and people never send so early as 
that." 
After allowing society to take care of itself by re- 
straining the freedom or taking the life of any person 
whose pre-natal influences were so destructive of the 
social order as to call for such safeguards, Dr. Holmes 
stopped short. He seemed to shift the responsibility 
from that point onward upon the Creator, whose 
arrangements had brought about these conditions. A 
NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 276 
just God, to say nothing of a merciful one, would of 
course make it all right hereafter for the unfortunate, 
involuntary victim. He said: - 
" It is very singular that we recognize all the bodily 
defects that unfit a man for military service, and all 
the intellectual ones that limit his range of thought, 
but always talk at him as if all his moral powers were 
perfect. I suppose we must punish evil-doers as we 
extirpate vermin ; but I don't know that we have any 
more right to judge them than we have to judge rats 
and mice, which are just as good as cats and weasels, 
though we think it necessary to treat them as crimi- 
nals. . . . Automatic action in the moral world; the 
reflex movement, which seems to be self-determination, 
and has been hanged and howled at as such (meta- 
phorically) for nobody knows how many centuries, - 
until somebody shall study this as Marshall Hall has 
studied reflex nervous action in the bodily system, I 
would not give much for men's judgments of each 
other's characters. Shut up the robber and defaulter 
we must. But what if your oldest boy had been 
stolen from his cradle and bred in a North Street 
cellar? What if you are drinking a little too much 
wine and smoking a little too much tobacco, and your 
son takes after you, and so, your poor grandson's 
brain being a little injured in physical texture, he 
loses the fine moral sense on which you pride your- 
self, and does n't see the difference between signing 
another man's name to a draft and his own ? " 
So, then, since no fallible man could ever be sure 
just how far another man was under the control of 
pre-natal influences, it became impossible to declare 
any man to be a sinner. Conceive an old-school 
Orthodox clergyman deprived of this privilege I Yet 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 
277 
lose it he must, unless lie could give a negative answer 
to Mr. Langdon when that gentleman wrote: " Do 
you think there may be predispositions, inherited or 
ingrafted, but at any rate constitutional, which shall 
take out certain apparently voluntary determinations 
from the control of the will, and leave them as free 
from moral responsibility as the instincts of the lower 
animals? Do you not think there may be a crime, 
which is not a sin ? " 
Without unbiassed freedom of the will, where was 
moral responsibility ? Without moral responsibility, 
what became of sin? Without sin, what was the use 
of Hell? What a house-that-Jack-built this was! But 
the Orthodox religionists of the good old school clung 
with pertinacity to their belief in Hell, - there were 
so many people who ought to be there ! 
What made all these innovating arguments more 
distasteful was, that the sinner seemed to become 
actually an object of pity. It might be a necessity 
to punish him, but he was to be commiserated for 
having been made the victim of such necessity. This 
was logic, and Dr. Holmes was a clear-headed and 
inexorable logician ; so his humanity and his logic 
were compounded thus: - 
" I don't deny that I hate the sight of certain peo- 
ple ; but the qualities which make me tend to hate 
the man himself are such as I am so much disposed 
to pity, that, except under immediate aggravation, I 
feel kindly enough to the worst of them. It is such 
a sad thing to be born a sneaking fellow, so much 
worse than to inherit a hump-back or a couple of 
club-feet, that I sometimes feel as if we ought to love 
the crippled souls, if I may use this expression, with a 
certain tenderness which we need not waste on noble 
natures." 278 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
It must be admitted that by this time Dr. Holmes 
had a pretty big fight ou his hands, in which it was 
not altogether easy to array his own side. In fact it 
was the successor of an old contest, which had had 
difficulties that logicians and theologians had never 
been able to get into shape. The impossibility of 
reconciling " foreknowledge absolute " and " free 
will " had kept the dialecticians by the ears for a 
couple of centuries, till they had reduced to the com- 
monplace everything which could possibly be said in 
the disputation. Now Dr. Holmes came along, lead- 
ing science by the hand to take a place in the con- 
test ; and heredity, or pre-natal influences, were set up 
as the new antagonists to continue the old warfare 
against free will. It is not settled yet, that unending 
dispute, and probably it never will be. Dr. Holmes 
fought hard in it to the end of his life, and then died, 
leaving it still furiously raging. Indeed, how can one 
make a chemical analysis of the motives which have 
produced an action, or developed a character, and 
allot so many ounces of free will, so many grammes 
of heredity per the father, and other grammes of 
heredity via the mother ? This is no place to enter 
into the discussion ; my purpose is only to show what 
sort of things they were that Dr. Holmes said, which 
caused him to live, for many years at least, under the 
ban of the religious world, and to bear the character 
of one teaching momentous innovations in the mat- 
ters of established faith. 
What was his own faith ? Many will think the 
question interesting, and seek an answer. But he 
never formulated his beliefs, and no one has the right 
to do it for him. For the most part he sedulously 
kept clear of any distinct commitments as to religion, NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 
279 
while speaking freely as to creeds. Yet his writings 
are full of disconnected, sporadic remarks bearing 
upon the subject, and much more will be found in the 
letters published in these volumes, notably in those to 
Mr. Kimball and Mrs. Stowe. I doubt if he could 
ever have written down his Credo, at least in a shape 
that would long have stood his own criticism. What 
he would have said on one day and in one mood, he 
would have rejected, or greatly amended, on another 
day and in another mood. The things which he did 
say are far from consistent with each other, far from 
constituting a systematic whole. Now his emotions 
were in the ascendant, and anon his intellect held 
domination. He was a poet and a logician; what was 
to be expected ? " Now you must know," the Profes- 
sor says, " that there are a great many things which 
interest me, to some of which this or that particular 
class of readers may be totally indifferent. I love 
. . . old stories from black-letter volumes and yel- 
low manuscripts, and new projects out of hot brains 
not yet imbedded in the snows of age. I love the 
generous impulses of the reformer ; but not less does 
my imagination feed itself upon the old litanies, so 
often warmed by the human breath upon which they 
were wafted to Heaven that they glow through our 
frames like our own heart's blood. I hope I love 
good men and women ; I know that they never speak 
a word to me, even if it be of question or blame, that 
I do not take pleasantly, if it is expressed with a rea- 
sonable amount of human kindness." His warfare, 
be it remarked however, was always against the 
glosses of Christianity, never against Christianity; 
against clergymen, not against Christ. He repudi- 
ated " the Deity of ecclesiastical commerce," as he 280 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
delightfully expressed it, but in the same paragraph 
delivered a strong appeal for faith in a kindly, paren- 
tal God. He was fond, his life long, of church-going. 
He says, again through the mouth of the Professor: 
" I am a regular church-goer. I should go for vari- 
ous reasons, if I did not love it; but I am happy 
enough to find great pleasure in the midst of devout 
multitudes, whether I can accept all their creeds or 
not. One place of worship comes nearer than the 
rest to my ideal standard, and to this it was that I 
carried our young girl." This was of course the old 
colonial King's Chapel, at the corner of School and 
Tremont streets in Boston, sometimes absurdly called 
the " Stone Chapel " (as being built of granite) by 
the people who were as much scared by the royalty in 
its proper title as if they were " jingo " politicians. 
Yet he went also to the " meeting-house " in Beverly 
Farms, about which certainly no associations of history 
or of antiquity cast any glamour ; for he found, as he 
said, that there was in the corner of his heart a plant, 
called reverence, which wanted to be watered about 
once a week. He liked a good preacher, but he sat 
beneath a dull one contentedly, studying him perhaps 
as a character, since dulness is not dull to the ob- 
server of human nature. He wrote thus to Bishop 
Brooks: - 
296 Beacon Street, May 23, 1888. 
My dear Mr. Brooks, - I had the privilege of 
listening to your sermon last Sunday forenoon. I 
was greatly moved and impressed by it, and I came 
away very thankful that so divine a gift of thought 
and feeling and utterance had been bestowed upon 
one who was born and moves among us. 
TO PHILLIPS BROOKS. Interior of King's Chapel 281 
My daughter would be glad to have me as her con- 
stant companion, and of course it would be a delight 
to listen to such persuasive and inspiring exhortations 
as those which held your great audience last Sunday. 
But my natural Sunday home is King's Chapel, 
where a good and amiable and acceptable preacher 
tries to make us better, with a purity and sincerity 
which we admire and love. In that church I have 
worshipped for half a century, - there I listened to 
Dr. Greenwood, to Ephraim Peabody, often to James 
Walker, and to other holy and wise men who have 
served us from time to time. There, on the fifteenth 
of June, 1840, I was married, there my children were 
all christened, from that church the dear companion 
of so many blessed years was buried. In her seat I 
must sit, and through its door I hope to be carried to 
my resting-place.1 It is not any difference of creed 
which would keep me from following my beloved 
daughter, for I have been at times a regular attendant 
on the Episcopal service. This was at Pittsfield, 
where my son Edward's friend, Mr. Newton, is I 
hear doing admirable work in the most catholic, un- 
sectarian spirit. I attend a Baptist church at Beverly, 
not rarely with edification, for my temple is a hypae- 
thral one, and my church doors open very widely. 
I am ashamed to ask you to pardon this letter. 
You know the language of sincerity from that of flat- 
tery, and will accept this heartfelt tribute in the spirit 
in which it is given. 
Writing, in 1876, to Mr. James William Kimball, 
and speaking of hymns, he said : " It would be one of 
the most agreeable reflections to me, if I could feel that 
I had left a few worthy to be remembered after me." 
NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 
1 So he was. 282 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
" Old realities have become shadows, but these 
shadows still torment me ; " thus wrote John Adding- 
ton Symonds; and I think that Dr. Holmes was in 
the like case, and that he never got wholly away from 
the beliefs instilled into his mind in childhood. He 
said once that he could never quite emerge from under 
the shadow of the old orthodox hell. And he wrote : 
" We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs 
of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it 
is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out 
of the superstitious fears which were early implanted 
in his imagination ; no matter how utterly his reason 
may reject them, he will still feel as the famous woman 
did about ghosts, Je rty crois pas, mais je les crains, 
- ' I don't believe in them, but I am afraid of them, 
nevertheless,' " - which quotation suggests what it is 
not altogether irrelevant to say in this connection: 
that the psychical, supernatural talk which became 
fashionable in the Doctor's later days interested him 
moderately. A friend once sent to him an article 
concerning ghosts. The Doctor, in his note of thanks, 
mentioned some singular occurrences within his per- 
sonal knowledge, and closed thus : " I keep my cellar 
door open for ' Science,' and my attic skylights open 
for unclassed and as yet unclassifiable statements 
about the imponderable." Though these words do not 
relate to the mysteries of religion, yet they indicate 
his general mental attitude towards all mysteries. 
If Death knocked at the door of a friend, he gave 
not precisely the condolence of a Christian believer, 
and yet something not altogether removed from that. 
Here, for example, are three rather interesting letters, 
one to the old friend of his boyhood, Phineas Barnes, 
who had received his summons, another to a corre- NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 
283 
spondent whom he had never personally met, the third 
to an acquaintance living in his neighborhood in 
Boston. 
March 10, 1871. 
My dear Barnes, - I just this moment received 
your letter, which I feel impelled to answer, even if I 
must do it hurriedly, on the instant. . . . Your letter 
recalls me from myself and my own immediate family 
interest to the tender recollections of an early and 
pure friendship, which comes back to me as it was and 
as it has always continued through a long period of 
separation, in which we never lost sight of each other, 
up to the present time, when your illness and the 
fears, I hope less founded than you seem to believe, 
have excited such anxiety in all who love you. You 
may be sure I wish to help your sweet daughter in all 
her untiring efforts to procure the best help and coun- 
sel our city could afford. . . . While I must hope 
that you will find yourself permanently relieved by an 
operation, if that is thought advisable, I admire, while 
I am not surprised at, the calmness with which you 
contemplate all possibilities. You are a philosopher 
by nature, and something more than a philosopher 
by faith. It is trust in something better and wiser 
than we are, whether it comes to us in the inner light 
which we believe is the direct gift of the infinite spirit, 
or takes the human aspect in the person of him who 
brings the Divine as it were face to face with us; or 
whether with deeper than even Christian humility we 
stretch our arms forth " like an infant crying in the 
night," and implore the Being who gave us life to 
give us even the crumbs of faith which fall from the 
table of the triumphant and unquestioning believer. 
TO PHINEAS BARNES. 284 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
To this, in one shape or another, we must all come, - 
if we have a Father, He will care for us and do what 
is best for us ; and if He is as good as even our 
earthly fathers and mothers have been, will judge us 
not by our poor stumbling acts and short-sighted 
views, and pitiable shortcomings, but in the light of 
His own magnanimous, forgiving, loving nature. Add 
to this view of our weakness and His strength, of our 
imperfection and His all-perfection, of our need and 
His sufficiency, such a view of the manner in which 
His grace is imparted as we believe the Spirit of God 
has taught us, and we are ready, so far as our limita- 
tions will let us be, for all that may be sent us. 
I thought you would like a few words from me of 
this general nature, far less for your sake than for 
mine, - for we must all soon cast anchor, if we have 
one, and mine is Trust in God. 
TO W. R. STURTEVANT. 
Beverly Farms, Mass., September 17, 1878. 
My dear Sir, - Your sad and tearful letter 
reached me at this seaside place, where I am spend- 
ing the summer months - have spent them rather, 
and am still lingering among the autumn leaves, be- 
ginning now to fade and soon to fall. The flowers 
are many of them already withered - alas, for the 
sweet flower that has faded from your sight! How 
could I read that tender letter of yours without the 
deepest sympathy - how could I keep the tears from 
wetting my own cheeks, when I thought how yours 
and the heart-stricken mother's were flowing ? I was 
three years old when a little sister of six died after a 
lingering illness. Her pallid face - the very posture 
in which she was sitting - her arms leaning on the NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 
285 
arms of the little chair - never left me, and to this 
day I can never recall her without an emotion of ten- 
derness which makes me akin to all grief in others. 
More than half a century had gone since her death, 
when I came upon a box carefully put away - it held 
her doll, and the sight of it made me a child again. 
Oh, no - I was not ashamed that it did. . . . 
How can one " comfort " another under such an 
affliction as yours ? Not certainly by phrases - 
rather by those assurances of sympathy which all 
hearts ask in their supreme moments of trial. Still, 
there are a few thoughts which it is not idle or ill- 
timed to recall. There are no graves that grow so 
green as the graves of children. Their memory comes 
back after a time more beautiful than that of those 
who leave us at any other age, because life has not 
had time to strip them of those " clouds of glory " 
which, as Wordsworth says so exquisitely, they come 
trailing with them "from Heaven, which is their 
home." If no pang is sharper than parting with a 
beloved child, no recollection clears itself so naturally 
and perhaps I might say so early, of all but what is 
lovely to dwell upon. 
There are two ways of accepting a grief such as 
you are now aching with. Those who believe in a 
fixed order of things which goes on without regard to 
human welfare here or hereafter, according to inexora- 
ble laws which give no account of themselves to those 
who are under their dominion, and never will, must 
bear their trials as they best can with the aid of what 
is called " philosophy." They have at least the con- 
solation of feeling that there is no ill will in the blind 
forces which wreck their happiness. The falling 
stone, the atmospheric poison, are not to blame for 286 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
what they do. One must do his best to keep the 
natural laws on his side, and then take what comes to 
him. He can have no quarrel with a universe which 
cannot help itself. His best consoler is Time, which 
heals most wounds, though it leaves too many of the 
wounded cripples. 
The other way of taking bereavements and misfor- 
tunes is to accept them as from the hand of One who 
will in due time explain to all His reasonable creatures 
the order of things in which their lives and welfare 
are bound up. All religions which do not treat men, 
women, and children as under the tender care of a 
Being who understands their natures, who knows all 
their griefs, who in allowing them to be born into 
consciousness - into intelligence and affection - took 
on Himself all the duties and obligations, and more 
than all, of the best of earthly parents, seem to me un- 
worthy of the source from which they are pretended 
to be derived. 
I hope you can accept your great sorrow as yet to 
be interpreted by the Divine wisdom and goodness. 
In the mean time be assured that the natural and 
outspoken expression of your anguish meets with my 
deepest sympathy, as I am sure it must with that of 
every feeling human heart. 
Boston, December 8, 1884. 
My dear Mrs. Dorr, - I write in the memory 
of a recent sorrow, which has fallen upon my own 
family, to express my sympathy with you in your great 
bereavement. It is not that words can do much to 
add to the simple phrase that says, - I sorrow with 
you and wish I could lighten your load of grief. 
TO MRS. JULIA C. R. DORR. NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 
287 
My loss is not only an affliction, but it is also a sad 
disappointment, for I had hoped and had every reason 
to hope for an honorable and useful and very happy 
career for my youngest son, who seemed to be just 
entering a new era in a life happy in all respects but 
one, - the want of health, which seemed to be return- 
ing to him when he was suddenly taken away. 
I tell you my sorrow, but I am thinking now of 
yours. It is not for me to suggest the sources of con- 
solation to which you must look in this hour of trial. 
A true woman's heart knows where to find its stay 
and support in those human affections which it has 
learned to lean upon, and in that higher trust which 
tells us that the source from which our earthly love 
derives its purest and warmest impulse must overflow 
with the same tenderness that belongs to our deepest 
emotions. I hope you find some solace in thoughts 
like these. 
The extracts you send me show what a loss the 
community has experienced in the death of Judge 
Dorr. Your private grief is sacred, and I almost 
hesitate to send this note, but you will understand it, 
and perhaps be reminded by it of how many there are 
who mourn with you in your hour of trial. 
These letters show the emotional, sympathetic side 
of the Doctor's nature. On the other hand, intellec- 
tually, as I have already so often had occasion to re- 
mark, he was a close and logical reasoner. He had 
learned that to take for granted a postulate which is 
essential and yet not known to be true, is only to court 
destruction and lead to a false conclusion in a vast 
majority of cases. The following seems to me a very 
striking letter concerning immortality; it stands by 288 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
itself, solitary, so far as I know, amid all that he has 
publicly or privately written : - 
TO JOHN LINDLEY. 
Private - an impromptu answer. 
Boston, December 28, 1867. 
Dear Sir, - I should prefer to say that I trust 
there will be a righting of this world's evils for each 
and all of us in a future state, than say that I share the 
unquestioning certainty of many of those about me. 
The natural argument seems to me against the 
supposition. In the year 1800 I was not, to the best 
of my knowledge. Since that time my consciousness 
has been evoked and my experiences have been ac- 
cumulated. I do not see that I have any natural 
ground for claiming the future any more than the 
past, - other than my conviction that it is or ought to 
be so, - a conviction which is sometimes strong and at 
other times weak, as in the experience of many others. 
I have seen many human consciousnesses put to- 
gether, like my own. They were at one time repre- 
sented by the unconscious life of ova. By and by 
they got sense, intellect, will, conscience, experience. 
But I have seen many consciousnesses taken to 
pieces also; they lost the senses to a great extent; the 
intellect and of course the conscience, with the will, 
were enfeebled, almost lost, and the experiences of life 
so erased that the wife forgot her husband, the mother 
her children. 
The natural conclusion would be that this gradual 
decay ends in extinction. The question might well be 
asked, whether the individuality, so nearly lost in this 
world, is likely to be restored by the destruction of the NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 
289 
organism. I hope and trust that my feelings are right, 
which tell me that this world demands a complement. 
If the evidence of the New Testament is a proof 
(and not merely a probability of a certain value, vari- 
ously estimated by different honest persons), there is 
no need of asking the question. 
One thing seems to me clear, - that if the future 
life is to be for the bulk of mankind what the larger 
part of our pulpits teach, namely, a condition of hope- 
less woe, there is no reason why we should wish to 
have proof of another life. 
The more I consider the doctrine of eternal punish- 
ment, the more it seems to me a heathen invention, 
which has found its way into Christianity, and en- 
tirely inconsistent with the paternal character attrib- 
uted to the Deity. (We must carry to any future 
sphere the characters we form here ; and these must 
influence, if they do not determine, our condition. 
Yet it seems in accordance with the paternal principle 
that any punishment should be reformatory and not 
vindictive.) 
One thing is certain : it is impossible to disprove 
the reality of a future life, and we have all a right to 
cherish the hope that we may live again under more 
favorable circumstances, and be able to account for 
these preliminary arrangements, which, as a finality, 
are certainly unsatisfactory. 
In connection with this letter it is interesting to 
read this passage from Elsie Venner. Mr. Bernard 
Langdon, it will be remembered, had been lassoed by 
the too melodramatic villain of the tale, made uncon- 
scious, and narrowly brought back to life; where, 
upon Dr. Holmes says : - 290 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
" There were some curious spiritual experiences 
connected with his last evening's adventure which 
were working very strongly in his mind. It was 
borne in upon him irresistibly that he had been dead 
since he had seen Helen, - as dead as the son of the 
Widow of Nain before the bier was touched and he 
sat up and began to speak. There was an interval 
between two conscious moments which appeared to 
him like a temporary annihilation, and the thoughts it 
suggested were worrying him with strange perplexities. 
" A man is stunned by a blow with a stick on the 
head. He becomes unconscious. Another man gets 
a harder blow on the head from a bigger stick, and it 
kills him. Does he become unconscious too ? If so, 
when does he come to his consciousness? The man 
who has had a slight or moderate blow conies to him- 
self when the immediate shock passes off and the 
organs begin to work again, or when a bit of the skull 
is pried up, if that happens to be broken. Suppose 
the blow is hard enough to spoil the brain and stop 
the play of the organs, what happens then ? " 
But Helen, the good New England girl, replies: - 
" It is a strange experience, but I once had some- 
thing like it. I fainted, and lost some five or ten 
minutes out of my life, as much as if I had been dead. 
But when I came to myself, I was the same person 
every way, in my recollections and character. So I 
suppose that loss of consciousness is not death. And 
if I was born out of unconsciousness into infancy with 
many/amZy traits of mind and body, I can believe, 
from my own reason, even without help from Revela- 
tion, that I shall be born again out of the unconscious- 
ness of death with my individual traits of mind and 291 
body. If death is, as it should seem to be, a loss of 
consciousness, that does not shake my faith; for I 
have been put into a body once already to fit me for 
living here, and I hope to be in some way fitted after 
this life to enjoy a better one. But it is all trust in 
God and in his Word. These are enough for me; I 
hope they are for you." 
Here we have Dr. Holmes on both sides of the 
debate, like the solitary domino player who pits his 
right hand against his left. I don't know which hand 
the Doctor thought would win, - if he had a fixed 
opinion. 
There is another paragraph in J. A. Symonds's 
Letters, which I feel tempted to quote before taking 
leave of this topic: " It is possible for me to state 
the mature opinion that my father typified an excep- 
tionally interesting moment of English evolution. He 
had abandoned the narrow standpoint of non-conform- 
ist or evangelical orthodoxy, but he retained what was 
ethically valuable in the religious tradition. He 
opened his mind to every influence of knowledge and 
of culture. He relinquished nothing which affected 
character and principle. In this way he formed a 
link between the past and the future, attaining to an 
almost perfect harmony of conservative and liberal 
ideas. I, the product of a younger period, regard his 
attitude with reverent admiration." One would mod- 
ify these words a little, not greatly, in fitting them to 
Dr. Holmes. It is interesting to note the movement 
of an age by observing minds so far asunder in their 
surroundings, yet advancing along parallel lines. 
Thus much, then, is said as to Dr. Holmes's rela- 
tions to theology, Christianity, and religion ; too much, 
from the point of view of present feeling and faith. 
NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 292 
It is a peril threatening the longevity of his writings, 
especially his novels, that the lessons to which he gave 
so much space and emphasis have now been learned. 
He himself lived to see the beginning of the harvest 
from that seed which he and a few other co-laborers had 
planted, as their Pilgrim progenitors had been wont 
in the early days to put in their corn, with much hard 
labor and under the menace of barbarism. In 1882, 
in a preface to a new edition of The, Autocrat, he was 
able to declare: " I can say without offence to-day 
that which called out the most angry feelings and the 
hardest language twenty-five years ago. I may doubt 
everything to-day if I will only do it civilly." In 
1891, he saw " the tyranny of that dogmatic dynasty," 
against which Myrtle Hazard had revolted, "breaking 
up in all directions." He saw abundant "evidence 
that there is no such thing as an air-tight reservoir of 
doctrinal finalities." He beheld "the folding-doors 
wide open to every Protestant to enter all the privi- 
leged precincts and private apartments of the various 
exclusive religious organizations. We may demand 
the credentials of every creed and catechise all the 
catechisms. So we may discuss the gravest questions 
over our morning coffee-cups, or over our evening 
teacups. There is no rest for the Protestant until he 
gives up his legendary anthropology and all its dog- 
matic dependencies." " Some persons," he admits, 
" may even at this late day take offence at a few 
opinions" of The Professor at the Breakfa st-Table ; 
" but most of these passages will be read without loss 
of temper by those who disagree with them; and by 
and by they may be found too timid and conservative 
for intelligent readers, if they are still read by any." 
If this new condition was desirable, the credit was 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES NOVELS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS 
293 
largely his; though the truth doubtless is, that it was 
one of the natural, inevitable, glacier-like movements 
of mankind, wherein he happened to be conspicuously 
in the front, - one of the little group which made the 
cut-water, if glaciers may be imagined to need such an 
equipment. CHAPTER XI 
THE DOCTOR'S DISTASTE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS 
As the story of Dr. Holmes's life moves on, one can 
hardly fail to notice how entirely it was that of the 
private citizen. Only by some sudden pricking of 
memory do we recall that this tranquil existence of 
the man of letters was running its peaceful course 
parallel with that momentous struggle, first political 
and then martial, equally fierce and spirit-stirring in 
both phases, which resulted in the abolition of slavery. 
The Doctor had no taste and felt no capacity for 
public affairs, or for any of that labor with organiza- 
tions, societies, and what not, of a quasi public char- 
acter, in which many persons so usefully interest 
themselves. Neither did his conscience compel him 
to do violence to his inclination, but permitted him to 
hold himself aloof from all these things, because he 
knew perfectly well that they could and surely would 
be done better by others. Politics, " movements," 
"causes," like factories and railroads, were to be han- 
dled by those who knew how; it would have been 
wastefulness for him to do such things badly to the 
neglect of other things which Nature had designed 
him to do well. He watched public affairs intelli- 
gently ; he voted conscientiously; with this he con- 
ceived that he had fulfilled his duty. The position 
seems sound ; yet it did not satisfy those of his friends 
who were of more militant temperaments, and who 295 
were anxious to enlist him in their struggles for the 
"good of mankind," little appreciating, what he so 
well knew, that his abilities were not adapted to serv- 
ing mankind in these special ways. It is cause for 
regret that a letter which James Russell Lowell wrote 
to him cannot be recovered, but his answer puts his 
case clearly. The occurrence sank deep into his mem- 
ory, and was referred to long years afterwards. 
DISTASTE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS 
TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
Boston, November 29, 1846. 
My dear Sir, - I have read your letter, as I be- 
lieve, in the same spirit as that in which it was writ- 
ten. There is nothing in its frankness which offends 
me; on the contrary, that is the very quality in it 
which makes it valuable and acceptable. I thank you 
for it, and shall endeavor to make a wholesome ap- 
plication of whatever truth and wisdom it contains. 
And now let me be frank with you. If I have 
endeavored to look at myself from your point of 
view, to correct my observations by your quadrant, 
will you be equally patient with me while I defend 
and explain some of my own views in a very tedious 
manner ? 
And first, my defence against certain specific grounds 
of complaint which you have in a very mild and proper 
way urged upon me : - 
I am not aware that I have arrayed myself against 
any of the " Causes " to which you refer, and I hardly 
know where to look for the " many shrewd rubs " you 
say I have given them. First, War. That old poem 
you refer to had a single passage in which I used ex- 
pressions which I think I should be unwilling to use 
now. But its main object was to show that war is one 296 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
of the most powerful stimulants in bringing out the 
power of the human intellect. Some years afterwards 
I wrote a Canadian war song, which my better feel- 
ings prompted me not to print. I own that I find in 
myself a growing hatred and disgust to this mode of 
settling national quarrels, and that in many points I 
sympathized with Mr. Sumner in his Fourth of July 
oration. But I cannot shut my eyes to the beauty of 
heroism and self-devotion which the battlefield has 
witnessed. I think our fathers were right in taking 
up arms to defend their liberties, and I have even now 
a mitigated and quasi kind of satisfaction in hearing 
of the courage and constancy of our countrymen in so 
poor a quarrel as we are engaged in.1 I believe there 
is nothing in this last poem which would go farther 
than defending our revolutionary struggle, and cer- 
tainly I have a right to claim some credit for not 
lugging in Majoi' Ringgold and General Taylor. If, 
as you seem to think, silence in regard to any great 
question is affording an incidental aid to its antago- 
nists, then I administered a rebuke to the war party 
in not alluding to our recent " glorious victories." 
Secondly, Slavery. I plead guilty of a thoughtless 
verse delivered at the same time with my $ B K poem, 
meant in the most perfect good nature for a harmless 
though a dull jest, and taken, to my great surprise, as a 
harsh and brutal expression of contempt: " The abo- 
lition men and maids," etc. Very certainly I should 
not write such a verse now, partly because this party 
has grown more powerful, perhaps, but partly also 
because I now know it would give offence to many 
good persons, whose motives and many of whose prin- 
ciples I hold in profound respect. I believe my posh 
1 The Mexican war. 297 
tive offences under this head stop at this period - 
1836 - with this one hardly-judged stanza. 
Thirdly, Temperance. I have written songs occa- 
sionally for social meetings in which the pleasures of 
convivial excitement were, perhaps, too warmly drawn. 
Here is a verse from one:- 
The Grecian's mound, the Roman's urn, 
Are silent when we call, 
Yet still the purple grapes return 
To cluster on the wall ; 
It was a bright Immortal's head 
They circled with the vine, 
And o'er their best and bravest dead 
They poured the dark red wine. 
I think I may say that it was from conscientious 
motives, in part, at least, if not mainly, that I never 
published the little poem from which this is taken - 
though I had a fondness for it. This was written for 
the Porcellian Club, many years ago ; but long since 
that I not only wrote but printed a song of a very 
different character for a temperance celebration in 
New York, thereby showing, what is true, that my 
sympathies, and in some humble measure my coopera- 
tion, were with the advocates of temperance. More 
than this, I took two hundred and fifty dollars instead 
of four hundred, rent, during the present year, for a 
store on Long Wharf, which I manage for my mother, 
rather than let it, like many of those about it, for a 
grocery, knowing that rum would be retailed from it. 
I mention this because it implies that I am not wholly 
insensible to the significance of this particular reform, 
and that, if needs be, I can make some little sacrifice 
for it. 
Fourthly, The claims of the poor. I believe I have 
never treated them unkindly in any way. I am sure 
DISTASTE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS 298 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
that I feel a deep interest in all well-directed efforts 
for improving their condition, and am ready to lend 
my cordial support to such practical measures as 
furnishing them with better dwellings, and similar 
movements. 
Fifthly and lastly, Reform in general, and reform- 
ers. It is a mistake of yours to suppose me a 
thorough-going conservatist; and I think you cannot 
have found that in my writings which does not belong 
to my opinions and character. I am an out-and-out 
republican in politics, a firm believer in the omnipo- 
tence of truth, in the constant onward struggle of the 
race, in the growing influence and blessed agency of 
the great moral principles now at work in the midst 
of all the errors and excesses with which they are 
attended. In a little club of ten physicians I rather 
think I occupy the extreme left of the liberal side of 
the house. The idea of my belonging to the party 
that resists all change is an entire misconception. I 
may be lazy, or indifferent, or timid, but I am by no 
means one of those (such as a few of my friends) who 
are wedded for better for worse to the status quo, 
with an iron ring that Reason cannot get away unless 
it takes the finger with it. 
But you refer to a certain passage in my last poem 
as implying that I treat it as a matter of choice which 
side of the great questions of the day one shall espouse. 
You then accuse me of ignoring the existence of con- 
science in the spiritual organization. On the strength 
of this you indulge in nearly a whole page of ironical 
amplifications. 
I was puzzled for a good while to conjecture what 
passage you referred to. At first I thought it was one 
with the lines, " Go to thy birthplace," etc. - Then 1 299 
thought it must be one beginning, " Don't catch the 
fidgets," - but I finally concluded, no doubt correctly, 
that it was that which commences, " Does praise de- 
light thee," etc. 
Now, as I promised to be frank, I must say that 
your interpretation of this passage is perverse in the 
extreme. It is in the form of a precept, but it is in 
reality the explanation of a trick, which you must 
know is not an uncommon one. So, a little before, I 
said that a man who wants to get on fast in the world 
had better cultivate his elders, - but do you under- 
stand me as implying that to get on fast is the highest 
object of human nature ? When I say 
" Does praise delight thee," etc., 
I at once fancy the intelligent reader paraphrasing the 
sentence in this way: " If you act merely to secure 
the approbation or flattery of others (and this, every- 
body knows, is a mean and unworthy motive), the trick 
that people of this stamp find most effectual is to 
choose some ultra side," etc. Nor can I conceive with- 
out a good deal of effort how you could put the inter- 
pretation you do upon the passage. Besides, as if to 
render your ironical remarks still more gratuitous, I 
had devoted two long and elaborate paragraphs to the 
single point of illustrating the dignity, the sensitive- 
ness, and the dangerous liability to debasement, of that 
very principle CONSCIENCE (as I had it in the text), 
which you say I would " expurgate altogether." My 
dear friend, this is not me whom you are criticising; 
but some changeling of your own, whom you have 
put in my place. You speak of criticising from your 
own point of view, but what point of view is there if 
you will not open your eyes ? What can you see with 
those organs if 
DISTASTE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS 300 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
" So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs," 
or so fatal an obliquity has deranged the axis of 
vision ? 
And now let me drop these little points, which after 
all are of small moment except as the index of the 
state of the mind and heart, and speak more generally. 
You blame me (kindly always) for what I do not 
do. I do not write poems or introduce passages stig- 
matizing war and slavery. 
As to war, I am perfectly willing to condemn it as 
a barbarous custom, whenever I can do so with any 
particular efficiency and propriety. Probably, how- 
ever, in the present state of my opinions I should not 
go far enough to satisfy you - certainly not to meet 
the views of Edmund Quincy. But I saw no particu- 
lar necessity to introduce war before my peaceful 
assemblage at the Tremont Temple, very few of whom 
could tell gunpowder from onion seed. 
As to slavery, there would have been still less fitness 
in introducing it. No doubt the audience would have 
applauded, - it would have been a popular thing to 
do. But I have in this place just two things to say: 
1. Slavery is a dreadful business, but the people about 
me are not slaveholders and generally hate it pretty 
thoroughly already. 2. All the resources of language 
have been so liberally employed upon this subject - 
all the cloacae of vituperative eloquence having of late 
years found their freest vent just upon this very point 
- that nothing is so flat and unprofitable as weakly 
flavored verses relating to it. Did you ever see a 
volume of lines - not by you or me - that illustrated 
this fact? 
Once more, I believe that at present you and I can- 
not prevent the existence of slavery. But the catas- DISTASTE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS 
301 
trophe of disunion I believe we can prevent, and thus 
avert a future of war and bloodshed which is equally 
frightful to both of us in contemplation. Can you 
trust me that I really believe this, or do you confine 
all honest faith and intelligent judgment to those who 
think with you? Mind this one thing,- I give these 
as reasons why I did not feel specially called upon to 
introduce the subject of slavery in preference to many 
others, but I am glad there are always eloquent men 
to keep the moral sense of the world alive on the 
subject. I thought disunion the most vital matter at 
present. 
I gave many lessons in my late poem on the most 
serious subjects. They were on points that most 
interested me. Most of all, I enforced as well as I 
could, in a long series of connected passages, the duty 
of religious charity. To vary my exercise, which was 
addressed to a young and somewhat mixed audience, 
I introduced many light passages, relating to trifling 
matters, every one of which was meant to convey 
some useful hint, if possible coupled with a pleasant 
thought. The consequence has been that one set of 
critics proscribe me for being serious and another 
for being gay, - you will take neither the one hand 
nor the other with a good grace, because I am not 
philo-melanic or miso-polemic enough to meet your 
standard. 
I supposed that you, and such as you, would feel 
that I had taught a lesson of love, and would thank 
me for it. I supposed that you would say I had tried 
in my humble way to adorn some of the scenes of this 
common life that surrounds us, with colors borrowed 
from the imagination and the feelings, and thank me 
for my effort. I supposed you would recognize a glow 302 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
of kindly feeling in every word of my poor lesson - 
even in its slight touches of satire, which were only 
aimed at the excesses of well-meaning people. I sup- 
posed you would thank me for laughing at that ridicu- 
lous phantom of the one poet that is to be, whose ima- 
ginary performances inferior persons are in the habit 
of appealing to, to prove that you and such as you are 
mere scribblers. I am sorry that I have failed in giv- 
ing you pleasure because I have omitted two subjects 
on which you would have loved to hear my testimony. 
If you have read as far as this, take courage, for I 
have almost done. 
I listen to your suggestions with great respect. I 
mean to reflect upon them, and I hope to gain some- 
thing from them. But I must say, with regard to art 
and the management of my own powers, I think I 
shall in the main follow my own judgment and taste 
rather than mould myself upon those of others. 
I shall follow the bent of my natural thoughts, which 
grow more grave and tender, or will do so as years 
creep over me. I shall not be afraid of gayety more 
than of old, but I shall have more courage to be 
serious. Above all, I shall always be pleased rather 
to show what is beautiful in the life around me than 
to be pitching into giant vices, against which the acrid 
pulpit and the corrosive newspaper will always anti- 
cipate the gentle poet. Each of us has his theory of 
life, of art, of his own existence and relations. It is 
too much to ask of you to enter fully into mine, but 
be very well assured that it exists, - that it has its 
axioms, its intuitions, its connected beliefs as well as 
your own. Let me try to improve and please my 
fellow-men after my own fashion at present; when I 
come to your way of thinking (this may happen) 1 DISTASTE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS 
303 
hope I shall be found worthy of a less qualified ap- 
probation than you have felt constrained to give me at 
this time. 
In Dr. Holmes's make-up, conservatism in things 
political and social was curiously compounded with 
the progressive tendency in religious thought. The 
abolitionists not only failed to secure his active cooper- 
ation, but it was very slowly and imperfectly that they 
got his sympathy. In his old age he explained, per- 
haps excused, himself for not falling in with them ; he 
recalled that his father, living many years in Georgia, 
" came in contact with slavery in its best and mildest 
form ; and, living among the best people, learned to 
look upon it with less abhorrence than if he had 
studied it from a distance. Though he rarely referred 
to it, I did not receive from him the strong feeling of 
hatred and opposition to the institution which many 
Northern children inherited from their parents. My 
maternal grandfather was the so-called owner of 
slaves received by inheritance, one of whom, by the 
way, was a witness to the Boston ' Massacre,' when a 
boy. The stories of the 4 bobolition ' ceremonies and 
processions were matters of popular jesting. So, when 
the negroes were excluded from the Common on 
artillery election day by general consent, it was nat- 
ural that I should not have been so ready for sym- 
pathy with the abolition movement as those young 
boys and men who were differently educated. . . . 
While I was studying medicine and boarding at No. 
2 Central Court, I met habitually at the table for a 
considerable period Mr. Knapp, the fellow-worker of 
Mr. Garrison on The Liberator, but I confess that I 
do not remember having any conversation with him 304 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
on this subject. I was taken up with my professional 
studies to the exclusion of everything else." 
In a word, abolition for a long while failed to inter- 
est him. Doubtless also there is truth in the sugges- 
tion of a writer in the Quarterly Review who says: 
" The same aristocratic and conservative attitude 
made him oppose some of the social and literary 
movements by which America was deeply stirred. It 
took many years for Garrison to convince him of the 
justice of the negro's claim. He half seriously attrib- 
utes his reluctance to his perusal, as a child, in the 
southeast attic of his home, of a book called The 
Negro Plot. But the opposition came rather from 
his character than his reading, and there can be no 
doubt that the personal peculiarities of many of the 
abolitionists excited his keen perception of the ridic- 
ulous ; the long hair of Charles C. Burleigh, the ven- 
erable appearance of Father Lamson, the wild ges- 
ticulations of Wright, outraged his strong sense of 
propriety. His opinion of the legitimate sphere and 
influence of women was cast in the Old World mould. 
Believing with Parson Wilbur that twenty Zieresiarchs 
were nothing to a single sAeresiarch, he had little 
sympathy with Mrs. Abby Kelley Foster." 
In 1856 he expressed the opinion that " we must 
reach the welfare of the blacks through the dominant 
race," - a notion abhorrent to abolitionists. Yet the 
struggle in Kansas aroused him to indignation, and 
he came out in a vigorous way for the free-state men. 
In 1858 he wrote to Rev. Samuel May: " Your note 
gave me very great pleasure. I told Edmund Quincy 
the other day that I valued the praise of the abolition- 
ists because I knew it was honest." But the language 
indicates plainly that he was not one of the band. DISTASTE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS 
305 
When at last the war came, it found him, or made 
him, as it did so many others who had previously felt 
and talked in the conservative and moderate strain, a 
strenuous, intense, often a greatly excited patriot, a 
Unionist of course, and very soon an anti-slavery 
man. His eldest son enlisted among the first; but 
this incentive was not necessary to put the Doctor 
in the right place. He wrote war lyrics with the 
spirit of a Tyrtaeus ; if they did not take their places 
among the camp songs, it was not because they had 
too little fire, but because they had too much literary 
finish; they were a trifle " over the heads " of the 
soldiery. He watched public affairs with keen inter- 
est, and, in view of the fact that his previous pursuits 
had given him scant experience in such matters, the 
accuracy of his observation and the shrewdness of his 
forecasts were remarkable. More than once he illus- 
trated that the looker-on knows the game better than 
the players do. All this need not be dilated upon ; 
it will be seen in the very interesting group of letters 
which he wrote at the time to Mr. Motley, then in 
Europe, - letters which are unquestionably the Doc- 
tor's best. 
Nevertheless, while he wrote ardently in poetry and 
prose, he could not be induced to come into working 
organizations, in witness whereof is this letter to his 
dear friend Rev. James Freeman Clarke, who could 
have won him over if any one could have done so : -- 
October 24, 1862. 
My dear James, - I received your circular for a 
meeting of the " Protective War-Claim Association " 
last week, and now I have a new one, which I feel 
bound to answer. 
TO REV. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. 306 
I go very little to Society and Club meetings. 
Some feel more of a call that way, others less; I 
among the least. 
I hate the calling of meetings to order. I hate the 
nomination of officers, always fearing lest I should be 
appointed Secretary. I hate being placed on commit- 
tees. They are always having meetings at which half 
are absent and the rest late. I hate being officially 
and necessarily in the presence of men most of whom, 
either from excessive zeal in the good cause or from 
constitutional obtuseness, are incapable of being 
bored, which state is to me the most exhausting of all 
conditions, absorbing more of my life than any kind 
of active exertion I am capable of performing. 
I am slow in apprehending parliamentary rules and 
usages, averse to the business details many persons 
revel in; and I am not in love with most of the 
actively stirring people whom one is apt to meet in 
all associations for doing good. 
Some trees grow very tall and straight and large in 
the forest close to each other, but some must stand by 
themselves or they won't grow at all. Ever since I 
used to go to the " Institute of 1770 " and hear Bob 
Rantoul call members to order, and to the " Euphra- 
dian," where our poor Loring used to be eloquent 
about Effie Deans, I have recognized an inaptitude, 
not to say ineptitude, belonging to me in connection 
with all such proceedings. 
" What if everybody talked in this way ? " The 
Lord arranges his averages in such a way that to 
every one person like myself there are two or three 
organizing, contriving, socializing intelligences, and 
three or four self-sacrificing people, who have forgot- 
ten what they like and what they hate by nature, and 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES DISTASTE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS 
307 
about a dozen good indifferent folks that will take 
part in anything they are asked to. 
Now look at it, dear James, Father Confessor, 
Good Shepherd. I have just sent off a long article 
for the December Atlantic, and that puts off my in- 
troductory lecture - (which I promised to write for 
H. J. Bigelow, who was sick) - and on that lecture 
I want to be at work at 10.30 to-morrow, when your 
meeting is. I like to stir up my doctors with whole- 
some fresh thought; and to arrange that takes time, 
and as I have but a little over a week for it I don't 
want to go and sweat a forenoon away in doing what 
some of your committee will find a pleasant excite- 
ment, but what will vex and fret and drain my nerves 
more than to write an anniversary poem - which is 
itself a short fever. 
This note is personal to you because I had a mind 
to tell you how alien associated action is to my tastes 
and habits, and because I knew you would take the 
trouble to read and understand it. 
The only approach to public activity which I recall 
was his oration, delivered in Boston on the Fourth of 
July, 1863. I did not hear this, and do not know 
what oratorical capacity he may have developed; but 
as one reads it, it seems a speech of the highest order, 
instinct with stimulating spirit, almost fiery at times, 
honestly recognizing all the difficulties to be encoun- 
tered, but with abiding courage to overcome them ; 
expressing an appreciation of the cause, of all that 
was at stake for humanity and the nation, of the 
practical situation, the prospects, and of the temper 
which must be adequate to the trial. It is printed in 
the Pages from an Old Volume of Life. I dare say 308 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
it is not often read nowadays, and in time will be for- 
gotten. But a country must be rich in patriotic elo- 
quence which can afford to let such an address glide 
out of memory. He had from Mr. Motley a letter of 
such admiration for this production that, after mak- 
ing the most liberal possible deductions on any sup- 
posable grounds of friendship and courtesy, there was 
enough of praise left to gratify any palate, however 
jaded with flattery.1 
The interest in public affairs, which had been 
aroused in Dr. Holmes by the war, never afterward 
entirely died away. Its vitality was assisted by his 
interest in the careers of his friends Motley and 
Lowell, and abundant indications of his shrewd obser- 
vation continue to find place in his letters to them. 
He actually upon occasion wrote to the dignitaries 
in Washington concerning the latter. In a note to 
him, December 13, 1884, the Doctor says: " Here is 
another case in which I have been meddling with 
your affairs. Governor Cleveland, the President-elect, 
wrote a letter on my notorious birthday, so full of 
compliment and high estimation that I thought I had 
a perfect right to reply to it. . . . In writing to the 
President-elect, I told him I had no personal favors 
to ask, but that for the sake of the country I hoped 
he would consider the desirableness of retaining you 
at your post. I gave him an outline of your special 
fitness for the place in terms that I fear would make 
you blush, and ended by saying that I did not believe 
there was a man in the country who could make your 
place good. ... I have had slight, but pleasant, rela- 
tions with Bayard, who is like to be Secretary of 
State (so they say), and have some thought of writing 
1 Motley Correspondence, ii. 141. DISTASTE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS 
309 
to him about keeping you in your position. Of course 
you can resign when you are tired of work and glory, 
lassatus et satiatus, and we shall all be most happy 
to get you back." Again, April 6, 1888 : " Why 
should not Cleveland send you back as minister? 
When he was appointed, I wrote him a letter, telling 
him he had better keep you, as we had no duplicates 
of that coinage. He may remember - who knows?" 
This was not only very kind on Dr. Holmes's part, 
but it also indicated that he felt an ingenuous distrust 
of the injurious gossip which he must often have heard 
about " practical politics." His letters produced no 
results. 
His views and feelings towards the South after the 
close of the war appear to have been reasonably but 
not immoderately liberal. He was neither vindic- 
tive, nor yet fancifully and romantically amicable ; he 
had a pretty clear view equally of what ought to be 
and of what could be. In his oration he had said: 
" There is material power enough in the North, if 
there be the will to use it, to overrun and by degrees 
to recolonize the South; and it is far from impossible 
that some such process may be a part of the mechan- 
ism of its new birth, spreading from various centres 
of organization, on the plan which Nature follows 
when she would fill a half-finished tissue with blood- 
vessels, or change a temporary cartilage into bone." 
But the plague of the " carpet-baggers," descending 
upon that region to complete the waste of the war, did 
not seem to him good medicine with which to restore 
political or social health. 
I find this letter, written apparently to the son of 
one of his classmates at Harvard College, who was a 
citizen of New Orleans: - 310 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
TO ALEXANDER PORTER MORSE. 
Boston, January 4, 1868. 
My dear Mr. Morse, - I find myself greatly 
embarrassed in writing to you now; the difficulty I 
find in separating two characters united in your per- 
son ; namely, that of the son of my old friend and 
classmate, and that of an editor of a journal represent- 
ing ideas which, as you know, must differ a good deal 
from those I entertain. I am going to speak to you 
in the second capacity to begin with, and reserve the 
pleasure of addressing you in the first until the 
last. 
Assuming your paper to be a move in the right 
direction, I think it promises to be conducted with 
spirit and to find many readers in the Southern States, 
a few in each of the Northern States, collectively per- 
haps a number not inconsiderable. And just so far 
as it encourages a wide and liberal culture, and tends 
to unite the sections of a country which has failed to 
break into countries, I shall rejoice in its success. It 
is evident that there is a returning feeling of literary 
fellowship. I do not speak from a personal sentiment, 
for I have not received the number with the review 
of my book in it, though I have just got that of Janu- 
ary 4th; but judging by the notice of The Atlantic, 
and the Harper advertisements, and from what I 
know personally of one of your contributors, Mr. 
Paul H. Hayne, with whom I have corresponded since 
the war. But you must remember that the " lost 
cause " is to us a crushed rebellion; that, to us, its 
true source was a great national wrong trying to per- 
petuate itself; that in this belief our children and 
friends have died, so that the whole North is still in 311 
mourning; and that to us such poems as " The Con- 
federate Dead," such pieces as " The Confederate 
Flag," are only a reopening of all the old wounds, not 
profitable to any, but entirely unwelcome to those 
who want to make all whole again as soon as time will 
let them. I think, therefore, you must rely on your 
Southern friends for your support. A sectional litera- 
ture does not seem to us to promise much, but it is a 
favorite idea with many of our Southern friends, 
and they must work it out successfully if they can. 
Whenever anything really deserving of high praise 
is accomplished, I very sincerely believe that none 
will more readily acknowledge its excellence than your 
Northern fellow-countrymen. 
And now to you personally, son of my dear old 
friend Morse, I have nothing to say that is not full of 
all kindness and good wishes. I remember saying to 
him once, when we were looking vaguely forward to a 
possible conflict of sections, how our boys might yet 
face each other in the field. I wonder how near any 
of you three or more sons of his came to my first-born I 
He got three bullets from some of you, anyhow; two 
went through him - neck and breast, and one stuck 
in the bone of his foot; but he is as well as ever, and 
I forgive you if either of you did it. Your father 
always seemed to like me, and I always liked him; 
we could not help liking him. I wonder if you knew 
what a pleasant, amiable, lively, entertaining, witty, 
shrewd, original young man he was ? Nobody was so 
free and easy, so companionable, so full of all kinds 
of agreeable talk. The only wonder was that he 
never seemed to make an enemy, so outspoken as he 
was, and so different in many of his notions from any 
of us. Well, his boys and mine had to fight; but if 
DISTASTE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS 312 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
he had brought up mine in New Orleans, and I had 
brought up his in Boston, they would have still fought, 
only changing sides. I am sure I feel just as well 
disposed to you and all my Southern friends as before 
the war. I do not ask them to forgive and forget as 
easily, it is not in nature that they should. But old 
friendships like your father's and mine are hard to 
outgrow, and I cannot help feeling an interest in all 
the members of my old friend's family. I wish you 
would renew the expression of my lasting remem- 
brance to your mother and your brothers, and be 
assured of my cordial regard, and my hope that I 
shall have the pleasure of seeing you whenever you 
visit Boston. 
Another Southern correspondent called forth these 
remarks, and it is an amusing instance of the Doc- 
tor's caution that the earlier of these two notes is 
marked '''•private: " - 
TO PAUL H. HAYNE. 
Boston, April 11, 1877. 
Dear Mr. Hayne, - Your letter, with the poems 
it enclosed, reached me yesterday. I read both the 
poems carefully, and I wish I could say that I read 
both with pleasure. But it distresses me to hear, 
whether in prose or verse, of the wretchedness of a 
sister State. I could not call up the images which 
your poem pictured in words, the intensity of which 
showed how deep the feeling which prompted them, 
without a thrill of sympathy and an aching of regret, 
that my fellow-countrymen of your proud record and 
sensitive race should be doomed to such suffering' - I 
will not say humiliation, though I fear many spirits DISTASTE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS 
313 
must have been broken down under the slow pressure 
of these calamities. At last we may hope that the 
dawn is showing itself. President Hayes means to do 
justice, we all - or almost all - believe; and it re- 
mains to be seen if your people, left to themselves, 
can right the wrongs under which they are groaning. 
There is eloquence and force in your " South Caro- 
lina " poem, and much beauty in the " Vision," which 
strikes me as one of the best things you have done. 
Boston, November 1, 1881. 
Dear Mr. Hayne, - 
I hope that the era of good feeling is at last inau- 
gurated. First, between the different sections of our 
own country, which were welded in fire and have now 
been tempered in blood. We know each other better, 
perhaps, than we could have done but for the fierce 
embrace of conflict; and we may hope that the dread 
lesson we have learned of what a civil contest means 
for both parties will serve once for all to teach us the 
meaning of E pluribus unum. CHAPTER XII 
THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
No sooner was Dr. Holmes famous than the count- 
less jaws of that many-headed and voracious ogre,"the 
public," began to gnash for the new victim. The post- 
man came weighed down with letters and parcels in- 
numerable, all demanding reply, a few deserving it. 
The burden became very serious, and it grew always 
heavier. It was not simply the swarm of autograph- 
hunters, like mosquitoes rising from the limitless 
breeding-grounds of summer marshes; but people 
came with every conceivable and inconceivable request 
for advice and assistance, chiefly literary, of course, 
though by no means wholly so; for the variety and 
absurdity of the petitions addressed to him could 
only be equalled by the ingenuous prayers of child- 
hood. In Over the Teacups he wrote: - 
"For the last thirty years I have been in the habit 
of receiving a volume of poems or a poem, printed or 
manuscript - I will not say daily, though I sometimes 
receive more than one in a day, but at very short in- 
tervals. I have been consulted by hundreds of writers 
of verse as to the merit of their performances, and 
have often advised the writers to the best of my abil- 
ity. Of late I have found it impossible to attempt to 
read critically all the literary productions, in verse 
and in prose, which have heaped themselves on every 
exposed surface of my library, like snowdrifts along 315 
the railroad tracks, - blocking my literary pathway, 
so that I can hardly find my daily papers." 
Now this was all very flattering of course; like the 
widening circles around the stone which falls into the 
water, it showed what a big splash he was making in 
the puddle of the world. But it placed him between 
alternatives of which each was disagreeable. He 
might leave the countless applicants unanswered; or 
he might answer them. To choose the former he was 
too kind-hearted; to do the latter was very distaste- 
ful. It resulted that from the beginning he elected 
the task of replying to all, - or substantially so. 
His rule, as he stated it, was: to answer " all letters 
which are written in good faith, and where an answer 
is like to be of any use or give any gratification." 
No album or collection of autographs went without 
his signature; he said once that, if it should retain 
any value at all, at least it would be the cheapest 
autograph on the dealers' catalogues. James Russell 
Lowell, who pursued a different plan, grumbled at 
him, because Holmes's amiable ways made it so hard 
for the others. Yet autograph-writing was a trifling 
part; there were countless more exacting desires, 
of which many could not be gratified. For friends 
sometimes presumed unduly upon friendship, and 
many of the promiscuous horde of charity-mongers 
had to take No for an answer, though little accus- 
tomed to submit gracefully to the negative. Fortu- 
nately, however, the Doctor was a supreme master of 
the art of refusal, and invariably did it with a singu- 
lar combination of graciousness and decision. There 
was no use in teasing him, and it was impossible to 
be vexed with him. 
As for the multitudes who asked for criticism, but 
THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 316 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
wanted praise, for their literary efforts; who prayed 
humbly for advice, but meant to get practical assist- 
ance ; or those who frankly asked to have their effu- 
sions sent to some editor stamped with the approval 
of the Autocrat, - all these innumerable men and 
women, lads and lasses, the Doctor treated with an 
incredible kindliness and patience. He might have 
cut out some of the clever passages in The Guardian 
Angel, a propos of the literary aspirations of Gifted 
Hopkins, and have caused them to be printed upon 
postal cards, which would then have needed only an 
address to make them entirely satisfactory replies. 
But it was not in his nature to do this. "I have 
always tried," he said, "to be gentle with the most 
hopeless cases. My experience, however, has not 
been encouraging." Sometimes he received letters 
which were even abusive and insulting, from persons 
who were not pleased with the responses which their 
entirely unwarranted demands had brought forth. 
But the Doctor took these things philosophically, even 
if they pained him a little. 
I once heard it said that he dispensed praise beyond 
what was deserved, because he loved praise himself and 
expected thus to secure it. The assertion was absurd 
and directly the opposite of the truth; for his advice 
and opinion were given with an honesty which is often 
amusingly blunt. Conscientious in all tilings, he was 
scrupulously so in advising, which he felt as a very 
grave responsibility, and performed under a sense of 
moral obligation.1 Even in letters of thanks for 
1 So he himself says in The Poet at the Breakfast-Table, p. 
156. " It is a very grave responsibility which these unknown 
correspondents throw upon their chosen counsellors. One whom 
you have never seen, who lives in a community of which you THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
317 
books sent to him, if he expressed a good opinion of 
their contents, he habitually stated with an accuracy, 
which provokes a smile, just how far his reading or 
investigation had gone. No man ever strayed into 
literature when he had better have kept out of it, and 
thereby suffered loss or disappointment, because he 
had received careless advice or disingenuous praise 
from Dr. Holmes. Persons who have had much ex- 
perience in literature will appreciate how great credit 
was due to him for his rule and his practice in this 
very trying department of the literary man's gratui- 
tous work. Looking backward over these things, 
when he was sitting over the Teacups, he wrote: - 
"A great deal of the best writing the languages 
of the world have ever known has been committed to 
leaves that withered out of sight before a second sun- 
light had fallen upon them. I have had many letters 
I should have liked to give the public, had their 
nature admitted of their being offered to the world. 
What struggles of young ambition, finding no place 
for its energies, or feeling its incapacity to reach the 
ideal towards which it was striving! What longings 
of disappointed, defeated fellow-mortals, trying to 
find a new home for themselves in the heart of one 
whom they have amiably idealized! And oh, what 
hopeless efforts of mediocrities and inferiorities, be- 
know nothing, sends you specimens more or less painfully volu- 
minous of his writings, which he asks you to read over, think 
over, and pray over, and send back an answer informing him 
whether fame and fortune are awaiting him as the possessor of 
the wonderful gifts his writings manifest, and whether you ad- 
vise him to leave all, - the shop he sweeps out every morning, 
the ledger he posts, the mortar in which he pounds, the bench 
at which he urges the reluctant plane, - and follow his genius 
whithersoever it may lead him." 318 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
lieving in themselves as superiorities, and stumbling 
on through limping disappointments to prostrate fail- 
ure! Poverty comes pleading, not for charity, for 
the most part, but imploring us to find a purchaser 
for its unmarketable wares. The unreadable author 
particularly requests us to make a critical examina- 
tion of his book, and report to him whatever may 
be our verdict, - as if he wanted anything but our 
praise, and that very often to be used in his publish- 
er's advertisements. But what does not one have 
to submit to who has become the martyr - the Saint 
Sebastian - of a literary correspondence! " 
Sometimes, of course, there occurred the pleasure 
of recognizing good work and encouraging men of 
worth. It is a familiar story that Bret Harte, in his 
youth, sent the manuscript of some of his early poems 
to the Doctor, that the Doctor replied with decided 
commendation; but that, since the communication 
had been anonymous, he never knew whom he had 
encouraged until one day when Bret Harte walked 
into his library and developed the story. 
At the famous Atlantic Breakfast, Mr. Aldrich 
made some remarks to this point, in his wonted happy 
vein, which I cannot resist transcribing: - 
"I cannot, however, let this hour pass without 
alluding to a certain characteristic of our honored 
friend which no one has yet touched upon. I mean 
his judicious and inexhaustible kindness to his younger 
brothers in literature. In the midst of a life singu- 
larly crowded with duties, he has always found time 
to hold out a hand to the man below him. It is safe 
to say that within the last twenty-five years no fewer 
than five thousand young American poets have hand- 
somely availed themselves of Dr. Holmes's amiability, THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
319 
and sent him copies of their first book. And I hon- 
estly believe that Dr. Holmes has written to each of 
these immortals a note full of the keenest apprecia- 
tion and the wisest counsel. I have seen a score of 
such letters from his busy pen, and - shall I confess 
it ? - I have one in my own possession. Twenty years 
ago I printed a volume of boyish verse; the first copy 
that came from the binder's was dispatched to the 
Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table - as if he had been 
waiting for it. In return I received the kindest letter 
ever written by a celebrity to an obscurity. It vir- 
tually told me not to make any more verses unless I 
could make better ones. It told me this, but with 
such delicate frankness of phrase that it seemed to 
me as if the writer had laid his hand in tender reproof 
upon my shoulder, as an elder brother might have 
done. The fresh and subtle learning of the Autocrat, 
the humor and pathos of the Poet, that skylark qual- 
ity of note in his lyrics, -he could not have perfected 
all these precious gifts, if God had not given him the 
most sympathetic of human hearts." 
A gentleman has written to me stating his convic- 
tion that Dr. Holmes was, of course, a great " episto- 
larian another is of opinion that he must have 
been an " affluent epistolaterffl-singular and pleasing 
phrases, which would have amused the Doctor, who 
loved simplicity in language, and, when people spoke 
of "conversationists " and "conversationalists," asked 
whether talkist would not do just as well, and who 
told his students not to ligate arteries, but to tie them. 
But these judges probably spoke with little know- 
ledge. Certainly in his own family the Doctor was 
not considered an adept in letter-writing. His wife 
used to say, in her lively way: "Oh, Wendell can't 320 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
write a letter; he seldom knows what to tell, and 
never knows how to say it." He himself admitted 
that the task was not agreeable, or stimulating. To 
Mrs. Helen Hopekirk Wilson he wrote: "It always 
comes a little hard for me to put my thoughts on 
paper for a friend. It is so much slower than talk- 
ing! That I am more at home in; and there is al- 
ways so much more in the response of bright mobile 
features than in the blank stare of a sheet of white 
paper." He declared, however, to Mrs. Kellogg, his 
good friend of the Pittsfield days, that he was a " very 
good correspondent as a reader of letters " like hers. 
And to the same lady he said: "There is something 
in a live letter, just from the mail, like a hot cake 
just from the griddle. A book can give much, but 
the hot cake and warm letter have a charm all their 
own." In fact, though he said that he had "written 
a very large number of letters in his life," he really 
had had little occasion or even opportunity for sus- 
tained correspondence. His friends all lived within 
a few miles of the State House, and he saw them often 
enough to make letters needless. His intimacies were 
as locally circumscribed as was the rest of his life. 
It will be observed in the correspondence following 
this memoir, that there are only two considerable 
groups of letters, viz.: those written to John Lothrop 
Motley and those to James Russell Lowell, during 
their foreign residences; those to Mrs. Stowe may, 
perhaps, be added as a third but small group. Beyond 
these a few parcels of a score or so each, for the most 
part not very important, and detached letters on spe- 
cial topics or occasions are all that have been received 
by me. I may say to the reader that scarcely anything 
has been rejected, so that he will gather the extent as 321 
well as the character of Dr. Holmes's correspondence 
from what follows. 
The condition of things which has been described 
resulted in the Doctor becoming a great writer of 
short notes. His friend Dr. Mitchell well and wit- 
tily said to him, that he "was not a man of letters, 
but a man of notes." He himself, in writing to Mrs. 
Julia C. R. Dorr, said: "Not that I pretend to keep 
up correspondence, for my unknown friends demand 
all the time that I can spare, and more too, - so that 
I furnish a hundred epistolary bites to a mob of 
strangers instead of half-a-dozen decent meals to my 
few intimates; " and, as he was then growing old and 
feeling the burden of these things, he half complained 
of "the quagmire of unanswered letters and unthanked- 
for books in which " he was struggling. He had re- 
markable facility and cleverness in this sort of litera- 
ture, - for a kind of literature it really became in his 
hands. He might send off a page or only half-a- 
dozen lines, dispatching it into space, as it were, to 
some person whom he had never seen or known, a 
mere name like any one of the thousands in a Direc- 
tory. But all the same the note was almost sure to 
contain some bit of wit, some cleverly turned expres- 
sion or happy simile, something which marked its 
origin as different from the ordinary. These notes 
must have been sprinkled in myriads over the coun- 
try, though not many have been sent in to me, - 
doubtless because they have been considered too tri- 
fling for reproduction as "Letters," a phrase prog- 
nosticating things more formal than such brevities. 
This is true enough, but these small bits, fragments, 
jeux-(T esprit, were so peculiarly characteristic of Dr. 
Holmes, that a memoir of him which did not contain 
THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 322 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
many of them would be absurdly imperfect. I there- 
fore follow these remarks with a somewhat various 
and necessarily heterogeneous collection of such as 
have come to my hands. 
The birth of his eldest son was announced to his 
sister by the following note: - 
TO MRS. CHARLES W. UPHAM. 
March 9, 1841. 
My dear Ann, - Last evening between eight and 
nine there appeared at No. 8 Montgomery Place a lit- 
tle individual who may be hereafter addressed as 
Holmes, Esq. 
or 
The Hon. Holmes, M. C. 
or 
His Excellency Holmes, President, etc., etc., 
but who for the present is content with scratching his 
face and sucking his right forefinger. 
Long years afterward, when the elevation of this 
son to the bench of the Supreme Judicial Court of 
Massachusetts gave him a position more honorable 
than any of these merely political forecastings, the 
Doctor wrote to Mrs. Kellogg : "Thank you for all 
the pleasant words about the Judge. To think of it, 
- my little boy a Judge, and able to send me to jail 
if I don't behave myself! " 
His friend, Thomas G. Appleton, published a book 
called A Sheaf of Papers, and gave to it this dedica- 
tion : - 
" TO 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 
who has put the electricity of our climate into words, and been 
to so many a physician to the mind as well as the body." THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
323 
A copy was sent to the Doctor by Captain Nathan 
Appleton, and called forth the following note: - 
TO CAPTAIN NATHAN APPLETON. 
May 2, 1875. 
My dear Mr. Appleton, - I have not had time 
to read all the papers which are bound up in the 
Sheaf, as I hope to in the course of to-day or to- 
morrow. But I have read enough of them to be quite 
charmed with their easy, bright flow of thought and 
fancy on just those very themes that I like to hear 
our famous talker discourse of. 
I do not know whether I was more surprised or 
gratified when your brother told me he was going to 
honor my name by inscribing it, as he has done, on 
the opening leaf of his charming little book. Pleas- 
antly as he had always spoken to me, I did not know 
that my pallid ray was more than barely visible to 
him in the corona of coruscations to which so emi- 
nently belongs the name "electric," which he has ap- 
plied to my own mild phosphorescence. I can only 
thank him for one of the most pleasing tributes of 
regard and kindly feeling it has ever been my good 
fortune to receive. 
TO THOMAS GOLD APPLETON. 
March VMh. 
My dear Appleton, - I have written a verse, 
not inappropriate, I hope, in the album. It only ex- 
presses in rhyme what so many have said of Kensett 
in prose. As to the Moore festival I have written at 
some length to Judge Daly. I can't meddle with it. 
My specialty is obituary notices, and inscriptions for 
tombstones. I have to say No to most of the urgent 
requests which are made to me, unless I wish my own 324 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
epitaph to be speedily written, or to go over the river 
to Somerville.1 Lecturing all the time as I do, and 
literally buried in mortuary composition - I have Dr. 
Bigelow, and Dr. J. B. S. Jackson now on hand - 
I had rather face a loaded seven-shooter than an invi- 
tation to do anything in the way of writing or speech- 
ifying. The Judge has been good and has not fol- 
lowed me up. Why can't you sparkle yourself, on 
the Tom Moore occasion? 
TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
May 4 th. 
My dear James, - Miss , here present, 
wants me to write to you, being afraid, she says, to 
write herself. She says she sent to "Hon. Janies 
Russell Lowell, Boston, Mass.," her photograph and 
her sister's newspaper, which she edited in 1860 in 
Cleveland, Ohio, entitled the Lady's Boudoir, con- 
taining an article by "J. Russell Lowell, Reformist," 
from Our Portfolio, and a letter to her, , from 
Matthew Arnold. She wants all these papers, badly, 
and sets me to badger and bother you about them. 
Do not curse me by all the gods upper and lower, for 
here I am with the thumbscrews tight and the wedges 
in the boot, writing in durance and, as it were, in the 
inquisitor's chamber. Of course you have treasured 
these things as the apple of your eye and can lay 
your hand on them in a moment, having nothing to 
do but take care of such treasures! Please address 
any communication not to me but to Miss , S. D. 
P. S. She says President Arthur wrote her a 
beautiful letter, and a fortiori (she didn't say that) 
J. R. L. will answer her. 
1 The locus of a well-known asylum for the insane, near Bos- 
ton. THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
325 
The following was evidently written when Mr. 
Lowell was editor of The Atlantic; it enclosed the 
poem of a gentleman who was a friend of both, but 
who had seen fit to use the Doctor's intervention : - 
Boston, March 10, 1861. 
My dear James,-I send you a letter and a 
poem from P B , to which I invite your spe- 
cial attention. If you accept the poem I shall be 
glad for P ; if you do not, pray treat him gin- 
gerly and send it back to him with the politest of 
notes. P is an enfant terrible, and I don't want 
him to begin "blowing," as the boys say, at me. 
I will write a recipe for you on the next page, to 
be administered to P in your note. 
B Olei dulc. 
Sacchari candati (vulgo molasses') 
aa pp. equales. 
ft. potio, cujus capiat 
seger q. s. 
This note, mind you, is to be sent at any rate, 
whatever you do with the poem. I have written and 
sent a reply to his letter, throwing off all responsibil- 
ity, as I always do. I enclose stamps in case they 
should be needed, and also apologies for troubling 
you - but this is one of the cases that require tender 
handling. 
TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
March 15, 1861. 
My dear Sir, - I have just got a moment's rest 
after getting three books through - no, not quite 
through yet - the press. There is as much electri- 
city in me as there is in a torpedo after he is made 
into a chowder. I don't want to do anything except 
TO THOMAS GAFFIELD. 326 
keep still and be let alone. Don't think I am offended 
at being asked to do anything; I am asked all the 
time to do everything. I shall have to stop payment 
on autographs by and by, I am afraid. Really, I 
have my hands full in every way, and the kindest 
thing my friends can do is just to let me carry what 
I hold, and not ask me to take anything more at 
present. 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
April 24, 1862. 
My dear Sir, - Many thanks for your kind invi- 
tation to the Unitarian festival. I shall not make 
any promise to be with you, principally to spare you 
any attempt at a speech, and partly because I do not 
like to appear at public meetings. The last is a mat- 
ter of taste, in which a member of the silent profes- 
sion has a certain right to be indulged. I take a cor- 
dial interest in your meetings, whether present or 
absent, and I rejoice that you are to have so noble a 
representative of liberal and manly thought as our 
true-hearted governor, - the only loyal pilot whose 
hand was on the tiller when the black squall struck 
the great fleet of the Union.1 
TO THE SAME. 
August 17,1863. 
Dear Sir,-You are very welcome to my auto- 
graph, which I have given to a great many friends be- 
fore yourself. Advice is another matter; the request 
is so general that I should not know where to begin. 
You might almost as well ask me for a coat or a pair 
of boots without sending your measure. . . . 
1 Governor Andrew, it is well known, had so far foreseen hos- 
tilities as to have the State militia thoroughly equipped to take 
the field for active service and leave the State instantly upon the 
summons from the President. 
TO G. W. KEMPER, M. D. THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
327 
This letter, I think, should be rescued from the 
oblivion of the newspaper in which I found it, with 
the explanation that it was "written in 1866, at the 
close of the war of the rebellion, in response to 
the request of Mrs. D. D. Tilton, lady manager 
of the Massachusetts table at the fair held in Wash- 
ington, in aid of the Home for Orphans of Union 
Soldiers." 
Boston, June 9, 1866. 
Dear Sir, - I must respond to your polite and 
flattering request by asking you to accept for the Fair 
two of my books, which contain some things in them 
more like to be read with patience, if not with pleas- 
ure, than anything I should write to order at short 
notice. To write a lyric is like having a fit, you 
can't have one when you wish you could (as, for 
instance, when your bore is in his third hour and 
having it all his own way), and you can't help having 
it when it comes itself. 
If it had so happened a lyric attack had seized me 
just at the moment I received your letter, be sure that 
you should have had a copy of verses such as one 
finds written out and lying before him on his desk 
after the spasm has gone off. But having had a 
paroxysm three or four days ago, the nervous energy 
had expended itself, and I must therefore hold up a 
book in each hand as a shield against your friendly 
attack, hoping that they will not prove as impenetra- 
ble to any who may undertake to read them as to 
your attempts upon my importunate muse. 
TO MOSES SWEETSER. 328 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
TO EDWARD EVERETT HALE, D. D.1 
December 7, 1869. 
My dear Mr. Hale, - I shall keep your note as 
a reminder that I hope some time or other to take 
up the pen which I have not cared to meddle with 
often of late. In the mean time you may be assured 
that nothing that one commits to paper is ever half 
so good as his great unwritten article. 
Like an Easter egg, that unhatched production - 
its unbroken shell, I mean - is stained - by the 
reader - that-is-to-be's imagination I mean - with 
every brilliant hue of promise. Break it, and you 
have the usual albuminous contents, - keep it whole, 
and you can feast your eyes on its gorgeous color, 
and your mind with the thought that it carries the 
possibility of Phoenix. 
Say, then, that you have the promise of an article 
from one of the most etceterable and etceteraed of 
our native writers, and it will be like a signed check 
with the amount left blank. Prophets and priests 
may desire it long and die without the sight, but will 
die saying, "When the great unwritten article does 
come - then - you will see" - and so turn their 
faces to the wall. 
Let us leave it then unwritten for the present, and 
think how much more precious is an infinite series of 
undefined expectations than any paltry performance 
or transient fruition. In the mean time believe me 
always very sincerely and faithfully yours. 
1 At the time engaged in editing the magazine called Old and 
New. 329 
THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
TO PAUL H. HAYNE. 
Boston, January 9,1870. 
My dear Mr. Hayne, - I have sent your son- 
net, which I liked much, to Mr. Edward Hale, who 
is best known to me among those connected with 
Old and New. I accompanied it with a note in- 
tended to draw his special and favorable attention to 
it, and then, in accordance with my rule in all cases, 
requested him to communicate directly with you with 
reference to his disposal of the poem. 
You will see at once why I follow this rule. Ed- 
itors have their own way of looking at contributions 
sent them, and I should too often have to write to my 
friends that their articles were to be returned to 
them. As I never know when this may happen, I 
make no exceptions, but always leave my friend the 
author at the threshold of my friend the Editor's 
Sanctum. 
I trust there was no need of my doing so in this 
case except to maintain the principle, and I shall be 
most happy if any words of mine have helped you to 
get a foothold in the new Journal, which, I under- 
stand, begins with the best prospects of success. 
TO EDWARD EVERETT HALE, D. D. 
March 23, 1870. 
Dear Mr. Hale,-You must excuse me from 
writing a critique - it is a kind of thing I dislike. I 
want to send you something, and, if I can work out 
a motive to my satisfaction, mean to do it one of these 
days. But I have been half sick through my whole 
lecture term, and am now very busy in some work I 
must attend to. 330 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
You are such a polycephalous andpolycheirous pro- 
ducer that you hardly realize the limitations of a com- 
mon mortal with only one pair of hemispheres and 
two hands. 
I am delighted to hear that your Magazine is get- 
ting on well, and I shall not feel easy until I have 
"cut behind," as the boys say when they hang on to 
an inviting equipage. 
TO MRS. CAROLINE L. KELLOGG. 
Boston, July 16, 1872. 
My dear Mrs. Kellogg, - If I were not a pretty 
well-seasoned stick of timber you would have bent me 
to your purpose - wouldn't you? Such a pleasant, 
lively letter from an old friend goes a good way to- 
wards breaking down a resolution; but it does not - 
I must say it - it does not go quite far enough. It 
is not your fault - you have said all that can be said, 
with the seductive accents of a siren. It is my fault, 
if anybody's. I have got tired of appearing on public 
occasions. I cut the Phi Beta Kappa and the Alumni 
meetings this year. I did, it is true, take down my 
cornstalk fiddle for the Grand Duke; but I have re- 
fused every invitation since that time. I have got 
enough of it. 
" Still must I hear ? Shall hoarse Fitzgerald bawl 
His creaking couplets in a tavern hall ? " 
says Lord Byron, and I feel about myself something 
as he felt about Lord Fitzgerald - if he was a Lord, 
as I think he was. 
Now you must remember that I was not always 
obdurate - that I glorified the Ploughman and tried 
to help sanctify the Cemetery - to say nothing of 
random verses on less occasions. 331 
I am now somewhat older than then, and I will not 
say Grosser - because I am not cross - only more set 
in my ways, as I have a right to be. 
I lectured steadily seven months from October to 
May, and I have been writing for The Atlantic regu- 
larly since January, and I have promised a gratuitous 
lecture to a "banquet" of ladies this autumn. It is 
enough for me, and I do not want to plague myself 
with pumping up patriotism and pouring it into stan- 
zas. I want to get away as soon as I can and lay up 
my heels and do nothing but read story-books. 
"So easy! just sit down and write what comes into 
your head." Tell that to the merinoes - (I adapt 
the saying to the mountain district). 
It costs sw**t; it costs nerve-fat; it costs phos- 
phorus, to do anything worth doing. 
No, my dear Lady, I adore you, but I 'll bet you 
can't coax me. I like your letter enormously - 
though I was puzzled with the "Bucher fever" as I 
read it the first time - Beecher, I discovered it to be. 
But for all that, you must give me up as beyond even 
your wonderful persuasive arts. Don't let anybody 
get hold of this letter, which is written in great worry 
of mind at saying No to a friend for whom I should 
always like to have a Yes ready. Remember me 
kindly to the Squire, and believe me 
Faithfully yours. 
THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
November 11, 1875. 
Dear Miss Sherwood, - I am much obliged to 
you for your very pleasant and flattering note, but I 
am going to excuse myself from doing anything more 
TO MISS J. SHERWOOD, KIRKWOOD, MO. 332 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
than thanking you and begging you to consider my 
answer as private. My hand aches with answering 
all sorts of invitations to do all sorts of things. 
Every one I accept makes it worse and worse, and I 
have at length to say No (wrapped up in the softest 
phrases I can clothe it in), to a great many friends I 
should be pleased to oblige. 
My hands just now are very full, and as every 
note that is liable to be printed means a drop of blood 
from my veins and a spark of nervous force from 
my ganglions, I have to beg off from tasks that 
seem very slight to all but those who are already 
overburdened. 
You will understand this - every woman knows 
what it is to have a stitch too many to take. If I do 
not look out I shall have to write, instead of " The Song 
of the Shirt," "The Song of the Sheet" (of paper), 
and draw tears from the eyes of everybody by my 
picture: - 
" With fingers weary and worn, 
With eyelids heavy and red," 
A scribbler holding a used-up pen 
Sat racking his used-up head. 
You would feel sorry for that, I know, so you 
will just keep this note to yourself and say no more 
about it. 
TO JOHN COLLINS WARREN, M. D. 
March 22, 1876. 
My dear Dr. Warren, - I must excuse myself. 
I have given what I could spare to the "Old South" 
Fund. I have written a poem, -some verses, at any 
rate,-printed in the Daily Advertiser under the 
title "A Last Appeal," to stir up people as much as 
I knew how to. And now I have ground my tune THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS. 
333 
and taken my hand-organ on my back, I cannot make 
up my mind to come back to the same doorstep and 
begin grinding again. Seriously and absolutely, you 
must call some other street musician. 
TO PROF. CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. 
296 Beacon Street, June 15, 1876. 
My dear Norton, - Although I feel with the 
Archbishop that "mon esprit, grace au ciel, n'a rien 
encore perdu de sa vigueur," and you are not playing 
the part of Gil Blas to me, I feel also the meaning of 
what Mr. Emerson said when he was younger than I 
am now: - 
" It is time to be old, 
To take in sail: 
There's not enough for this and that, 
Make thy option which of two, 
Economize the falling river, 
Leave the many and hold the few." 
Pleasant as it is to be told we are not worn out and 
effete, I am so tired after my long winter course of 
lectures and all that has filled up their intervals, that 
I would give more for a few weeks of lotus-eating 
than for all the honors in the world. 
I found the task of presiding at the business meet- 
ings very trying. I dreaded the mere matter of man- 
aging the dinner. When I gave up the presidency 
of the Alumni it was with a sigh of relief that 2Eolus 
might have envied. I have not heart to think of try- 
ing it again, if it were a conceivable thing that the 
office should be offered me. 
I do assure you that in spite of all that is compli- 
mentary in the suggestion that I might be acceptable 334 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
once more to the Association, it made me ache all over 
to read your kind note. I have been so followed up 
of late with requests, and urgent requests, to be and 
to do so many things in so many places, that I feel 
almost as nervous as Sydenham's male hysteric pa- 
tient. To-day I left town to get rid of two formid- 
able friendly attacks, and came back to simmer 
through an examination this afternoon of a candidate 
for the degree of Phil. Doct. To-morrow I am im- 
paled by an Executive Committee; Saturday we 
have a most tedious Faculty meeting; and early next 
week sixty-nine books will be handed me for minute 
examination of medical students for their degree. 
And this is my vacation after seven months' lectures. 
I was not made for so much work as I have been hav- 
ing - I cannot tell you half of it - and I know you 
would not want to overdrive that poor old horse you 
heard me tell of the other evening. 
To . 
December 4, 1886. 
Dear Sir, - I do not like to be asked to read 
and give my opinion of manuscripts in verse or prose. 
The critics of the magazines are the proper persons to 
apply to, and they are commonly fair enough. I fail 
to see the distinguishing qualities in these verses 
which would entitle them to a place in such a periodi- 
cal as The Atlantic. But I have nothing to do with 
editing that magazine; and you can send your pieces 
to the editor, if you have no fear of the waste-basket. 
You have probably no conception of the vast number 
of young persons who write passable, and even pretty 
and pleasant, verse nowadays; it is a very common 
accomplishment, if it deserves such a name, for it THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS. 
335 
leads many persons to write who have nothing in par- 
ticular to say, and who are fascinated with the jingle 
of their own verses. I will not criticise your lines; 
I do not see why you should ask me to. Send them 
to the magazines; and, if they all reject them, send 
them to any newspaper that will print them, if you 
think they are worthy of being made public; and 
if they have any originality, any real merit of any 
kind, you will soon be found out, you may depend 
upon it. 
P. S. You will ask me if I read these verses. I 
did, every one of them. 
I find in The, Book-Buyer this note : - 
TO M. A. DE WOLFE HOWE, JR. 
Beverly Farms, Mass., September 22, 1887. 
My dear Sir,-For the first time since some 
early date, whether A. D. or A. Mundi I hardly 
know, I have got my harness off and am standing for 
a month or two in the stall, so to speak. In other 
words, I have no literary work in hand at this mo- 
ment, and am lolling in a rocking-chair at my autum- 
nal fireside. 
Now, as you know, my dear young friend, Dobbin 
must be harnessed up just as much to carry one to 
visit his neighbors as to go on a long journey. To 
continue my figurative manner of speech, I do not 
wish to harness up, as I must do, even for the slight 
excursion to the bowers of my Alma Mater. For, 
look you, I am what my friends the autograph-hunt- 
ers call a "noted person," sometimes perhaps " noto- 
rious," but I am not quite sure of this. They also 
remind me that I am advanced in life, and not likely 336 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
to be good for autographs much longer, so that it 
would be the civil thing in me to hurry up my signa- 
ture before it is too late. Under these circumstances, 
being "noted," and also well-nigh the position of the 
superfluous veteran, I have to be careful what I write, 
as I often find it in print, sometimes to my great dis- 
comfiture. I cannot write even a careless note like 
this without grave consideration. The Interviewer 
comes everywhere, and if a note happens to lie open 
anywhere he will know what is in it, and it will be 
served up in the next morning's paper. 
So let me have my sweet do-nothing, as the Italians 
say; and let poor old Dobbin stand in the stall with 
his harness off, munching his hay and oats, and think- 
ing when he is next to be trotted out, hoping it will 
not be yet awhile. 
TO WILLIAM H. POTTER, D. M. D., SECRETARY. 
296 Beacon Street, December 3, 1888. 
My dear Sir, - I am sorry to say that I shall 
not be able to attend the meeting of the Harvard 
Dental Association or take an active part in its pro- 
ceedings. 
I have a real interest in the welfare of a profession 
to which so many of us ought to feel grateful with 
every word we speak and every morsel we swallow. 
Few persons have passed the age of threescore years 
and ten, retaining their own self-respect and a proper 
regard to appearances, whose mouths do not flash 
with incisors which never knew what it is to grow 
from a socket or to cut their way through a gum. By 
the thoughtful care and ingenious devices of the den- 
tist, childhood is protected from the destructive pro- 
cesses which threaten and tend to undermine the 337 
structures essential to health and beauty; youth is 
rendered doubly charming, middle age comely, and 
old age presentable. We cannot be too grateful to 
our dental friends who do so much for us all, and it 
is pleasant to see them gathered together to use the 
organs in their own mouths in the important function 
to which the preceding hour has been devoted, and 
now to exhibit those same organs in the smiling 
amenities of social intercourse. 
I am always pleased to hear of the success of the 
graduates of the Dental School, whom I had the pleas- 
ure of counting among the audience at my anatomi- 
cal lectures. I will not refer to those established in 
our own city, who have filled and are filling so well 
the places once occupied by Dr. Flagg, Dr. Joshua 
Tucker, Dr. Harwood, and their more immediate 
successors. But I was glad to know that the son of 
my classmate, Dr. Horatio Cook Meriam, who bears 
his name, was prospering in a neighboring city fa- 
mous of old for its witches and in later years for its 
bewitching daughters, whose most precious attractions 
are safe, I am sure, in his hands. 
In my visit to Cambridge, England, two years ago, 
I met Dr. George Cunningham, one of the most in- 
telligent graduates of the class of 1876, thriving and 
happy in a charming old residence under the shadow 
- the light, rather, of the great University. 
In connection with this, here is a paragraph from 
an earlier letter concerning a dinner of the forceps- 
wielders which the Doctor did attend: - 
THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 338 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
TO JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 
February 15, 1873. 
My dear Motley,-I got your letter of Janu- 
ary 26th to-day, just as I was getting ready to go to 
a dinner at Parker's of our Dental Faculty - for you 
knew, or must know, that we have a Dental School 
now in connection with the University. I had to 
leave it unread, or I should not have been in season to 
hear the young man our professor got to come all the 
way from London to give the Anniversary Address. 
It was an awful kind of thought to sit down with a 
room full of tooth-doctors, gnashing their incisors and 
molars in concert; but I sat between President Eliot, 
for whom I have a fancy, and a white-headed old 
dentist from New York - Dr. Eleazer Parmelee, fa- 
mous a generation or so since - worth four millions, 
somebody said, which fact seemed to cast a golden 
nimbus about his silver hair. So while you have 
been dining [with] dukes, I have been dining with 
dentists, - and to tell the honest truth I think we 
could get along better without the first than the sec- 
ond." . . . 
February 29, 1892. 
Dear Mr. Ropes, - The time comes sooner or 
later when the muse has to say to her veterans: " Clau- 
dite jam rivos, senes, sat prata biberunt." I have 
written a great many occasional poems in my day, but 
I find the twilight of fourscore years and ovei' less 
favorable to that kind of mental labor than the easier 
task of recording my recollections, with which I be- 
guile the hours spared to me by my correspondence. 
I must therefore excuse myself from the honorable 
TO JOHN CODMAN ROPES. THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
339 
office of Poet at the Gettysburg celebration, and if 
any request comes in a more formal shape I will write 
my apology in a more dignified and official fashion 
than I have written this easy and familiar note. 
P. S. I had forgotten the former letter you sent 
and was thinking only of your note. I will answer 
it, as I have said, in due season and dignified phrases. 
The Times, of Trenton, published the following 
reply of Dr. Holmes "to a young and ambitious liter- 
ary aspirant who applied to him for a position as pri- 
vate secretary." 
Dear Sir, - I regret that it is not in my power to 
direct you to any place of employment such as you 
desire. In a city like this the crowding toward all 
such employments is very great, and there are a few 
situations to be divided among a great number of 
applicants. As for myself, I am not (as I am often 
supposed to be) an editor, and have no writing to do 
which I am not competent to do myself, with a little 
occasional aid from the members of my own family. 
I regret not to be able to give you encouragement 
as to employment in Boston, but the truth is, there is 
next to nothing of the kind you mention, most of our 
writers being as poor as rats themselves, and no more 
able to keep an amanuensis than they are able to set 
up a coach and six. 
I do not even know how to advise you beyond this 
simple counsel, which I have occasionally given to 
young aspirants: If you think you have literary 
talents, write something for the best paper or maga- 
zine you can get into; keep to one signature, and you 
will be found out by a public which is ready to give 340 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
the highest price for almost every kind of literary 
ability. 
I do not "turn from your petition with cold indiffer- 
ence," but it is utterly out of my power to do more 
than give you these few words of kindly advice. 
Here is a short note, but probably as long as the 
recipient wanted: - 
May 22, 1891. 
My dear Sir, - I have received your poem, 
"Heart of the Golden Roan," and read it all. There 
was enough in it to keep up my interest, and I paid 
an attention to it which I can rarely afford to give to 
the books I receive. I will not criticise it. I think 
some may find it obscure; but my eyes are not very 
bright, and my wits may be at fault when I think 
there is some difficulty in getting at your whole mean- 
ing. At any rate I thank you for what you have 
given us. 
Beverly Farms, Mass., August 19, 1882. 
My dear Young Lady, - I know very little 
about the musical world of Boston, and am unable to 
advise you, etc., etc. . . . 
As to your literary questions, I do not see how you 
can help yourself if an editor alters your papers, 
except by becoming so important to him that you 
can make it a condition of publishing your articles 
that they shall not be in any way tampered with. 
I remember writing an article for the North Ameri- 
can Review many years ago in which the editor 
claimed his Editorial right to change things to suit 
himself, and altered just one word - for the worse. 
I submitted. Long afterwards, when the article was THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
341 
reprinted, I altered it back again, as it was at first. 
I believe editors do claim that right until their con- 
tributors get too important to be interfered with, and 
I think all you would get by complaining would be 
to find the door of that particular periodical closed 
against you. 
As to your literary prospects I can tell you very 
little. There is a great crowd of ready and agreeable 
writers, and it is neither more nor less than a "strug- 
gle for life" between them, and survival of the - fit- 
test, sometimes - but it is safer to say survival of 
the - survivors. 
Do your best, and you will find your market value 
in due time. I am afraid I can give no other counsel 
than this. 
TO MBS. E. S. SINCLAIR. 
September 16,1882. 
My dear Mrs. Sinclair, - I must begin by- 
thanking you for your kind letter and the pleasant 
words it contains ; a word from Emerson, such as you 
have reported to me, is better than a page of eulogy 
from many very good people. I have read, and read 
carefully, the three poems you send me. Master 
Willie, your grandson, shows a poetical nature, and 
only wants training to do justice to it, but I am afraid 
he will want to do as most young writers of verse do, 
make a reputation by sending his immature produc- 
tions to the literary market. Now he has a great 
deal to learn before he can present himself to the 
public; thus in "Man's Heritage," he makes "past" 
rhyme with "bequest" and "given" rhyme with 
"risen." I say "makes" them rhyme, but that he 
cannot do. He uses them as if they were rhymes. 
Most critics would instantly condemn a copy of verses 342 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
to the waste-basket, which contained such errors as 
these. The verses might have merit, but such false 
rhyming would frighten them, and prevent their doing 
justice to the lines that held them. I do not commonly 
encourage young persons to write in verse. If they 
feel the impulse to do so very strongly, I advise them 
to take some signature and stick to it. The signa- 
ture should not be a fancy name, or a boy's name 
like Willie, but initials; three are best, as they are 
less likely to have more than one owner. If the verse 
has any real merit the publishers will find it out, for 
they are always looking round for new talent. Mis- 
takes in rhyme, rhythm, and even in spelling are very 
common in young writers. A young lady who is be- 
coming known through leading periodicals, and writes 
very well, spells "absence" twice, in a letter she has 
just written me, "abscence." So the faults I have 
found with one of Willie's poems do not prevent my 
recognizing in them a poetic character, which may 
develop, with careful cultivation, to excellence. But 
writing verses is not the chief aim of man. It is a 
fascinating kind of labor and brings so much flattery 
and over-praise from friends, that it is too apt to en- 
gross more than its share of time and attention. The 
most assiduous study of the best models is one of the 
preparations for success. This takes time, which is 
an advantage; for if one publishes too hastily, as I 
did when a young man, he is liable to get a name for 
a certain cleverness or smartness which will be in his 
way when he aims at better work and a larger repu- 
tation. 
August 26, 1863. 
Dear Sir, -I have read your poem, or rather the 
extracts you have sent me, all of them carefully. THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
343 
The composition appears to be of the nature of an 
Epic, a form of poem which has been successful only 
a very few times in the world's history. Southey 
tried it often, -you remember Byron's 
" An Epic from Bob Southey every year." 
Joel Barlow tried it and failed; Timothy Dwight 
tried it and failed. No living poet of repute, who 
writes in the English language, has ventured on such 
a task, that I remember. In the face of such facts 
it is, perhaps, more than you have a right to expect 
that I should prophesy success for your effort. I do 
not think it would prove profitable in a pecuniary 
point of view; on the contrary, I fear it might prove 
a losing enterprise. As to literary reputation, you 
must know what competition you would have to meet. 
I do not think your poetical training fits you to 
enter the lists against Tennyson and Longfellow and 
Browning, who are almost the only poets that write 
long pieces. 
It is greatly to your credit that you have studied 
history and composition, while others have been wast- 
ing their time and talents. You have gained know- 
ledge and happiness, with a certain degree of skill in 
working at your task. Still I cannot conscientiously 
advise you to print your poem; it will be an expense 
to you, and the gain to your reputation will not be an 
equivalent. 
November 12, 1871. 
My dear Sir, - The instinct, perhaps as you 
say inherited, for writing verse needs long training 
and study, before it can produce rhymes that can be 
called poetry. The sonnet is a very complex and 
difficult form of verse, and hardly fit for a beginner. 344 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
It has been a good deal cultivated in this country, 
and many writers have become skilful in construct- 
ing it; perhaps your daughter may become so by 
practice, but I think she is too immature at present 
to wrestle with its difficulties. There is such a super- 
abundance of verse in the literary market that with 
few exceptions it is a drug, a superfluity which some- 
times brings a writer some slight reward in pay or in 
reputation, but it is for the most part a disappoint- 
ment. Only one thing can be said to a beginner: " If 
you believe in yourself, try, try, and try again, until 
you succeed; or have failed so constantly that you 
had better try some pursuit that promises a better 
reward." 
New York. 
My dear Sir, - I receive great numbers of let- 
ters resembling that which you sent me. It pains me 
to say that I can do little, very little, to help the ap- 
plicants. If you have the ability and the knowledge 
to write what the public wants, you will soon be found 
out. Write in any paper, in the obscurest village 
sheet in the country, and you will soon be known if 
you write with originality, force, beauty, scholarship 
of such a grade as the public demands. If you have 
not some, at least, of these qualities, you will find 
literature an unprofitable field. Any regular occu- 
pation - a clerkship, a mechanical employment - is 
better than writing prose or verse which is rejected 
by all the good paying periodicals, and only serves to 
fill up blanks in the columns of one of those papers 
I spoke of. You can begin with them, but if your 
productions attract no attention after a fair trial, it 
is not worth while to waste your strength in writing 
what does not bring reputation or profit. You see I THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
345 
have a good deal of confidence in the judgment of the 
reading public. It knows what it wants, at any rate, 
and pounces upon every new aspirant, who shows any 
mark of genius, with carnivorous avidity. The ed- 
itors all want him, the public wants him - and he is 
soon dragged from obscurity. But both are intoler- 
ant of mediocrity, or at least indifferent to it, and 
the great majority of candidates for fame and money 
have nothing but mediocrity to offer - if they have 
as much as that. 
You have got to save what powers you have - to 
show, not me or any friend, but the reading public 
and the editors. I have tried to help two men of real 
powers and accomplishments to a share of public 
favor, but I found I could do little, as the public will 
judge for itself. There is no royal road to repu- 
tation. The praise of friends is of no avail. The 
advice of experts is hardly needed by the youth of 
genius, and of no use to the ambitious young person 
who has no special gift. 
As to suggestions how you shall write what will be 
acceptable, or how what you write may get the con- 
sideration of editors, I can only say that, if you do not 
know what you are to write upon, no stranger can tell 
you; and if you will do your best, you must take your 
chance patiently and cheerfully, as every one of us, 
who has had any measure of success, has had to do 
in his time. 
Excuse my plain speaking. Your letter found me 
very busy, but I have answered it honestly and con- 
scientiously. 
No sooner had the Doctor's name acquired a mer- 
chantable value than certain of those persons who are 346 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
politely called " sharp Yankees," signifying thereby 
persons who keep their practices just outside the stat- 
utes, sought from time to time to make use of him 
for their own personal benefit. But the Doctor was 
a wary and shrewd person, who generally thought 
twice, and cautiously too, before he acted, and who 
was not invested with that unfortunate quality of 
genius, - a stupid incapacity to take care of himself. 
Once, however, he got entrapped, and the result called 
forth this letter. 
Boston, November 19, 1870. 
Dear Dr. Sargent,-You have hit it exactly. 
Five or six years ago, I received au elegantly bound 
volume, . . . and wrote as polite an answer as so 
unusual attention seemed to demand, . . . and though 
my letter is tolerably guarded, as you must see, con- 
sidering it as a private communication, I said as com- 
plimentary things as the dedication, the rich binding 
and the gilt edges and the pages I examined would 
bear, much as one says "Your humble servant" at 
the end of a letter, not meaning that he will make his 
correspondent's pies or black his boots. 
And now my innocently meant letter follows me 
about from town to town, and one professional bro- 
ther after another writes to know how it was that I 
became the accomplice of this person, whom they all 
agree in denouncing as a charlatan. 
I cut a large slice of humble pie and eat it, as 
Pistol ate his leek, before their eyes. I am eating a 
slice of it now. I ought to have seen the cat's ears 
and tail under the thin sprinkling of meal, but I did 
not. Worse than this, I have had a similar but more 
TO DR. SARGENT. THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
347 
ingenious trick to get my name played on me once 
again since that. I am proud to say, however, that 
a third attempt (this time from California), so admi- 
rably managed that it ought to have succeeded, found 
me on my guard, and was met with fox-like astute- 
ness under the cover of lamb-like ingenuousness. 
So you see, my dear Dr. Sargent, that I am the 
persecuted individual. Having the good or bad for- 
tune to be known by name a little more widely than 
the common run of doctors, it is an object to entrap 
me for advertisements. It also happens that I receive 
a great many letters, complimentary or otherwise, 
from a distance, and I do not always study them as 
carefully as I ought to, very probably, before answer- 
ing them. 
This is all I have to say. The ghost of that inno- 
cent letter will haunt me all my days. Indignant 
remonstrances, severe sentences of condemnation, will 
follow that apparition in endless relays. What can 
I do? A newspaper battle between Professors 
and Holmes will only make matters worse. You can 
tell the story in your own words among your medical 
friends. I have had to write in former years to 
and , and I never know where he will turn up 
next - but there is no peace for me. 
Faithfully and sorrowfully yours. 
The following little note is too clever to be lost: - 
TO PROFESSOR ASA GRAY. 
May 21 st. 
Dear Dr. Gray, -You may remember that 
brought me a note from Mrs. Gray, he being ap- 348 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
parently an acquaintance or correspondent of your 
own. 
I have just received this letter from him, with the 
printed fragment, and it leads me to ask whether he 
is of sound and disposing intellect, or one of those 
people whose brains are slightly addled by a freak or 
phantasy? Shall I answer this letter? and if so, 
what shall I say to this man, who is stirring the infi- 
nite abysses with a toothpick? Please return the 
invaluable documents, with a hint as to whether it 
is worth while to answer the letter at all, except in 
a polite phrase or so. - I am disposed to leave the 
wearer of Mambrino's helmet in undisturbed posses- 
sion. 
Somewhere about 1872-73 the Massachusetts Medi- 
cal Society undertook to expel those of its members 
who were avowed practitioners of homoeopathy. The 
attempt was resisted; litigation resulted, and the 
court finally decided that the Society had the lawful 
right to make the expulsion. Of course feeling ran 
very high, and, apart from the legal conflict, discussion 
as to the wisdom and propriety of the proceeding was 
heated among the physicians and the community. 
Naturally enough the practitioners of the regular 
school (I hope the phrase is correctly used, though I 
speak with alarm upon the topic!), knowing the pro- 
clivities of Dr. Holmes, desired to enlist his trenchant 
pen upon their side. He, however, declined to enter 
the lists, and the following letter, in which he did so, 
is an excellent instance of the cool, shrewd judgment 
which protected him from many an error in life, 
though few persons appreciated the presence of the 
quality in his mental composition. 349 
THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
TO DR. JOHN COLLINS WARREN. 
April 14, 1873. 
Dear Dr. Warren, - I have most carefully and 
patiently read all the documents you placed in my 
hands. I have thought the whole matter over delib- 
erately, and am satisfied that the Society was entirely 
in the right in getting rid of the homoeopathists as 
it did. 
It is a question, however, whether it is worth while 
to stir the matter, since the Society has gained its 
point. The homoeopathists would like a chance to 
answer an attack, and they would at once be lifted 
into notice by the article which was meant to finish 
them, especially if it were written in a way to attract 
the attention of the public. 
There are two popular maxims which it is always 
well to bear in mind, when dealing with these noli 
me tang ere, quasi scientific bodies: to "let sleeping 
dogs lie," and "to leave well enough alone." Where 
there is good evidence that public opinion is awake 
and active, with the impression that the homoeopa- 
thists are a wronged and persecuted band of martyrs, 
when such opinion puts itself forward in a tangible 
shape, it may be proper to meet it with statements 
and explanations. Until such time the expediency of 
agitation appears to me questionable. 
But, secondly, the result of the appeal to the Su- 
preme Court has not as yet been made public so far 
as I know, and the publication of its judgment would 
seem to mark the proper time for taking up the gen- 
eral question, if it were to be taken up at all. 
And, lastly, I am far from feeling certain that I 
should be the best hand you could call to the task of 350 
dealing with these people, in case it became necessary 
or was thought expedient to meddle with them. 
They know me of old, and they would know me in the 
domino of an editorial, you may be very sure. Now 
you know as well as I do that I have a certain kind 
of literary reputation which would make me a desira- 
ble antagonist to any impertinent upstart, who might 
want to advertise himself. When I published my lec- 
tures on "Homoeopathy and its Kindred Delusions," 
in 1842, I had three formal pamphlets, besides mis- 
cellaneous newspaper squibs, launched at my head - 
from Boston, Providence, and Philadelphia. I am 
better known now than I was then, a great deal, and 
it would be a good thing for any of these obscure 
charlatans to have a chance to measure himself 
against me. 
You must not mistake this for vanity, for I have 
had to learn by some very trying experiences that I 
must be very careful how I give the self-advertising 
classes any chance whatever to avail themselves of my 
name, which has been long enough before the public 
to have become available for their purposes. 
The more I think of it the more I am convinced 
that, if anything at all is to be said in your pages, 
and whenever it may be said, a perfectly simple, dry, 
brief, impersonal article (not rhetorical, not brilliant, 
not popular in its tone) will be the best policy. 
I must therefore return a " retaining-fee " of twenty 
dollars which has been sent me by Dr. R , hoping 
that I have convinced you that I am right in prefer- 
ring that some other person may be assigned the task. 
I will return you the papers, which will go among 
the faits pour servir of the writer of any future arti- 
cles, if such articles should ever be written. 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 351 
THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
A few of the short notes, though they hardly 
amount to very much, may be added, as specimens. 
TO GEORGE ABBOT JAMES. 
June 29th. 
My dear Mr. James, - I have seen the bottom 
of a good many glasses in my time, but of none with 
more pleasure than of this which you send me. After 
having made many an old Roman tipsy in spite of his 
amethyst, the cyathus, or patera, or whatever it might 
have been called, is still ample enough, though it 
would hold but a few drops of Falernian, to carry 
a friendly pledge, which comes to me, glowing and 
fragrant, and for which please accept my most cordial 
acknowledgments. 
Those who remember the famous Portuguese Gram- 
mar will enjoy this: - 
TO DR. S. WEIR MITCHELL. 
April 29, 1863. 
Dear Mr. Sir, - I have to receive from you the 
past to-morrow the phrases-book of the Portugal lan- 
guage. Walking through the mail office to Cam- 
bridge, where I enhabit not, I am wanting it before 
the day next to this morning's hinder side. I find in 
it much rib movement. The English I discover to 
be very extraordinary pretty good. The London's na- 
noc 
tive must have was a writer of the vermicular parts. I 
reflect the ditto well accommodated to the Portu-geese. 
To the Joseph Miller book much prefer I this, and 
thank the same for you with all my cardiac scrobicle. 
Make believe I am faithfoolishly yours. 352 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
TO THE SAME. 
October 4, 1882. 
My dear Dr. Mitchell, - I found the magnifi- 
cent paper-scimetar on my table yesterday, and could 
not help thinking it was meant to remain there. 
Only it is too gorgeous - too grand - for such a 
humble literary work-bench. No matter; it shall 
stay there and divide the honors with the one Miss 
Thackeray sent me years ago. 
The riddle on it is one of the best in the English 
language. I doubt if there are ten, or even five - I 
am not sure there are three, which can compare with 
it in finish and in the perfection of its graceful dou- 
ble-meanings. If you only left this, to consult me 
about whether it would be a fitting present - say for 
the Queen or the President - or Mr. Gladstone or 
Victor Hugo - why, I shall say certainly it is more 
than good enough for the best of them. If you meant 
it for me, I can only say I thank you most heartily 
for a gift of which any author might be proud, en- 
graved with lines which he will never look upon with- 
out wishing he had written them. 
The scimetar was an ivory paper-cutter, inscribed 
with this " riddle: " - 
" A simple go-between am I, 
Without a thought of pride. 
I part the gathered thoughts of men 
And liberally divide. 
I set the soul of Shakspeare free, 
To Milton's thoughts give liberty, 
Let Sidney speak with freer speech, 
Bid Spenser sing and Taylor preach. 
Though through all learning swift I glide, 
No wisdom doth with me abide." THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
353 
The following was to Mr. George W. Simmons, 
who had succeeded in making fruit trees grow upon 
the inhospitable soil of "Little Nahant." 
21 Charles Street. 
My dear Sir, - Mrs. Holmes desires to add her 
thanks to mine for the beautiful fruits and flowers. 
I could not keep both those pears, and as Agassiz 
had asked me to dine with him on Thursday, I sent 
him the biggest, with the lines you will find on the 
next leaf. 
The Prophet for his thirsting flock 
Bade streams of water flow ; 
The new enchanter smites the rock 
And fruits of Eden glow. 
Like goes to like ; this beauty seeks 
The great and good and fair, 
And finds at length, with blushing cheeks, 
A second matchless pair. 
TO DR. GEORGE C. SHATTUCK. 
September 22, 1864. 
Dear Dr. Shattuck, -You will be interested in 
this young man, Mr. W. M. F. Rounds, who wishes 
to begin the study of medicine. He is wide awake, 
full of good intent, and always goes to your church 
on Sunday when he is in town. He wishes to give his 
note for lecture fees, and I hope you will accommo- 
date him in this and in such other ways as he may 
ask with reference to instruction, for he is a youth of 
promise and may do us honor by and by. 354 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
TO WILLIAM C. 'WINSLOW.1 
My dear Sir, - I have read with great interest 
the accounts of the projected exploration of Zoan. I 
believe in the spade. It has furnished the cheap de- 
fence, if not of nations, yet of beleaguered armies. 
It has fed the tribes of mankind. It has furnished 
them water, coal, iron, and gold. And it has given, 
and is giving, them truth, historic truth, the mines 
of which have never been opened until our own time. 
It seems to me that the whole Christian and the 
whole Hebrew world should be as much interested in 
the excavation of Zoan as the classic world is in that 
of Troy, or Mycenae, or Assos. 
My guinea-hen does not lay as many golden eggs as 
do the more prolific fowls of some of my neighbors, 
but one of them is at your service to hatch a spade 
for Zoan. 
TO FRANCIS BARTLETT. 
July 29, 1879. 
My dear Mr. Bartlett, - My Doctor, O. W. 
H., M. D., has forbidden my going out evenings for 
the present, for fear of a return of certain troubles, 
which I believe I am getting rid of, but for which he 
is still treating me. I am very sorry that my respect 
for his opinion, founded on a very long experience 
with his patient, compels me to deny myself the pleas- 
ure of being with you and your guests on Friday 
evening. 
In response to an invitation to visit Naushon, the 
far-famed Island Kingdom of "Governor" Swain, 
this note was written: - 
1 Concerning the " Egypt Exploration Fund," and the exca- 
vations at " Zoan," 1885. 355 
THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
TO JOHN M. FORBES. 
September 12, 1851. 
My dear Sir,-I received a missive with the Seal 
of State a few days before yours. I do not pretend 
to rebel or repudiate - the authority is undisputed, 
and the command is one which it is the highest of 
privileges to obey. If therefore I should by ill chance 
be wanting among the faithful subjects, you may be 
sure I have entered into some private composition or 
coalition with the Governor. If it does not prove so, 
I will consent to be hanged (in any well-slung ham- 
mock), drawn (at full length in the Island Book), and 
quartered (in any room of the Gubernatorial mansion). 
TO MRS. JULIA C. R. DORR. 
Boston, November 1, 1889. 
My dear Mrs. Dorr, - The ivy has reached me 
in good condition, and if care and attention can make 
it live and grow, it shall flourish and spread until it 
begins to cut off the light of that study window which 
you remember. It is but a very little while ago that 
I was saying, "I must have some living thing in this 
room - a plant - a plant is what I want, - a live 
thing without nerves, that knows nothing of original 
sin and its penalties - of headaches and heartaches, 
- an innocent, delightfully idiotic being that is not 
troubled with any of our poor human weaknesses and 
irritabilities. . . . 
Miss Kate Field is, I believe, responsible for this 
bit: " His reference in Elsie Venner to the ' twenty- 
seventh letter of the alphabet ' so puzzled one lady 
reader, who was reading the story in company with a 356 
relative, that she wrote to the author, telling him that 
neither she nor her cousin Edward could make out 
his meaning." His reply was: - 
Boston, March 4, 1861. 
My dear Miss Lavinia, - The twenty-seventh 
letter of the alphabet is pronounced by applying the 
lips of the person speaking it to the cheek of a friend, 
and puckering and parting the same with a peculiar 
explosive sound. "Cousin Edward" will show you 
how to speak this labial consonant, no doubt, and 
allow you to show your proficiency by practising it 
with your lips against his cheek. For further infor- 
mation you had better consult your gra'mma. 
A Scotch gentleman who sent him a book called 
Burns and the Kirk had from him a note of thanks 
in which he said: "I find it full of interest, for it 
treats a question which has long puzzled me: how 
strait-laced Scotland could clasp her national poet to 
her bosom without breaking her stays." 
A gentleman of the Jewish faith one day sent to 
the Doctor some wine from Jerusalem. The note of 
thanks was: "Wine received. Strong as Samson. 
Sweet as Delilah." 
Once, when a man of no great note died, his friends 
tried to get Dr. Holmes to "say a few kind words 
about the deceased which might be published." But 
he declined. "Do you see?" he said. "They want 
to engage me in the embalming business! But I can- 
not help to preserve this fly in amber." 
In a letter he spoke of a learned gentleman as "not 
so much stamped with learning, as stained with it." 
A newspaper preserves this story, which I believe 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES THE VICTIM OF CORRESPONDENTS 
357 
is correct: that at a country charitable fair he was 
entreated to furnish a letter for "the post-office." 
Placing a one-dollar bank-note between the leaves of 
a sheet of paper, he wrote on the first page: - 
" Dear lady, whosoe'er thou art, 
Turn this poor page with trembling care ; 
But hush, oh, hush thy beating heart, 
The one thou lov'st best will be there." 
Turning the page in obedience to this injunction, 
the one-dollar "greenback" was disclosed, and to 
prove the truth of his assertion, the Doctor had writ- 
ten the following appeal on the opposite page: - 
" Fair lady, lift thine eyes and tell 
If this is not a truthful letter. 
This is the one thou lovest well, 
And naught (0) would make thee love it better." 
Half-a-dozen trifling anecdotes may perhaps find a 
place here as fittingly as anywhere else. 
Walking down Beacon Street one day, a physician 
told Holmes of an amusing marriage, a "love-match," 
which had occurred in his family, wherein the bride 
was eighty-eight years old and the groom a trifle 
younger. The Doctor was greatly amused. Coming 
to his house, he walked slowly up the steps, then sud- 
denly turning, running down, and calling after his 
companion, he said: "Of course they didn't have 
any children; but, tell me, did they have any grand- 
children?" 
Here is a story told by Dr. C. B. Porter, of Bos- 
ton. "At the time of the Peace Jubilee I returned 
to my office on Boylston Street one day, and I found 
my slate in the hall covered with Latin words and 
signed O. W. Holmes. I immediately got down my 358 
dictionary, for I could not translate it without; and 
I found out by my translation that he had been to 
the Peace Jubilee, had soiled his boots so thoroughly 
with the dirt there that he did not like to go down 
town in such a plight, and stopped and asked my 
servant for a boot-brush that he might clean up his 
boots, and he had dignified this rather menial per- 
formance by writing it all out in Latin and leaving 
it on my slate. I do not doubt but that Dr. Holmes, 
with his keen sense of humor, was thinking of the 
trouble I should be put to in translating that Latin 
to ascertain the very commonplace thing which he 
had done."1 
Mr. Howells, early in his career, introduced him- 
self to Mr. Lowell; and thereupon Mr. Lowell took 
him into town to call on Dr. Holmes. The hand- 
shakings being completed, the Doctor turned to Mr. 
Lowell, and said, "Well, James, this is something 
like the apostolic succession; this is the laying on of 
hands." 
He said that he could not imagine a man falling in 
love with Mrs. Siddons; it would be like falling in 
love with the Pyramids. On another occasion he 
remarked that, though a woman tempted man to eat, 
he had never heard that Eve had anything to do with 
his drinking; he took to that of his own motion. 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
1 Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. cxxxi. No. 24, 
p. 586.