Children's Stories in American Literature, 1660-1860 Part 10

On the study floor could still be seen the dents of the muskets stacked there in Revolutionary times, and an old family portrait in one of the upper rooms still bore the sword-thrusts of the British soldiers. A certain dark store-room contained a pile of tables and chairs, which to the child's fancy seemed to have rushed in there to hide, and tumbled against one another as people do when frightened.

Another store-room held an array of preserve-jars containing delicious sweets; before the door of this room he would stand with one eye glued to the keyhole while his childish imagination revelled in the forbidden luxuries.

The house had also a ghostly garret about which cl.u.s.tered many legends, and these in connection with certain patches of sand bare of gra.s.s and vine and called the Devil's Footsteps, which might have been seen around the neighborhood, tended to make the bedtime hour a season of dread to the imaginative boy, who saw shadowy red-coats in every dark corner, and with every unfamiliar noise expected even more uncanny visitors.

Outside was the old garden, sweet and sunny, and close to it the friendly wall of a neighbor's house, up which climbed a honeysuckle which stretched so far back into memory that the child thought it had been there always, "like the sky and stars," and on the whole the atmosphere of the old home was most wholesome.

When Holmes was but a little child he was sent to Dame Prentice's school, where he studied the primer and spent his leisure moments in falling in love with his pretty girl schoolmates or playing with certain boyish toys which were always confiscated sooner or later by the school-mistress, and went to help fill a large basket which stood ready to receive such treasures. At ten years of age he began attendance at the Cambridgeport school, where he had for schoolmates Margaret Fuller and Richard Henry Dana, and where he remained for some years.

Holmes says that in these years of his childhood every possible occasion for getting a crowd together was made the most of--school anniversaries and town centennials; Election Day, which came in May, when everyone carried a bunch of lilacs and the small boys ate "election buns" of such size that the three regular meals had to be omitted; Fourth of July, a very grand holiday indeed, when the festivities were opened by the Governor; Commencement Week, with its glories of shows and dancing on the Common, were each in turn made seasons of joy for the youthful denizens of Cambridge and Boston.

Perhaps the most gratifying of all the holidays was the old-fashioned Thanksgiving, when even the sermon, though of greater length than usual, "had a subdued cheerfulness running through it," which kept reminding the children of the turkey and oyster-sauce, the plum-pudding, pumpkin-pie, oranges, almonds, and s.h.a.gbarks awaiting them at home, and the c.h.i.n.k of the coin in the contribution-boxes was but a joyous prelude to the music of roasting apples and nuts.

Holmes left the Cambridgeport school to enter Phillips Academy, and has left us a charming account of this first visit to Andover, whither he went in a carriage with his parents, becoming more and more homesick as the time came for parting, until finally he quite broke down and for a few days was utterly miserable. But he had happy days at Andover, and revisiting the place in after years he describes himself as followed by the little ghost of himself, who went with him to the banks of the Showshine and Merrimac; to the old meeting-house, the door of which was bullet-riddled by the Indians; to the school-rooms where he had recited Euclid and Virgil; to the base-ball field, and to the great bowlder upon which the boys cracked nuts, proving such a faithful guide that when the day was over Holmes almost committed the folly of asking at the railroad office for two tickets back to Boston. Perhaps of all the celebrated men who have been pupils at the famous school no one held it more lovingly in his heart than he who turned back after so many years of success to pay this loving tribute to its memory.

The stay at Andover lasted but a year, during which time Holmes discovered that he could write verse, and gained a little reputation thereby, which led to his being made cla.s.s-poet when he left school to enter Harvard, in his sixteenth year. Throughout his college life he kept his reputation as a maker of humorous verse, and was perhaps the most popular member of the various societies and clubs for which Harvard was noted. He was graduated in his twentieth year, and within a year of this time had decided to study medicine, and after a two years' course in Boston went abroad to attend lectures in Paris and Edinburgh.

But the practice of medicine included but a few years of Holmes's life, as in 1847 he accepted the chair of anatomy and physiology at Harvard, holding the position for thirty-five years.

During his years of study and practice, Holmes had gained gradually the reputation of a clever literary man whose name was familiar to the readers of the best periodicals of the day. This reputation began with the publication of a poem, _Old Ironsides_, which was inspired by the proposition to destroy, as of no further use, the old frigate Const.i.tution, which had done such glorious service during the war of 1812. These verses, which begin the literary life of Holmes, ring with a n.o.ble patriotism which flashed its fire into the hearts of thousands of his countrymen and made the author's name almost a household word.

They were published originally in the Boston _Advertiser_, but so furious was the storm aroused that within a short time they had been copied in newspapers all over the land, printed on handbills that placarded the walls, and circulated in the streets from hand to hand.

It was a satisfaction to the young patriot to know that his appeal had not been made in vain, and that the old ship was allowed to rest secure in the keeping of a grateful nation. A few years later Holmes published his first volume of poems, collected from various periodicals, and gained medals for some essays on medical subjects.

For many years after this his literary work consisted chiefly of fugitive poems, written very often for special occasions, such as cla.s.s anniversaries and dinners.

It was, however, by the publication of a series of essays in the _Atlantic Monthly_, which was started in 1857, with James Russell Lowell as editor, that Holmes began his career as the household intimate of every lover of reading in America. These essays, which are now collected in four volumes, appeared in the _Atlantic_, at intervals between the series, between 1857 and 1859, and thus cover almost the entire period of the author's life as a man of letters.

The first series--_The Autocrat at the Breakfast-Table_--struck the key-note for the rest, a note which showed the author's heart attuned in its broad yet subtle sympathy to the heart of his race, and created such a friendship as rarely exists between author and reader. In the Autocrat Holmes introduces a variety of characters which at intervals flit throughout the rest of the series.

The papers are thrown into the form of talks at the breakfast-table between the author and his fellow-boarders, and so strong is the personal flavor that they seem to the reader like the home-letters of an absent member of the family. The landlady and her son, Benjamin Franklin, the sharp-eyed spinster in black, the young fellow "whose name seems to be John and nothing else," and the school-teacher, appear and disappear side by side with Little Boston, Iris, and the characters of the other series, and emphasize the life-likeness of the whole. It never seems in reading these papers that the _dramatis personae_ are anything else than living human beings, with whom Holmes actually converses around the boarding-house table or at his own fireside. The series, besides _The Autocrat at the Breakfast-Table_, includes _The Professor at the Breakfast-Table_, _The Poet at the Breakfast-Table_, and _Over the Teacups_, the last being separated from the others by an interval of thirty years.

One of the chief charms of these essays is found in the bits of biography which stamp them in so many cases as personal history. One may read here the nature of the man who could thus step back into the realm of childhood, appreciate the delicate grace of girlhood, enjoy the robust enthusiasm of young manhood, and pause with reverent sympathy before the afflicted. Behind each character portrayed one feels the healthful, generous throb of a humanity to which no ambition of soul could seem foreign or no defect appeal in vain. Scattered throughout the volumes are many charming verses, to some of which Holmes owes his fame as a poet. In _The Autocrat at the Breakfast-Table_ occurs, among others, the celebrated poem, _The Chambered Nautilus_, which shows perhaps the highest point to which Holmes's art as a poet has reached. This poem, founded upon the many-chambered sh.e.l.l of the pearly nautilus, is made by the poet to ill.u.s.trate the progress of the soul in its journey through life; the spiritual beauty of the verse shows it a genuine reflection of that soul illumination which made of the poet's Puritan ancestors a peculiar people. Many other poems bear the mark of this spiritual insight, and stamp the author as possessing the highest poetic sense.

But it is perhaps in his humorous poems that Holmes has appealed to the greatest number of readers. Throughout the verse of this cla.s.s runs the genuine Yankee humor, allied to high scholarship and the finest literary art.

Many of the verses seem but an echo in rhyme of the half-serious, half-whimsical utterances of the Breakfast-Table Series. Who but the Autocrat himself could have given literary form to the exquisite pathos of The _Last Leaf_, the delicious quaintness of _Dorothy Q_, or the solemn drollery of _The Katy Did_?

Many of the more popular poems are simply _vers d'occasion_, written for some cla.s.s reunion, college anniversary, or state dinner. These poems, collected under the t.i.tle _Poems of the Cla.s.s of '29_, show Holmes in his most charming mood of reminiscence. Through all his poetry shines here and there an intense sympathy with nature, for running side by side with his appreciation of human interests we see ever that deep love of nature which is the mark of the true poet.

Trees and flowers, the seasons, the meadows, rivers, clouds, and the enchanting mysteries of twilight touch his heart to sympathetic vibrations, and their beauty enters into and becomes a part of himself. In this sense some of his most charming recollections cease to be merely remembrance; they are the very air and sunlight which he breathed and which became incorporated into his being. Thus the old garden whose fragrance lingers so loving in his memory and is enshrined with such tender grace in his pages is not a description, but a breath of that far-away childhood which still shines for him immortally beautiful; and the fire-flies flitting across the darkened meadows bring once again to his mind the first flash of insight into the wonder and meaning of the night.

In some charming pages he has told us of his love for trees, particularly of the old elms which are the pride of the New England villages, and in equally poetic vein he has emphasized the beauty of the pond-lily, the cardinal flower, the huckleberry pasture, and the fields of Indian corn.

Dr. Holmes is also known as a novelist as well as essayist and poet.

His three novels, _Elsie Venner_, _The Guardian Angel_, and _A Mortal Antipathy_, are undoubtedly the results of his experience as a physician, for each in turn is founded upon some mental trait which sets the hero or heroine apart from the rest of mankind. In the treatment of these characteristics Holmes has made apparent the powerful effect of heredity upon the life of the human being. These novels are chiefly valuable as character-studies by an earnest student of moral science whose literary bias tempted him to throw them into the form of fiction. While touched with the true Holmes flavor, they cannot be called fiction of the highest order nor do they emphasize Holmes's place in literature. They seem rather to show his versatility as a writer and to ill.u.s.trate his familiarity with those subtle problems of character that have always puzzled mankind.

Holmes's medical and literary essays, poems, novels, and other miscellany have been collected in thirteen volumes, the last of which, _Over the Teacups_, appeared but a short time before his death.

He spent most of his life in Boston, his home there being the favorite meeting-place for the most distinguished of his countrymen and a recognized rallying-point for foreign guests. He was the last of that brilliant circle which made New England famous as the literary centre of America; in many senses he combined the excellences which have given American letters their place in the literature of the world.

Beside the writers who founded American literature must be placed many others whose work belongs to the same period. In history and biography, besides the work of the great historians, we have Hildreth's _History of the United States_, Lossing's _Field Book of the Revolution_, Schoolcraft's studies and researches among the Indian tribes, the carefully written biographies of Sparks, the Peter Parley and Abbott stories for the young, and numerous other contributions which throw valuable light upon the early history of the United States.

In fiction the pictures of Southern life by Sims, and the romances of Dutch life in New York by Hoffman, preserve the colonial traditions, and with many other writers of lesser note supplement the work of the great novelists.

The philosophy of Emerson has found expression in the writings of Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker, and Margaret Fuller. In poetry, the still honored names of Fitz-Greene Halleck, Joseph Rodman Drake, Elizabeth Kinney, Alice and Phoebe Cary ill.u.s.trate the place that they held in the popular heart. Chief among these minor singers stands John Howard Payne, whose immortal song has found a home in nearly every land.