Journeys Through Bookland Volume Vii Part 39

NOTE.--"He says in a letter that he felt, as he walked up the hills, very forlorn and desolate indeed, not knowing what was to become of him in the big world, which grew bigger as he ascended, and yet darker with the coming on of night. The sun had already set, leaving behind it one of those brilliant seas of chrysolite and opal which often flood the New England skies; and, while he was looking upon the rosy splendor with rapt admiration, a solitary bird made wing along the illuminated horizon. He watched the lone wanderer until it was lost in the distance, asking himself whence it had come and to what far home it was flying. When he went to the house where he was to stop for the night, his mind was still full of what he had seen and felt, and he wrote these lines, as imperishable as our language, _To a Waterfowl_."--Parke G.o.dwin, in Biography of Bryant.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THY FIGURE FLOATS ALONG]

Whither, 'midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast-- The desert and illimitable air-- Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

_By_ GRACE E. SELLON

Besides giving to the United States her great president, Abraham Lincoln, the year 1809 also bestowed upon us one of the most gifted and warmly esteemed of American authors, Oliver Wendell Holmes. It was in a pleasant home in Cambridge, not far from the great university in which he was to serve ably for so many years, that Holmes was born. His mother was a bright and sociable little woman, well liked for her lively ways and quick sympathy, and his father, though a grave and scholarly man, was of a kindly nature. Both parents were descended from families that were looked upon as among the best in New England, and this became a matter of no little pride to their son.

The old colonial house where his boyhood and youth were spent contained a well-chosen library. Here, he has written, "he b.u.mped about among books from the time when he was hardly taller than one of his father's or grandfather's folios." Yet he did not read many of these volumes thoroughly. He liked to "read _in_ books rather than _through_ them" and would hunt out a paragraph here and there that especially pleased and satisfied him. The collections of sermons were always pa.s.sed by, the lives of pious children met with the same neglect, and even _The Pilgrim's Progress_ seemed to picture the world as such a cruel, gloomy place that this great book too was shunned.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 1809-1894]

The truth was that, being a lively and cheerful boy, he rebelled against the dark and fear-awakening religion preached by his father, a Congregational minister, discussed by visiting pastors and taught in many of the books that he avoided in the library. He seemed to know by instinct which of the clergymen who called at his father's home were kindly and friendly, and which of them looked on children as "a set of little fallen wretches," and for the forlorn looks and solemn ways of the latter he had an especial dislike. "Now and then," he has written, "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." In fact, he might have pleased his father by becoming a minister if a certain preacher that he knew had not, to use his own words, "looked and talked so like an undertaker."

But the dreary sermons, the visits of the long-faced clergymen and the drill in the Catechism were only shadows that came and went. Most of the time young Holmes was as light-hearted a boy as was to be found in all New England. He liked best of all to go hunting, carrying on such trips an old gun of the kind used in the Revolution. A good many of his hours at home were spent in working with tools, and thus he became skilful enough to carve out of wood a skate on which he learned to travel about on the ice. He was active and industrious at school, too, and he made such a good record there that though he whispered a great part of the time he got along peaceably with the school-master. The only serious troubles that he had came from two great fears. Many times after he had gone to bed at night he would be awakened by ghosts or evil spirits mysteriously roaming through the house. Perhaps he was ashamed to tell of this dread to his mother or father, and so the foolish belief that there might be ghosts about stayed with him through boyhood. His other fear was of the doctor's visits. In helpless terror he would look on while the old physician p.r.o.nounced his doom and began to measure out the bitter medicine.

In his fifteenth year Holmes left the school at Cambridgeport to attend Phillips Academy, at Andover, and in the following year, 1825, entered Harvard College. During his four years at Harvard he took quite as active an interest in the social life of the college as in his cla.s.ses.

He joined the society known as the Knights of the Square Table, and at the lively meetings of the club, where wine and wit pa.s.sed freely about the table, he was introduced to a kind of gayety undreamed of in his quiet home. In a humorous description of himself, given at this time in a letter to a former cla.s.smate at Andover, he writes:

"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.... Secondly, with regard to my normal 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."

After graduating from Harvard, Holmes entered the Dane Law School at Cambridge. He did not feel at all sure, however, that he wished to be a lawyer, and at the end of a year he had so far lost interest in his studies that he gave them up. As the physician's calling seemed much more to his liking, he took two courses of study in a private school of medicine. This preparation was not, of course, sufficient to fit him for a larger practice, so a trip to Europe where he could study under the great professors of the School of Medicine at Paris became necessary.

Accordingly, his parents, at some sacrifice to themselves, provided him with the required means, and he set sail from New York in the spring of 1833.

During the two years spent abroad, Holmes gave himself up wholly to his chosen study. "I am more and more attached every day to the study of my profession.... 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," he wrote home. This period of hard work, however, was interrupted by summer vacations spent in the countries along the Rhine, in England and in Italy.

Early in 1836, the young physician established himself in Boston.

Perhaps it was that people thought him too much of a wit to take their troubles seriously, or perhaps it was that he was better fitted to teach than to practice the doctor's art. At any rate, his success was very moderate. He was very glad, then, to be appointed Professor of Anatomy at Dartmouth College in 1838, a position that he held until 1840. About this time, too, he received prizes for some _Medical Essays_ that are even to-day regarded as valuable. Thus he was gradually fitting himself for the honorable office offered him in 1847, that of Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the Medical School of Harvard University.

For thirty-five years Holmes filled this position with the greatest success. He was given the fifth hour in the day as his lecture period because he was the only one able to hold the attention of students who had already been listening to four long and difficult lectures. He enlivened the dry subject with funny stories, droll comparisons and interesting descriptions, teaching while he entertained.

In 1840 the young doctor had married Amelia Lee Jackson, daughter of a highly respected Boston family. His wife was of so gentle and tactful a nature that their home was always a well-ordered and pleasant place of rest for the busy doctor, where unwelcome visitors and other annoyances were not allowed to take his time. Yet he was never too much occupied to find pleasure in what interested his wife and his three children.

During all these years when the profession of medicine had been of chief concern to him, and even before he had begun his medical studies, he had occasionally written poems that won a good deal of praise from friends, but brought no widespread notice. From his very earliest years he could feel very keenly and remember the melody of verse. "The low, soft chirp of the little bird heard in the nest, while his mother is brooding over him," he has written, "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." He enjoyed writing poems for the yearly meetings held by his college cla.s.s long after their graduation, and he made several contributions to the Harvard _Collegian_. Just once in these early years had his fame traveled far, and that was the occasion when he wrote _Old Ironsides_. The frigate _Const.i.tution_ that had served the country so well was to be done away with as a useless vessel. Learning of this, Holmes penned in haste the stanzas that stirred the nation's feelings and saved the old boat from destruction.

It came, then, as a surprise to the American people, when upon the founding of the _Atlantic Monthly_ in 1857, the name of Holmes was signed to the articles that probably were most popular of all published in that magazine, to which the greatest literary men in the country were contributing. _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_, was the t.i.tle of the delightful series of humorous essays in which the author seemed really to be talking to his readers. A sort of story bound the numbers together. In the fourth issue appeared, perhaps, the best poem written by Holmes--_The Chambered Nautilus_. This was a favorite with him and was one of those poems of which he said: "I did not write it, but it was written through me," for he believed it to be a work of inspiration.

_The Autocrat_, which is Holmes' greatest work, was followed by two similar but inferior series, _The Professor at the Breakfast Table_ and _The Poet at the Breakfast Table_. Between the last two series he had published in 1861 his novel _Elsie Venner_, followed in 1867 by _The Guardian Angel_, and in 1885 by _A Mortal Antipathy_. The first of these novels is considerably the best, but none of them ranks high, for they all deal with unusual people who because of weird inherited traits of mind are forced to go through strange if not impossible experiences.

Still another kind of writing was attempted by Holmes. In 1878 he completed a biography of his intimate friend, the historian Motley, and in 1884 wrote a life of Emerson. These are not, however, among his best productions. _Over the Teacups_, similar to the _Breakfast Table_ papers, appeared in 1890, and was his last important work.

In 1886, accompanied by his daughter, he spent four months in Europe, chiefly in England. The warm welcome and high honor given him by the English people were very gratifying to the aged professor. He was always at his best when talking, and so brilliant and easy was his wit that had not politeness forbidden he could have entertained a roomful of people during a whole evening. This fact as well as his literary achievements made him popular everywhere.

On the occasion when he received a degree of honor from Cambridge University, the young collegemen greeted him by singing at the tops of their voices a song of "Holmes, sweet Holmes;" and on a similar occasion at Oxford one of the students, making good use of the t.i.tle of a poem especially known to Holmes' young readers, asked from the gallery whether the Doctor had come in the "One-Hoss Shay." It is likely that the worthy old gentleman was quite as pleased with this hearty good will as with the more dignified tributes received during his memorable visit.

After 1890, Holmes wrote only occasionally. Yet he continued to take his usual walks and to answer a part of his large correspondence, leaving the rest to a secretary. Now and then he would go to a concert or to a dinner among friends, and in other ways he showed himself remarkably active. In fact, he had not become feeble in mind or body when death quietly came to him, October 7th, 1894.

Though the brightness of his wit makes Holmes one of the most entertaining of writers it is his deep kindness that gives to what he has written an even greater power and attractiveness. More than all else, he tried both in his writings and in his everyday living to drive away the shadows of all kinds of suffering, and to share with others the cheerfulness of his own genial nature.

"Long be it ere the table shall be set For the last breakfast of the Autocrat, And love repeat with smiles and tears thereat His own sweet songs that time shall not forget."[405-1]

FOOTNOTES:

[405-1] Whittier's ode on the eightieth birthday of Holmes.

THE CUBES OF TRUTH

_By_ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Listen, Benjamin Franklin.[406-1] This is for you, and such others of tender age as you may tell it to.

When we are as yet small children, long before the time when those two grown ladies offer us the choice of Hercules,[406-2] there comes up to us a youthful angel, holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and in his left spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless ivory, and on each is written in letters of gold--TRUTH. The spheres are veined and streaked and spotted beneath, with a dark crimson flush above where the light falls on them and in a certain aspect you can make out upon every one of them the three letters, L, I, E.

The child to whom they are offered very probably clutches at both. The spheres are the most convenient things in the world; they roll with the least possible impulse just where the child would have them. The cubes will not roll at all; they have a great talent for standing still, and always keep right side up. But very soon the young philosopher finds that things which roll so easily are very apt to roll into the wrong corner, and to get out of his way when he most wants them, while he always knows where to find the others, which stay where they are left.

Thus he learns--thus we learn--to drop the streaked and speckled globes of falsehood, and to hold fast the white angular blocks of truth. But then comes Timidity, and after her Good-nature, and last of all Polite-behaviour, all insisting that truth must _roll_, or n.o.body can do anything with it; and so the first with her coa.r.s.e rasp, and the second with her broad file, and the third with her silken sleeve, do so round off and smooth and polish the snow-white cubes of truth, that, when they have got a little dingy by use, it becomes hard to tell them from the rolling spheres of falsehood.

The schoolmistress[407-3] was polite enough to say that she was pleased with this, and that she would read it to her little flock the next day.

But she should tell the children, she said, that there were better reasons for truth than could be found in mere experience of its convenience, and the inconvenience of lying.

Yes--I said--but education always begins through the senses, and works up to the idea of absolute right and wrong. The first thing the child has to learn about this matter is, that lying is unprofitable--afterwards, that it is against the peace and dignity of the universe.