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DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
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Dr. Holmes starting on his Morning Walk in November, 1893 
 
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 DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 CAROLINE TICKNOR 
 
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 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 MDCCCCXV 
 
 LlBJUKjr 
 
 HILL. Mass 
 
 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRAR^ 
 CHESTNUT HILL, MASS, 
 
F 
 
 7^=37 
 
 COPYRIGHT, I9IS1 BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published October iqijj 
 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Dr. Holmes was in truth the poet-laureate of 
 Boston. He early won the laurels which were placed 
 on his brow by his appreciative fellow-citizens, and 
 these he wore triumphantly until the end. And in 
 turn he crowned Boston with literary offerings such 
 as no other citizen has bestowed in like measure. 
 The spirit of New England has doubtless been pre- 
 sented in prose and verse by other sons and daugh- 
 ters, but no one else has given us so much of Boston 
 from the Bostonian point of view. 
 
 Except for a brief interim Dr. Holmes passed all 
 of his years in Boston, "tethered," it has been said, 
 close to the State House, whose gilded dome he has 
 immortalized in literature. All of his intimates lived 
 within a few miles of him, and his useful activities 
 were confined to his own community. Unlike so 
 many prominent men of letters, he was in no way 
 connected with diplomatic or political affairs; he 
 held no public office, and his cheerful, useful career 
 progressed in even, tranquil measures "in his own 
 place." Seated in honor at the head of his Boston 
 
 [v] 
 

 PREFACE 
 
 breakfast-table, the Autocrat looked out upon the 
 broad expansive universe and in inimitable lan- 
 guage discoursed upon its problems, pointed out, 
 with a roguish finger, its eccentricities, touched 
 gently upon its sorrows, and with his flow of wit and 
 wisdom enlivened and instructed the minds and 
 spirits of the ever-widening circle of his table com- 
 panions. 
 
 Dr. Holmes's Boston is the Boston of the entire 
 nineteenth century, barring its opening and clos- 
 ing decades, and in his varied disquisitions he has 
 reflected its characteristics, changes, and gradual 
 expansion. His Boston was not merely a place, it 
 was also a very individual "state-of-mind," and the 
 immortal Autocrat not only voiced that mental at- 
 titude, but also did much to influence its trend and 
 shape its course. Holmes was, no doubt, to some 
 extent, what Boston made him, and Boston to-day 
 bears the vivid imprint left by the personality of 
 him who christened it the "Hub." 
 
 "Surely this is the ideal civic bard," exclaimed 
 Edmund Clarence Stedman, "who at the outset 
 boasted of his town, — 
 
 " The threefold hill shall be 
 The home of art, the nurse of liberty, — 
 
 [ vi] 
 
PREFACE 
 
 " and who has celebrated her every effort, in peace 
 or war, to make good the boast. He is an essential 
 part of Boston, like the crier who becomes so identi- 
 fied with a court that it seems as if Justice must 
 change quarters when he is gone. The Boston of 
 Holmes, distinct as his own personality, certainly 
 must go with him. Much will become new when old 
 things pass away with the generation of a wit who 
 made a jest that his State House was the hub of the 
 solar system, and in his heart believed it. The time 
 is ended when we can be so local; this civic faith 
 was born before the age of steam, and cannot out- 
 last, save as a tradition, the advent of electric 
 motors and octuple sheets. Towns must lose their 
 individuality, even as men, — who yearly differ 
 less from one another. Yet the provincialism of 
 Boston has been its charm, and its citizens, striving 
 to be cosmopolitan, in time may repent the efface- 
 ment of their birth-mark." 
 
 The following compilation aims to present the 
 "Boston of Holmes," as set forth by himself. The 
 many passages dealing with this his favorite topic 
 have been gleaned from his entire works and have 
 been fitted together in chronological order. Thus 
 the Boston flavor, which permeates the Doctor's 
 
 [ vii] 
 
PREFACE 
 
 work throughout, is now for the first time presented 
 in concentrated form. His scattered reflections and 
 picturesque descriptions, when pieced together, 
 furnish an almost consecutive story of nineteenth- 
 century Boston. And with this revelation of "Dr. 
 Holmes's Boston" is bound up a characteristic 
 picture of "Boston's Dr. Holmes," for, though it is 
 at best a fragmentary piece of work, its autobio- 
 graphical interest goes far toward proving the 
 truth of the saying attributed to the wise Doctor, 
 that " an autobiography is what a biography ought 
 to be." 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. Childhood and College Days ... 1 
 
 II. Habits and Habitations .... 29 
 
 III. Boston in War Times 47 
 
 IV. The Coliseum and the Boston Fire . 67 
 V. Boston versus England 91 
 
 VI. "The Hub" 109 
 
 VII. Boston the Lecture Cradle . . . 129 
 
 VIII. Boston the Bookish 151 
 
 IX. Boston Elms and the Long Path . . . 169 
 
 X. Farewell, Boston 189 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Dr. Holmes starting on his Morning Walk in No- 
 vember, 1893 Frontispiece 
 
 He is just leaving his house at 296 Beacon Street. / 
 
 The State-House Dome Title-Page 
 
 "Boston State House is the hub of the solar system. You v^ 
 could n't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all 
 creation straightened out for a crowbar." The State House was 
 built by Charles Bulfinch, architect, in 1795-98. The dome was 
 at first entirely of wood; it was covered with copper in 1802 and 
 was first gilded in 1874. The present cupola, a reproduction of 
 the original one, was built in 1897. The one shown in the picture 
 was built in 1859. 
 
 From the collection in the Boston Public Library. 
 
 The Gambrel-roofed House . . . .' . 6 
 
 Dr. Holmes's birthplace in Cambridge. Built in 1730; torn 
 down after the death of the Doctor's mother in 1862. It was Gen- 
 eral Ward's headquarters in the Revolution, and General Warren 
 slept there before the Battle of Bunker Hill. 
 
 Old Latin School, Bedford Street, 1860 ... 20 
 
 Built in 1844 and torn down in 1879. The famous teacher 
 Francis Gardner was head-master here for many years, and here 
 Phillips Brooks taught immediately after leaving college. 
 From the collection in the Boston Public Library. 
 
 View from the State House looking West, showing 
 the Back Bat before it was filled in . . .38 
 
 The filling began in 1857. 
 
 From the collection of Mr. Bernard P. Verne. 
 
 [xi ] 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Summer Street in 1846, showing Trinity Church, 
 with Park Street Steeple in the Distance . 42 
 
 From a water-color drawing by Sarah Hodges Swan after a 
 painting by N. Vautin. The painting was made from a pencil 
 sketch by Sarah Hodges in 1846. The water-color is in the pos- 
 session of Dr. William Donnison Swan, of Cambridge. 
 
 Beacon Street in Dr. Holmes's Time . . . .44 
 
 The square house on the corner of Walnut Street, the second 
 street down, is the old Phillips house, where the abolitionist Wen- 
 dell Phillips was born. 
 
 From the collection in the Boston Public Library. 
 
 Colonnade Row, Tremont Street, opposite the 
 Common, in 1860 50 
 
 From the collection in the Boston Public Library. 
 
 Daniel Webster's House, at the corner of High 
 and Summer Streets . . 54 
 
 Summer Street at this time was one of the finest residential 
 streets of Boston. 
 
 West Street in 1860, looking towards Bedford 
 Street 60 
 
 On the left is a glimpse of the Washington Gardens at the cor- 
 ner of Tremont Street. The opposite corner was occupied by the 
 Amos Lawrence house. 
 
 From the collection in the Boston Public Library. 
 
 The Coliseum of the Peace Jubilee of 1869 . . 70 
 
 The street-corner shown in the foreground is that of Boylston 
 Street (left) and Clarendon Street (right). The site of the Coli- 
 seum is now occupied by Copley Square, Huntington Avenue, 
 Trinity Church, etc. 
 
 From the collection of Mr. Bernard P. Verne. 
 
 The Boston Fire of November 9-10, 1872 ... 80 
 
 The view extends from the post office (then in process of con- 
 struction) on the left to Summer Street on the right. 
 From the collection in the Boston Public Library. 
 
 [ xii ] 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 State Street, from an Engraving made about 1842 96 
 
 The lion and unicorn of Colonial days have since been restored 
 in place of the ornamental scrolls at the corners of the Old State 
 House. 
 
 From the collection in the Boston Public Library. 
 
 Park Street Church 100 
 
 Built in 1809. From the quality of the theology preached here, 
 this came to be known as "Brimstone Corner." 
 From the collection of Mr. Bernard P. Verne. 
 
 Boston from the Public Garden, about 1880 . . 104 
 
 The spire seen near the State House is that of the First Baptist 
 Church on Somerset Street, torn down in 1882. 
 From the collection in the Boston Public Library. 
 
 The Frog Pond 114 
 
 The introduction of Boston's first city water service was cele- 
 brated here, October 25, 1848. The Soldiers' Monument, by Mar- 
 tin Milmore, was erected in 1877 in memory of the soldiers and 
 sailors killed in the War for the Union. 
 
 From the collection in the Boston Public Library. 
 
 The Old City Hall, 1858 120 
 
 This was formerly the Court-House. It was fitted up as the City 
 Hall in 1840-41. The present building was erected on the same 
 site in 1862-65. 
 
 The Hancock House, on Beacon Street next to 
 the State House 124 
 
 Built in 1737 by Thomas Hancock and later occupied by his 
 nephew John Hancock. It was torn down in 1863. 
 From the collection in the Boston Public Library. 
 
 The Old South Church 136 
 
 Built in 1729-30. Joseph Warren in March, 1775, made his fa- 
 mous address here in defiance of the threats of British officers, and 
 in the same year the church was desecrated by the British, who 
 used it for cavalry drill. It has not been used for religious services 
 
 [ xiii ] 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 since the building of the New Old South Church in 1873-75, but 
 it is maintained for lectures and the exhibition of antiquities by a 
 fund raised to secure its preservation. 
 
 From the collection in the Boston Athenseum. 
 
 The Beacon Street Side of the Public Garden in 
 1857, showing Dr. Holmes and Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson in Conversation 142 
 
 From the collection in the Boston Athenaeum. 
 
 Park Street from the State-House Grounds . . 156 
 
 The George Ticknor house is shown on the left. 
 From the collection in the Boston Public Library. 
 
 The Museum of Fine Arts, Copley Square . .166 
 
 The Museum was founded in 1870, and the building was com- 
 pleted in 1879. Sturgis & Brigham were the architects. It was 
 torn down in 1911, the collections being removed to the new 
 building farther out on Huntington Avenue, and the Copley 
 Plaza Hotel was erected on the site. 
 
 From the collection in the Boston Athenaeum. 
 
 Tremont Street Mall, now called Lafayette 
 Mall, Boston Common 172 
 
 Showing the elms removed when the subway was built. 
 From the collection in the Boston Public Library. 
 
 The Old Elm, Boston Common ..... 182 
 
 It was over 72 feet high and 22§ feet in circumference a foot from 
 the ground, and was supposed to have antedated the founding of 
 Boston. It blew down in a gale, February 15, 1876. A scion, 
 now a sizable and vigorous tree, is growing on the site. 
 From the collection in the Boston Public Library. 
 
 The Tremont House, 1886 184 
 
 Built in 1828-29 and torn down in 1895 to make place for the 
 Tremont Building, which was erected the following year. The Old 
 Granary Burying-Ground is seen on the left. 
 
 [ xiv ] 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Long Path, Boston Common 186 
 
 This path, now known officially as Oliver Wendell Holmes Walk, 
 runs from opposite Joy Street to the corner of Tremont and Boy ls- 
 ton Streets. The view is of the upper end, looking towards Bea- 
 con Street. 
 
 From the collection in the Boston Athenaeum. 
 
 The Gardiner Greene House, Pemberton Square 194 
 
 Built by William Vassall about 1758. In 1803 it came into the 
 possession of Gardiner Greene, the wealthiest citizen of Boston in 
 his day. It appears in Cooper's novel "Lionel Lincoln" as the 
 house of Mrs. Lechmere. When it was torn down in 1835, the 
 famous gingko, or ginkgo, tree which adorned its grounds was 
 transplanted through the agency of Dr. Jacob Bigelow to the 
 Joy Street end of the "Long Path" on Boston Common. The 
 site of the house is now occupied by the Court-House. 
 
 From a painting by Pratt in 1833, now in the possession of 
 Frederic Amory, Esq. 
 
 King's Chapel, 1860 202 
 
 Built in 1749-54. This was Dr. Holmes's place of worship. He 
 occupied Pew 102 in the front centre of the south gallery. 
 From the collection in the Boston Public Library. 
 
 The Old North Church, Salem Street . . . 208 
 
 Now called Christ Church. The view is from Hull Street and 
 shows Copps Hill Burying-Ground on the left. The corner-stone 
 was laid in 1723. It was in the belfry of this church that the lan- 
 terns were hung that gave the signal to Paul Revere on the night 
 of the 18th of April, 1775. The church was restored in 1912 under 
 the direction of Bishop William Lawrence. 
 
 From the collection in the Boston Public Library. 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CHILDHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 1809-1830 
 
From the first gleam of morning to the gray 
 
 Of peaceful evening, lo, a life unrolled ! 
 
 In woven pictures all its changes told, 
 
 Its lights, its shadows, every flitting ray, 
 
 Till the long curtain, falling, dims the day, 
 
 Steals from the dial's disk the sunlight's gold, 
 
 And all the graven hours grow dark and cold 
 
 When late the glowing blazes of noontide lay. 
 
 Ah! the warm blood runs wild in youthful veins, — 
 
 Let me no longer play with painted fire; 
 
 New songs for new-born days ! I would not tire 
 
 The listening ears that wait for fresher strains 
 
 In phrase new-moulded, new-forged rhythmic chains 
 
 With plaintive measures from a worn-out lyre. 
 
DK. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CHILDHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS 
 1809-1830 
 
 I know that it is a hazardous experiment to ad- 
 dress myself again to a public which in days long 
 past has given me a generous welcome. But my 
 readers have been, and are, a very faithful constitu- 
 ency. I think there are many among them who 
 would rather listen to an old voice they are used to 
 than to a new one of better quality, even if the 
 "childish treble" should betray itself now and then 
 in the tones of the over-tired organ. But there 
 must be others, — I 'm afraid many others, — who 
 will exclaim, "He has had his day, and why can't 
 he be content? We don't want any literary reve- 
 nants, superfluous veterans, writers who have worn 
 out their welcome and still insist on being attended 
 to. Give us something fresh, something that be- 
 longs to our day and generation." 
 
 Alas, alas ! my friend, — my young friend, for 
 your hair is not yet whitened, — I am afraid you 
 
 [3 1 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 are too nearly right. . . . But suppose that a writer 
 who has reached and passed the natural limit of 
 serviceable years feels that he has some things 
 which he would like to say, and which may have 
 an interest for a limited class of readers, — is he 
 not right in trying his powers and calmly taking 
 the risk of failure? 
 
 I confess that there is something agreeable to me 
 in renewing my relations with the reading public. 
 Were it but a single appearance, it would give me a 
 pleasant glimpse of the time when I was known as 
 a frequent literary visitor. Many of my readers — 
 if I can lure any from the pages of younger writers 
 — will prove to be the children, or the grandchil- 
 dren, of those whose acquaintance I made something 
 more than a whole generation ago. I could depend 
 on a kind welcome from my contemporaries, — my 
 coevals. But where are those contemporaries? Ay 
 de mi! as Carlyle used to exclaim, — "Ah, dear me," 
 as our old women say, — I look round for them and 
 see only their vacant places. 
 
 It will not do for us to boast about our young 
 days and what they had to show. It is a great deal 
 
 [ 4 ] 
 
CHILDHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 better to boast about what they did not show, and, 
 strange as it may seem, there is a certain satisfac- 
 tion in it. In these days of electric lighting, when 
 you have only to touch a button and your parlor or 
 bedroom is instantly flooded with light, it is a pleas- 
 ure to revert to the era of the tinder-box, the flint 
 and steel, and the brimstone match. It gives me an 
 almost proud satisfaction to tell how we used, when 
 those implements were not at hand, or not em- 
 ployed, to light our whale-oil lamp by blowing a 
 live coal held against the wick, often swelling our 
 cheeks and reddening our faces until we were on 
 the verge of apoplexy. I love to tell of our stage- 
 coach experiences, of our sailing-packet voyages, of 
 the semi-barbarous destitution of all modern com- 
 forts and conveniences through which we bravely 
 lived and came out the estimable personages you 
 find us. 
 
 Think of it! All my boyish shooting was done 
 with a flint-lock gun; the percussion lock came to 
 me as one of those new-fangled notions people had 
 just got hold of. We ancients can make a grand 
 display of minus quantities in our reminiscences, 
 and the figures look almost as well as if they had 
 the plus sign before them. 
 
 [5 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 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. 
 
 [This notable event occurred upon the twenty-ninth 
 of August, 1809, a year which was productive of many 
 famous personages; Gladstone, Tennyson, Darwin, and 
 Abraham Lincoln all first saw light within this memora- 
 ble twelvemonth. 
 
 In the "old gambrel-roofed house," where Holmes 
 was born, lurked many historic memories ; there General 
 Ward made his headquarters in Revolutionary days; 
 its threshold was often crossed by Washington, and 
 General Warren slept there prior to the battle of Bunker 
 Hill. In this old homestead young Holmes dwelt until 
 he reached years of maturity, when after his mother's 
 death, it was torn down, leaving him to deplore its 
 passing although he readily acknowledged it was "a 
 case of justifiable domicide."] 
 
 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 stood. 
 Be thankful that you still keep your birthplace. 
 This earth has a homeless look to me since mine 
 has disappeared from its face. 
 
 I remember saying something, in one series of 
 papers published long ago, about the experience 
 
 [ 6] 
 
The Gambr el-roofed House 
 
CHILDHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 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 boy- 
 hood, 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 fame. 
 
 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. First the nest, then the hen- 
 coop, by and by the barnyard with occasional pred- 
 atory incursions into the neighbor's garden — 
 and his little universe has reached its boundaries. 
 
 Just so with my experience of atmospheric exis- 
 tence. 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 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 Com- 
 
 [7] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 y mon, with the far-away "Washington 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 un- 
 worded impressions — vague pictures swimming 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. 
 
 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 imagination of 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 pro- 
 saic enclosures; and full before me waved the luxu- 
 rient branches of the "Washington Elm," near 
 
 [8] 
 
CHILDHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 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. 
 
 Know old Cambridge? Hope you do. — 
 Born there? Don't say so! I was, too. 
 (Born in a house with a gambrel-roof , — 
 Standing still, if you must have proof.) 
 
 Nicest place that was ever seen, 
 Colleges red and Common green, 
 Sidewalks brownish, with trees between, 
 Sweetest spot beneath the skies, 
 When the canker-worms don't rise, — 
 When the dust, that sometimes flies 
 Into your mouth and ears and eyes, 
 In a quiet slumber lies, 
 Not in the shape of unbaked pies 
 Such as barefoot children prize. 
 
 A kind of harbor it seems to be, 
 Facing the flow of a boundless sea. 
 Rows of gray old Tutors stand 
 Ranged like rocks upon the sand; 
 Rolling beneath them, soft and green, 
 Breaks the tide of bright sixteen, — 
 One wave, two waves, three waves, four, — 
 Sliding up the sparkling floor: 
 Then it ebbs to flow no more, 
 Wandering off from shore to shore 
 With its freight of golden ore! 
 
 [9] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 My boyhood had a number of real sensations. 
 . . . An inspiring scene, which I witnessed many 
 times in my early years, was the imposing triumphal 
 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 not associated 
 with war but with peace. My earliest memory goes 
 back to the Declaration of Peace, signalized to me 
 by the illumination of the College in 1815. I re- 
 member well coming from the Dame school, throw- 
 ing up my "jocky," as the other boys did, and 
 shouting "Hooraw for Amiriky," 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 handmaiden from the brilliant spectacle to 
 darkness and slumber. 
 
 The social habits of our people have undergone an 
 immense change within the past half century, largely 
 in consequence of the vast development in the means 
 of intercourse between different neighborhoods. 
 
 [ 10] 
 
CHILDHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 Commencements, college gatherings of all kinds, 
 church assemblages, school anniversaries, town 
 centennials, — all possible occasions for getting 
 crowds together are made the most of. " 'T is sixty- 
 years since," and a good many years over, — the 
 time to which my memory extends. The great days 
 of the year were, Election, — General Election on 
 Wednesday, and Artillery Election on the Monday 
 following, at which time lilacs were in bloom and 
 'lection buns were in order; Fourth of July, when 
 strawberries were just going out; and Commence- 
 ment, a grand time of feasting, fiddling, dancing, 
 jollity, not to mention drunkenness and fighting, 
 on the classic green at Cambridge. This was the 
 season of melons and peaches. That is the way our 
 boyhood chronicles events. It was odd that the 
 literary festival should be turned into a Donny- 
 brook fair, but so it was when I was a boy, and the 
 tents and the shows and the crowds on the Common 
 were to the promiscuous many, the essential parts 
 of the great occasion. They had been so for genera- 
 tions, and it was only gradually that the Cam- 
 bridge Saturnalia were replaced by the decencies 
 and solemnities of the present sober anniversary. 
 
 Nowadays our celebrations smack of the Sunday 
 
 [11] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 school more than of the dancing-hall. The aroma of 
 the punch-bowl has given way to the milder flavor 
 of lemonade and the cooling virtues of ice-cream. 
 A strawberry festival is about as far as the dissipa- 
 tion of our social gatherings ventures. There was 
 much that was objectionable in those swearing, 
 drinking, fighting times, but they had a certain ex- 
 citement for us boys of the years when the century 
 was in its teens, which comes back to us not without 
 its fascinations. The days of total abstinence are 
 a great improvement over those of unlicensed 
 license, but there was a picturesque element about 
 the rowdyism of our old Commencement days, 
 which had a charm for the eye of boyhood. 
 
 They had not then the dainty things 
 That commons now afford, 
 But succotash and hominy 
 Were smoking on the board; 
 They did not rattle round in gigs, 
 Or dash in long-tailed blues, 
 But always on Commencement days 
 The tutors blacked their shoes. 
 
 God bless the ancient Puritans ! 
 Their lot was hard enough 
 But honest hearts make iron arms, 
 And tender maids are tough; 
 
 [ 12] 
 
CHILDHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 So love and faith have formed and fed 
 Our true-born Yankee stuff, 
 And keep the kernel in the shell 
 The British found so rough ! 
 
 The firing of the great guns at the Navy -yard is 
 easily heard at the place where I was born and lived. 
 "There is a ship of war come in," they used to say, 
 when they heard them. Of course, I supposed that 
 such vessels came in unexpectedly, after indefinite 
 years of absence, — suddenly as falling stones; and 
 that the great guns roared in their astonishment 
 and delight at the sight of the old war-ship splitting 
 the bay with her cutwater. Now, the sloop-of-war, 
 the Wasp, Captain Blakely, after gloriously captur- 
 ing the Reindeer and the Avon, had disappeared 
 from the face of the ocean, and was supposed to be 
 lost. But there was no proof of it, and, of course, for 
 a time, hopes were entertained that she might be 
 heard from. Long after the last real chance had 
 utterly vanished, I pleased myself with the fond 
 illusion that somewhere on the waste of waters 
 she was still floating, and there were years during 
 which I never heard the sound of the great gun 
 booming inland from the Navy-yard without say- 
 ing to myself, "The Wasp has come!" and almost 
 
 [13] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 thinking I could see her as she rolled in, crumpling 
 the water before her, weather-beaten, barnacled, 
 with shattered spars and threadbare canvas, wel- 
 comed by the shouts and tears of thousands. This 
 was one of those dreams that I nursed and never 
 told. 
 
 Do you know, dear reader, that I can remember 
 the great September gale of 1815, as if it had blown 
 yesterday? . . . The 23d of September, 1815. It 
 was an awful blow. Began from the east, got round 
 to the southeast, at last to the south, — we have 
 had heavy blows from that quarter since then, as 
 you suggest with your natural pleasant smile. It 
 tore great elms up by the roots in the Boston Mall, 
 in the row Mr. Paddock planted by the Granary 
 Burial-ground. What was very suggestive, the 
 English elms were the chief sufferers. The American 
 ones, slenderer and more yielding, renewed the old 
 experience of the willows by the side of the oaks. 
 
 The wind caught up the waters of the bay and of 
 the river Charles, as mad shrews tear the hair from 
 each other's heads. The salt spray was carried far 
 inland, and left its crystals on the windows of farm- 
 houses and villas. I have, besides more specific 
 
 [ 14 ] 
 
CHILDHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 recollections, a general remaining impression of 
 a mighty howling, roaring, banging, and crashing, 
 with much running about, and loud screaming of 
 orders for sudden taking in of all sail about the 
 premises, and battening down of everything that 
 could flap or fly away. The top-railing of our old 
 gambrel-roofed house could not be taken in, and 
 it tried an aeronautic excursion, as I remember. 
 Dreadful stories came in from scared people that 
 somehow managed to blow into harbor in our man- 
 sion. Barns had been unroofed, "chimbleys" over- 
 thrown, and there was an awful story of somebody 
 taken up by the wind and slammed against some- 
 thing with the effect of staving in his ribs, — fearful 
 to think of! It was hard travelling that day. . . . 
 Boston escaped the calamity of having a high tide 
 in conjunction with the violence of the gale, but 
 Providence was half drowned, the flood rising 
 twelve or fourteen feet above the high- water mark. 
 ... It is something to have seen or felt or heard the 
 great September gale. 
 
 I'm not a chicken, I have seen 
 Full many a chill September, 
 And though I was a youngster then, 
 That gale I well remember; 
 
 [ 15 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 The day before, my kite-string snapped, 
 And I, my kite pursuing, 
 The wind whisked off my palm-leaf hat; 
 For me two storms were brewing! 
 
 It chanced to be our washing-day, 
 
 And all our things were drying; 
 
 The storm came roaring through the lines, 
 
 And set them all a flying; 
 
 I saw the shirts and petticoats 
 
 Go riding off like witches; 
 
 I lost, ah ! bitterly I wept, — 
 
 I lost my Sunday breeches! 
 
 We used to receive into the family as "help," as 
 they used to be called, young men and women 
 from the country. From the men and boys, young 
 persons of both sexes, I learned many phrases and 
 habits of superstition, and peculiarities character- 
 istic of our country people. They did not like to be 
 called servants, did not show great alacrity in an- 
 swering the bell, the peremptory summons 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 musi- 
 cians. They had their Farmer's Almanac, their broad- 
 
 [ 16] 
 
CHILDHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 sheets telling the story of how the "Constitootion" 
 took the "Guerrier," and other naval combats. 
 
 They had their specific medicines, of which "hiry 
 pikry " (hierapicra — sacred bitters) was a favorite. 
 Some of the country customs were retained. " Husk- 
 ing " went on upon a small scale in the barn. The 
 habits of parlor and kitchen with reference to alco- 
 holic 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, cordial, which was simply diluted 
 and sweetened alcohol 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 matter of heating and lighting. We 
 depended on wood, which was brought from the 
 country in loads upon 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 the hearth. 
 
 I wonder whether the boys who live in Roxbury 
 and Dorchester are ever moved to tears or filled 
 
 [ 17 1 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 with silent awe as they look upon the rocks and frag- 
 y ments of " puddingstone " abounding in those locali- 
 ties. I have my suspicions that these boys "heave 
 a stone" or "fire a brickbat," composed of the con- 
 glomerate just mentioned, without any more tear- 
 ful or philosophical contemplations than boys of 
 less favored regions expend on the same perfor- 
 mance. Yet a lump of puddingstone is a thing to 
 look at, to think about, to study, to dream over, to 
 go crazy with, to beat one's brains out against. 
 Look at that pebble in it. From what cliff was it 
 broken? On what beach rolled by the waves of the 
 ocean? How and when inbedded in soft ooze, which 
 itself became stone, and by-and-by was lifted into 
 bald summits and steep cliffs, such as you may see 
 on Meetinghouse-Hill any day — yes, and mark 
 the scratches on their faces left when the boulder- 
 carrying glaciers planed the surface of the continent 
 with such rough tools that the storms have not 
 worn the marks out of it with all the polishing of 
 ever so many thousand years? 
 
 Or as you pass a roadside ditch or pool in spring- 
 time, take from it a bit of stick or straw which has 
 lain undisturbed for a time. Some little worm- 
 shaped masses of clear jelly containing specks are 
 
 [ 18] 
 
CHILDHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 fastened to the stick: eggs of a small snail-like 
 shell-fish. One of these specks magnified proves to 
 be a crystalline sphere with an opaque mass in the 
 centre. And while you are looking, the opaque mass 
 begins to stir, and by-and-by slowly to turn upon 
 its axis like a forming planet, — life beginning 
 in the microcosm, as in the great worlds of the 
 firmament, with the revolution that turns the 
 surface in ceaseless round to the source of life and 
 light. 
 
 A pebble and the spawn of a mollusk ! Before you 
 have solved their mysteries, this earth where you 
 first saw them may be a vitrified slag, or a vapor 
 diffused through planetary spaces. Mysteries are 
 common enough, at any rate, whatever the boys in 
 Roxbury and Dorchester think of "brickbats" and 
 the spawn of creatures that live in roadside puddles. 
 
 At about ten years of age I began going to what 
 we always called the "Port School," because it was 
 kept at Cambridgeport, a mile from the College. 
 This suburb was at that time thinly inhabited, 
 and, being much of it marshy and imperfectly re- 
 claimed, had a dreary look as compared with the 
 thriving College settlement. The tenants of the 
 many beautiful mansions that have sprung up along 
 
 [ 19] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 Main Street, Harvard Street, and Broadway can 
 hardly recall the time when, except the "Dana 
 House" and the "Opposition House" and the 
 " Clark House," these roads were almost all the way 
 bordered by pastures until we reached the "stores" 
 of Main Street, or were abreast of that forlorn 
 "First Row " of Harvard Street. We called the boys 
 of that locality "Port-chucks." They called us 
 "Cambridge-chucks," but we got along very well 
 together in the main. . . . 
 
 Sitting on the girls' benches, conspicuous among 
 the school-girls of unlettered origin by that look 
 which rarely fails to betray hereditary and congeni- 
 tal culture, was a young person very nearly my own 
 age. She came with the reputation of being " smart," 
 as we should have called it, clever as we say nowa- 
 days. This was Margaret Fuller, . . . her air to her 
 schoolmates was marked by a certain stateliness 
 and distance, as if she had other thoughts than 
 theirs and was not of them. ... A remarkable 
 point about her was that long, flexile neck, arching 
 and undulating in strange, sinuous movements, 
 which one who loved her would compare to those of 
 a swan, and one who loved her not, to those of the 
 ophidian who tempted our common mother. 
 
 [ 20] 
 
Old Latin School, Bedford Street, 1860 
 
CHILDHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 My first schoolmaster, William Biglow, was a 
 man of peculiar character. He had been master of 
 the Boston Latin School for a number of years, and 
 seems to have found his pupils an unmanageable set 
 in the early part of his reign. I can easily under- 
 stand how he found difficulties in the management 
 of a large collection of city boys. ... I do not re- 
 member being the subject of any reproof or disci- 
 pline at that school, although I do not doubt I de- 
 served 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 I have never forgotten. 
 
 After being five years at Port School, the time 
 drew near when I was to enter College. It seemed 
 advisable to give me a year of higher training, and 
 for that end some public school was thought to offer 
 advantages. Phillips Academy at Andover was well 
 known to us. . . . It was settled then that I should 
 go to Phillips Academy, and preparations were 
 made that I might join the school at the beginning 
 of autumn. 
 
 In due time I took my departure in the old car- 
 [21 1 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 riage, a little modernized from the pattern of my 
 Lady BountifuTs, and we jogged soberly along, — 
 kind parents and slightly nostalgic boy, — towards 
 the seat of learning some twenty miles away. Up 
 the old West Cambridge road, now North Avenue; 
 past Davenport's tavern, with its sheltering tree 
 and swinging sign; past the old powder -house, look- 
 ing like a colossal conical ball set on end; past the 
 old Tidd House, one of the finest ante-Revolution- 
 ary mansions; past Miss Swan's great square board- 
 ing-school, where the music of girlish laughter was 
 ringing through the windy corridors ; so on through 
 Stoneham . . . Reading . . . Wilmington ... so at 
 last into the hallowed borders of the academic 
 town. 
 
 My literary performances at Andover, if any 
 reader who may have survived so far cares to know, 
 included a translation from Virgil, out of which I 
 remember this couplet, which had the inevitable 
 cockney rhyme of beginners : — 
 
 " Thus by the power of Jove's imperial arm 
 The boiling ocean trembled into calm." 
 
 Also a discussion with Master Phineas Barnes 
 on the case of Mary, Queen of Scots, which he 
 treated argumentatively and I rhetorically and sen- 
 
 [ 22 ] 
 
CHILDHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 timentally. My sentences were praised and his con- 
 clusions adopted. 
 
 I went from the Academy to Harvard College. 
 
 We have stately old Colonial palaces in our an- 
 cient village, now a city, and a thriving one, — 
 square-fronted edifices that stand back from the 
 vulgar highway, with folded arms, as it were; social 
 fortresses of the time when the twilight lustre of 
 the throne reached as far as our half -cleared settle- 
 ment, with a glacis before them in the shape of a 
 long broad gravel-walk, so that in King George's 
 time they looked as formidably to any but the silk- 
 stocking gentry, as Gibraltar, or Ehrenbreitstein, 
 to a visitor without the password. We forget all 
 this in the kindly welcome they give us today ; for 
 some of them are still standing and doubly famous, 
 as we all know. 
 
 The College plain would be nothing without its 
 elms. As the long hair of woman is a glory to her, so 
 are these green tresses that bank themselves against 
 the sky in thick clustered masses the ornament and 
 the pride of the classic green. You know the " Wash-v/ 
 ington Elm," or if you do not, you had better re- 
 
 [ 23 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 kindle your patriotism by reading the inscription, 
 which tells you that under its shadow the great 
 leader first drew his sword at the head of an Ameri- 
 can army. In a line with that you may see two 
 others : the coral fan, as I always called it from its 
 resemblance in form to that beautiful marine growth, 
 and a third a little further along. I have heard it 
 said that all three were planted at the same time, 
 and that the difference in growth is due to the slope 
 of the ground, — the Washington elm being lower 
 than either of the others. 
 
 The soil of the University town is divided into 
 patches of sandy and clayey ground. The Common 
 and the College green, near which the old house 
 stands, are on one of the sandy patches. Four 
 curses are the local inheritance: droughts, dust, 
 mud, and canker-worms. I cannot but think that 
 all the characters of a region help to modify the 
 children born in it. I am fond of making apologies 
 for human nature, and I think I could find an ex- 
 cuse for myself if I, too, were dry and barren and 
 muddy- witted and "cantankerous," — disposed to 
 get my back up, like those other natives of the soil. 
 
 Like other boys in the country, I had my patch 
 of ground, to which, in the spring time, I intrusted 
 
 [ 24 ] 
 
CHILDHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 the seeds furnished me, with a confident trust in 
 their resurrection and glorification in the better 
 world of summer. But I soon found that my lines 
 had fallen in a place where a vegetable growth had 
 to run the gauntlet of as many foes and trials as a 
 Christian pilgrim. 
 
 Beyond the garden was "the field," a vast do- 
 main of four acres or thereabout, by the measure- 
 ment of after years, bordered to the north by a 
 fathomless chasm, — the ditch the base-ball players 
 of the present era jump over; on the east by unex- 
 plored territory; on the south by a barren enclosure, 
 where the red sorrel proclaimed liberty and equality 
 under its drapeau rouge, and succeeded in establish- 
 ing a vegetable commune where all were alike, poor, 
 mean, sour, and uninteresting; and on the west by 
 the Common, not then disgraced by jealous en- 
 closures, which make it look like a cattle-market. 
 Beyond, as I looked round, were the Colleges, the 
 meeting-house, the little square market-house, long 
 vanished; the burial-ground where the dead Presi- 
 dents stretched their weary bones under epitaphs 
 stretched out at as full length as their subjects ; the 
 pretty church where the gouty Tories used to kneel 
 
 [ 25 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 on their hassocks; the district school-house, and 
 hard by it Ma'am Hancock's cottage, never so called 
 in those days, but rather "tenfooter"; then houses 
 scattered near and far, open spaces, the shadowy 
 elms, round hilltops in the distance and over all the 
 great bowl of the sky. Mind you, this was the 
 WORLD, as I first knew it; terra veteribus cognita, 
 as Mr. Arrowsmith would have called it, if he had 
 mapped out the universe of my infancy. 
 
 By and by the stony foot of the great University 
 will plant itself on this whole territory, and the pri- 
 vate recollections which cling so tenaciously and 
 fondly to the place and its habitations will have 
 died with those who cherished them. 
 
 Shall they ever live again in the memory of those 
 who loved them here below? What is this life with- 
 out the poor accidents which make it our own, and 
 by which we identify ourselves? Ah me! I might 
 like to be a winged chorister, but still it seems to me 
 I should hardly be quite happy if I could not recall 
 at will the Old House with the Long Entry, and the 
 White Chamber (where I wrote the first verses that 
 made me known, with a pencil, starts pede in uno, 
 pretty nearly), and the Little Parlor and the Study, 
 
 [ 26 ] 
 
CHILDHOOD AND COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 and the old books in uniforms as varied as those of 
 the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company used 
 to be, if my memory serves me right, and the front 
 yard with the Star-of-Bethlehems growing, flower- 
 less, among the grass, and the dear faces to be seen 
 no more there or anywhere on this earthly place of 
 farewells. 
 
 Go where the ancient pathway guides, 
 
 See where our sires laid down 
 Their smiling babes, their cherished brides, 
 
 The patriarchs of the town; 
 Hast thou a tear for buried love? 
 
 A sigh for transient power? 
 All that a century left above, 
 
 Go, read it in an hour! 
 
CHAPTER II 
 HABITS AND HABITATIONS 
 
At, tear her tattered ensign down! 
 
 Long has it waved on high, 
 And many an eye has danced to see 
 
 That banner in the sky; 
 Beneath it rung the battle shout, 
 
 And burst the cannon's roar; — 
 The meteor of the ocean air 
 
 Shall sweep the clouds no more. 
 
 Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, 
 
 Where knelt the vanquished foe, 
 When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, 
 
 And waves were white below, 
 No more shall feel the victor's tread, 
 
 Or know the conquered knee; — 
 The harpies of the shore shall pluck 
 
 The eagle of the sea! 
 
 Oh better that her shattered hulk 
 
 Should sink beneath the wave; 
 Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 
 
 And there should be her grave; 
 Nail to the mast her holy flag, 
 
 Set every threadbare sail, 
 And give her to the god of storms, 
 
 The lightning and the gale! 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 HABITS AND HABITATIONS 
 
 I, then, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Junior in Har- 
 vard University, am a plumeless biped of the 
 height of exactly five feet three inches when stand- 
 ing in a pair of substantial boots made by Mr. 
 Russell of this town, having eyes which I call blue, f 
 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 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. ... I am 
 acquainted with a great many fellows who do not 
 speak to each other. Still I find pleasant compan- 
 ions and a few good friends among these jarring 
 elements. . . . 
 
 Wednesday — yesterday — was our Exhibition; 
 on the whole it was very poor; sometimes fellows 
 
 [31] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 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 "festive entertainments " and we call 
 "blows." A fine body of academic militia, denom- 
 inated the "Harvard Washington Corps," parades 
 before the ladies in the afternoon, and there is eat- 
 ing and drinking and smoking and making merry. 
 If you ever come to Boston you will, of course, 
 come 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. 
 
 [Two years later Holmes, the medical student, again 
 discourses upon his position in another communication 
 to his friend Phinehas Barnes.] 
 
 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 your fancy 
 
 sketches a twofold picture. In the front ground 
 
 stands myself, on one side sparkle the fountains of 
 
 [ m ] 
 
HABITS AND HABITATIONS 
 
 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 I 
 am sitting with Wistar's Anatomy beneath my 
 quiescent arm, with a stethoscope on my desk, and 
 the blood-stained implements of my ungracious 
 profession around me. ... 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 occupy- 
 ing 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 little 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 
 
 [ 33 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 lawyer; if you would go off like an opium-eater in 
 love with your starving delusion, — be a doctor. 
 
 To change the subject — I have just now a ruse 
 in my head which I am in hopes to put into execu- 
 tion 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 mar- 
 ried you shall come and see us, and show her this 
 letter. We shall breakfast at eight and dine at two 
 precisely. 
 
 [In 1830, when Holmes was in the Law School, the 
 frigate Constitution, then lying in the Charlestown 
 
 [34 1 
 
HABITS AND HABITATIONS 
 
 Navy Yard, was condemned by the Navy Department 
 to be destroyed. Holmes read this in a newspaper and in 
 a mood of indignation hastily penned the lines of "Old 
 Ironsides" and sent them to the Boston "Advertiser." 
 Fast and far the verses travelled through the press of the 
 country, and when they reached Washington, they were 
 circulated on printed handbills. The astonished Secre- 
 tary made haste to retrace the step which he had taken 
 in the interest of business, and the ship obtained its 
 reprieve from the young law student, who thus achieved 
 fame as a rising poet. 
 
 About the year 1836, one may catch a glimpse of the 
 young doctor driving about the city in that chaise 
 which, he asserted gayly, brought him more satisfaction 
 than did the active practice of medicine : "In one of the 
 clumsy great vehicles of that day, swung upon huge 
 C springs, vibrating in every direction, the little gentle- 
 man used to appear advancing along the road, seeming 
 at once in peril and a cause of peril, bouncing insecurely 
 upon the seat, and driving always a mettlesome steed 
 at an audacious speed." 
 
 On June 15, 1840, the year after he had begun to 
 practise medicine, Dr. Holmes married Amelia Lee 
 Jackson, of Boston, the third daughter of Hon. Charles 
 Jackson, an associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial 
 Court of the Commonwealth. Mrs. Holmes was an 
 ideal wife, a delightful comrade, and a helpmate calcu- 
 lated to supply the wants, and, by her skilful manage- 
 ment, smooth the path for her husband. Her executive 
 ability enabled her to perform easily many tasks which 
 would otherwise have rested upon the Doctor's shouders ; 
 she shielded him from bores and unnecessary interrup- 
 
 [35] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 tions and made his surroundings both cheerful and tran- 
 quil. She was kind, gentle, and tactful, and rose with 
 strength and nobility to a great emergency such as she 
 was forced to face when her eldest son was three times 
 wounded in the Civil War. The children of this marriage 
 were three. The eldest, Oliver Wendell, has since had 
 an illustrious career; entering the Twentieth Massa- 
 chusetts among the early volunteers, he was severely 
 wounded in three engagements, but each time returned 
 to the field. He became a lieutenant-colonel in the 
 service. Later he studied law, won distinction by his 
 writings, and has now been for many years an Associate 
 Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The sec- 
 ond child, a daughter named after her mother, married 
 Mr. Tudor Sargent. She died in 1889. The third child, 
 Edward Jackson, inherited much of his father's wit and 
 humor but he also inherited the asthma with which Dr. 
 Holmes was all his life afflicted. This undermined the 
 son's rather feeble constitution so that he was much 
 hampered in his practice of law; he died in 1884, and 
 his mother survived him for four years, passing away 
 in 1888. 
 
 At the time of his marriage Dr. Holmes bought a 
 house at No. 8 Montgomery Place, subsequently Bos- 
 worth Street, which has long since vanished, and of 
 which he wrote in 1885:] 
 
 Yesterday morning I passed through Montgom- 
 ery Place, and found workmen tearing out the in- 
 side of No. 8, where we lived for eighteen years, and 
 where all my children were born. Not a vestige is 
 
 [36] 
 
HABITS AND HABITATIONS 
 
 left to show where our old Cambridge house stood. 
 . . . We must make ourselves new habitations . . . 
 that is all: and carry our remembrances, associa- 
 tions, affections, all that makes home, under a new 
 roof. 
 
 Little I ask; my wants are few; 
 I only wish a hut of stone, 
 
 (A very plain brown stone will do,) 
 That I may call my own; — 
 
 And close at hand is such a one, 
 
 In yonder street that fronts the sun. 
 
 I care not much for gold or land; — 
 Give me a mortgage here and there, — 
 
 Some good bank-stock, some note of hand, 
 Or trifling railroad share, — 
 
 I only ask that Fortune send 
 
 A little more than I shall spend. 
 
 [From Montgomery Place, Dr. Holmes moved to 164 
 Charles Street, on the riverside, near the Cambridge 
 bridge. This house commanded a fine view of the estuary 
 of the Charles backed by the neighboring hills, and here 
 the Doctor spent some happy years until the destroying 
 hand of "progress" again approached his dwelling and 
 the increasing business traffic on Charles Street forced 
 him to migrate to a more tranquil spot, and he followed 
 the river — back up Beacon Street — to his final home 
 at 296. It was in 1870 that he took possession of his 
 Beacon Street home, in which he breathed his last on 
 October 7, 1894. 
 
 [ 37 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 He was for many years an enthusiastic oarsman, and 
 before the building-up of the Back Bay district, when 
 there was an extensive estuary on which to embark, he 
 was one of the first to launch his boat upon these 
 waters. He was to be seen, when the weather permitted, 
 making long excursions in his "long, sharp-pointed, 
 black-cradle" pattern, and he has entertainingly de- 
 scribed this pastime:] 
 
 For the past nine years, I have rowed about, dur- 
 ing a good part of the summer, on fresh or salt 
 water. My present fleet on the river Charles con- 
 sists of three row-boats. 1 — A small flat-bottomed 
 skiff of the shape of a flat-iron, kept mainly to lend 
 to boys. 2 — A fancy dory for two pairs of sculls, 
 in which I sometimes go out with my young folks. 
 3 — My own particular water-sulky, a "skeleton" 
 or "shell" race-boat, twenty-two feet long, with 
 huge outriggers, which boat I pull with ten foot 
 sculls, — alone, of course, as it holds but one, and 
 tips him out if he does n't mind what he is about. 
 In this I glide around the Back Bay, down the 
 stream, up the Charles to Cambridge and Water- 
 town, up the Mystic, round the wharves, in the 
 wake of steamboats, which leave a swell after them 
 delightful to rock upon; I linger under the bridges, 
 — those "caterpillar bridges," as my brother pro- 
 
 [ 38 ] 
 
View from the State House looking West, showing the Back Bay 
 before it was filled in 
 
HABITS AND HABITATIONS 
 
 fessor so happily called them; rub against the black 
 sides of wood-schooners ; cool down under the over- 
 hanging stern of some tall Indiaman; stretch across 
 to the Navy Yard, where the sentinel warns me off 
 from the Ohio, — just as if I should hurt her by 
 lying in her shadow; then strike out into the harbor, 
 where the water gets clear and the air smells of the 
 ocean, — till all at once I remember, that, if a west 
 wind blows up of a sudden, I shall drift along past 
 the islands, out of sight of the dear old State House, 
 — plate, tumbler, knife and fork all waiting at 
 home, but no chair drawn up at the table, — all the 
 dear people waiting, waiting, waiting, while the 
 boat is sliding, sliding, sliding into the great desert, 
 were there is no tree and no fountain. As I don't 
 want my wreck to be washed up on one of the beaches 
 in company with devil's-aprons, bladder- weeds, 
 dead horse-shoes, and bleached crab-shells, I turn 
 about and flap my long narrow wings for home. 
 
 When the tide is running out swiftly, I have a 
 splendid fight to get through the bridges, but al- 
 ways make it a rule to beat, — though I have been 
 jammed up into pretty tight places at times, and 
 was caught once between a vessel swinging round 
 and the pier, until our bones (the boat's, that is) 
 
 [39 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 cracked as if we had been in the jaws of Behemoth. 
 Then back to my moorings at the foot of the Com- 
 mon, off with the rowing-dress, dash under the 
 green translucent wave, return to the garb of civi- 
 lization, walk through my garden, take a look at the 
 elms on the Common, and reaching my habitat, in 
 consideration of my advanced period of life, indulge 
 in the Elysian abandonment of a huge recumbent 
 chair. 
 
 When I have established a pair of well-pro- 
 nounced feathering-calluses on my thumbs, when 
 I am in training so that I can do my fifteen miles 
 at a stretch without coming to grief in any way, 
 when I can perform my mile in eight minutes or a 
 little more, then I feel as if I had old Time's head 
 in chancery, and could give it to him at my leisure. 
 
 I do not deny the attraction of walking. I have 
 bored this ancient city through and through in my 
 daily travels, until I know it as an old inhabitant of 
 Cheshire knows his cheese. Why, it was I who, in 
 the course of these rambles, discovered that re- 
 markable avenue called Myrtle Street, stretching 
 in one long line from east of the Reservoir to a pre- 
 cipitous and rudely paved cliff which looks down 
 
 [ 40 ] 
 
HABITS AND HABITATIONS 
 
 on the grim abode of Science, and beyond it to the 
 far hills; a promenade so delicious in its repose, so 
 cheerfully varied with glimpses down the northern 
 slope into busy Cambridge Street with its iron river 
 of the horse-railroad, and wheeled barges gliding 
 back and forward over it, — so delightfully closing 
 at its western extremity in sunny courts and pas- 
 sages where I know peace, and beauty, and virtue, 
 and serene old age must be perpetual tenants, — so 
 alluring to all who desire to take their daily stroll, 
 in the words of Dr. Watts — 
 
 "Alike unknowing and unknown, — " 
 
 that nothing but a sense of duty would have 
 prompted me to reveal the secret of its existence. I 
 concede, therefore, that walking is an immeasur- 
 ably fine invention, of which old age ought con- 
 stantly to avail itself. 
 
 I dare not publicly name the rare joys, the infi- 
 nite delights, that intoxicate me on some sweet 
 June morning, when the river and bay are smooth 
 as a sheet of beryl-green silk, and I run along rip- 
 ping it up with my knife-edged shell of a boat, the 
 rent closing after me like those wounds of angels 
 which Milton tells of, but the seam still shining 
 
 [41 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 for many a long rood behind me. To lie still over 
 the Flats, where the waters are shallow, and see the 
 crabs crawling and the sculpins gliding busily and 
 silently beneath the boat, — to rustle in through 
 the long harsh grass that leads up some tranquil 
 creek, — to take shelter from the sunbeams under 
 one of the thousand-footed bridges, and look down 
 its interminable colonnades, crusted with green and 
 oozy growth, studded with minute barnacles, and 
 belted with rings of dark mussels, while overhead 
 streams and thunders that other river whose every 
 wave is a human soul flowing to eternity as the 
 river below flows to the ocean, lying there moored 
 unseen, in loneliness so profound that the columns 
 of Tadmor in the Desert could not seem more re- 
 mote from life — the cool breeze on one's forehead, 
 the stream whispering against the half-sunken pil- 
 lars, — why should I tell of these things, that I 
 should live to see my beloved haunts invaded and 
 the waves blackened with boats as with a swarm of 
 water-beetles? What a city of idiots we must be not 
 to have covered this glorious bay with gondolas and 
 wherries, as we have just learned to cover the ice in 
 winter with skaters! I am satisfied that such a set 
 of black-coated, stiff- jointed, soft-muscled, paste- 
 
 [ 42 1 
 
Summer Street in 1846, showing Trinity Church, urith Park Street 
 Steeple in the Distance 
 
HABITS AND HABITATIONS 
 
 complexioned youth as we can boast in our Atlantic 
 cities never before sprang from loins of Anglo-Saxon 
 lineage. 
 
 West Boston Bridge, which I rake with my opera- 
 glass from my window, I have been in the habit 
 of crossing since the time when the tall masts of 
 schooners and sloops at the Cambridge end of it 
 used to frighten me, being a very little child. Year 
 after year the boys and men, black and white, may 
 be seen fishing over its rails, as hopefully as if the 
 river were full of salmon. At certain seasons there 
 will be now and then captured a youthful and inex- 
 perienced codfish, always, so far as I have observed, 
 of quite trivial dimensions. The fame of the exploit 
 has no sooner gone abroad, than the enthusiasts of 
 the art come flocking down the river and cast their 
 lines in side by side, until they look like a row of harp 
 strings for number. . . . The spiny sculpin and the 
 flabby, muddy flounder are the common rewards of 
 the angler's toil. Do you happen to know these fish ? 
 
 [Turning his back upon the river which he loves so 
 well, Dr. Holmes climbs the hill and points out the 
 early abiding places of several famous Bostonians.] 
 
 Emerson's birthplace and that of our other illus- 
 [ 43 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 trious Bostonian, Benjamin Franklin, were within 
 a kite-string's distance of each other. When the 
 baby philosopher of the last century was carried 
 from Milk Street through the narrow passage long 
 / known as Bishop's Alley, now Hawley Street, he 
 came out in Summer Street, very nearly opposite 
 the spot where, at the beginning of this century, 
 stood the parsonage of the First Church, the home 
 of the Reverend William Emerson, its pastor, and 
 the birthplace of his son Ralph Waldo. The oblong 
 • quadrangle between Newbury, now Washington 
 Street, Pond, now Bedford Street, Summer Street, 
 and the open space called Church Green, where the 
 New South Church was afterwards erected, is rep- 
 resented on Bonner's maps of 1772 and 1769 as an 
 almost blank area, not crossed or penetrated by a 
 single passageway. 
 
 Even so late as less than a half century ago this 
 region was still a most attractive little rus in urhe. 
 The sunny gardens of the late Judge Charles Jack- 
 son and the late Mr. S. P. Gardner opened their 
 flowers and ripened their fruits in the places now 
 occupied by great warehouses and other massive 
 edifices. The most aristocratic pears, the "Saint 
 Michael," the "Brown Bury," found their natural 
 
 [ 44 ] 
 
Beacon Street in Dr. Holmes's Time 
 
HABITS AND HABITATIONS 
 
 homes in these sheltered enclosures. The fine old 
 mansion of Judge William Prescott looked out upon 
 these gardens. Some of us can well remember the 
 window of his son's, the historian's, study, the light 
 from which used every evening to glimmer through 
 the leaves of the pear-trees while the "Conquest of 
 Mexico" was achieving itself under difficulties 
 hardly less formidable than those encountered by 
 Cortes. It was a charmed region in which Emerson 
 first drew his breath. 
 
 Motley's father's family was at this time living in 
 the house No. 7 Walnut Street, looking down Chest- 
 nut Street over the water to the western hills. Near 
 by, at the corner of Beacon Street, was the residence 
 of the family of the first mayor of Boston, and at 
 a little distance from the opposite corner was the 
 house of one of the fathers of New England manu- 
 facturing enterprise, a man of superior intellect, 
 who built up a great name and fortune in our city. 
 The children from these three homes naturally be- 
 came playmates. Mr. Motley's house was a very 
 hospitable one, and Lothrop and two of his young 
 companions were allowed to carry out their schemes 
 of amusement in the garden and the garret. If one 
 with a prescient glance could have looked into that 
 
 [45 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 garret on some Saturday afternoon while our cen- 
 tury was not far advanced in its second score of 
 years, he might have found three boys in cloaks and 
 doublets and plumed hats, heroes and bandits, en- 
 acting more or less impromptu melodramas. In one 
 of the boys he would have seen the embryo drama- 
 tist of a nation's life history, John Lothrop Motley; 
 in the second, a famous talker and wit who has 
 spilled more good things on the wasteful air in con- 
 versation than would carry a "diner-out" through 
 half a dozen London seasons . . . Thomas Gold 
 Appleton. In the third, he would have recognized 
 a champion of liberty known wherever that word is 
 spoken, an orator whom to hear is to revive all the 
 traditions of the grace, the address, the command- 
 ing sway of the silver-tongued eloquence of the most 
 renowned speakers, — Wendell Phillips. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 BOSTON IN WAR TIMES 
 
We sing "Our Country's" song to-night 
 
 With saddened voice and eye; 
 Her banner droops in clouded light 
 
 Beneath the wintry sky. 
 We'll pledge her once in golden wine 
 
 Before her stars have set: 
 Though dim one reddening orb may shine, 
 
 We have a Country yet. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 BOSTON IN WAR TIMES 
 
 ["War Times" found Dr. Holmes an intense Union- 
 ist and patriot; he could not be induced to join working 
 organizations, but he plied his pen ardently for his 
 country's cause; he produced vivid prose, and stirring 
 war lyrics; and his eldest son was among the first to 
 enlist. 
 
 In 1861 he wrote Motley of conditions then prevail- 
 ing in Boston:] 
 
 I am thankful for your sake that you are out of 
 this wretched country. There was never anything 
 in our experience that gave any idea of it before. 
 Not that we have any material suffering as yet. 
 Our factories have been at work, and our dividends 
 have been paid. Society — in Boston, at least — has 
 been nearly as gay as usual. I had a few thousand 
 dollars to raise to pay for my house in Charles 
 Street, and sold my stocks for more than they 
 cost me. We have had predictions, to be sure, 
 that New England was to be left out in the cold 
 if a new confederacy was formed, and that the grass 
 was to grow in the streets of Boston. But prophets 
 
 [ 49 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 are at a terrible discount in these times, and in 
 spite of their predictions Merrimac sells at $125. 
 It is the terrible uncertainty of everything — most 
 of all, the uncertainty of the opinion of men, I had 
 almost said of principles. From the impracticable 
 Abolitionist, as bent on total separation from the 
 South as Carolina is on secession from the North, 
 to a Hunker, or Submissionist, or whatever you 
 choose to call the wretch who would sacrifice every- 
 thing and beg the South's pardon for offending it, 
 you find all shades of opinion in our streets. 
 
 [In reply to some criticisms concerning his failure to 
 play the part of a literary reformer he exclaims :] 
 
 You blame me (kindly always) for what I do not 
 do. I do not write poems or introduce passages 
 stigmatizing war and slavery . . . 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 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 that I had 
 tried in my humble way to adorn some of this com- 
 mon life that surrounds us, with colors borrowed 
 
 [ 50 1 
 
Colonnade Roiv, Tremont Street, opposite tJie Common, in 1860 
 
BOSTON IN WAR TIMES 
 
 from the imagination and the feelings, and thank 
 me for my effort. I supposed you would recognize a 
 glow of kindly feeling in every word of my poor 
 lesson — even in its light touches of satire, which 
 were only aimed at the excesses of well-meaning 
 people. 
 
 I am sorry that I have failed in giving you pleas- 
 ure because I have omitted two subjects on which 
 you would have loved to hear my testimony. . . . 
 But I must say, with regard to art and the manage- 
 ment 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 gaiety 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 an- 
 ticipate 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, 
 
 [ 51 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 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. 
 
 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 committees. 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 per- 
 sons 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. 
 
 [ 52 1 
 
BOSTON IN WAR TIMES 
 
 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 
 "Euphradian" 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. 
 
 February 8, 1861, is said to have been the coldest 
 day in this region for thirty-seven years. The ther- 
 mometer fell to from 12° to 20° below zero in Boston, 
 and from 20° to 30° in the neighboring towns. You 
 may know it is cold when you see people clapping 
 their hands to their ears, and hoisting their shoul- 
 ders and running. I see them on the long West 
 Boston Bridge every winter from my warm home at 
 the river's edge in Boston. I am afraid with the 
 wicked pleasure that Lucretius speaks of. 
 
 I know rather less of finance than you do of 
 medicine. ... I have always thought that if I had 
 passed a year or two in a counting-room it would 
 have gone far towards making a sensible man of me. 
 
 [53 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 I only know there is a great split about making 
 government paper legal tender, and if I could see 
 Bill Gray five minutes just at this point, I could 
 make out where the pinch is, and what kept him 
 awake a week ago as I hear something did, thinking 
 about it. 
 
 For myself, I do not profess to have any political 
 wisdom. I read, I listen, I judge to the best of my 
 ability. ... If we have grown unmanly and degen- 
 erate in the north wind, I am willing that the sirocco 
 should sweep us off from the soil. If the course of 
 nature must be reversed for us, and the Southern 
 Goths must march to the "beggarly land of ice" to 
 overrun and recolonize us, I have nothing to object. 
 But I have a most solid and robust faith in the 
 sterling manhood of the North, in its endurance, 
 its capacity for a military training, its plasticity for 
 every need, in education, in political equality, in 
 respect for man as man in peaceful development, 
 which is our law, in distinction from aggressive col- 
 onization; in human qualities as against "bestial and 
 diabolical ones" in the Lord as against the Devil. 
 
 If I never see peace and freedom in this land, I 
 shall have faith that my children will see it. If they 
 
 [ 54 ] 
 
Daniel Webster's House, at the corner of High and Summer Streets 
 
BOSTON IN WAR TIMES 
 
 do not live long enough to see it I believe their chil- 
 dren will. The revelations we have had from the 
 Old World have shed a new light for us on feudal 
 barbarism. We know now where we have to look for 
 sympathy. But oh! it would have done your heart 
 good to see the processions of day before yesterday 
 and to-day, the air all aflame with flags, the streets 
 shaking with the tramp of long-stretched lines, and 
 only one feeling showing itself, the passion of the 
 first great uprising, only the full flower of which 
 that was the opening bud. 
 
 God bless the Flag and its loyal defenders, 
 While its broad folds o'er the battle-field wave, 
 Till the dim star-wreath rekindle its splendors, 
 Washed from its stains in the blood of the brave ! 
 
 They were talking in the cars to-day of Fremont's 
 
 speech at the Tremont Temple last evening. His 
 
 allusions to slavery — you know what they must 
 
 have been — were received with an applause which 
 
 they would never have gained a little while ago. 
 
 Nay, I think a miscellaneous Boston audience 
 
 would be more like to cheer any denunciation of 
 
 slavery now than almost any other sentiment. 
 
 Do not think that the pluck or determination of 
 the North has begun to yield. There never was such 
 
 [55 1 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 a universal enthusiasm for the defence of the Union 
 and the trampling out of rebellion as at this perilous 
 hour. ... I won't say to you "be of good courage," 
 because men of ideas are not put down by the acci- 
 dents of a day or a year. 
 
 You remain an idealist, as all generous natures do 
 and must. I sometimes think it is the only absolute 
 line of division between men, — that which separates 
 the men who hug the actual from those who stretch 
 their arms to embrace the possible. I reduce my 
 points of contact with the first class to a minimum. 
 
 You know better than I do the contrivances of 
 that detested horde of mercenary partisans who 
 would in a moment accept Jeff Davis, the slave- 
 trade, and a Southern garrison in Boston, to get 
 back their post-offices and their custom-houses. . . . 
 The mean sympathizers with the traitors are about 
 in the streets under many aspects. You can gener- 
 ally tell the more doubtful ones by the circumstance 
 that they have a great budget of complaints against 
 the government, that their memory is exceedingly 
 retentive of every reverse and misfortune, and that 
 they have the small end of their opera-glasses to- 
 
 [5Q] 
 
BOSTON IN WAR TIMES 
 
 wards everything that looks encouraging. I do not 
 think strange of this in old men; they wear their old 
 opinions like their old clothes, until they are thread- 
 bare, and we need them as standards of past thought 
 which we may reckon our progress by, as the ship 
 wants her stationary log to tell her headway. But 
 to meet young men who have breathed this Ameri- 
 can air without taking the contagious fever of lib- 
 erty, whose hands lie as cold and flabby in yours as 
 the fins of a fish, on the morning of a victory — this 
 is the hardest thing to bear. 
 
 Oh, if the bullets would only go to the hearts that 
 have no warm human blood in them! But the most 
 generous of our youth is the price we must pay for 
 the new heaven, and the new earth which are to be 
 born of this fiery upheaval. I think one of the most 
 trying things of a struggle like this is the painful 
 revelation of the meanness which lies about us un- 
 suspected. 
 
 War is a very old story, but it is a new one to this 
 generation of Americans. Our own nearest relation 
 in the ascending line remembers the Revolution 
 well. How should she forget it? Did she not lose her 
 doll, which was left behind when she was carried out 
 of Boston, about that time growing uncomfortable 
 
 [57] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 by reason of cannon-balls dropping in from the 
 neighboring heights at all hours, — in token of 
 which see the tower of Brattle Street Church at this 
 very day? War in her memory means '76. As for 
 the brush of 1812, "we did not think much about 
 that " ; and everybody knows that the Mexican busi- 
 ness did not concern us much, except in its politi- 
 cal relations. No ! war is a new thing to us who are 
 not in the last quarter of their century. 
 
 The war passion burned like scattered coals of 
 
 fire in the households of Revolutionary times; now 
 
 it rushes all through the land like a flame over the 
 
 prairie. 
 
 " As the wild tempest wakes the slumbering sea, 
 Thou only teachest all that man can be! " 
 
 We indulged in the above apostrophe to War in a 
 Phi Beta Kappa poem of long ago. . . . Oftentimes, 
 in paroxysms of peace and good will towards all 
 mankind, we have felt twinges of conscience about 
 the passage, especially when one of our orators 
 showed us that a ship of war costs as much to build 
 and to keep as a college, and that every port-hole 
 we could stop would give us a new professor. Now 
 we begin to think there was some meaning in our 
 
 [58] 
 
BOSTON IN WAR TIMES 
 
 poor couplet. War has taught us, as nothing else 
 could, what we can be and are. It has exalted our 
 manhood and womanhood, and driven us all back 
 upon our substantial human qualities, for a long 
 time more or less kept out of sight by the spirit of 
 commerce, the love of art, science, or literature, or 
 other qualities not belonging to all of us as men and 
 women. 
 
 Whatever miseries this war brings upon us, it is 
 making us wiser, and we trust better. W 7 iser, for 
 we are learning our weakness, our narrowness, our 
 selfishness, our ignorance, in lessons of sorrow and 
 shame. Better, because all that is noble in men and 
 women is demanded by the time, and our people 
 are rising to the standard the time calls for. For 
 this is the question the hour is putting to each of us. 
 Are you ready, if need be, to sacrifice all that you 
 have and hope for in this world, that the generations 
 to follow you may inherit a whole country whose 
 natural condition shall be peace, and not a broken 
 province which must live under the perpetual 
 threat, if not in the constant presence, of war and 
 all that war brings with it? If we are ready for this 
 sacrifice, battles may be lost, but the campaign and 
 its grand object must be won. 
 
 [59 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 [After the battle of Antietam Dr. Holmes received 
 a message that his son Captain Holmes was seriously 
 wounded.] 
 
 In the dead of night which closed upon the bloody 
 field of Antietam my household was startled from 
 its slumbers by the loud summons of a telegraphic 
 messenger. The air had been heavy all day with 
 the rumors of battle, and thousands and tens of 
 thousands had walked the streets with throbbing 
 hearts, in dread anticipation of the tidings any hour 
 might bring. 
 
 We rose hastily, and presently the messenger was 
 admitted. I took the envelope from his hand, 
 opened it, and read : — 
 
 Hagerstown, 17th. 
 Capt. H. wounded shot through the neck thought 
 not mortal at Keedysville. 
 
 [Dr. Holmes immediately set out upon a journey 
 southward, and spent many days in vainly searching 
 the hospitals and temporary shelters for his wounded 
 son. In an article entitled "My Hunt after 'The Cap- 
 tain,'" he has set forth his quest in a memorable de- 
 scription of the conditions prevailing after the terrible 
 battle.] 
 
 Was it possible that my Captain could be lying on 
 straw in one of these places? Certainly it was pos- 
 
 [60] 
 
West Street in 1860, looking toivards Bedford Street 
 
BOSTON IN WAR TIMES 
 
 sible, but not probable; but as the lantern was held 
 over each bed, it was with a kind of thrill that I 
 looked upon the features it illuminated. Many 
 times I started as some faint resemblance, — the 
 shade of a young man's hair, the outline of his half- 
 turned face, — recalled the presence I was in search 
 of. The face would turn towards me, and the mo- 
 mentary illusion would pass away, but still the 
 fancy clung to me. There was no figure huddled up 
 on its rude couch, none stretched at the roadside, 
 none toiling languidly along the dusty pike, none 
 passing in car or in ambulance, that I did not scru- 
 tinize as if it might be that for which I was making 
 my pilgrimage to the battle-field. 
 
 [Dr. Holmes missed the young Captain, who was travel- 
 ling homeward by slow stages, and their meeting at last 
 upon the train is characteristically described by him.} 
 
 The expected train came in so quietly that I was 
 almost startled to see it on the track. Let us walk 
 calmly through the cars, and look around us. 
 
 In the first car, on the fourth seat to the right, I 
 saw my Captain; there I saw him, even my first- 
 born, whom I had sought through many cities. 
 
 "How are you Boy?" 
 
 "How are you, Dad?" 
 
 [61 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 Such are the proprieties of life, as they are ob- 
 served among us Anglo-Saxons of the nineteenth 
 century, decently disguising those natural impulses 
 that made Joseph, the Prime Minister of Egypt, 
 weep aloud so that the Egyptians and the house of 
 Pharaoh heard, — nay, which had once overcome 
 his shaggy old uncle Esau so entirely that he fell on 
 his brother's neck and cried like a baby in the pres- 
 ence of all the women. 
 
 On Monday morning, the twenty-ninth of Sep- 
 tember, we took the cars for home. . . . 
 
 Fling open the window-blinds of the chamber 
 that looks out on the waters and towards the western 
 sun ! Let the joyous light shine in upon the pictures 
 that hang upon its walls, and the shelves thick-set 
 with the names of poets and philosophers and sacred 
 teachers, in whose pages our boys learn that life is 
 noble only when it is held cheap by the side of honor 
 and of duty. Lay him on his bed, and let him sleep 
 off his aches and weariness. So comes down another 
 night over this household, unbroken by any mes- 
 senger of evil tidings, — a night of peaceful rest and 
 grateful thoughts; for this our son and brother was 
 dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found. 
 
 [ 62 ] 
 
BOSTON IN WAR TIMES 
 
 Lord of all being ! throned afar, 
 Thy glory flames from sun and star; 
 Centre and soul of every sphere, 
 Yet to each loving heart how near ! 
 
 Our midnight is thy smile withdrawn; 
 Our noontide is thy gracious dawn; 
 Our rainbow arch thy mercy's sign; 
 All, save the clouds of sin, are thine! 
 
 [On the 4th of July, 1863, Dr. Holmes delivered a 
 stirring Oration before the Authorities of Boston. He 
 closed this splendid address with the words:] 
 
 Citizens of Boston, sons and daughters of New 
 England, men and women of the North, brothers 
 and sisters in the bond of American Union, you 
 have among you the scarred and wasted soldiers 
 who have shed their blood for your temporal salva- 
 tion. They bore your nation's emblems bravely 
 through the fire and smoke of the battle-field; nay, 
 their own bodies are starred with bullet-wounds and 
 striped with sabre-cuts, as if to mark them as be- 
 longing to their country until their dust becomes a 
 portion of the soil which they defended. In every 
 Northern graveyard slumber the victims of this 
 destroying struggle. Many whom you remember 
 playing as children amidst the clover-blossoms of 
 
 [63 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 our Northern fields, sleep under nameless mounds 
 with strange Southern wild-flowers blooming over 
 them. By those wounds of living heroes, by those 
 graves of fallen martyrs, by the hopes of your chil- 
 dren yet unborn, and the claims of your children's 
 children yet unborn, in the name of outraged honor, 
 in the interest of violated sovereignty, for the life of 
 an imperilled nation, for the sake of men every- 
 where and of our common humanity, for the glory 
 of God and the advancement of his kingdom on 
 earth, your country calls upon you to stand by her 
 through good report and through evil report, in 
 triumph and in defeat, until she emerges from the 
 great war of Western civilization, Queen of the 
 broad continent, Arbitress in the councils of earth's 
 emancipated peoples; until the flag that fell from 
 the wall of Fort Sumter floats again inviolate, su- 
 preme, over all her ancient inheritance, every for- 
 tress, every capital, every ship, and this warring 
 land is once more a United Nation! 
 
 Flag of the heroes who left us their glory, 
 
 Borne through their battle-fields' thunder and flame, 
 Blazoned in song and illumined in story, 
 Wave o'er us all who inherit their fame! 
 Up with our banner bright, 
 Sprinkled with starry light, 
 
 [ 64 ] 
 
BOSTON IN WAR TIMES 
 
 Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore, 
 
 While through the sounding sky 
 
 Loud rings the Nation's cry, — 
 Union and Liberty! One Evermore! 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE COLISEUM AND THE BOSTON FIRE 
 
 1869-1872 
 
(Sung at the "Jubilee" June 15, 1869, to the music of Keller's "American 
 Hymn.") 
 
 Angel of Peace, thou hast wandered too long ! 
 
 Spread thy white wings to the sunshine of love ! 
 Come while our voices are blended in song, — 
 
 Fly to our ark like the storm-beaten dove! — 
 Fly to our ark on the wings of the dove, — 
 
 Speed o'er the far-sounding billows of song, 
 Crowned with thine olive-leaf garland of love, — 
 
 Angel of Peace, thou hast waited too long! 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE COLISEUM AND THE BOSTON FIRE 
 1869-1872 
 
 [The great " Peace Jubilee " of 1869 was an epoch- 
 making occurrence in Boston. It was pronounced by 
 Dr. Holmes: "a mighty success"; "a sensation of a 
 lifetime"; he wrote of it to Motley in glowing terms.] 
 
 We have had the Coliseum fever, and happily re- 
 covered. It was a grand affair, I assure you. I 
 doubt if forty thousand people were ever seen be- 
 fore under one unbroken continuity of roof, in a 
 single honest parallelogram. I will give you its 
 dimensions, as compared with the Coliseum at 
 Rome, — which last building had velaria, very 
 probably, for emperors, ambassadors, and such, but 
 had no proper roof. The audience was truly a won- 
 derful sight, and the vast orchestra and chorus, 
 though not deafening, as many expected, was al- 
 most oceanic in the volume of its surges and billows. 
 I wrote a hymn for it which Amory told me, two 
 days ago, I had not been praised enough for. 
 
 [At this same period he describes the new statue of 
 Washington which he suggests needs to be turned about 
 in order to face the city of Boston.] 
 
 [69] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 We have got a grand new equestrian statue of 
 George Washington, "first in war," etc., in the 
 Public Garden. It reminds me of Rauch's statue of 
 Frederic at Berlin, which I never saw, except in a 
 glass stereograph — almost as good, however, as 
 the statue itself. It faces down Commonwealth 
 Avenue, as if he were riding out of Boston. I won- 
 der we have not had an epigram, in some New York 
 paper, to the effect that he is turning his horse's 
 tail to us. They can turn it about, however, as they 
 have done with Everett's. I suppose you [John 
 Lothrop Motley] will be in bronze one of these days, 
 — but I hope they will make you face Boston. This 
 new and first equestrian statue we have seen here is 
 generally admired. I think it is admirable in its 
 effect, and I have not heard any but favorable 
 criticisms so far. So you see, what with her Coli- 
 seum, and its thousand instruments and ten thou- 
 sand singers, and its "man on horseback" (what a 
 wonderfully picturesque generalization that was of 
 Caleb Cushing's), and its two members of the Cabi- 
 net and Minister to England, our little town of 
 Boston feels as good as any place of its size, to say 
 nothing of bigger ones. 
 
 [When the friends of the rival claimants of the dis- 
 [70] 
 
The Coliseum of the Peace Jubilee of 1869 
 
THE COLISEUM 
 
 covery of anaesthesia were proposing monuments for 
 each, Holmes suggested that all should unite in erecting 
 a single memorial, with a central group symbolizing 
 painless surgery, a statue of Jackson on one side, a 
 statue of Morton on the other and the inscription be- 
 neath: "To E (i) ther."] 
 
 I am going to send you my Halleck poem . . . and 
 
 one or two other trifles. They will have a home 
 
 flavor, I know, and you will get a whiff of Boston 
 
 and Cambridge associations out of them, if nothing 
 
 else, — just as Mr. Ho wells told me, coming out in 
 
 the cars, yesterday, that the smell of the Back Bay 
 
 salt water brought back Venice to him. 
 
 [The Humboldt Centennial celebration, which took 
 place on September 14, 1869, of which Holmes wrote, 
 was a feature of importance in Boston.] 
 
 September, 1868. 
 This last week we had a Humboldt celebration, 
 or rather two, in Boston. One in which Agassiz 
 was the orator, the other in which a German — 
 Heinzel by name — was speaker. Agassiz did him- 
 self credit by a succinct account of Humboldt's life 
 and labors, and interesting anecdotes of his per- 
 sonal relations with him. He was in great trouble all 
 the time. Curious hint for public speakers who use 
 glasses. I sat next to Charles Sumner. "Agassiz 
 
 [71] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 has made a mistake," he said; "he has eye-glasses; 
 he ought to have spectacles. In three or four min- 
 utes his skin will get moist and they will slip and 
 plague him." They did not in "three or four min- 
 utes," but in the last part of his address they gave 
 him a good deal of trouble keeping one hand busy 
 all the time to replace them as they slid down his 
 nose. Remember this if you have occasion to speak 
 an hour or two before an audience in a warm room. 
 Of course I wrote a poem, which I had the wonder- 
 ful sense to positively refuse delivering in Music 
 Hall after the long Address of Agassiz, but read at 
 the soiree afterwards. I thought well of it, as I am 
 apt to, and others liked it. 
 
 His was no taper lit in cloistered cage, 
 
 Its glimmer borrowed from the grove or porch; 
 
 He read the record of the planet's page 
 By Etna's glare and Cotopaxi's torch. 
 
 He heard the voices of the pathless woods; 
 
 On the salt steppes he saw the starlight shine; 
 He scaled the mountain's windy solitudes, 
 
 And trod the galleries of the breathless mine. 
 
 For God's new truth he claimed the kingly robe 
 That priestly shoulders counted all their own, 
 
 Unrolled the gospel of the storied globe 
 And led young Science to her empty throne. 
 
 [ 72 ] 
 
THE COLISEUM 
 
 Longfellow has got home, not looking younger 
 certainly, but luminous with gentle graces as always. 
 . . . Walking on the bridge two or three weeks ago, 
 
 I met a barouche with Miss G and a portly 
 
 mediaeval gentleman at her side. I thought it was a 
 ghost, almost, when the barouche stopped and out 
 jumped Tom Appleton in the flesh, and plenty of 
 it, as aforetime . We embraced — or rather he em- 
 braced me and I partially spanned his goodly cir- 
 cumference. He has been twice here — the last 
 time he took tea and stayed till near eleven, pouring 
 out all the time such a torrent of talk, witty, enter- 
 taining, audacious, ingenious, sometimes extrava- 
 gant, but fringed always with pleasing fancies as 
 deep as the border of a Queen's cashmere, that my 
 mind came out of it as my body would out of a 
 Turkish bath — every joint snapped and its hard 
 epidermis taken clean off in that four hours' immer- 
 sion. 
 
 So you see I have only told you of small local and 
 personal matters, not so well as a lively woman 
 would have done, but as they came up to my mind. 
 I read somewhere lately a letter of a great personage 
 then abroad — I think it was old John Adams — in 
 which he begs for a letter full of trifling home-mat- 
 
 [ 73 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 ters. He gets enough that strains him to read, and 
 he wants undress talk. I can tell you nothing of the 
 large world you will not get better from other cor- 
 respondents, but I can talk to you of places and 
 persons and topics of limited interest which will 
 perhaps give you five minutes of Boston, and be as 
 refreshing as a yawn and stretch after being fixed 
 an hour in one position. 
 
 April, 1870. 
 I have been well enough of late, and went to a 
 
 dinner-party at Mrs. 's yesterday, and a kind 
 
 of soiree she had after it. This good lady (who is a 
 distant relation of Mrs. Leo Hunter) had bagged 
 Mr. Fechter, who has been turning the heads of the 
 Boston women and girls with his Hamlets and 
 Claude Melnottes. A pleasant, intelligent man, — 
 but Boston furores are funny. The place is just of 
 the right size for sesthetic endemics, and they spare 
 neither age nor sex — among the women, that is, 
 for we have man-women and woman-women here, 
 you know. It reminds me of the time we had when 
 Jefferson was here, but Fechter is feted off the stage 
 as much as he is applauded on it. I have only seen 
 him in Hamlet, in which he interested rather than 
 
 [74 ] 
 
THE COLISEUM 
 
 overwhelmed rne. But his talk about Rachel and 
 the rest with whom he has played so much was 
 mighty pleasant. 
 
 December, 1871. 
 At this moment, as I write, a flock of a hundred 
 or more wild ducks are swimming about and diving 
 in a little pool in the midst of the ice, for the river 
 has just frozen over again, and the thermometer 
 was at zero yesterday. I think you would call my 
 library a pleasant room, even after all the fine resi- 
 dences you have seen. I do not think the two famous 
 Claudes of Longford Castle, with the best picture 
 Turner ever painted between them, would pay me 
 for my three windows which look over the estuary 
 of Charles River. But you know I have the faculty 
 of being pleased with everything that is mine. 
 
 Through my north window, in the wintry weather, — 
 
 My airy oriel on the river shore, — 
 I watch the sea-fowl as they flock together 
 
 Where late the boatman flashed his dripping oar. 
 
 I see the solemn gulls in council sitting 
 
 On some broad ice-floe pondering long and late, 
 
 While overhead the home-bound ducks are flitting, 
 And leave the tardy concave in debate. 
 
 [ 75 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 How often gazing where a bird reposes, 
 
 Rocked on the wavelets, dripping with the tide, 
 
 I lose myself in strange metempsychosis 
 And float a sea-fowl at a sea-fowl's side. 
 
 A voice recalls me. — From my window turning 
 
 I find myself a plumeless biped still; 
 No beak, no claws, so sign of wings discerning, 
 
 In fact with nothing bird-like but my quill. 
 
 [At this time, 1870, the accession of Harvard' s new 
 president was a matter of much interest.] 
 
 Our new President Eliot has turned the whole 
 University over like a flapjack. There never was such 
 a bouleversement as that in our Medical Faculty. 
 The Corporation has taken the whole management 
 out of our hands and changed everything. We are 
 paid salaries, which I rather like, though I doubt if 
 we gain in pocket by it. We have, partly in conse- 
 quence of outside pressure, remodelled our whole 
 course of instruction. Consequently we have a 
 smaller class, but better students, each of whom 
 pays more than under the old plan of manage- 
 ment. 
 
 It is so curious to see a young man like Eliot, 
 with an organizing brain, a firm will, a grave, calm, 
 dignified presence, taking the ribbons of our classi- 
 
 [76] 
 
THE COLISEUM 
 
 cal coach and six, feeling the horses' mouths, put- 
 ting a check on this one's capers and touching that 
 one with the lash, — turning up everywhere, in 
 every Faculty (I belong to three), on every public 
 occasion at every dinner orne, and taking it all as 
 naturally as if he had been born President. In the 
 mean time Yale has chosen a Connecticut country 
 minister, Get. 60, as her President, and the experi- 
 ment of liberal culture with youth at the helm ver- 
 sus orthodox repression with a graybeard Palinurus 
 is going on in a way that it is impossible to look at 
 without interest in seeing how the experiment will 
 turn out. 
 
 I suppose E has told you all about the 
 
 Grand Duke's visit and the stir it made in our little 
 city. You are so used to great folks that a Grand 
 Duke is not more to you than a Giant or a Dwarf 
 is to Barnum; but we had not had a sensation for 
 some time, and this splendid young man — for he is 
 a superb specimen — produced great effect. I sup- 
 pose you get the Boston papers sometimes and read 
 what your fellow-citizens are doing. The dinner the 
 gentlemen (gave) was a handsome one — thirty-five 
 dollars a plate ought to pay for what the Californ- 
 ians call a "square meal." Speeches and a poem, of 
 
 [ 77 J 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 course — blush for me ! — the whole affair was a 
 success, with one or two fiascos. 
 
 [Holmes wrote to his friend Motley a graphic de- 
 scription of the great Boston fire of 1872.] 
 
 The recollection of the Great Fire will always be 
 associated with a kindly thought of yourself in my 
 memory. For on Saturday, the 9th of November, 
 your sister Mrs. S. Rodman, sent me a package of 
 little Dutch story-books, which you had been so 
 good as to procure for me. You have no idea with 
 what childlike, or if you will childish, interest I 
 looked at those little story-books. I was sitting in 
 my library, my wife opposite, somewhere near nine 
 o'clock, perhaps, when I heard the fire-bells and left 
 the Dutch picture-books, which I was very busy 
 with (trying to make out the stories with the aid of 
 the pictures, which was often quite easy) , and went 
 to the north window. Nothing there. We see a good 
 many fires in the northern hemisphere, which our 
 windows command, and always look, when we hear 
 an alarm, towards Charlestown, East Cambridge, 
 Cambridge, and the towns beyond. Seeing nothing 
 in that direction I went to the windows on Beacon 
 Street, and looking out saw a column of light which 
 I thought might come from the neighborhood of the 
 
 [78] 
 
THE BOSTON FIRE 
 
 corner of Boy 1st on and Tremont Streets, where 
 stands one of the finest edifices in Boston, the 
 " Hotel Boylston," put up by Charles Francis 
 Adams. The fire looked so formidable, I went out, 
 thinking I would go to Commonwealth Avenue to 
 get a clear view of it. As I went in that direction I 
 soon found I was approaching a great conflagration. 
 There was no getting very near the fire; but that 
 night and the next morning I saw it dissolving the 
 great high buildings, which seemed to melt away in 
 it. My son Wendell made a remark which I found 
 quite true, that great walls would tumble and yet 
 one would hear no crash, — they came down as if 
 they had fallen on a vast feather-bed. Perhaps, as 
 he thought, the air was too full of noises for us to 
 note what would have been in itself a startling crash. 
 I hovered round the Safety Vaults in State Street, 
 where I had a good deal of destructible property of 
 my own and others, but no one was allowed to en- 
 ter them. So I saw (on Sunday morning) the fire 
 eating its way straight toward my deposits, and 
 millions of others with them, and thought how I 
 should like it to have them wiped out with that red 
 flame that was coming along clearing everything 
 before it. But I knew all was doing that could be 
 
 [79 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 done, and so I took it quietly enough, and managed 
 to sleep both Saturday and Sunday nights tolerably 
 well, though I got up every now and then to see how 
 far and fast the flames were spreading northward. 
 Before Sunday night, however, they were tolerably 
 well in hand, so far as I could learn, and on Monday 
 all the world within reach was looking at the wilder- 
 ness of ruins. 
 
 To-day, Saturday, I went with my wife to the 
 upper story of Hovey's store on Summer Street, a 
 great establishment, — George Gardner, you re- 
 member, owns the building, — which was almost 
 miraculously saved. The scene from the upper win- 
 dows was wonderful to behold. Right opposite, 
 Trinity Church, its tower standing, its walls partly 
 fallen, more imposing as a ruin than it ever was in 
 its best estate, — everything flat to the water, so 
 that we saw the ships in the harbor as we should 
 have done from the same spot in the days of Black- 
 stone (if there had been ships then and no trees in 
 the way), here and there a tall chimney, — two or 
 three brick piers for safes, one with a safe standing 
 on it as calm as if nothing had happened, — piles of 
 smoking masonry, the burnt stump of the flagstaff 
 
 [80] 
 
f jjfl! I ! .! I \ 
 LiliiiillTii f flf !l ! i~ ! 
 
The Boston Fire of November 9-10, 1872 
 
-iimiBirihriini |j 
 
 
 
THE BOSTON FIRE 
 
 in Franklin Street, groups of people looking to see 
 where their stores were, or hunting for their safes, 
 or round a fire-engine which was playing on the 
 ruins that covered a safe, to cool thern, so it could 
 be got out, — cordons of military and of the police 
 keeping off the crowds of people who have flocked 
 from all over the country, etc., etc. . . . Everybody 
 seems to bear up cheerfully and hopefully against 
 the disaster, and the only thought seems to be how 
 best and soonest to repair damages. 
 
 Things are going on pretty regularly. Froude is 
 here lecturing; I went to hear him Thursday, and 
 was interested. . . . After the lecture we had a pleas- 
 ant meeting of the Historical Society at Mr. J. A. 
 Lowell's, where Froude was present. Winthrop 
 read a long and really very interesting account of 
 the fires which had happened in Boston since its 
 settlement, beginning with Cotton Mather's ac- 
 count of different ones, and coming down to the 
 "Great Fire" of 1760. Much of what he read I find 
 in Drake's "History of Boston," from which I also 
 learn that the "Great Fire" began in the house of 
 Mrs. Mary Jackson and Son at the sign of the Bra- 
 zen Head in Cornhill, and that all the buildings on 
 
 [81 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 Colonel Wendell's wharf were burned. My mother 
 used to tell me that her grandfather (Col. W.) lost 
 forty buildings in that fire, which always made me 
 feel grand, as being the descendant of one that hath 
 had losses, — in fact makes me feel a little grand 
 now, in telling you of it. Most people's grandfathers 
 in Boston, to say nothing of their great-grand-fa- 
 thers, got their living working in their shirt-sleeves, 
 but when a man's g.g. lost forty buildings, it is 
 almost up to your sixteen quarterings that you 
 know so much about in your Austrian experience. 
 
 O vision of that sleepless night, 
 
 What hue shall paint the mocking light 
 
 That burned and stained the orient skies 
 
 Where peaceful morning loves to rise, 
 
 As if the sun had lost his way 
 
 And dawned to make a second day, — 
 
 Above how red with fiery glow, 
 
 How dark to those it woke below ! 
 
 On roof and wall, on dome and spire, 
 Flashed the false jewels of the fire; 
 Girt with her belt of glittering panes, 
 And crowned with starry-gleaming vanes, 
 Our northern queen in glory shone 
 With new-born splendors not her own, 
 And stood, transfigured in our eyes, 
 A victim decked for sacrifice ! 
 
 [ 82 ] 
 
THE BOSTON FIRE 
 
 The cloud still hovers overhead, 
 
 And still the midnight sky is red; 
 
 As the lost wanderer strays alone 
 
 To seek the place he called his own, 
 
 His devious footprints sadly tell 
 
 How changed the pathways known so well; 
 
 The scene, how new ! The tale, how old 
 
 Ere yet the ashes have grown cold ! 
 
 [In the summer of 1873, Holmes writes to Motley 
 from the resort which was christened by his friend 
 Appleton, " Cold roast Boston."] 
 
 May I gossip a few minutes? I write, you see, 
 from Nahant, where I have been during July and 
 August, staying with my wife in the cottage you 
 must remember as Mr. Charles Amory's. ... So I 
 have been here, as I said, playing cuckoo in the nest, 
 with my wife, who enjoys Nahant much more than 
 I do — having had more or less of asthma to take 
 off from my pleasures. Still, there has been much 
 that is agreeable, and as a change from city life I 
 have found it a kind of refreshment. 
 
 Many of your old friends are our neighbors. 
 Longfellow is hard by, with Tom Appleton in the 
 same house, and for a fortnight or so Sumner as 
 his guest. Sumner, who was very nearly killed and 
 buried by the newspapers, seems as well as ever, 
 
 [ 83 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 and gave us famous accounts of what he did and 
 saw in England. ... I have dined since I have been 
 here at Mr. George Peabody's with Longfellow, 
 Sumner, Appleton, and William Amory; at Cabot 
 Lodge's with nearly the same company; at Mr. 
 James's with L. and S., and at Longfellow's en 
 famille, pretty nearly. Very pleasant dinners. . . . 
 Nahant is a gossipy Little Peddington kind of a 
 place. As Alcibiades and his dog are not here, they 
 are prattling and speculating and worrying about 
 the cost of Mr. J 's new house, which, exter- 
 nally at least, is the handsomest country house I ever 
 saw, and is generally allowed to be a great success. 
 The inside is hardly finished, except the hall and the 
 dining-room, which are very fine. . . . On Monday 
 we go back to Boston after two months' stay. 
 
 [In the following spring he again writes to Motley.] 
 
 I have come down — or got up — to dinner- 
 parties as the substantial basis of my social life. 
 They have slacked off (Novanglice) of late, so that 
 I am now as domestic as a gallinaceous fowl, in 
 place of chirruping and flitting from bough to bough. 
 
 In the mean time I have my little grandchild to 
 remind me I must not think too much of the pomps 
 
 [ 84 ] 
 
THE BOSTON FIRE 
 
 and vanities of the world, with two generations 
 crowding me along. . . . We are all well, and living 
 along in our quiet way with as much comfort as we 
 have any right to, and more than most people have 
 to content themselves with. I have only one trouble 
 I cannot get rid of, namely, that they tease me to 
 write for every conceivable anniversary. I wrote a 
 hymn which was sung at the delivery of Schurz's 
 Eulogy. Waldo Higginson came this afternoon to 
 get me to write a hymn for the dedication — no — 
 the opening or completion, of the Memorial Hall. 
 You remember Sydney Smith's John Bull — how 
 he "blubbers and subscribes," — I scold and con- 
 sent. 
 
 (DEDICATION OF MEMORIAL HALL, JUNE 23, 1874) 
 
 Where, girt around by savage foes, 
 Our nurturing Mother's shelter rose, 
 Behold, the lofty temple stands, 
 Reared by her children's grateful hands! 
 
 Firm are the pillars that defy 
 The volleyed thunders of the sky; 
 Sweet are the summer wreaths that twine 
 With bud and flower our martyrs' shrine. 
 
 The hues their tattered colors bore 
 Fall mingling on the sunlit floor 
 
 [85 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 Till evening spreads her spangled pall, 
 And wraps in shade the storied hall. 
 
 Firm were their hearts in danger's hour, 
 Sweet was their manhood's morning flower, 
 Their hopes with rainbow hues were bright, — 
 How swiftly winged the sudden night! 
 
 O Mother! on thy marble page 
 Thy children read, from age to age, 
 The mighty word that upward leads 
 Through noble thought to nobler deeds. 
 
 [In July, 1874, Holmes writes of a summer spent in 
 Boston.] 
 
 We are living in a desert. I feel, as I walk down 
 Beacon Street, as if I were Lord Macaulay's New 
 Zealander. I expect to start a fox or a woodchuck 
 as I turn through Clarendon or Dartmouth Street, 
 and to hear the whir of the partridge in Common- 
 wealth Avenue. The truth is I have no country 
 place of my own, and we are so much more comfort- 
 able in our own house here that we can hardly make 
 up our minds to go to any strange place in the coun- 
 try, or by the seashore. 
 
 You think I am wedded to the pavement. True, 
 but I am also passionately fond of the country, 
 only I am so liable to suffer from asthma when I get 
 
 [86] 
 
THE BOSTON FIRE 
 
 off the brick sidewalk that I am virtually impris- 
 oned, except when I can arrange my conditions in 
 the most favorable way, in a way that happens to 
 agree with me. . . . Few people enjoy better health 
 than I do just so long as I am let alone and regulate 
 my own habits; but when others want me to wear 
 their shoes, how they do chafe and pinch ! I think, 
 if I am unsocial, it is quite as much by constitution 
 as it is by any want of the social instinct, and I have 
 learned to judge others very charitably in the study 
 of my own weakness. 
 
 Our neighbors of Manhattan have an excellent 
 jest about our crooked streets which, if they were a 
 little more familiar with a native author of unques- 
 tionable veracity, they would strike out from the 
 letter of "Our Boston Correspondent" where there 
 is a source of perennial hilarity. It is worth while to 
 reprint, for the benefit of whom it may concern, a 
 paragraph from the authentic history of the vener- 
 able Diedrich Knickerbocker: — 
 
 "The sage council, as has been mentioned in a 
 preceding chapter, not being able to determine upon 
 any plan for the building of their city, — the cows 
 in a laudable fit of patriotism, took it under their 
 peculiar charge, and as they went to and from pas- 
 
 [87] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 ture, established paths through the bushes, on each 
 side of which the good folks built their houses; 
 which is one cause of the rambling and picturesque 
 turns and labyrinths, which distinguish certain 
 streets of New York at this very day." 
 
 To compare the situations of any dwellings in 
 either of the great cities with those which look upon 
 the Common, the Public Garden, the waters of the 
 Back Bay, would be to take an unfair advantage of 
 Fifth Avenue and Walnut Street. St. Botolph's 
 daughter dresses in plainer clothes than her more 
 stately sisters, but she wears an emerald on her 
 right hand and a diamond on her left that Cybele 
 herself need not be ashamed of. 
 
 While the inhabitants of Albany and Augusta are 
 listening for the cracking and grinding of the break- 
 ing ice in their rivers, the Bostonians are looking for 
 the crocuses and snow-drops in the Beacon Street 
 front-yards. Boston is said to be in latitude 42° and 
 something more, but Beacon Street is practically 
 not higher than 40°, on account of its fine southern 
 exposure. Not long after the pretty show of crocuses 
 has made the borders look gay behind the iron 
 fences, a faint suspicion arises in the mind of the 
 
 [88] 
 
THE BOSTON FIRE 
 
 interested spectator that the brown grass on the 
 banks of the Common and the terraces of the State 
 House is getting a little greenish. The change shows 
 first in the creases and on the slopes, and one hardly 
 knows whether it is fancy or not. There is also a 
 spotty look about some of the naked trees that we 
 had not noticed before, yes, the buds are swelling. 
 The breaking-up of the ice on the Frog Pond ought 
 to have been as carefully noted as that of the Hud- 
 son and Kennebec but it seems to have been neg- 
 lected by local observers. If anybody would take the 
 trouble to keep the record of the leafing and flower- 
 ing of the trees on the Common, of the first coming 
 of the birds, of the day when the first schooner 
 passes West Boston Bridge, it would add a great 
 deal to the pleasure of our spring walks through the 
 malls, and out to the learned city beyond the river, 
 because dull isolated facts become interesting by 
 comparison. But one must go to the country to find 
 people who care enough about these matters, and 
 who are constantly enough in the midst of the 
 sights and sounds of the opening year to take cogni- 
 zance of the order of that grand procession, with 
 March blowing his trumpet at the head of it, and 
 April following with her green flag, and the rest 
 
 [89] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 coming in their turn, till February brings up the 
 rear with his white banner. 
 
 Around the green, in morning light, 
 
 The spired and palaced summits blaze, 
 And, sunlike, from her Beacon-height 
 
 The dome-crowned city spreads her rays; 
 They span the waves, they belt the plains, 
 
 They skirt the roads with bands of white, 
 Till with a flash of gilded panes 
 
 Yon farthest hillside bounds the sight. 
 Peace, Freedom, Wealth! no fairer view, 
 
 Though with the wild-bird's restless wings 
 We sailed beneath the noontide's blue 
 
 Or chased the moonlight's endless rings! 
 Here, fitly raised by grateful hands 
 
 His holiest memory to recall, 
 The Hero's, Patriot's image stands; 
 
 He led our sires who won them all! 
 
CHAPTER V 
 BOSTON VERSUS ENGLAND 
 
 1877 
 
This is your month, the month of "perfect days," 
 Birds in full song and blossoms all ablaze. 
 Nature herself your earliest welcome breathes, 
 Spreads every leaflet, every bower inwreathes; 
 Carpets her paths for your returning feet, 
 Puts forth her best your coming steps to greet; 
 And Heaven must surely find the earth in tune 
 When Home, Sweet Home, exhales the breath of June. 
 
 Eight years an exile! What a weary while 
 Since first our herald sought the mother isle ! 
 His snow-white flag no churlish wrong has soiled, — 
 He left unchallenged, he returns unspoiled. 
 
 Here let us keep him, here he saw the light, — 
 His genius, wisdom, wit, are ours by right; 
 And if we lose him our lament will be 
 We have "five hundred" — not "as good as he." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 BOSTON VERSUS ENGLAND 
 
 1877 
 
 ["Boston has enough of England about it to make 
 a good English Dictionary," wrote Dr. Holmes, who in 
 recording his trans-Atlantic impressions delighted in 
 reversing the customary method of his fellow-country- 
 men and invariably made his comparisons tip the scales 
 in favor of his native haunts. During Lowell's stay in 
 England the Doctor, in his letters, frequently voiced 
 his preference for his own land, and later celebrated 
 Lowell's return, with a charming poetic tribute. 
 
 He wrote to Lowell in 1877:] 
 
 I will venture to say that the Boston postmark 
 looks pleasantly on the back of a letter — for you 
 have paid your debts before sailing, I do not ques- 
 tion. 
 
 I do not feel quite happy without reminding 
 you once or twice in a year, or even a little oftener 
 than that, that there is such a place as New Eng- 
 land, and that you have some friends there who 
 have not forgotten you, and who will be very glad 
 to see you back again. 
 
 [ 93 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 What can I say to interest you ! The migrations 
 of the Vicar and his wife from the blue bed to the 
 brown were hardly more monotonous that the pen- 
 dulum-swing of my existence, so far as all outward 
 occurrences go. Yet life is never monotonous, abso- 
 lutely, to me. I am a series of surprises to myself in 
 the changes that years and ripening, and it may be 
 a still further process which I need not name, bring 
 about. The movement onward is like changing 
 place in a picture gallery — the light fades from this 
 picture and falls on that, so that you wonder where 
 the first has gone to and see all at once the meaning 
 of the other. Not that I am so different from other 
 people — there may be a dozen of me, minus my 
 accidents, for aught I know — say rather ten thou- 
 sand. But what a strange thing life is when you 
 have waded in up to your neck and remember the 
 shelving sands you have trodden! 
 
 You may get as much European epidermis as you 
 like, the strigil will always show you to be at heart 
 an unchanged and unchangeable New Englander. 
 You are anchored here and though your cable is 
 three thousand miles long, it will pull you home 
 again by and by; at least so I believe. That is just 
 
 [ 94 1 
 
BOSTON VERSUS ENGLAND 
 
 what we like, — a man who can be at his ease in 
 Court or cloister, and yet has a bit of Yankee back- 
 bone that won't soften in spite of his knee-breeches, 
 his having to be "with high consideration" and the 
 rest. 
 
 The Club has flourished greatly, and proved to^ 
 all of us a source of the greatest delight. I do not 
 believe that there ever were such agreeable periodi- 
 cal meetings in Boston as these we have had at 
 Parker's. We have missed you of course, but your 
 memory and your reputation were with us. The 
 magazine which you helped to give a start to has 
 prospered, since its transfer to Ticknor & Fields. 
 
 I should like very much to hear something of your 
 every-day experiences of English life, — how you 
 like the different classes of English people you meet, 
 — the scholars, the upper class, and the average 
 folk that you may have to deal with. You know 
 that, to a Bostonian, there is nothing like a Bos- 
 tonian's impression of a new people or mode of life. 
 We carry the Common in our heads as the unit of 
 space, the State House as her standard of architec- 
 ture, and measure off men in Edward Everetts as 
 with a yard-stick. 
 
 [95] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 Perhaps you would like a word or two about the 
 Club. No meeting the last Saturday of December, 
 that being the 25th. The last of November we had 
 a very good meeting for these degenerate days — 
 Emerson hors de combat, mainly, Agassiz dead, 
 Longfellow an absentee, Lowell representing — the 
 Club — at her Imperial Majesty's Court. I feel like 
 old Nestor talking of his companions of earlier days 
 
 — divine Polyphemus, godlike Theseus, and the 
 rest, — "men like these I have not seen and shall 
 never look on their like" — at least until you come 
 back and we have Longfellow and all that is left of 
 Emerson to meet you. I say "all that is left." It is 
 the machinery of thought that moves with diffi- 
 culty, especially the memory, but we can hardly 
 hope that the other mental powers will not fade 
 as that has faded. 
 
 Emerson is gently fading out like a photograph 
 
 — the outlines are all there, but the details are 
 . getting fainter. 
 
 When I think of myself slowly oxydating in my 
 quiet village life, and of you in the centre of every- 
 thing, yourself a centre, I smile at the contrast, and 
 wonder whether you still remember there is such 
 a corner of the universe as that from which I am 
 
 [96] 
 
State Street, from an Engraving made about 18^2 
 

BOSTON VERSUS ENGLAND 
 
 writing. . . . You must be what our people call "a 
 great success" in England; now come home (when 
 you are ready) and you shall be Sir Oracle — not 
 Magnus but Maximus Apollo, among your own 
 admiring fellow-citizens. 
 
 This is our place of meeting; opposite 
 That towered and pillared building : look at it; 
 King's Chapel in the Second George's day, 
 Rebellion stole its regal name away, — 
 Stone Chapel sounded better; but at last 
 The poisoned name of our provincial past 
 Had lost its ancient venom; then once more 
 Stone Chapel was King's Chapel as before. 
 
 Next the old church your wandering eye will meet — 
 A granite pile that stares upon the street — 
 Our civic temple; slanderous tongues have said 
 Its shape was modelled from St. Botolph's head, 
 Lofty, but narrow; jealous passers-by- 
 Say Boston always held her head too high. 
 
 Turn half-way round, and let your look survey 
 The white fagade that gleams across the way, — 
 The many-windowed building, tall and wide, 
 The palace-inn that shows its northern side 
 In grateful shadow when the sunbeams beat 
 The granite wall in summer's scorching heat. 
 This is the place; whether its name you spell 
 Tavern, or caravansera, or hotel. 
 Would I could steal its echoes! You should find 
 Such store of vanished pleasures brought to mind: 
 
 [97 1 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 Such feasts! the laughs of many a jocund hour 
 That shook the mortar from King George's tower; 
 Such guests ! What famous names its record boasts, 
 Whose owners wander in the mob of ghosts ! 
 Such stories! every beam and plank is filled 
 With juicy wit the joyous talkers spilled. 
 
 [Lowell testified to the brilliancy of the gatherings 
 of the Saturday Club, when he wrote from the centre of 
 London's most cultured circles: — "I have never seen 
 society, on the whole, so good as I used to meet at our 
 Saturday Club." 
 
 In 1886, Dr. Holmes started with his daughter, Mrs. 
 Sargent, upon a trip to Europe. He had not been 
 abroad since his student days, and he remained four 
 months, spending most of his time in England, where 
 he was overwhelmed with attentions. His impressions 
 of the old world at this time have been bequeathed us 
 in one of his last volumes, "Our Hundred Days in Eu- 
 rope." During this triumphal journey he amuses him- 
 self, as was his wont, in comparing the conditions 
 abroad with those at home:] 
 
 When Dickens landed in Boston, he was struck 
 with the brightness of all the objects he saw, — 
 buildings, signs, and so forth. When I landed in 
 Liverpool, everything looked very dark, very dingy, 
 very massive, in the streets I drove through. So in 
 London. . . . 
 
 We went to the Lyceum Theatre to see Mr. Irving. 
 [ 98] 
 
BOSTON VERSUS ENGLAND 
 
 . . . Between the scenes we went behind the curtain, 
 and saw the very curious and admirable machinery 
 of the dramatic spectable. We made the acquaint- 
 ance of several imps and demons, who were got up 
 wonderfully well. Ellen Terry was as fascinating as 
 ever. I remember that once before I had met her and 
 Mr. Irving behind the scenes. It was at the Boston 
 Theatre, and while I was talking with them a very 
 heavy piece of scenery came crashing down, and 
 filled the whole place with dust. It was but a short 
 distance from where we were standing, and I could 
 not help thinking how near our several life-dramas 
 came to a simultaneous exeunt omnes. 
 
 To one whose eyes are used to Park Street and 
 the Old South steeples as the standards of height, a 
 spire which climbs four hundred feet towards the sky 
 is a new sensation. . . . 
 
 Cheyne (pronounced "Chainie") Walk is a some- 
 what extended range of buildings. Cheyne Row is a 
 passage which reminded me a little of my old habitat, 
 Montgomery Place, now Bosworth Street. 
 
 There are three grades of recognition, entirely 
 distinct from each other in the meeting of two per- 
 sons from different countries who speak the same 
 
 [ 99 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 language, — an American and an Englishman, for 
 instance; the meeting of two Americans from differ- 
 ent cities, as of a Bostonian and a New Yorker or a 
 Chicagoan; and the meeting of two from the same 
 city, as of two Bostonians. . . . Let me give a few 
 practical examples. An American and an English- 
 man meet in a foreign land. The Englishman has 
 occasion to mention his weight, which he finds has 
 gained in the course of his travels. "How much is it 
 now?" asks the American. "Fourteen stone. How 
 much do you weigh?" "Within four pounds of two 
 hundred." Neither of them takes at once any clear 
 idea of what the other weighs. The American has 
 never thought of his own, or his friends', or anybody's 
 weight in stones of fourteen pounds. The English- 
 man has never thought of any one's weight in pounds. 
 They can calculate very well with a slip of paper and 
 a pencil, but not the less is their language but half 
 intelligible as they speak and listen. The same thing 
 is in a measure true of other matters they talk about. 
 "It is about as large a space as the Common," says 
 the Boston man. "It is about as large as St. James's 
 Park," says the Londoner. "As high as the State 
 House," says the Bostonian, or "as tall as Bunker 
 Hill Monument," or "about as big as the Frog 
 
 [ 100 1 
 
Park Street Church 
 
BOSTON VERSUS ENGLAND 
 
 Pond," where the Londoner would take St. Paul's, 
 the Nelson Column, the Serpentine, as his standard 
 of comparison. The difference in scale does not stop 
 here: it runs through a greater part of the objects of 
 thought and conversation. . .. Conversation between 
 two Londoners, two New Yorkers, two Bostonians, 
 requires no footnotes, which is a great advantage in 
 their intercourse. . . . How well they understand 
 each other! Thirty-two degrees marks the freezing- 
 point. Two hundred and twelve marks the boiling 
 point. They have the same scale, the same fixed 
 points, the same record — and no wonder they pre- 
 fer each other's company ! 
 
 We Boston people are so bright and wide-awake, 
 and have been really so much in advance of our 
 fellow-barbarians with our "Monthly Anthologies," 
 and "Atlantic Monthlies," and " North American 
 Reviews," that we have been in danger of thinking 
 our local scale was the absolute one of excellence — 
 forgetting that 212 Fahrenheit is but 100 Centigrade. 
 That is one way of looking at ourselves ; and the other, 
 as you know, is looking on ourselves as intellectual 
 colonial dependents, and accepting that " certain con- 
 descension in foreigners," which you [Lowell] have so 
 deliciously exploded, as all that we are entitled to." 
 
 [ 101 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 The 17th of June is memorable in the annals of my 
 country. On that day in the year 1775 the battle of 
 Bunker's Hill was fought on the height I see from the 
 window of my library, where I am now writing. The 
 monument raised in memory of our defeat, which was 
 in truth a victory, is almost as much a part of the 
 furniture of my room as its chairs and tables; out- 
 side, as they are inside, furniture. But the 17th of 
 June 1886, is memorable to me above all other anni- 
 versaries of that day I have known. For on that day 
 I received from the ancient University of Cambridge, 
 England, the degree of Doctor of Letters, " Doctor 
 Litt.," in its abbreviated academic form. The honor 
 was an unexpected one" that is, until a short time 
 before it was conferred. 
 
 In looking at the monuments which I saw in Lon- 
 don and elsewhere in England, certain resemblances, 
 comparisons, parallels, contrasts, and suggestions 
 obtruded themselves upon my consciousness. We 
 have one steeple in Boston which to my eyes seems 
 absolutely perfect: that of the Central Church, at 
 the corner of Newbury and Berkeley streets. Its 
 resemblance to the spire of Salisbury had always 
 struck me. On mentioning this to the late Mr. Rich- 
 
 [ 102 ] 
 
BOSTON VERSUS ENGLAND 
 
 ardson, the very distinguished architect, he said to 
 me that he thought it more like that of the Cathedral 
 of Chartres. One of the best living architects agreed 
 with me as to the similarity to that of Salisbury. It 
 does not copy either exactly, but, if it had twice its 
 actual dimensions, would compare well with the best 
 of the two, if one is better than the other. Saint- 
 Martin-in-the-Fields made me feel as if I were in 
 Boston. Our Arlington Street Church copies it 
 pretty closely, but Mr. Gilman left out the columns. 
 
 On other shores, above their mouldering towns, 
 In sullen pomp the tall cathedral frowns. 
 
 Yet Faith's pure hymn, beneath its shelter rude, 
 Breathes out as sweetly to the tangled wood 
 As where the rays through pictured glories pour 
 On marble shaft and tessellated floor; — 
 Heaven asks no surplice round the heart that feels, 
 And all is holy where devotion kneels. 
 
 As for the kind of monument such as I see from my 
 library window standing on the summit of Bunker 
 Hill, and have recently seen for the first time at 
 Washington, on a larger scale, I own that I think a 
 built-up obelisk a poor affair as compared with an 
 Egyptian monolith of the same form. It was a tri- 
 umph of skill to quarry, to shape, to transport, to 
 
 [ 103 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 cover with expressive symbols, to erect, such a stone 
 as that which has been transferred to the Thames 
 Embankment, or that which now stands in Central 
 Park, New York. Each of its four sides is a page of 
 history, written so as to endure through a score of 
 centuries. A built-up obelisk requires very little 
 more than brute labor. A child can shape its model 
 from a carrot or a parsnip, and set it up in miniature 
 with blocks of loaf sugar. It teaches nothing, and the 
 stranger must go to his guide-book to know what it is 
 there for. I was led into many reflections by a sight 
 of the Washington Monument. I found it was almost 
 the same thing at a mile's distance as the Bunker 
 Hill Monument at half a mile's distance; and unless 
 the eye had some means of measuring the space be- 
 tween itself and the stone shaft, one was about as 
 good as the other. 
 
 What better provision can be made for mortal 
 man than such as our own Boston can afford its 
 wealthy children? A palace on Commonwealth 
 Avenue or on Beacon Street; a country-place at 
 Framingham or Lenox; a seaside residence at Na- 
 hant, Beverly Farms, Newport, or Bar Harbor; a 
 pew at Trinity or King's Chapel; a tomb at Mount 
 Auburn, or Forest Hills; with the prospect of a 
 
 [ 104 1 
 
Boston from the Public Garden, about 1880 
 
BOSTON VERSUS ENGLAND 
 
 memorial stained-window after his lamented demise, 
 — is not that a pretty programme to offer a can- 
 didate for human existence? 
 
 I, for one, being myself as inveterately rooted an 
 American of the Boston variety as ever saw himself 
 mirrored in the Frog Pond, hope that the exchanges 
 of emigrants and re-emigrants will be much more 
 evenly balanced by and by than at present. I hope 
 that more Englishmen like James Smithson will help 
 to build up our scientific and literary institutions. I 
 hope that more Americans like George Peabody will 
 call down the blessings of the English people by noble 
 benefactions to the cause of charity. It was with 
 deep feelings of pride and gratitude that I looked up- 
 on the bust of Longfellow, holding its place among 
 the monuments of England's greatest and best chil- 
 dren. I see with equal pleasure and pride that one of 
 our own large-hearted countrymen has honored the 
 memory of three English poets, Milton, Herbert, and 
 Cowper, by the gift of two beautiful stained-win- 
 dows, and with still ampler munificence is erecting 
 a stately fountain in the birthplace of Shakespeare. 
 Such acts as these make us feel more and more the 
 truth of the generous sentiment which closes the 
 
 [ 105 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 ode of Washington Allston, "America to Great Bri- 
 tain": "We are one!" 
 
 Let not the too mature traveller think it [travel- 
 ling] will change any of his habits. It will interrupt 
 his routine for a while, and then he will settle down 
 into his former self, and be just what he was before. 
 I brought home a pair of shoes I had made in London; 
 they do not fit like those I had before I left, and I 
 rarely wear them. It is just so with the new habits 
 I formed and the old ones I left behind me. 
 
 After memorable interviews, and kindest hospi- 
 talities, and grand sights, and huge influx of patri- 
 otic pride, — for every American owns all America, — 
 I come back with the feeling which a boned turkey 
 might experience, if, retaining his consciousness, he 
 were allowed to resume his skeleton. 
 
 Welcome, O Fighting Gladiator, and Recumbent 
 Cleopatra, and Dying Warrior (reproduced in the 
 calcined mineral of Lutetia) that crown my loaded 
 shelves ! Welcome, ye triumphs of pictorial art (re- 
 peated by the magic graver) that look down from the 
 walls of my sacred cell ! . . . The old books look out 
 from the shelves, and I seem to read on their backs 
 
 [ 106] 
 
BOSTON VERSUS ENGLAND 
 
 something besides their titles, — a kind of solemn 
 greeting. The crimson carpet flushes warm under 
 my feet. The arm-chair hugs me; the swivel-chair 
 spins round with me, as if it were giddy with pleas- 
 ure; the vast recumbent fauteuil stretches itself out 
 under my weight, as one joyous with food and wine 
 stretches in after-dinner laughter. 
 
 New England, we love thee; no time can erase 
 From the hearts of thy children the smile on thy face. 
 'T is the mothers fond look of affection and pride, 
 As she gives her fair son to the arms of his bride. 
 
 Here 's to all the good people, wherever they be, 
 Who have grown in the shade of the liberty -tree; 
 We all love its leaves, and its blossoms and fruit, 
 But pray have a care of the fence round its root. 
 
 We should like to talk big; it 's a kind of a right, 
 When the tongue has got loose and the waistband 
 
 grown tight; 
 But, as pretty Miss Prudence remarked to her beau, 
 On its own heap of compost, no biddy should crow. 
 
 Enough! There are gentlemen waiting to talk, 
 Whose words are to mine as the flower to the stalk. 
 Stand by your old mother whatever befall; 
 God bless all her children! Good night to you all! 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 "THE HUB" 
 
The Angel spake: "This threefold hill shall be 
 The home of Arts, the nurse of Liberty! 
 Our stately summit from its shaft shall pour 
 Its deep-red blaze along the darkened shore; 
 Emblem of thoughts that, kindling far and wide, 
 In danger's night shall be a nation's guide. 
 One swelling crest the citadel shall crown, 
 Its slanted bastions black with battle's frown, 
 And bid the sons that tread its scowling heights 
 Bare their strong arms for man and all his rights! 
 One silent steep along the northern wave 
 Shall hold the patriarch's and the hero's grave; 
 When fades the torch, when o'er the peaceful scene 
 The embattled fortress smiles in living green, 
 The cross of Faith, the anchor staff of Hope, 
 Shall stand eternal on its grassy slope; 
 There through all time shall faithful memory tell 
 'Here virtue toiled, and Patriot valor fell; 
 Thy free, proud fathers slumber at thy side; 
 Live as they lived, or perish as they died.'" 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 "THE HUB" 
 
 I love this old place where I was born ; the heart 
 of the world beats under the three hills of Boston, 
 Sir ! I love this great land with so many tall men in 
 it, and so many good, noble women. 
 
 A man can see further, Sir, — he said one day, — 
 from the top of Boston State House, and see more 
 that is worth seeing, than from all the pyramids and 
 turrets and steeples in all the places in the world! 
 No smoke, Sir; no fog, Sir; and a clean sweep from 
 the Outer Light and the sea beyond it to the New 
 Hampshire mountains ! Yes, Sir, — and there are 
 great truths that are higher than mountains and 
 broader than seas, that people are looking for from 
 the tops of these hills of ours, — such as the world 
 never saw, though it might have seen them at 
 Jerusalem, if its eyes had been open! 
 
 It's a slow business, this of getting the ark 
 launched. The Jordan was n't deep enough, and 
 the Tiber was n't deep enough, and the Rhone was 
 n't deep enough, — and perhaps the Charles is n't 
 
 [ HI 1 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 deep enough; but I don't feel sure of that, Sir, and 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-breasted 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! 
 
 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 three 
 hundred years! That's all I claim for Boston, — 
 that it is the thinking centre of the continent, and 
 therefore of the planet. . . . Don't talk to me of 
 modesty, I 'm past that ! There is n't a thing that 
 was ever said or done in Boston, from pitching tea 
 overboard to the last ecclesiastical lie it tore to 
 tatters and flung into the dock, that was n't thought 
 very indelicate by some fool or tyrant or bigot, and 
 all the entrails of commercial and spiritual conserv- 
 atism are twisted into colics as often as this revo- 
 lutionary brain of ours has a fit of thinking come 
 ■ N over it. 
 
 [ 112 1 
 
"THE HUB" 
 
 When I heard the young fellow's exclamation, I 
 looked round the table with curiosity . . . what I 
 heard began so : — 
 
 — By the Frog Pond, 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. Born in Boston; 
 went to school in Boston as long as the boys would 
 let me. — The little man groaned, turned, as if to 
 look round, and went on. — Ran away from school 
 one day to see Phillips hung for killing Denegri with 
 a loggerhead. That was in flip days, when there 
 were always two or three loggerheads in the fire. 
 I 'm a Boston boy, I tell you, — born at the North 
 End, and mean to be buried on Copp's Hill, with 
 the good underground people, — the Worthylakes, 
 and the rest of 'em. Yes, Sir, — up on the old 
 hill, where they buried Captain Daniel Malcolm 
 in a stone grave, ten feet deep, to keep him safe 
 from the red-coats, in these old times when the 
 world was frozen up tight and there was n't but one 
 spot open, and that was right over Faneuil Hall, — 
 and black enough it looked, I tell you! There's 
 where my bones shall lie, Sir, and rattle away when 
 the big guns go off at the Navy Yard opposite! Full 
 
 [ 113 1 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 of crooked little streets; — but I tell you Boston 
 has opened, and kept open, more turnpikes that 
 lead straight to free thought and free speech and 
 free deeds than any other city of live men or dead 
 men, — I don't care how broad their streets are, 
 nor how high their steeples ! 
 
 — How high is Bosting meet'n' house? — said a 
 person with black whiskers and imperial. . . . 
 
 — How high? said the little man. — As high as 
 the first step of the stairs that lead to the New 
 Jerusalem. Is n't that high enough? 
 
 — It is, — I said. The great end of being is to 
 harmonize man with the order of things, and the 
 church has been a good pitch-pipe, and may be so 
 still. But who shall tune the pitch-pipe? 
 
 — Were you born in Boston, Sir? — said the little 
 man, — looking eager and excited. 
 
 I was not, — I replied. 
 
 — It 's a pity, — it 's a pity, — said the little man ; 
 — it 's the place to be born in. But if you can't fix 
 it so as to be born here, you can come and live here. 
 Old Ben Franklin, the father of American science 
 and the American Union, wasn't ashamed to be 
 
 [ 114 ] 
 
The Frog Pond 
 
"THE HUB" 
 
 born here. Jim Otis, the father of American Inde- 
 pendence, bothered about the Cape Cod marshes 
 awhile, but he came to Boston as soon as he got big 
 enough. Joe Warren the first bloody ruffled-shirt of 
 the Revolution, was as good as born here. Parson 
 Channing strolled along this way from Newport, 
 and stayed here. Pity old Sam Hopkins hadn't 
 come too; we'd have made a man of him, — poor, 
 dear, good old Christian heathen! There he lies, 
 as peaceful as a young baby in the old burying- 
 ground ! I 've stood on the slab many a time . . . 
 this is the great Macadamizing place, — always 
 cracking up something. 
 
 — Cracking up Boston folks, — said the gentle- 
 man with the diamond-pin. 
 
 I never thought he would come to good when I 
 heard him attempting to sneer at an unoffending 
 city so respectable as Boston. After a man begins 
 to attack the State House, when he gets bitter 
 about the Frog Pond, you may be sure there is not 
 much left of him. Poor Edgar Poe died in the 
 hospital soon after he got into this way of talking; 
 and so sure as you find an unfortunate fellow re- 
 duced to this pass, you had better begin praying for 
 
 [ H5 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 him, and stop lending him money, for he is on his 
 last legs. Remember poor Edgar! He is dead and 
 gone; but the State House has its cupola fresh- 
 gilded, and the Frog Pond has got a fountain that 
 squirts up a hundred feet into the air and glorifies 
 that humble sheet with a fine display of provincial 
 rainbows. 
 
 I question everything; but if I find Bunker Hill 
 Monument standing as straight as when I leaned 
 against it a year or ten years ago, I am not much 
 afraid that Bunker Hill will cave in if I trust myself 
 again on the soil of it. . . . 
 
 The Monument is an awful place to visit, I said. 
 The waves of time are like the waves of the ocean; 
 the only thing they beat against without destroy- 
 ing it is a rock; and they destroy that at last. But 
 it takes a good while. There is a stone now stand- 
 ing in very good order that was as old as a monu- 
 ment of Louis XIV and Queen Anne's day is now 
 when Joseph went down into Egypt. Think of the 
 shaft on Bunker Hill standing in the sunshine on 
 the morning of January 1st in the year 5872 ! 
 
 — It won't be standing, — the Master said. — We 
 are poor bunglers compared to those old Egyptians. 
 There are no joints in one of their obelisks. . . . 
 
 [ H6] 
 
"THE HUB" 
 I was thinking of something very different. I 
 was indulging a fancy of mine about the Man who 
 is to sit at the foot of the Monument for one, or 
 may be two or three thousand years. As long as 
 the monument stands there and there is a city near 
 it, there will always be a man to take the names of 
 visitors and extract a small tribute from their 
 pockets, I suppose. I sometimes get to thinking of 
 the long, unbroken succession of these men, until 
 they come to look like one Man; continuous in be- 
 ing unchanging as the stone he watches, looking 
 upon the successive generations of human beings 
 as they come and go, and out-living all the dynas- 
 ties of the world in all probability. It has come to 
 pass that I never speak to the Man of the Monu- 
 ment without wanting to take off my hat and feel- 
 ing as if I were looking down the vista of twenty 
 or thirty centuries. 
 
 — Sin has many tools but a lie is the handle 
 which fits them all. 
 
 — I think, Sir, — said the divinity student, you 
 must intend that for one of the sayings of the Seven 
 Wise Men of Boston you were speaking of the other 
 day. 
 
 [ 117 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 —I thank you my young friend, —was my reply, 
 — but I must say something better than that, be- 
 fore I could pretend to fill out the number. 
 
 The schoolmistress wanted to know how many 
 of these sayings were on record, and what, and by 
 whom said. 
 
 — Why, let us see, — there is that one of Benja- 
 min Franklin, ''the great Bostonian," ... To be 
 sure, he said a great many wise things, — and I 
 don't feel sure he did n't borrow this, — he speaks 
 as if it were old. But then he applied it so neatly ! — 
 
 "He that has once done you a kindness will be 
 more ready to do you another than he whom you 
 yourself have obliged." 
 
 — Then there is that glorious Epicurian paradox, 
 uttered by my friend, the Historian, in one of his 
 flashing moments : — 
 
 "Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dis- 
 pense with its necessities." 
 
 — To these must certainly be added that other 
 saying of one of the wittiest of men: — 
 
 "Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris." 
 
 The divinity student looked grave at this, but 
 said nothing. 
 
 The schoolmistress spoke out, and said she didn't 
 [ H8] 
 
"THE HUB" 
 
 think the wit meant any irreverence. It was only 
 another way of saying, Paris is a heavenly place 
 after New York, or Boston. 
 
 A jaunty-looking person, who had come in with 
 the young fellow they call John, — evidently a 
 stranger, — said there was one more wise man's 
 saying that he had heard; it was about our place, 
 but he did n't know who said it. A civil curiosity 
 was manifested by the company to hear the fourth 
 wise saying. I heard him distinctly whispering to 
 the young fellow who brought him to dinner, Shall 
 I tell it ? To which the answer was, Go ahead ! — 
 Well, — he said, — this was what I heard : — 
 
 "Boston State House is the hub of the solar 
 system. You could n't pry that out of a Boston 
 man if you had the tire of all creation straightened 
 out for a crowbar." 
 
 — Sir, I said, — I am gratified with your remark. 
 It expresses with pleasing vivacity that which I 
 have sometimes heard uttered with malignant dul- 
 ness. The satire of the remark is essentially true 
 of Boston, — and of all other considerable, — and 
 inconsiderable places with which I have had the 
 privilege of being acquainted. Cockneys think 
 London is the only place in the world. Frenchmen 
 
 [ 119] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 — you remember the line about Paris, the Court, 
 the World, etc. . . . "See Naples and die." It is 
 quite as bad with smaller places. I have been 
 about lecturing, you know, and have found the 
 following propositions to hold true of all of them : — 
 
 1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through 
 the centre of each and every town and city. 
 
 2. If more than fifty years have passed since its 
 foundation, it is affectionately styled by the in- 
 habitants the "good old town of" — (whatever its 
 name may happen to be). 
 
 3. Every collection of its inhabitants that 
 comes together to listen to a stranger is invariably 
 declared to be a "remarkably intelligent audience." 
 
 4. The climate of the place is particularly favor- 
 able to longevity. 
 
 5. It contains several persons of vast talent little 
 known to the world. (One or two of them, you may 
 remember, sent short pieces to the "Pactolian" 
 some time since, which were "respectfully de- 
 clined.") 
 
 Boston is just like other places of its size; only 
 perhaps, considering its excellent fish-market, paid 
 fire-department, superior monthly publications, 
 and correct habit of spelling the English language, 
 
 [ 120 ] 
 
The Old City Hall, 1858 
 
"THE HUB" 
 
 it has some right to look down on the mob of cities. 
 I '11 tell you, though, if you want to know it, what 
 is the real offense of Boston. It drains a large water- 
 shed of its intellect, and will not itself be drained. 
 If it would only send away its first-rate men, in- 
 stead of its second-rate ones (no offense to the well- 
 known exceptions, of which we are always proud) , 
 we should be spared such epigrammatic remarks as 
 that which the gentleman has quoted. There can 
 never be a real metropolis in this country until the 
 biggest centre can drain the lesser ones of their 
 talent and wealth. 
 
 You have seen our gilt dome, and no doubt you 've been told 
 That the orbs of the universe round it are rolled; 
 But I '11 own it to you, and I ought to know best, 
 That this is n't quite true of all stars of the West. 
 
 You'll go to Mount Auburn — we'll show you the track, — 
 And can stay there, — unless you prefer to come back; 
 And Bunker's tall shaft you can climb if you will, 
 But you '11 puff like a paragraph praising a pill. 
 
 You must see — but you have seen — our old Faneuil Hall, 
 Our churches, our school-rooms, our sample-rooms, all; 
 And, perhaps, though the idiots must have their jokes, 
 You have found our good people much like other folks. 
 
 A bit of gilding here and there has a wonderful 
 effect in enlivening a landscape or an apartment. 
 
 [ 121 1 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 Napoleon consoled the Parisians in their year of de- 
 feat by gilding the dome of the Invalides. Boston 
 glorified her State House and herself at the expense 
 of a few sheets of gold leaf laid on the dome, which 
 shines like a sun in the eyes of her citizens, and like a 
 star in those of the approaching traveller. 
 
 — There are no such women as the Boston wo- 
 men, Sir, — he said. ... — But confound the make- 
 believe women we have turned loose in our streets ! 
 Where do they come from? Not out of Boston parlors, 
 I trust. Why, there is n't a beast or a bird that would 
 drag its tail through the dirt in the way these crea- 
 tures do their dresses. Because a queen or a duchess 
 wears long robes on great occasions, a maid-of -all- 
 work or a factory-girl thinks she must make herself a 
 nuisance by trailing through the street, picking up 
 and carrying about with her — pah ! — that 's what 
 I call getting vulgarity into your bones and marrow. 
 Making believe be what you are not is the essence 
 of vulgarity. Show over dirt is the one attribute of 
 vulgar people. If any man can walk behind one of 
 these women and see what she rakes up as she goes, 
 and not feel squeamish, he has got a tough stomach. 
 I would n't let one of 'em into my room without 
 
 [ 122 ] 
 
"THE HUB" 
 
 serving 'em as David served Saul at the cave of the 
 wilderness, cut off his skirts, Sir! cut off his skirts. 
 . . . Don't tell me that a true lady ever sacrifices the 
 duty of keeping all about her sweet and clean to the 
 wish of making a vulgar show. I won't believe it of 
 a lady. There are some things that no fashion has 
 any right to touch, and cleanliness is one of those 
 things. If a woman wishes to show that her husband 
 or father has got money, which she wants to spend, 
 but does n't know how, let her buy a yard or two of 
 silk and pin it to her dress when she goes out to walk, 
 but let her unpin it before she goes into the house. 
 
 [We] have had our sensibilities greatly worked 
 upon, our patriotism chilled, our local pride outraged, 
 by the monstrosities which have been allowed to de- 
 form our beautiful public grounds. We have to be 
 very careful in conducting a visitor, say from his 
 marble-fronted hotel to the City Hall. Keep straight 
 along after entering the Garden, — you will not care 
 to inspect the little figure of the military gentleman 
 to your right. Yes,the Cochituate water is drinkable, 
 but I think I would not turn aside to visit that small 
 fabric which makes believe it is a temple and is a 
 weak-eyed fountain feebly weeping over its insignifi- 
 
 [ 123 1 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 cance. About that other stone misfortune, cruelly 
 reminding us of the "Boston Massacre," we will not 
 discourse; it is not imposing, and is rarely spoken of. 
 
 What a mortification to the inhabitants of a city 
 with some hereditary and contemporary claims to 
 cultivation; which has noble edifices, grand libraries, 
 educational institutions of the highest grade, an art- 
 gallery filled with the finest models and rich in paint- 
 ing and statuary, — a stately city that stretches 
 both arms across the Charles to clasp the hands of 
 Harvard, her twin-sister, each lending lustre to the 
 other like double stars, — what a pity that she should 
 be so disfigured by crude attempts to adorn her and 
 commemorate her past that her most loving children 
 blush for her artificial deformities amidst the wealth 
 of her natural beauties! One hardly knows which 
 to groan over most sadly, — the tearing down of old 
 monuments, the shelling of the Parthenon, the over- 
 throw of the pillared temples of Rome, and in a 
 humbler way the destruction of the old Hancock 
 House, or the erection of monuments which are to be 
 a perpetual eyesore to ourselves and our descendants. 
 
 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- 
 
 [ 124 ] 
 
The Hancock House, on Beacon Street next to the State House 
 
^aMgffiflK^i.mttwwW* * 
 
 
 
"THE HUB" 
 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, in- 
 stead 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 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 know something of 
 the relative size of the planets. I have seen Venus. 
 The Earth on which I live 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 frac- 
 tional rights in the universe, seemed to have under- 
 gone 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 our 
 planet equipped and provisioned for a long voyage in 
 
 [ 125 1 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 space, — its almost boundless stores of coal and 
 other inflammable materials, its untired renewal of 
 the forms of life, the ever growing control over the 
 powers of Nature which its inhabitants 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 in- 
 stitution so far as the human race is concerned. On 
 this theory I base my hope for myself 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 re- 
 tain a cheerful optimism, it is because this educa- 
 tional theory is the basis of my working creed. 
 
 Alone! no climber of an Alpine cliff, 
 No Arctic venturer on the waveless sea, 
 Feels the dread stillness round him as it chills 
 The heart of him who leaves the slumbering earth 
 To watch the silent worlds that crowd the sky. 
 
 So have I grown companion to myself, 
 
 And to the wandering spirits of the air 
 
 That smile and whisper round us in our dreams. 
 
 Thus have I learned to search if I may know 
 
 The whence and why of all beneath the stars 
 
 And all beyond them, and to weigh my life 
 
 [ 126 ] 
 
''THE HUB" 
 
 As in a balance, — poising good and ill 
 
 Against each other, — asking of the Power 
 
 That flung me forth among the whirling worlds, 
 
 If I am heir to any inborn right, 
 
 Or only as an atom of the dust 
 
 That every wind may blow where 'er it will. 
 
 It is here, Sir ! right here ! ... in this old new city 
 of Boston, — this remote provincial corner of a pro- 
 vincial nation, that the Battle of the Standard is 
 fighting, and was fighting before we were born, and 
 will be fighting when we are dead and gone, — 
 please God ! The battle goes on everywhere through- 
 out civilization; but here, here, here is the broad 
 white flag flying which proclaims, first of all, peace 
 and good will to men, and next to that, the absolute, 
 unconditional spiritual liberty of each individual 
 immortal soul! The three-hilled city against the 
 seven-hilled city! ... I swear to you, Sir, I believe 
 that these two centres of civilization are just exactly 
 the two points that close the circuit in the battery of 
 our planetary intelligence! , , s we have got the new 
 heavens and the new earth over us and under us! 
 Was there ever anything in Italy, I should like to 
 know, like a Boston sunset? 
 
 Yes, — Boston sunsets; perhaps they 're as good in 
 [ 127 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 some other places but I know 'em best here. Any- 
 how, the American skies are different from anything 
 they see in the Old World. Yes, and the rocks are 
 different, and everything that comes out of the soil, 
 from grass to Indians, is different. 
 
 I look at your faces, — I'm sure there are some from 
 The three-breasted mother I count as my own; 
 You think you remember the place you have come from, 
 But how it has changed in the years that have flown! 
 
 Unaltered, 't is true, is the hall we call "Funnel," 
 
 Still fights the "Old South" in the battle for life, 
 
 But we've opened our door to the West through the tunnel, 
 
 And we've cut off Fort Hill with our Amazon Knife. 
 
 You should see the new Westminster Boston has builded, — 
 Its mansions, its spires, its museums of arts, — 
 You should see the great dome we have gorgeously gilded; 
 'T is the light of our eyes, 't is the joy of our hearts. 
 
 When first in his path a young asteroid found it, 
 As he sailed through the skies with the stars in his wake, 
 He thought 't was the sun, and kept circling around it 
 Till Edison signalled, "You 've made a mistake." 
 
 We are proud of our city, — her fast-growing figure, 
 The warp and the woof of her brain and her hands, — 
 But we 're proudest of all that her heart has grown bigger, 
 And warms with fresh blood as her girdle expands. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 BOSTON THE LECTURE CRADLE 
 
"Now, then, Professor, fortune has decreed 
 That you, this evening, shall be first to read, — 
 Lucky for us that listen, for in fact 
 Who reads this poem must know how to act." 
 
 Right well she knew that in his greener age 
 He had a mighty hankering for the stage. 
 The patient audience had not long to wait; 
 Pleased with his chance, he smiled and took the bait; 
 Through his wild hair his coaxing fingers ran, — 
 He spread the page before him and began. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 BOSTON THE LECTURE CRADLE 
 
 [The " lecture-habit " of this country was in its heyday 
 during Dr. Holmes's earlier years. Massachusetts was 
 the cradle of the Lyceum, first organized in 1829, and 
 Boston was the hand that rocked the cradle. The found- 
 ing of the Lowell Institute, which occurred ten years 
 later, was an occurrence of far-reaching importance. 
 In the decade of 1849-50 the Lowell Lectures became 
 a vital factor in the city's life, and Boston had the glory 
 of being herself the principal source of supply. Among 
 her sons who ornamented the lecture platform were 
 Webster, Choate, Phillips, Channing, Sumner, Emer- 
 son, Lowell, Starr King, Winthrop, Parker, James Free- 
 man Clarke, Edward Everett Hale, and many others, 
 among whom may be mentioned the ever-popular 
 "Autocrat," who has amusingly described the typical 
 audience of his early days.] 
 
 Have I ever acted in private theatricals? Often. 
 I have played the part of the "Poor Gentleman," be- 
 fore a great many audiences, — more, I trust, than 
 I shall ever face again. I did not wear a stage cos- 
 tume, nor a wig, nor a mustache of burnt cork, but I 
 was placarded and announced as a public performer, 
 and at the proper hour I came forward with the ballet- 
 
 [ 131 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 dancer's smile upon my countenance, and made my 
 bow and acted my part. I have seen my name stuck 
 up in letters so big that I was ashamed to show my- 
 self in the place by daylight. I have gone to a town 
 with a sober literary essay in my pocket, and seen 
 myself everywhere announced as the most desperate 
 of buffos, — one who was obliged to restrain himself 
 in the full exercise of his powers, from prudential 
 considerations. I have been through as many hard- 
 ships as Ulysses, in the pursuit of my histrionic voca- 
 tion. I have travelled in cars until the conductors 
 all knew me like a brother. I have run off the rails, 
 and stuck all night in snow-drifts, and sat behind 
 females that would have the window open when 
 one could not wink without his eyelids freezing 
 together. 
 
 Two Lyceum assemblies, of five hundred each, are 
 so near alike, that they are absolutely indistinguish- 
 able in many cases by any definite mark, and there is 
 nothing but the place and time by which one can tell 
 the "remarkably intelligent audience" of a town of 
 New York, or Ohio, from one in any New England 
 town of similar size. . . . One knows pretty well even 
 the look the audience will have, before he goes in. 
 
 [ 132 ] 
 
BOSTON THE LECTURE CRADLE 
 
 Front seats : a few old folks, — shiny-headed, — 
 slant up best ear towards the speaker, — drop off 
 asleep after a while, when air begins to get a little 
 narcotic with carbonic acid. Bright women's faces, 
 young and middle-aged, a little behind these, but 
 toward the front, — (pick out the best and lecture 
 mainly to that.) Here and there a countenance, sharp 
 and scholarlike, and a dozen pretty female ones 
 sprinkled about. An indefinite number of pairs of 
 young people, — happy, but not always very atten- 
 tive. Boys, in the background, more or less quiet! 
 Dull faces, here, there, — in how many places ! I 
 don't say dull people, but faces without a ray of sym- 
 pathy or movement of expression. They are what 
 kill the lecturer. These negative faces with their 
 vacuous eyes and stony lineaments pump and suck 
 the warm soul out of him. 
 
 [During his lecture-tours about the country, Dr. 
 Holmes had an opportunity to study the character- 
 istics of innumerable hotels and taverns.] 
 
 Don't talk to me about taverns ! There is just one 
 genuine, clean, decent, palatable thing occasionally 
 to be had in them — namely, a boiled egg. The soups 
 taste pretty good sometimes, but their sources are 
 
 [ 133 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 involved in a darker mystery than that of the Nile. 
 Omelettes taste as if they had been carried in the 
 waiter's hat, or fried in an old boot. I ordered scram- 
 bled eggs one day. It must be they had been scram- 
 bled for by somebody, but who — who in the posses- 
 sion of sound reason could have scrambled for what 
 I had set before me under that name? . . . Then 
 the waiters with their napkins — what don't they 
 do with those napkins ! Mention any one thing of 
 which you can say with truth, "That they do not 
 do." 
 
 No; give me a home, or a home like mine, where 
 all is clean and sweet, where coffee has preexisted 
 in the berry, and tea has still faint recollections 
 of the pigtails that dangled about the plant from 
 which it was picked, where butter has not the pre- 
 vailing character which Pope assigned to Denham, 
 where soup could look you in the face if it had 
 "eyes" (which it has not), and where the comely 
 Anne or the gracious Margaret takes the place of 
 these napkin-bearing animals. 
 
 [In 1876 Holmes writes to his friend Motley:] 
 
 I am most devoutly thankful that my seven 
 months' lectures are at last over, and I am gradu- 
 
 [ 134 ] 
 
BOSTON THE LECTURE CRADLE 
 
 ally beginning to come to myself, like one awaken- 
 ing from a trance or a fit of intoxication. You 
 know that the steady tramp of a regiment would 
 rock the Menai bridge from its fastenings, and so 
 all military bodies break their step in crossing it. 
 This reiteration of lectures in even march, month 
 after month, produces some such oscillations in one's 
 mind, and he longs, after a certain time, to break 
 up their uniformity. If they kept on long enough, 
 Harvard would move to Somerville. . . . 
 
 I have done enough to know what work means, 
 and should think I had been a hard worker if I did 
 not see what others have accomplished. I can never 
 look on those great histories of yours and think 
 what toil they cost, what dogged perseverance as 
 well as higher qualities they imply, without feeling 
 almost as if I had been an idler. 
 
 [In response to one of the many appeals made him 
 for patriotic poems, Dr. Holmes protests that there 
 is a limit beyond which even the poet must refuse to go. 
 He explains that he has recently done his part to "save 
 the Old South."] 
 
 I have lectured steadily seven months from Oc- 
 tober to May, and have been writing for "The At- 
 lantic" regularly since January, and I have promised 
 
 [ 135 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 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 stanzas. 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). 
 
 Full sevenscore years our city's pride — 
 
 The comely Southern spire — 
 Has cast its shadow, and defied 
 
 The storm, the foe, the fire; 
 Sad is the sight our eyes behold; 
 
 Woe to the three-hilled town, 
 When through the land the tale is told — 
 
 "The brave 'Old South' is down!" 
 
 The darkened skies, alas! have seen 
 
 Our monarch tree laid low, 
 And spread in ruins o'er the green, 
 
 But Nature struck the blow; 
 No scheming thrift its downfall planned, 
 
 It felt no edge of steel, 
 No soulless hireling raised his hand 
 
 The deadly stroke to deal. 
 
 In bridal garlands, pale and mute, 
 Still pleads the storied tower; 
 
 [ 136 1 
 
The Old South Church 
 
BOSTON THE LECTURE CRADLE 
 
 These are the blossoms, but the fruit 
 
 Awaits the golden shower; 
 The spire still greets the morning sun, — 
 
 Say, shall it stand or fall? 
 Help, ere the spoiler has begun! 
 
 Help, each, and God help all! 
 
 It costs sw . . t; it costs nerve-fat; it costs phos- 
 phorus, to do anything worth doing. 
 
 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 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 other street musicians. 
 
 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 the picture: — 
 
 With fingers weary and worn, 
 With eyelids heavy and red, 
 A scribbler holding a used-up pen 
 Sat racking his used-up head. 
 
 [ 137 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 [In September, 1887, Holmes writes to a friend in 
 Europe:] 
 
 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 moment, and am 
 lolling in a rocking-chair at my autumnal fireside. 
 
 So let me have my sweet do-nothing, as the Ital- 
 ians say; and let poor old Dobbin stand in the stall 
 with his harness off, munching his hay and oats, and 
 thinking when he is next to be trotted out, hoping 
 it will not be yet awhile. 
 
 I have lived so long stationary, that I have be- 
 come intensely 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 valu- 
 able qualities about an old provincial friend like me, 
 to a cosmopolitan 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 
 
 [ 138 ] 
 
BOSTON THE LECTURE CRADLE 
 
 scent of the lavender in which fair linen has been 
 laid away in old bureau drawers. It is not the fra- 
 grance of the garden, but there is something which 
 reaches the memory in it and sets us thinking of 
 seasons that are dead and gone, and what they 
 carried away with them. 
 
 I am a little overwhelmed with my new reputation 
 as a gardener; yet as I have succeeded in raising as 
 many cauliflowers and cabbages that did not head, as 
 many rat-tailed carrots and ram's-horn radishes, in 
 our Cambridge sand-patch, which we called a gar- 
 den, as any other horticulturist could show from the 
 same surface of ground, I have some claim to the title. 
 
 I see some of the London journals have been at- 
 tacking some of their literary people for lecturing, 
 on the ground of its being a public exhibition of 
 themselves for money. . . . To this I reply . . . Her 
 most Gracious Majesty, the Queen, exhibits her- 
 self to the public as a part of the service for which 
 she is paid. We do not consider it low-bred in her 
 to pronounce her own speech, and should prefer it 
 so to hearing it from any other person, or reading 
 it. His Grace and his Lordship exhibit themselves 
 very often for popularity, and their houses every 
 
 [ 139 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 day for money. — No, if a man shows himself 
 other than he is, if he belittles himself before an 
 audience for hire, then he acts unworthily. But 
 a true word, fresh from the lips of a true man, is 
 worth paying for, at the rate of eight dollars a day, 
 or even of fifty dollars a lecture. The taunt must 
 be an outbreak of jealousy against the renowned 
 authors who have the audacity to be also orators. 
 The sub-lieutenants (of the press) stick a too popu- 
 lar writer and speaker with an epithet in England, 
 instead of with a rapier, as in France. — Poh ! 
 
 The weather here is very cold and the spring 
 puns are very backward. Early Joe Millers, though 
 forced to be up by the 1st of April are like to yield 
 but a poor crop. The art o' jokes don't flourish. I 
 wish you to see that we are some punkins here 
 in the Hub town, though you have the demirep- 
 utation of making worse puns and more of them 
 in your city than are made in any other habitable 
 portion of the globe. 
 
 All lecturers, all professors, all schoolmasters, 
 have ruts and grooves in their minds into which 
 their conversation is perpetually sliding. Did you 
 never, in riding through the woods in a still June 
 
 [ 140 ] 
 
BOSTON THE LECTURE CRADLE 
 
 evening, suddenly feel that you had passed into a 
 warm stratum of air, and in a minute or two strike 
 the chill layer of atmosphere beyond? Did you 
 never, in cleaving the green waters of the Back 
 Bay, — where the Provincial blue-noses are in the 
 habit of beating the "Metropolitan" boat-clubs, — 
 find yourself in a tepid streak, a narrow, local gulf- 
 stream, a gratuitous warm-bath a little under- 
 done, through which your glistening shoulders soon 
 flashed, to bring you back to the cold realities of 
 full-sea temperature ! 
 
 Just so, in talking to any of the characters above 
 referred to, one not unfrequently finds a sudden 
 change in the style of the conversation. The lack- 
 lustre eye, rayless as a Beacon street door-plate in 
 August, all at once fills with light; the face flings 
 itself wide open like the church-portals when the 
 bride and bridegroom enter; the little man grows in 
 stature before your eyes, like the small prisoner with 
 hair on end, beloved yet dreaded in early childhood; 
 you were talking with a dwarf and an imbecile, — 
 you have a giant and a trumpet-tongued angel be- 
 fore you ! Nothing but a streak out of a fifty-dollar 
 lecture. As when, at some unlooked-for moment, 
 the mighty fountain-column (on the Common) 
 
 [ 141 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 springs into the air before the astonished passer-by, 
 
 — silver-footed, diamond-crowned, rainbow-scarfed 
 
 — from the bosom of that fair sheet, sacred to the 
 hymns of quiet batrachians at home, and the epi- 
 grams of a less amiable and less elevated order of 
 reptilia in other latitudes. 
 
 Tell me that old Homer did not roll his sightless 
 eyeballs about with delight, as he thundered out 
 these ringing syllables! It seems hard to think of 
 his going around like a hand-organ man, with such 
 music and such thoughts as his to earn his bread 
 with. One can't help wishing that Mr. Pugh could 
 have got him for a single lecture, at least, of the 
 " Star Course," or that he could have appeared in 
 the Music Hall, "for this night only." 
 
 The same line of anxious and conscientious effort 
 which I saw not long since on the forehead of one 
 of the sweetest and truest singers who has visited 
 us; the same which is so striking on the masks of 
 singing women painted upon the fagade of our great 
 organ, — that Himalayan home of harmony which 
 you are to see and then die, if you don't live where 
 you can see and hear it often. Many deaths have 
 happened in a neighboring large city from that well- 
 
 [ 142 ] 
 
The Beacon Street Side of the Public Garden, in 1857, showing 
 Dr. Holmes and Ralph Waldo Emerson in Conversation 
 
BOSTON THE LECTURE CRADLE 
 
 known complaint Icterus Invidiosorum, after re- 
 turning from a visit to the Music Hall. 
 
 I don't like your chopped music any way. That 
 woman — she had more sense in her little finger 
 than forty medical societies — Florence Nightin- 
 gale — says that the music you pour out is good 
 for sick folks, and the music you pound out is n't. 
 
 I have attended a large number of celebrations, 
 commencements, banquets, soirees, and so forth, 
 and done my best to help on a good many of them. 
 In fact, I have become rather too well known in 
 connection with "occasions," and it has cost me no 
 little trouble. I believe there is no kind of occur- 
 rence for which I have not been requested to con- 
 tribute something in prose or verse. It is sometimes 
 very hard to say no to the requests. If one is in the 
 right mood when he or she writes an occasional 
 poem, it seems as if nothing could have been easier. 
 "Why, that piece run off jest like ile. I don't bul- 
 lieve," the unlettered applicant says to himself, — 
 "I don't bullieve it took him ten minutes to write 
 them verses." The good people have no suspicion 
 of how much a single line, a single expression, may 
 cost its author. 
 
 [ 143 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 I cannot work many hours consecutively with- 
 out deranging my whole circulating and caloric 
 system. My feet are apt to get cold, my head hot, 
 my muscles restless, and I feel as if I must get up 
 and exercise in the open air. This is in the morning, 
 and I very rarely allow myself to be detained in- 
 doors later than twelve o'clock. After fifteen or 
 twenty minutes' walking I begin to come right, and 
 after two or three times as much as that I can go 
 back to my desk for an hour or two. 
 
 A new lecture is just like any other new tool. We 
 use it for a while with pleasure. Then it blisters 
 our hands, and we hate to touch it. By and by our 
 hands get callous, and then we have no longer any 
 sensitiveness about it. But if we give it up, the 
 callouses disappear; and if we meddle with it again, 
 we miss the novelty and get the blisters. The story 
 is often quoted of Whitefield, that he said a sermon 
 was good for nothing until it had been preached 
 forty times. A lecture does n't begin to be old until 
 it has passed its hundredth delivery; and some, I 
 think, have doubled, if not quadrupled, that num- 
 ber. These old lectures are a man's best commonly; 
 they improve by age, also, — like the pipes, fiddles, 
 
 [ 144 ] 
 
BOSTON THE LECTURE CRADLE 
 
 and poems I told you of the other day. One learns 
 to make the most of their strong points and to 
 carry off their weak ones, — to take out the really 
 good things which don't tell on the audience, and 
 put in cheaper things that do. All this degrades 
 him, of course, but it improves the lecture for gen- 
 eral delivery. A thoroughly popular lecture ought 
 to have nothing in it which five hundred people 
 cannot all take in in a flash, just as it is uttered. 
 
 I tell you the average intellect of five hundred 
 persons, taken as they come, is not very high. It 
 may be sound and safe, so far as it goes, but it is 
 not very rapid or profound. A lecture ought to be 
 something which all can understand, about some- 
 thing which interests everybody. 
 
 [In 1882 Dr. Holmes delivered his farewell address to 
 the Medical School of Harvard University. In the 
 course of his remarks he said :] 
 
 There are three occasions upon which a human 
 being has a right to consider himself as a centre of 
 interest to those about him : when he is christened, 
 when he is married, and when he is buried. Every 
 one is the chief personage, the hero of his own bap- 
 tism, his own wedding, and his own funeral. 
 
 [ 145 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 There are other occasions, less momentous, in 
 which one may make more of himself than under 
 ordinary circumstances he would think proper to 
 do when he may talk about himself, and tell his 
 own experiences, in fact, indulge in a more or less 
 egotistic monologue without fear of reproach. 
 
 I think I may claim that this is one of those occa- 
 sions. I have delivered my last anatomical lecture 
 and heard my class recite for the last time. They 
 wish to hear from me again in a less scholastic mood 
 than that in which they have known me. . . . 
 
 This is the thirty-sixth Course of Lectures in 
 which I have taken my place and performed my 
 duties as Professor of Anatomy. For more than 
 half of my term of office I gave instruction in Phy- 
 siology, after the fashion of my predecessors and in 
 the manner then generally prevalent in our schools, 
 where the physiological laboratory was not a neces- 
 sary part of the apparatus of instruction. It was 
 with my hearty approval that the teaching of 
 Physiology was constituted a separate department 
 and made an independent Professorship. Before 
 my time, Dr. Warren had taught Anatomy, Physi- 
 ology, and Surgery in the same course of Lectures, 
 lasting only three or four months. As the bounda- 
 
 [ 146 ] 
 
BOSTON THE LECTURE CRADLE 
 
 ries of science are enlarged, new divisions and sub- 
 divisions of its territories become necessary. In the 
 place of six Professors in 1847, when I first became 
 a member of the Faculty, I count twelve upon the 
 Catalogue before me, and I find the whole number 
 engaged in the work of instruction in the Medical 
 School amounts to no less than fifty. 
 
 Since I began teaching in this school, the aspect 
 of many branches of science has undergone a veiy 
 remarkable transformation. Chemistry and Physi- 
 ology are no longer what they were, as taught by 
 the instructors of that time. We are looking for- 
 ward to the synthesis of new organic compounds; 
 our artificial madder is already in the market, and 
 the indigo-raisers are now fearing that their crop 
 will be supplanted by the manufactured article. In 
 the living body we talk of fuel supplied and work 
 done, in movement, in heat, just as if we were deal- 
 ing with a machine of our own contrivance. A phy- 
 siological laboratory of to-day is equipped with 
 instruments of research of such ingenious contri- 
 vance, such elaborate construction, that one might 
 suppose himself in a workshop where some exquis- 
 ite fabric was to be wrought, such as Queens love to 
 wear, and Kings do not always love to pay for. They 
 
 [ 147 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 are indeed weaving a charmed web, for these are 
 the looms from which comes the knowledge that 
 clothes the nakedness of intellect. . . . 
 
 I am afraid that it is a good plan to get rid of old 
 Professors, and I am thankful to hear that there is 
 a movement for making provision for those who 
 are left in need when they lose their offices and 
 their salaries. ... If I myself needed an apology 
 for holding my office so long, I should find it in the 
 fact that human anatomy is much the same study 
 that it was in the days of Vesalius and Fallopius, 
 and that the greater part of my teaching was of 
 such a nature that it could never become antiquated. 
 
 Old theories, and old men who cling to them, 
 must take themselves out of the way as the new 
 generation with its fresh thoughts and altered hab- 
 its of mind comes forward to take the place of that 
 which is dying out. It is always the same story that 
 old men tell to younger ones, some few of whom will 
 in their turn repeat the tale, only with altered 
 names to their children's children. 
 
 I am grateful to the roof which has sheltered me, 
 and to the floors which have sustained me, though 
 I have thought it safest always to abstain from any- 
 
 [ 148 ] 
 
BOSTON THE LECTURE CRADLE 
 
 thing like eloquence, lest a burst of too emphatic 
 applause might land my class and myself in the cel- 
 lar of the collapsing structure and bury us in the 
 fate of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. I have helped 
 to wear these stairs into hollows, — stairs which I 
 trod when they were smooth and level, fresh from 
 the plane. There are just thirty-two of them, as 
 there were five and thirty years ago, but they are 
 steeper and harder to climb, it seems to me, than 
 they were then. ... I have never been proud of the 
 apartment beneath the seats, in which my prepara- 
 tions for lecture were made. But I chose it because 
 I could have it to myself, and I resign it, with a 
 wish that it were more worthy of regret, into the 
 hands of my successor, with my parting benediction. 
 Within its twilight precincts I have often prayed 
 for light, like Ajax, for the daylight found scanty 
 entrance, and the gaslight never illuminated its 
 dark recesses. May it prove to him who comes after 
 me like the cave of the Sibyl, out of the gloomy 
 depths of which came the oracles which shone with 
 the rays of truth and wisdom. 
 
 This temple of learning is not surrounded by the 
 mansions of the great and wealthy. No stately 
 avenues lead up to its fagades and portico. I have 
 
 [ 149 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 sometimes felt, when conveying a distinguished 
 stranger through its precincts to its door, that he 
 might question whether star-eyed science had not 
 missed her way when she found herself in this not 
 too attractive locality. I cannot regret that we — 
 you, I should say — are soon to migrate to a more 
 favored region, and carry on your work as teachers 
 and learners in ampler halls and under far more 
 favorable conditions. 
 
 I dare not be a coward with my lips 
 
 Who dare to question all things in my soul; 
 
 Some men may find their wisdom on their knees, 
 
 Some prone and grovelling in the dust like slaves; 
 
 Let the meek glowworm glisten in the dew; 
 
 I ask to lift my taper to the sky 
 
 As they who hold their lamps above their heads, 
 
 Trusting the larger currents up aloft, 
 
 My life shall be a challenge, not a truce! 
 This is my homage to the mighty powers, 
 To ask my noblest question, undismayed 
 By muttered threats that some hysteric sense 
 Of wrong or insult will convulse the throne 
 Where wisdom reigns supreme; . . . 
 
 Thou will not hold in scorn the child who dares 
 Look up to Thee, the Father, — dares to ask 
 More than thy wisdom answers. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 BOSTON THE BOOKISH 
 
If all the trees in all the woods were men; 
 
 And each and every blade of grass a pen; 
 
 If every leaf on every shrub and tree 
 
 Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea 
 
 Were changed to ink, and all earth's living tribes 
 
 Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, 
 
 And for ten thousand ages, day and night, 
 
 The human race should write, and write, and write, 
 
 Till all the pens and paper were used up, 
 
 And the huge inkstand was an empty cup, 
 
 Still would the scribblers clustered round its brink 
 
 Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 BOSTON THE BOOKISH 
 
 [Dr. Holmes worked enthusiastically for the founda- 
 tion of the Harvard Medical Library, and he lived to 
 see the new Boston Public Library rise upon its site in 
 Copley Square; he delivered a poem upon the occasion 
 of the laying of the corner-stone of the new edifice, in 
 1888.] 
 
 A library like ours must exercise the largest 
 hospitality. A great many books may be found in 
 every large collection which remind us of those 
 apostolic-looking old men who figure on the plat- 
 form at out political and other assemblages. 
 Some of them have spoken words of wisdom in their 
 day, but they have ceased to be oracles; some of 
 them never had any particularly important mes- 
 sage for humanity, but they add dignity to the 
 meeting by their presence; they look wise, whether 
 they are so or not, and no one grudges them their 
 places of honor. 
 
 I like books, — I was born and bred among them, 
 and have the easy feeling, when I get into their 
 presence, that a stable boy has among horses. I 
 
 [ 153 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 don't think I undervalue them, either as compan- 
 ions or instructors. 
 
 s 
 
 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 or paragraph that I wanted, and 
 which left its impression and became part of my 
 intellectual furniture. 
 
 Some day I want to talk about my library. It is 
 such a curious collection of old and new books, such 
 a mosaic of learning and fancies and follies, that a 
 glance over it would interest the company. 
 
 I have a picture hanging in my library, a litho- 
 graph, of which many of my readers may have seen 
 copies. It represents a grayhaired old book-lover 
 at the top of a long flight of steps. He finds himself 
 in clover, so to speak, among rare old editions, books 
 
 [ 154 ] 
 
BOSTON THE BOOKISH 
 
 he has longed to look upon and never seen before, 
 rarities, precious old volumes, incunabula, cradle- 
 books, printed while the art was in its infancy, — 
 its glorious infancy, for it was born a giant. The 
 old bookworm is so intoxicated with the sight and 
 handling of the priceless treasures that he cannot 
 bear to put one of the volumes back after he has 
 taken them from the shelf. So there he stands, — 
 one book open in his hands, a volume under each 
 arm, and one or more between his legs, — loaded 
 with as many as he can possibly hold at the same 
 time. 
 
 Now, that is just the way in which the extreme 
 form of book-hunger shows itself in the reader whose 
 appetite has become over-developed. He wants to 
 read so many books that he over-crams himself with 
 the crude materials of knowledge, which become 
 knowledge only when the mental digestion has time 
 to assimilate them. I never go into that famous 
 "Corner Bookstore," and look over the new books 
 in the row before me, as I enter the door, without 
 seeing half a dozen which I want to read, or at least 
 know something about. 
 
 Well, then, there is no use in gorging one's self 
 with knowledge, and no need of self-reproach be- 
 
 [ 155] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 cause one is content to remain more or less ignorant 
 of many things which interest his fellow-creatures. 
 We gain a good deal of knowledge through the 
 atmosphere; we learn a great deal by accidental 
 hearsay, provided we have the mordant in our own 
 consciousness which makes the wise remark, the 
 significant fact, the instructive incident take hold 
 of it. After the stage of despair comes the period of 
 consolation. We soon find that we are not so much 
 worse off than most of our neighbors as we supposed. 
 One of the encouraging signs of the times is the 
 condensed and abbreviated form in which knowl- 
 edge is presented to the general reader. The short 
 biographies of historic personages, of which within 
 the past few years many have appeared, have been 
 a great relief to the large class of readers who want 
 to know something, but not too much, about them. 
 
 I have some curious books in my library, a few 
 of which I should like to say something about. . . . 
 A library of a few thousand volumes ought always 
 to have some books in it which the owner almost 
 never opens, yet with whose backs he is so well ac- 
 quainted that he feels as if he knew something of 
 their contents. They are like those persons whom 
 
 [ 156 1 
 
Park Street from the State-House Grounds 
 
BOSTON THE BOOKISH 
 
 we meet in our daily walks, with whose faces and 
 figures, whose summer and winter garments, — 
 whose walking-sticks and umbrellas even, — we feel 
 acquainted, and yet whose names, whose business, 
 whose residences, we know nothing about. Some of 
 these books are so formidable in their dimensions, 
 so rusty and crabbed in their aspect, that it takes 
 a considerable amount of courage to attack them. 
 
 Some books are edifices, to stand as they are 
 built; some are hewn stones, ready to form a part 
 of future edifices; some are quarries, from which 
 stones are to be split for shaping and after use. 
 
 I confess that I am not in sympathy with some of 
 the movements that accompany the manifestations 
 of American social and literary independence. . . . 
 So far as concerns literary independence, if we 
 understand by that getting rid of our subjection to 
 British critisicm, such as it was in the days when 
 the question was asked, "Who reads an American 
 book?" we may consider it pretty well established. 
 If it means dispensing with punctuation, coining 
 words at will, self-revelation unrestrained by a 
 sense of what is decorous, declamations in which 
 
 [ 157 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 everything is glorified without being idealized, 
 "poetry" in which the reader must make the 
 rhythms which the poet has not made for him, then 
 I think we had better continue literary colonists. . . . 
 But there is room for everybody and everything in 
 our huge hemisphere. YoungAmerica is like a three- 
 year-old colt with his saddle and bridle just taken 
 off. The first thing he wants to do is to roll. He is a 
 droll object, sprawling in the grass with his four 
 hoofs in the air; but he likes it, and it won't harm 
 us. So let him roll, — let him roll! 
 
 I have always believed in life rather than books. 
 I suppose every day of earth, with its hundred 
 thousand deaths and something more of births, with 
 its loves and hates, its triumphs and defeats, its 
 pangs and blisses, has more of humanity in it than 
 all the books that were ever written or put to- 
 gether. I believe the flowers growing at this mo- 
 ment send up more fragrance to heaven than was 
 ever exhaled from all the essences ever distilled. 
 
 Anybody can write "poetry." It is a most un- 
 enviable distinction to have published a thin vol- 
 ume of verse, which nobody wanted, nobody buys, 
 
 [ 158 ] 
 
BOSTON THE BOOKISH 
 
 nobody reads, nobody cares for except the author, 
 who cries over its pathos, poor fellow, and revels in 
 its beauties, which he has all to himself. Come ! who 
 will be my pupils in a Course, — Poetry taught in 
 twelve lessons? 
 
 Yes, write, if you want to, there 's nothing like trying; 
 
 Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold? 
 I '11 show you that rhyming 's as easy as lying, 
 
 If you '11 listen to me while the art I unfold. 
 
 Here 's a book full of words; one can choose as he fancies, 
 As a painter his tint, as a workman his tool; 
 
 Just think! all the poems and plays and romances 
 Were drawn out of this, like the fish from a pool! 
 
 Just so with your verse, — 't is as easy as sketching, — 
 You can reel off a song without knitting your brow, 
 
 As lightly as Rembrandt a drawing or etching; 
 It is nothing at all, if you only know how. 
 
 Poetry is commonly thought to be the language 
 of emotion. On the contrary, most of what is so 
 called proves the absence of all passionate excite- 
 ment. It is a cold-blooded, haggard, anxious, wor- 
 rying hunt after rhymes which can be made service- 
 able, after images which will be effective, after 
 phrases which are sonorous; all this under limita- 
 tions which restrict the natural movements of 
 fancy and imagination. 
 
 [ 159 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 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 a day, but at very 
 short intervals. I have been consulted by hundreds 
 of writers of verse as to the merit of their perform- 
 ances, and have often advised the writers to the 
 best of my ability. Of late I have found it impos- 
 sible to attempt to read critically all the literary 
 productions, in verse and prose, which have heaped 
 themselves on every exposed surface of my library, 
 like snowdrifts along the railroad tracks, — block- 
 ing my literary pathway, so that I can hardly find 
 my daily papers. 
 
 I have read recently that Mr. Gladstone receives 
 six hundred letters a day. Perhaps he does not re- 
 ceive six hundred letters every day, but if he gets 
 anything like that number daily, what can he do 
 with them? . . . 
 
 I do not pretend that I receive six hundred or even 
 sixty letters a day, but I do receive a good many, 
 and have told the public of the fact from time to 
 time, under the pressure of their constantly in- 
 creasing exactions. As it is extremely onerous, and 
 is soon going to be impossible, for me to keep up the 
 
 [ 160 ] 
 
BOSTON THE BOOKISH 
 
 wide range of correspondence which has become a 
 large part of my occupation, and tends to absorb all 
 the vital force which is left me, I wish to enter into 
 a final explanation with the well-meaning but merci- 
 less taskmasters who have now for many years been 
 levying their heavy task upon me. I have preserved 
 thousands of their letters, and destroyed a very 
 large number, after answering them. . . . 
 
 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, believing in themselves as superiorities, 
 and stumbling on through limping disappointments 
 to prostrate failure! 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 examination 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 publisher's advertisements. 
 
 [ 161] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 But what does not one have to submit to who has 
 become the martyr — the Saint Sebastian — of a 
 literary correspondence ! 
 
 If the time ever comes when to answer all my 
 kind unknown friends, even by dictation, is impos- 
 sible, or more than I feel equal to, I wish to refer 
 any of those who may feel disappointed at not re- 
 ceiving an answer to the following general acknowl- 
 edgments : — 
 
 1. I am always grateful for any attention which 
 shows me I am kindly remembered. 
 
 2. Your pleasant message has been read to me, 
 and has been thankfully listened to. 
 
 3. Your book (your essay) (your poem) has 
 reached me safely, and has received all the respect- 
 ful attention to which it seemed entitled. It would 
 take more than all the time I have at my disposal to 
 read all the printed matter and all the manuscripts 
 which are sent to me, and you would not ask me to 
 attempt the impossible. You will not, therefore, 
 expect me to express a critical opinion of your work. 
 
 4. I am deeply sensible of your expressions of per- 
 sonal attachment to me as an author of certain writ- 
 ings which have brought me very near to you, — 
 in virtue of some affinity in our ways of thought and 
 
 [ 162 ] 
 
BOSTON THE BOOKISH 
 
 moods of feeling. Although I cannot keep up the 
 correspondences with many of my readers who seem 
 to be thoroughly congenial with myself, let them be 
 assured that their letters have been read or heard 
 with peculiar gratification, and are preserved as 
 precious treasures. 
 
 What a blessed thing it is, that Nature, when she 
 invented, manufactured and patented her authors, 
 contrived to make critics out of the chips that were 
 left! Painful as the task is, they never fail to warn 
 the author, in the most impressive manner, of the 
 probabilities of failure in what he has undertaken. 
 Sad as the necessity is to their delicate sensibilities, 
 they never hesitate to advise him of the decline of 
 his powers, and to press upon him the propriety of 
 retiring before he sinks into imbecility. 
 
 No more our foolish passions and affections 
 The tragic Muse with mimic grief shall try, 
 
 But, nobler far, a course of vivisections 
 
 Teach what it costs a tortured brute to die. 
 
 Instead of crack-brained poets in their attics 
 Filling thin volumes with their flowery talk, 
 
 There shall be books of wholesome mathematics; 
 The tutor with his blackboard and his chalk. 
 
 [ 163 ] 
 
/ 
 
 DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 No longer bards with madrigal and sonnet 
 
 Shall woo to moonlight walks the ribboned sex, 
 
 But side by side the beaver and the bonnet 
 Stroll, calmly pondering on some problem's x. 
 
 The sober bliss of serious calculation 
 
 Shall mock the trivial joys that fancy drew, 
 
 And, oh, the rapture of a solved equation, — 
 One selfsame answer on the lips of two ! 
 
 It seems to me, I said, that the great additions 
 which have been made by realism to the territory 
 of literature consist largely in swampy, malarious, 
 ill-smelling patches of soil which had previously 
 been left to reptiles and vermin. It is perfectly easy 
 to be original by violating the laws of decency and 
 the canons of good taste. The general consent of 
 civilized people was supposed to have banished cer- 
 tain subjects from the conversation of well-bred peo- 
 ple and the pages of respectable literature. There 
 is no subject, or hardly any, which may not be 
 treated of at the proper time, in the proper place, 
 by the fitting person, for the right kind of listener 
 or reader. But when the poet or the story-teller 
 invades the province of the man of science, he is on 
 dangerous ground. I need say nothing of the blun- 
 ders he is pretty sure to make. The imaginative 
 
 [ 164 ] 
 
BOSTON THE BOOKISH 
 
 writer is after effects. The scientific man is after 
 truth. Science is decent, modest; does not try to 
 startle, but to instruct. The same scenes and ob- 
 jects which outrage every sense of delicacy in the 
 story-teller's highly colored paragraphs can be read 
 without giving offense in the chaste language of the 
 physiologist or the physician. In this matter of the 
 literal reproduction of sights and scenes which our 
 natural instinct and our better informed taste and 
 judgment teach us to avoid, art has been far in ad- 
 vance of literature. 
 
 Who does not remember odious images that can 
 never be washed out from the consciousness which 
 they have stained? . . . Expressions and thoughts 
 of a certain character stain the fibre of the thinking 
 organ, and in some degree affect the hue of every 
 idea that passes through the discolored tissues. 
 
 This puerile hunting after details, this cold and 
 cynical inventory of all the wretched conditions in 
 the midst of which poor humanity vegetates, not 
 only do not help us to understand it better, but, on 
 the contrary, the effect on the spectators is a kind 
 of dazzled confusion mingled with fatigue and dis- 
 gust. . . . Truth is lost in its own excess. 
 
 I confess that I am a little jealous of certain ten- 
 [ 165 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 dencies in our own American literature, which led 
 one of the severest and most outspoken of our sa- 
 tirical fellow-countrymen, no longer living to be 
 called to account for it, to say, in a moment of bit- 
 terness, that the mission of America was to vulgar- 
 ize mankind. 
 
 Our American atmosphere is vocal with the flip- 
 pant 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 en- 
 riching the soil, and sowing good seed in plenty; by 
 good teaching and good books, rather than by wast- 
 ing our time in talking against it. Half knowledge 
 dreads nothing but whole knowledge. 
 
 The difference between green and seasoned knowl- 
 edge is very great. 
 
 What glorifies a town like a cathedral? What dig- 
 nifies a province like a university? What illumines 
 a country like its scholarship, and what is the nest 
 that hatches scholars but a library? 
 
 Thus, then, our library is a temple as truly as the 
 dome-crowned cathedral hallowed by the breath of 
 prayer and praise, where the dead repose and the 
 
 [ 166] 
 
The Museum of Fine Arts, Copley Square 
 
BOSTON THE BOOKISH 
 
 living worship. May all its treasures be consecrated 
 like that to the glory of God, through the contribu- 
 tions it shall make to the advancement of sound 
 knowledge . . . and to the common cause in which 
 all good men are working, the furtherance of the 
 well-being of their fellow-creatures ! 
 
 Proudly, beneath her glittering dome, 
 Our three-hilled city greets the morn; 
 
 Here Freedom found her virgin home, — 
 The Bethlehem where her babe was born. 
 
 Let in the light! from every age 
 
 Some gleams of garnered wisdom pour, 
 
 And, fixed on thought's electric page, 
 Wait all their radiance to restore. 
 
 Let in the light! these windowed walls 
 Shall brook no shadowing colonnades, 
 
 But day shall flood the silent halls 
 Till o 'er yon hills the sunset fades. 
 
 Behind the ever open gate 
 
 No pikes shall fence a crumbling throned 
 No lackeys cringe, no courtiers wait, — 
 
 This palace is the people's own! 
 
 Here shall the sceptred mistress reign 
 Who heeds her meanest subject's call, 
 
 Sovereign of all their vast domain, 
 The queen, the handmaid of them all! 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 BOSTON ELMS AND THE LONG PATH 
 
The elms have robed their slender spray 
 With full-blown flower and embryo leaf; 
 
 Wide o'er the clasping arch of day 
 Soars like a cloud their hoary chief. 
 
 See the proud tulip's flaunting cup, 
 That flames in glory for an hour, — 
 
 Behold it withering, — then look up, — 
 How meek the forest monarch's flower! 
 
 When wake the violets, Winter dies; 
 
 When sprout the elm-buds, Spring is near; 
 When lilacs blossom, Summer cries, 
 "Bud, little roses! Spring is here!" 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 BOSTON ELMS AND THE LONG PATH 
 
 [Dr. Holmes cherished a lifelong enthusiasm for 
 trees, and while on his lecture tours about the country, 
 he was wont to carry in his pocket a measuring tape, 
 which he stretched about the girth of any especial tree 
 giant that he encountered. During his travels abroad, 
 he delighted to compare the measurements of the great 
 trees in foreign countries with those of his own land, 
 and he was keenly elated when his "home trees" proved 
 winners in the contest of dimension.] 
 
 It has always been a favorite idea of mine to 
 bring the life of the Old and the New World face 
 to face by an accurate comparison of their various 
 types of organization. We should begin with man, 
 of course; institute a large and exact comparison 
 between the development of la pianta umana, as 
 Alfieri called it, in different sections of each country, 
 in the different callings, at different ages, estimat- 
 ing the height, weight, force by the dynamometer 
 and the spirometer, and finishing off with a series 
 of typical photographs, giving the principal na- 
 tional physiognomies. Then I would follow this up 
 
 [ 171 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 by contrasting the various parallel forms of life in 
 the two continents. . . . The American elm is tall, 
 graceful, slender-sprayed, and drooping as if from 
 languor. The English elm is compact, robust, holds 
 its branches up, and carries its leaves for weeks 
 longer than our own native tree. 
 
 Is this typical of the creative force on the two 
 sides of the ocean, or not? 
 
 The most interesting comparison I made was 
 between the New England and the Old England 
 elms. It is not necessary to cross the ocean to do 
 this, as we have both varieties growing side by side 
 in our parks, — on Boston Common, for instance. 
 It is wonderful to note how people will lie about 
 big trees. There must be as many as a dozen trees, 
 each of which calls itself the "largest elm in New 
 England." In my younger days, when I never 
 travelled without a measuring tape in my pocket, 
 it amused me to see how meek one of the great 
 swaggering elms would look when it saw the fatal 
 measure begin to unreel itself. It seemed to me that 
 the leaves actually trembled as the inexorable band 
 encircled the trunk in the smallest place it could find, 
 which is the only safe rule. The English elm (Ulmus 
 
 [ 172 ] 
 
Tremont Street Mall, now called Lafayette Mall, Boston Common 
 
BOSTON ELMS 
 
 campestris) as we see it in Boston, comes out a little 
 earlier, perhaps, than our own, but the difference 
 is slight. It holds its leaves long after our elms are 
 bare. It grows upward, with abundant dark foli- 
 age, while ours spreads, sometimes a hundred and 
 twenty feet, and often droops like a weeping willow. 
 The English elm looks like a much more robust tree 
 than ours, yet they tell me it is very fragile, and 
 that its limbs are constantly breaking off in high 
 winds, just as happens with our native elms. Ours 
 is not a very long-lived tree; between two and 
 three hundred years is, I think, the longest life that 
 can be hoped for it. 
 
 There is a hint of a typical difference in the Amer- 
 ican and the Englishman which I have long recog- 
 nized in the two elms as compared to each other. 
 It may be fanciful, but I have thought that the 
 correctness and robustness about the English elm, 
 which are replaced by the long tapering limbs and 
 willowy grace and far-spreading reach of our own, 
 might find a certain parallelism in the people, es- 
 pecially the females of the two countries. 
 
 I saw no horse-chestnuts equal to those I re-: 
 member in Salem, and especially to one in Rock- 
 port, which is the largest and finest I have ever seen; 
 
 [ 173 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 no willows like those I pass in my daily drives. . . . 
 No apple-trees I saw in England compare with one 
 next my own door, and there are many others as 
 fine in the neighborhood. 
 
 I saw the poet [Tennyson] to the best advantage, 
 under his own trees and walking over his own do- 
 main. He took delight in pointing out to me the 
 finest and rarest of his trees, — and there were 
 many beauties among them. I recalled my morn- 
 ing's visit to Whittier at Oak Knoll, in Danvers, a 
 little more than a year ago, when he led me to one 
 of his favorites, an aspiring evergreen which shot 
 up like a flame. I thought of the graceful Ameri- 
 can elms in front of Longfellow's house, and the 
 sturdy English elms that stand in front of Lowell's. 
 In this garden of England, the Isle of Wight, where 
 everything grows with such a lavish extravagance 
 of greenness that it seems as if it must bankrupt 
 the soil before autumn, I felt as if weary eyes and 
 overtasked brains might reach their happiest haven 
 of rest. . . . We find our most soothing companion- 
 ship in the trees among which we have lived, some 
 of which we may ourselves have planted. We lean 
 against them, and they never betray our trust; 
 
 [ 174 1 
 
BOSTON ELMS 
 
 they shield us from the sun and from the rain; their 
 spring welcome is a new birth, which never loses its 
 freshness; they lay their beautiful robes at our feet 
 in autumn; in winter they "stand and wait," em- 
 blems of patience and of truth, for they hide noth- 
 ing, not even the little leaf-buds which hint to 
 us of hope, the last element in their triple sym- 
 bolism. 
 
 I have owned many beautiful trees, and loved 
 many more outside my own leafy harem. Those 
 who write verses have no special claim to be lovers 
 of trees, but so far as one is of the poetical tempera- 
 ment he is likely to be a tree-lover. Poets have, as 
 a rule, more than the average nervous sensibility 
 and irritability . Trees have no nerves . They live and 
 die without suffering, without self-questioning or 
 self-reproach. They have the divine gift of silence. 
 They cannot obtrude upon the solitary moments 
 when one is to himself the most agreeable of com- 
 panions. 
 
 The poet is a luxury, and if you want him you 
 must pay for him, by not trying to make a drudge 
 of him, while he is all his lifetime struggling with 
 the chills and heats of his artistic intermittent 
 fever. 
 
 [ 175] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 Say not the Poet dies ! 
 
 Though in the dust he lies, 
 He cannot forfeit his melodious breath, 
 
 Unsphered by envious death! 
 Life drops the voiceless myriads from its roll; 
 
 Their fate he cannot share, 
 
 Who, in the enchanted air 
 Sweet with the lingering strains that Echo stole, 
 Has left his dearer self, the music of his soul! 
 
 Count not our Poet dead ! 
 
 The stars shall watch his bed, 
 The rose of June its fragrant life renew 
 
 His blushing mound to strew, 
 And all the tuneful throats of summer swell 
 
 With trills as crystal-clear 
 
 As when he wooed the ear 
 Of the young muse that haunts each wooded dell, 
 With songs of that "rough land" he loved so long and well! 
 
 He sleeps; he cannot die! 
 
 As evening's long-drawn sigh, 
 Lifting the rose-leaves on his peaceful mound, 
 
 Spreads all their sweets around, 
 So, laden with his song, the breezes blow 
 
 From where the rustling sedge 
 
 Frets our rude ocean's edge 
 To the smooth sea beyond the peaks of snow. 
 His soul the air enshrines and leaves but dust below! 
 
 A walk through the grounds of Magdalen College, 
 under the guidance of the president of that college, 
 
 [ 176 ] 
 
BOSTON ELMS 
 
 showed us some of the fine trees for which I was 
 always looking. One of these, a wych-elm (Scotch 
 elm of some books), was so large that I insisted 
 upon having it measured. A string was procured 
 and carefully carried round the trunk, above the 
 spread of the roots and below that of the branches, 
 so as to give the smallest circumference. I was cu- 
 rious to know how the size of the trunk of this tree 
 would compare with that of the trunks of some of 
 our largest New England elms. 
 
 I have measured a good many of these. About 
 sixteen feet is the measurement of a large elm, like 
 that on Boston Common, which all middle-aged 
 people remember. From twenty-two to twenty- 
 three feet is the ordinary maximum of the very larg- 
 est trees. I never found but one to exceed it: that 
 was the great Springfield elm, which looked as if it 
 might have been formed by the coalescence, from 
 the earliest period of growth, of two young trees. 
 When I measured this in 1837, it was twenty -four 
 feet eight inches in circumference at five feet from 
 the ground; growing larger above and below. I re- 
 member this tree well, as we measured the string 
 that was to tell the size of its English rival. As we 
 came near the end of the string, I felt as I did when 
 
 [ 177 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 I was looking at the last dash of Ormonde and the 
 Bard of Epsom. — Twenty feet, and a long piece 
 of string left. — Twenty-one. — Twenty -two. — 
 Twenty-three. — An extra heart-beat or two. — 
 Twenty-four! Twenty-five and six inches over!! 
 The Springfield elm may have grown a foot or 
 more since I measured it, fifty years ago, but the 
 tree at Magdalen stands ahead of all my old meas- 
 urements. Many of the fine old trees, this in par- 
 ticular, may have been known in their younger 
 days to Addison, whose favorite walk is still 
 pointed out to the visitor. 
 
 I never saw more than two or three good photo- 
 graphs of American elms. The best is a large one 
 of the "Johnson Elm" about three miles from Prov- 
 idence, one of the finest trees, as it was when I used 
 to visit it in New England. This was sent me, 
 framed by my nephew Dr. Parsons, of Providence, 
 who may be in possession of the negative. ... I 
 have stereographs of the Boston Elm, before its 
 present condition of decadence, and one of the 
 Washington Elm, the last a fair specimen of the 
 tree, but neither of them equal to the great John- 
 son Elm. 
 
 [ 178] 
 
BOSTON ELMS 
 
 I have brought down a slice of hemlock to show 
 you. Tree blew down in my woods (that were) in 
 1852. Twelve feet and a half round, fair girth; nine 
 feet where I got my section, higher up. This is a 
 wedge, going to the centre, of the general shape of a 
 slice of apple-pie in a large and not opulent family. 
 Length about eighteen inches. I have studied the 
 growth of this tree by its rings, and it is curious. 
 Three hundred and forty -two rings. Started, there- 
 fore, about 1510, The thickness of the rings tells 
 the rate at which it grew. Look here. Here are 
 some human lives laid down against the periods of 
 its growth, to which they corresponded. This is 
 Shakespeare's. The tree was seven inches in diam- 
 eter when he was born ; ten inches when he died. A 
 little less than ten inches when Milton was born; 
 seventeen when he died. Then comes a long inter- 
 val, and this thread marks out Johnson's life, dur- 
 ing which the tree increased from twenty-two to 
 twenty-nine inches in diameter. Here is the span of 
 Napoleon's career, — the tree does n't seem to have 
 minded it. 
 
 I never saw the man who was not startled at 
 looking on this section, — I have seen many wooden 
 preachers, — never one like this. How much more 
 
 [ 179 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 striking would be the calendar counted on the rings 
 of one of these awful trees which were standing 
 when Christ was on earth, and where that brief 
 mortal life is chronicled with the stolid apathy of 
 vegetable being, which remembers all human his- 
 tory as a thing of yesterday in its own dateless ex- 
 istance ! 
 
 What makes a first-class elm? — Why size, in 
 the first place, and chiefly. Anything over twenty 
 feet of clear girth, five feet above the ground, and 
 with a spread of branches a hundred feet across, 
 may claim that title, according to my scale. 
 
 Elms of the second-class, generally ranging from 
 fourteen to eighteen feet, are comparatively com- 
 mon. The queen of them all is that glorious tree 
 near one of the churches in Springfield. Beautiful 
 and stately she is beyond all praise. The "great 
 tree " on Boston Common comes in the second rank, 
 as does the one at Cohasset, which used to have, 
 and probably has still a head as round as an apple, 
 and near them one at Newburyport, with scores 
 of others which might be mentioned. 
 
 Eternal Truth! beyond our hopes and fears 
 Sweep the vast orbits of thy myriad spheres! 
 
 [ 180] 
 
BOSTON ELMS 
 
 From age to age, while History carves sublime 
 On her waste rock the flaming curves of time, 
 How the wild swayings of our planet show 
 That worlds unseen surround the world we know. 
 
 There was no place so favorable as the Common 
 for the study of the heavens. The skies were bril- 
 liant with stars, and the air was just keen enough 
 to remind our young friend that the cold season 
 was at hand. They wandered round for a while, 
 and at last found themselves under the Great Elm, 
 drawn hither, no doubt, by the magnetism it is so 
 well known to exert over the natives of its own soil 
 and those who have often been under the shadow of 
 its outstretched arms. 
 
 The venerable survivor of its contemporaries 
 that flourished in the days when Blackstone rode 
 beneath it on his bull, was now a good deal broken 
 by age, yet not without marks of lusty vitality. It 
 has been wrenched and twisted and battered by so 
 many scores of winters that some of its limbs were 
 crippled and many of its joints were shaky, and but 
 for the support of the iron braces that lent their 
 strong sinews to its more infirm members it would 
 have gone to pieces in the first strenuous north- 
 easter or the first sudden and violent gale from the 
 
 [181 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 southwest. But there it stood . . . though its obit- 
 uary was long ago written after one of the ter- 
 rible storms that tore its branches, — leafing out 
 hopefully in April as if it were trying in its dumb 
 language to lisp "Our Father," and dropping its 
 slender burden of foliage in October as softly as if 
 it were whispering Amen ! 
 
 Not far from the ancient and monumental tree 
 lay a small sheet of water, once agile with life and 
 vocal with evening melodies, but now stirred only 
 by the swallow as he dips his wing, or by the morn- 
 ing bath of the English sparrows, those high-headed, 
 thick-bodied, full-feeding, hot-tempered little John 
 Bulls that keep up such a swashing and swabbing 
 and spattering round all the water basins, one 
 might think from the fuss they make about it that a 
 bird never took a bath here before, and that they 
 were the missionaries of ablution to the unwashed 
 Western world. 
 
 There are those who speak lightly of this small 
 aqueous expanse, the eye of the sacred enclosure, 
 which has looked unwinking on the happy faces of 
 so many natives and the curious features of so 
 many strangers. The music of its twilight minstrels 
 has long ceased, but their memory lingers like an 
 
 [ 182 1 
 
The Old Elm, Boston Common 
 
BOSTON ELMS 
 
 echo in the name it bears. Cherish it, inhabitants 
 of the two-hilled city, once three-hilled; ye who 
 have said to the mountain "Remove hence," and 
 turned the sea into dry land! May no contractor 
 fill his pockets by undertaking to fill thee, thou 
 granite-girdled lakelet, or drain the civic purse by 
 drawing off thy waters ! For art thou not the Palla- 
 dium of our Troy? Didst thou not, like the Divine 
 image which was the safeguard of Ilium, fall from 
 the skies, and if the Trojan could look with pride 
 upon the heaven-descended form of the Goddess of 
 Wisdom, cannot he who dwells by thy shining oval 
 look in that mirror and contemplate Himself, — 
 the Native of Boston? 
 
 Will you walk out and look at those elms with 
 me after breakfast? — I said to the schoolmistress. 
 
 We walked under Mr. Paddock's row of English 
 elms. The gray squirrels were looking for their 
 breakfasts, and one of them came towards us in 
 light, soft, intermittent leaps, until he was close to 
 the rail of the burial-ground. He was on a grave 
 with a broad blue-slatestone at its head, and a shrub 
 growing on it. The stone said this was the grave 
 of a young man who was the son of an Honorable 
 
 [ 183 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 gentleman, who died a hundred years ago and more. 
 Oh, yes, died, — with a small triangular mark on 
 one breast, and another smaller opposite ? in his back, 
 where another young man's rapier had slid through 
 his body; and so he lay out there on the Common, 
 and was found cold the next morning, with the night- 
 dews and the death-dews mingled on his forehead. 
 
 Let us have a look at poor Benjamin's grave, — 
 said I. — His bones lie where his body was laid so 
 long ago, and where the stone says they lie, — 
 which is more than can be said of most of the ten- 
 ants of this and several other burial-grounds. 
 
 The most accursed act of Vandalism ever com- 
 mitted within my knowledge was the uprooting of 
 the ancient gravestones in three at least of our city 
 burial-grounds, and one at least just outside the 
 city, and planting them in rows to suit the taste for 
 symmetry of the perpetrators. Many years ago, 
 when this disgraceful process was going on under 
 my eyes, I addressed an indignant remonstrance to 
 a leading journal. I suppose it was deficient in lit- 
 erary elegance, or too warm in its language; for no 
 notice was taken of it, and the hyena horror was 
 allowed to complete itself in the face of daylight. 
 I have never got over it. 
 
 [ 184 1 
 
The Tremont House, 1886 
 
BOSTON ELMS 
 
 The bones of my own ancestors, being entombed, 
 lie beneath their own tablet; but the upright stones 
 have been shuffled about like chessmen, and noth- 
 ing short of the Day of Judgment will tell whose 
 dust lies beneath any of those records, meant by 
 affection to mark one small spot as sacred to some 
 cherished memory. Shame! Shame! Shame! that 
 is all I can say. It was on public thoroughfares, 
 under the eye of authority, that this infamy was 
 enacted. The red Indians would have known bet- 
 ter; the selectmen of an African kraal- village would 
 have had more respect for their ancestors. I should 
 like to see the gravestones which have been dis- 
 turbed all removed, and the ground levelled, leav- 
 ing the flat tombstones ; epitaphs were never famous 
 for truth, but the old reproach of "Here lies" never 
 had such a wholesale illustration as in these out- 
 raged burial-places, where the stone does He above 
 and the bones do not lie beneath. 
 
 Stop before we turn away, and breathe a woman's 
 sigh over poor Benjamin's dust. Love killed him I 
 think. Twenty years old, and there fighting another 
 young fellow on the Common in the cool of that old 
 July evening; yes, there must have been love at the 
 bottom of it. 
 
 [ 185 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 The schoolmistress dropped a rosebud she had in 
 her hand, through the rails, upon the grave of Ben- 
 jamin Woodbridge. 
 
 We came opposite the head of a place or court 
 running eastward from the main street. — Look 
 down there, — I said, — My friend, the Professor, 
 lived in that house at the left hand for years and 
 years. He died out of it, the other day. — Died? — 
 said the schoolmistress. — Certainly, — said I. We 
 die out of houses, just as we die out of our bodies. 
 A commercial smash kills a hundred men's houses for 
 them, as a railroad crash kills their mortal frames 
 and drives out the immortal tenants. Men sicken of 
 houses until at last they quit them, as the soul leaves 
 its body when it is tired of its infirmities. The body 
 has been called "the house we live in"; the house is 
 quite as much the body we live in. 
 
 The schoolmistress and I had pleasant walks and 
 long talks. . . . 
 
 My idea was, in the first place, to search out the 
 picturesque spots which the city affords a sight of, 
 to those who have eyes. I know a good many and it 
 was a pleasure to look at them in company with my 
 young friend. There were the shrubs and flowers in 
 the Franklin-Place front-yards or borders: Com- 
 
 [ 186 ] 
 
The Long Path, Boston Common 
 
BOSTON ELMS 
 
 merce is just putting his granite foot upon them. 
 Then there are certain small seraglio-gardens, into 
 which one can get a peep through the crevices of 
 high fences, — one in Myrtle Street, or at the back 
 of it, — here and there one at the North and South 
 Ends. Then the great elms in Essex Street. Then 
 the stately horsechestnuts in that vacant lot in 
 Chambers Street, which hold their outspread hand 
 over your head (as I said in my poem the other day), 
 and look as if they were whispering, "May grace, 
 mercy, and peace be with you!" — and the rest of 
 the benediction. Nay, there are certain patches of 
 ground, which, having lain neglected for a time, 
 Nature, who always has her pockets full of seeds, 
 and holes in her pockets, has covered with hungry 
 plebeian growths, which fight for life with each 
 other, until some of them get broad-leaved and suc- 
 culent, and you have a coarse vegetable tapestry 
 which Raphael would have disdained to spread over 
 the foreground of his masterpiece. The Professor 
 pretends that he found such a one on Charles Street, 
 which, in its dare-devil impudence of rough-and- 
 tumble vegetation, beat the pretty -behaved flower- 
 beds of the Public Garden as ignominiously as a 
 group of young tatterdemalions playing pitch-and- 
 
 [ 187 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 toss beats a row of Sunday-school-boys with their 
 teacher at their head. 
 
 It was on the Common that we were walking. The 
 mall, or boulevard of our Common, you know, has 
 various branches leading from it in different direc- 
 tions. One of these runs down opposite Joy Street 
 southward across the whole length of the Common 
 to Boylston Street. We called it the long path, and 
 were fond of it. 
 
 I felt very weak, indeed (though of a tolerably 
 robust habit), as we came opposite the head of this 
 path on that morning. I think I tried to speak 
 twice without making myself distinctly audible. 
 At last I got out the question, — Will you take the 
 long path with me? — Certainly, — said the school- 
 mistress, — with much pleasure. — Think, — I said, 
 before you answer: if you take the long path with 
 me now, I shall interpret it that we are to part 
 no more! The schoolmistress stepped back with a 
 sudden movement, as if an arrow had struck her. 
 
 One of the long granite blocks used as seats was 
 hard by, the one you may still see close by the Ging- 
 ko-tree.— Pray, sit down, — I said. — No, no, she an- 
 swered softly, — I will walk the long path with you ! 
 
CHAPTER X 
 FAREWELL, BOSTON 
 
I come not here your morning hour to sadden, 
 A limping pilgrim, leaning on his staff, — 
 I, who have never deemed it sin to gladden 
 This vale of sorrows with a wholesome laugh. 
 
 If words of mine another's gloom has brightened, 
 Through my dumb lips the heaven-sent message came: 
 If hand of mine another's task has lightened, 
 It felt the guidance that it dares not claim. 
 
 Time claims his tribute; silence now is golden; 
 
 Let me not vex the too long suffering lyre; 
 
 Though to your love untiring still beholden, 
 
 The curfew tells me — cover up the fire. 
 
 And now with grateful smile and accents cheerful, 
 
 And warmer heart than look or word can tell, 
 
 In simplest phrase — these traitorous eyes are tearful - 
 
 Thanks, Brothers, Sisters, — Children, — and farewell. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 FAREWELL, BOSTON 
 
 [The Doctor glided gently and peacefully into the 
 period of old age. He had worked hard but had never 
 been forced to over- work; he had been free from any 
 overwhelming anxieties; he had always enjoyed a com- 
 fortable amount of worldly goods, and had been ever 
 surrounded by congenial friends and agreeable family 
 ties. In the words of his biographer: 
 
 " He had strolled pleasantly and at his own pace along 
 the side paths, by the enchanting hedgerows, quite 
 apart from the hurly-burly of the highway where the 
 throng hurried and jostled along, the millionaires and 
 the beggars crowding, hustling, and cursing each other. 
 Thus leaving this procession, which could find no leisure 
 for enjoyment, to push and tumble along as best it 
 might, he meantime advanced pleasantly falling in now 
 and then with good company, moving through the 
 changing shade, or sunshine, enjoying all the possible 
 beauty and peacefulness of the journey through life. 
 In this way he became old, and hardly knew it — 
 would have forgotten it for a long while, perhaps, had 
 he been a less close observer of facts, or if others had 
 not called his attention to the climbing figures of the 
 anniversaries."] 
 
 I must not forget that a new generation of readers 
 has come into being since I have been writing for 
 
 [ 191 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 the public, and that a new generation of aspiring 
 and brilliant authors has grown into general recog- 
 nition. The dome of Boston State House, which is 
 the centre of my little universe was glittering in its 
 fresh golden pellicle before I had reached the scrip- 
 tural boundary of life. It has lost its lustre now, 
 and the years which have dulled its surface have 
 whitened the dome of that fragile structure in which 
 my consciousness holds the session of its faculties. 
 Time is not to be cheated. 
 
 Look here! There are crowds of people whirled 
 through our streets on these new-fashioned cars, with 
 their witch-broomsticks overhead, — if they don't 
 come from Salem, they ought to, — and not more 
 than one in a dozen of these fish-eyed bipeds thinks 
 or cares a nickel's worth about the miracle which is 
 wrought for their convenience. . . . What do they 
 know or care about this last revelation of the omni- 
 present spirit of the material universe? We ought 
 to go down on our knees when one of these mighty 
 caravans, car after car, spins by us, under the mys- 
 tic impulse which seems to know not whether its 
 train is loaded or empty. ... I am thankful that in 
 an age of cynicism I have not lost my reverence. 
 
 [ 192 ] 
 
FAREWELL, BOSTON 
 
 Perhaps you would wonder to see how some very 
 common sights impress me. . . . And now, before 
 this new manifestation of that form of cosmic vital- 
 ity which we call electricity, I feel like taking the 
 posture of the peasants listening to the Angelus. 
 
 All reflecting persons must recognize, in looking 
 back over a long life, how largely their creeds, their 
 course of life, their wisdom and unwisdom, their 
 whole characters, were shaped by the conditions 
 which surrounded them. Little children they came 
 from the hands of the Father of all; little children in 
 their helplessness, their ignorance, they are going 
 back to him. They cannot help feeling that they 
 are to be transferred from the rude embrace of the 
 boisterous elements to arms that will receive them 
 tenderly. Poor planetary foundlings, they have 
 known hard treatment at the hands of the brute 
 forces of nature, from the control of which they are 
 soon to be set free. 
 
 I see no corner of the universe which the Father 
 has wholly deserted. The forces of Nature bruise 
 and wound our bodies, but an artery no sooner 
 bleeds than the Divine hand is placed upon it to 
 
 [ 193 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 stay the flow. A wound is no sooner made than the 
 healing process is set on foot. Pain reaches a certain 
 point and insensibility comes on, — for fainting is 
 the natural anodyne of curable briefs, as death is 
 the remedy of those which are intolerable. 
 
 I am satisfied, that, as we grow older, we learn 
 to look upon our bodies more and more as a tempor- 
 ary possession and less and less as identified with 
 ourselves. In early years, while the child "feels its 
 life in every limb," it lives in the body and for the 
 body to a very great extent. It ought to be so. 
 
 I am living as agreeably as possible under my con- 
 ditions. ... But in the mean time my sight grows 
 dimmer, my hearing grows harder, and I don't 
 doubt my mind grows duller. But you remember 
 what Landor said : that he was losing his mind, but 
 he did n't mind that, — he was losing or had lost 
 his teeth — that was his chief affliction. Between 
 nature and art I get on very well in the dental way, 
 — as for the mental, I will not answer. 
 
 Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don't you love a cush- 
 ioned seat 
 
 In a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your 
 feet? 
 
 [ 194 ] 
 
The Gardiner Greene House, Pemberton Square 
 
FAREWELL, BOSTON 
 
 Don't you wear warm, fleecy flannels? Don't you muffle up 
 
 your throat? 
 Don't you like to have one help you when you 're putting on 
 
 your coat? 
 
 Don't you like old books you've dog's-eared, you can't re- 
 member when? 
 Don't you call it late at nine o'clock and go to bed at ten? 
 How many cronies can you count of all you used to know 
 Who called you by your christian name some fifty years ago? 
 
 An old tree can put forth a leaf as green as that 
 of a young one, and looks at it with a pleasant sort 
 of surprise, I suppose, as I do at my saucily juvenile 
 productions. 
 
 I think I do not feel any considerable change in 
 my general condition, — my sight grows dimmer, of 
 course, — but very slowly. I have worn the same 
 glasses for twenty years. I am getting somewhat 
 hard of hearing, — "slightly deaf," the newspapers 
 inform me, with that polite attention to a personal 
 infirmity which is characteristic of the newspaper 
 press. The dismantling of the human organism is a 
 gentle process, more obvious to those who look on 
 than to those who are the subjects of it. It brings 
 some solaces with it: deafness is a shield; incapacity 
 unloads our shoulders; and imbecility, if it must 
 come, is always preceded by the administration of 
 
 [ 195 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 one of Nature's opiates. It is a good deal that we 
 older writers, whose names are often mentioned 
 together, should have passed the Psalmist's limit 
 of active life, and yet have an audience when we 
 speak or sing. 
 
 I wish you all the blessings you have asked for 
 me — how much better you deserve them ! 
 
 There is all the difference in the world in the men- 
 tal as in the bodily constitution of different individ- 
 uals. Some must "take in sail" sooner, some later. 
 We can get a useful lesson from the American and 
 English elms on our Common. The American elms 
 are quite bare, and have been so for weeks. They 
 know very well that they are going to have storms 
 to wrestle with; they have not forgotten the gales of 
 September and the tempests of the late autumn and 
 early winter. It is a hard fight they are going to 
 have, and they strip their coats off and roll up their 
 shirt-sleeves, and show themselves bare-armed and 
 ready for the contest. The English elms are of a 
 more robust build, and stand defiant, with all their 
 summer clothing about their sturdy frames. They 
 may yet have to learn a lesson from their American 
 cousins, for notwithstanding their compact and 
 
 [ 196 1 
 
FAREWELL, BOSTON 
 
 solid structure they go to pieces in the great winds 
 just as ours do. We must drop much of our foliage 
 before winter is upon us. We must take in sail and 
 throw over cargo, if necessary, to keep us afloat. 
 
 There are no times like the old times, — they shall never be 
 
 forgot ! 
 There is no place like the old place, — keep green the dear old 
 
 spot! 
 There are no friends like our old friends, — may Heaven 
 
 prolong their lives! 
 There are no loves like our old loves, — God bless our loving 
 
 wives ! 
 
 At fifty, your vessel is staunch, and you are on 
 deck with the rest, in all weathers. At sixty, the 
 vessel still floats, and you are in the cabin. At 
 seventy, you, with a few fellow-passengers, are on a 
 raft. At eighty, you are on a spar, to which, possi- 
 bly, one, or two, or three friends of about your own 
 age are still clinging. After that, you must expect 
 soon to find yourself alone, if you are still floating, 
 with only a life-preserver to keep your old white- 
 bearded chin above water. 
 
 My friends — contemporary ones — are all gone 
 pretty much. James Clarke was the one I miss 
 most. William Amory I saw a good deal of in these 
 last years. Asa Gray I liked exceedingly, though I 
 
 [ 197 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 did not see him very often. Herman Inches I go to 
 see pretty often, but he is gradually wearing out, 
 after outliving almost everybody who expected to 
 go to his funeral. 
 
 You make fun of our Class meeting [1889]. It was 
 not very exhilarating, but we got through it pretty 
 well. Two who were there last year were missing. 
 . . . There were six of us. . . Stickney and Smith 
 were both stone deaf, and kept up some kind of tele- 
 phony with each other. I read them a poem in which 
 were two lines that I can remember: "So ends 'The 
 Boys' a lifelong play;" and "Farewell! I let the 
 curtain fall. " The drama was really carried out very 
 well. All kinds of characters were represented, and 
 we appeared on the stage in larger numbers for a 
 longer time than any class of our generation. . . . 
 
 How strange it is to see the sons of our contem- 
 poraries getting gray, and their grandchildren get- 
 ting engaged and married. I take the labuntur anni 
 without many eheus. The truth is, Nature has her 
 anodynes, and Old Age carries one of them in his 
 pocket. It is some kind of narcotic; it dulls our sen- 
 sibility; it tends to make us sleepy and indifferent; 
 and, in lightening our responsibilities (which Presi- 
 dent Walker spoke of as one of our chief blessings), 
 
 [ 198 ] 
 
FAREWELL, BOSTON 
 
 rids us of many of our worries. I don't think you 
 grow old, and in many ways I do not feel as if I did. 
 But sight and hearing won't listen to any nonsense. 
 
 The class of 1829 at Harvard College, of which I 
 am a member, graduated, according to the triennial, 
 fifty-nine in number. It is sixty years, then, since 
 that time; and as they were, on an average, about 
 twenty years old, those who survive must have 
 reached fourscore years. Of the fifty-nine graduates 
 ten only are living, or were at the last accounts ; one 
 in six very nearly. In the first ten years after gradu- 
 ation, our third decade, when we were between 
 twenty and thirty years old, we lost three members, 
 — about one in twenty; between the ages of thirty 
 and forty, eight died, — one in seven of those the 
 decade began with; from forty to fifty, only two, — 
 or one in twenty -four; from fifty to sixty, eight, — 
 or one in six; from sixty to seventy, fifteen, — or 
 two out of every five; from seventy to eighty, 
 twelve, — or one in two. The greatly increased 
 mortality which began with the seventh decade 
 went on steadily increasing. At sixty we come 
 "within range of the rifle-pits," to borrow an ex- 
 pression from my friend Weir Mitchell. 
 
 [ 199 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 At the last annual dinner every effort was made 
 to bring all the survivors of the class together. Six 
 of the ten living members were there, — six old 
 men in place of the thirty or forty classmates who 
 surrounded the long, oval table in 1859, when I 
 asked, "Has any old fellow got mixed with the 
 boys?" — "boys" whose tongues were as the vi- 
 brating leaves of the forest; whose talk was like the 
 voice of many waters; whose laugh was as the 
 breaking of mighty waves upon the seashore. 
 Among the six at our late dinner was our first 
 scholar, and the thorough-bred and accomplished 
 engineer who held the city of Lawrence in his brain 
 before it spread itself out along the banks of the 
 Merrimac. There, too, was the poet whose National 
 Hymn, "My Country, 't is of thee," is known to 
 more millions, and dearer to many of them, than all 
 the other songs written since the Psalms of David. 
 Four of our six were clergymen; the engineer and 
 the present writer completed the list. Were we 
 melancholy? Did we talk of graveyards and epi- 
 taphs? No, — we remembered our dead tenderly, 
 serenely, feeling deeply what we had lost in those 
 who but a little while ago were with us. . . . We were 
 not the moping, complaining graybeards that many 
 
 [ 200 ] 
 
FAREWELL, BOSTON 
 
 might suppose we must have been. We had been 
 favored with the blessing of long life. We had seen 
 the drama well into its fifth act. The sun still 
 warmed us, the air was still grateful and life-giving. 
 
 Well, let the present do its best, 
 
 We trust our Maker for the rest, 
 
 As on our way we plod; 
 
 Our souls, full dressed in fleshly suits, 
 
 Love air and sunshine, flowers and fruits, 
 
 The daisies better than their roots 
 
 Beneath the grassy sod. 
 
 Not bed-time yet! The full-blown flower 
 Of all the year — this evening hour — 
 With friendship's flame is bright; 
 Life is still sweet, the heavens are fair, 
 Though fields are brown and woods are bare, 
 And many a joy is left to share 
 Before we say Good-night! 
 
 I have sometimes thought that I loved so well the 
 accidents of this temporary terrestrial residence, its 
 endeared localities, its precious affections, its pleas- 
 ing variety of occupation, its alternations of excited 
 and gratified curiosity, and whatever else comes 
 nearest to the longings of the natural man, that I 
 might be wickedly homesick in a far-off spiritual 
 realm where such toys are done with. 
 
 [ 201 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 In whatever world I may find myself, I hope I 
 shall always love our poor little spheroid, so long my 
 home, which some kind angel may point out to me 
 as a gilded globule swimming in the sunlight far 
 away. After walking the streets of pure gold in the 
 New Jerusalem, might not one like a short vacation, 
 to visit the well-remembered green fields and flow- 
 ery meadows? 
 
 [Throughout his life Dr. Holmes was fond of church- 
 going, and he was a regular attendant at the services in 
 King's Chapel.] 
 
 I am a regular church-goer. I should go for va- 
 rious 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. . . . 
 
 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 wor- 
 shipped 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 
 
 [ 202 ] 
 
King's Chapel, 1860 
 
FAREWELL, BOSTON 
 
 served from time to time. There on the fifteenth of 
 June 1840, 1 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. 
 
 Is it a weanling's weakness for the past 
 
 That in the stormy, rebel-breeding town, 
 Swept clean of relics by the levelling blast, 
 Still keeps our gray old chapel's name of "Bang's," 
 Still to its outworn symbols fondly clings, — 
 Its unchurched mitres and its empty crown? 
 
 All vanished! It were idle to complain 
 
 That ere the fruits shall come the flowers must fall; 
 Yet somewhat we have lost amidst our gain, 
 Some rare ideals time may not restore, — 
 The charm of courtly breeding, seen no more, 
 
 And reverence, dearest ornament of all. 
 
 The middle-aged and young men 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. 
 
 The pulpit used to lay down the law to the pews; 
 at the present time, it is of more consequence what 
 
 [ 203 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 the pews think than what the minister does, for the 
 obvious reason that the pews can change their min- 
 ister, and often do, whereas the minister cannot 
 change the pews, or can do so only to a very limited 
 extent. The preacher's garment is cut according to 
 the pattern of his hearers, for the most part. 
 
 It is natural enough to cling to life. We are used 
 to atmospheric existence, and can hardly conceive 
 of ourselves except as breathing creatures. We have 
 never tried any other mode of being, or, if we have, 
 we have forgotten all about it, whatever Words- 
 worth's grand ode may tell us we may remember. 
 Heaven itself must be an experiment to every hu- 
 man soul which shall find itself there. It may take 
 time for an earth-born saint to become acclimated 
 to the celestial ether, — that is, if time can be said 
 to exist for a disembodied spirit. We are all sen- 
 tenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, 
 and though the condemned cell of our earthly exis- 
 tence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we 
 have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably 
 comfortable for the little while we are to be confined 
 in it. The prisoner of Chillon 
 
 "regained [his] freedom with a sigh," — 
 [ 204 1 
 
FAREWELL, BOSTON 
 
 and a tender-hearted mortal might be pardoned for 
 looking back, like the poor lady who was driven 
 from her dwelling-place by fire and brimstone, at 
 the home he was leaving for the "undiscovered 
 country." 
 
 The mysteries of our lives and 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. 
 
 How few things there are that do not change their 
 whole aspect in the course of a single generation! 
 The landscape around us is wholly different. Even 
 the outlines of the hills that surround us are changed 
 by the creeping of the villages with their spires and 
 school-houses up their sides. The sky remains the 
 same, and the ocean. A few old churchyards look 
 very much as they used to, except, of course in Bos- 
 ton, where the gravestones have been rooted up and 
 planted in rows with walks between them, to the 
 utter disgrace and ruin of our most venerated ceme- 
 taries. The Registry of Deeds and the Probate 
 Office show us the same old folios, where we can 
 
 [ 205 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 read our grandfather's title to his estate (if we had a 
 grandfather and he happened to own anything) and 
 see how many pots and kettles there were in his 
 kitchen by the inventory of his personal property. 
 . . . The graveyard and the stage are pretty much 
 the only places where you can expect to find your 
 friends as you left them five and twenty or fifty 
 years ago. 
 
 The mossy marbles rest 
 On the lips that he has prest 
 
 In their bloom, 
 And the names he loved to hear 
 Have been carved for many a year 
 
 On the tomb. 
 
 And if I should live to be 
 The last leaf upon the tree 
 
 In the spring, 
 Let them smile, as I do now, 
 At the old forsaken bough 
 
 Where I cling. 
 
 This is the season for old churchyards. . . . The 
 Boston ones have been ruined by uprooting and 
 transplanting the gravestones. But the old Cam- 
 bridge burial-ground is still inviolate; as are the one 
 in the edge of Watertown, beyond Mount Auburn, 
 and the most interesting in some respects of all, that 
 
 [ 206 ] 
 
FAREWELL, BOSTON 
 
 at Dorchester, where they show great stones laid on 
 the early graves to keep the wolves from acting like 
 hyenas. I make a pilgrimage to it from time to time 
 to see that little Submit sleeps in peace, and read 
 the tender lines that soothed the heart of the Pil- 
 grim mother two hundred years ago and more: 
 
 " Submit submitted to her heavenly king 
 Being a flower of that aeternal spring, 
 Near 3 yeares old she dyed in heaven to waite 
 The yeare was sixteen hundred 48." 
 
 Mount Auburn wants a century to hallow it, but 
 is beginning to soften with time a little. Many of 
 us remember it as yet unbroken by the spade, be- 
 fore Miss Hannah Adams went and lay down there 
 under the turf, alone, — "first tenant of Mount 
 Auburn." The thunder-storms do not frighten the 
 poor little woman now as they used to in those 
 early days when I remember her among the living. 
 There are many names of those whom we have 
 loved and honored on the marbles of that fair 
 cemetery. 
 
 Perhaps you sometimes wander in through the 
 iron gates of the Copp's Hill burial-ground. You 
 love to stroll round among the graves that crowd 
 
 [ 207 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 each other in the thickly peopled soil of that breezy 
 summit. You love to lean on the freestone slab 
 which lies over the bones of the Mathers, — to read 
 the epitaph of stout William Clark, "Despiser of 
 Sorry Persons and little Actions," to stand by the 
 stone grave of sturdy Daniel Malcolm and look upon 
 the old splintered slab that tells the old rebel's 
 story, — to kneel by the triple stone that says how 
 the three Worthylakes, father, mother, and young 
 daughter, died on the same day and lie buried there; 
 a mystery; the subject of a moving ballad, by the 
 late Benjamin Franklin, — as may be seen in his 
 autobiography, which will explain the secret of the 
 triple gravestone; though the old philosopher has 
 made a mistake, unless the stone is wrong. 
 
 The Little Gentleman lies where he longed to lie, 
 among the old names and the old bones of the old 
 Boston people. At the foot of his resting-place is 
 the river, alive with the wings and antennae of its 
 colossal water-insects; over opposite are the great 
 war-ships, and the heavy guns, which, when they 
 roar, shake the soil in which he lies; and in the 
 steeple of Christ Church, hard by, are the sweet 
 chimes which are the Boston boy's Ranz des Vaches, 
 whose echoes follow him all the world over. 
 
 [ 208 ] 
 
The Old North Church, Salem Street 
 
FAREWELL, BOSTON 
 How old was I, ... I the recipient of all these 
 favors and honors? I had cleared the eight barred 
 gate, which few come in sight of, and fewer, far 
 fewer, go over, a year before. I was a trespasser on 
 the domain belonging to another generation. . . . 
 After that leap over the tall barrier, it looks like a 
 kind of impropriety to keep on as if one were still of 
 a reasonable age. Sometimes it seems to me almost 
 of the nature of a misdemeanor to be wandering 
 about in the preserve which the fleshless gate- 
 keeper guards so jealously. 
 
 [Dr. Holmes was able to take his usual walks until 
 within a few days of his death. He had failed gently 
 and almost imperceptibly and seemingly in accordance 
 with his own word-pictures of Nature's gradual relin- 
 quishment of her physical possessions. He was up and 
 about the house on the last day, passing away peace- 
 fully in his chair on Oct. 7, 1894. Two days later he 
 was buried from King's Chapel. In his last letters to 
 Whittier, Dr. Holmes sets forth his cheerful and hope- 
 ful view of old age, and affectionately clasps hands with 
 the dear friend in whose company he is "nearing the 
 snow-line":] 
 
 My dear Whittier, — Here I am at your side 
 among the octogenarians. At seventy we are ob- 
 jects of veneration, at eighty of curiosity, at ninety 
 
 [ 209 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 of wonder; and if we reach a hundred we are candi- 
 dates for a side-show attached to Barnum's great 
 exhibition. . . . 
 
 Old age at best is lonely, and the process of chang- 
 ing one's whole suit of friends and acquaintances 
 has its moments when one feels naked and shivers. 
 
 I have this forenoon answered a letter from the 
 grandson of a classmate and received a visit from 
 the daughter of another classmate, the "Sweet 
 Singer" of the class of '29. So you see I have been 
 contemplating the leafless boughs and the brown 
 turf in the garden of my memory. 
 
 Not less do I prize my newer friendships. 
 
 I hope dear Whittier, that you find much to enjoy 
 in the midst of all the lesser trials which old age 
 must bring with it. You have kind friends all 
 around you, and the love and homage of your fel- 
 low-countrymen as few have enjoyed them, with 
 the deep satisfaction of knowing that you have 
 earned them, not merely by the gifts of your genius, 
 but by the noble life which has ripened without a 
 flaw into a grand and serene old age. I never see 
 my name coupled with yours, as it often is now- 
 adays, without feeling honored by finding myself 
 
 [ 210 ] 
 
FAREWELL, BOSTON 
 
 in such company, and wishing that I were more 
 worthy of it. 
 
 [The Doctor's final words of appreciation offered to 
 his friend Whittier may well be re-echoed on his own 
 behalf, for they were as applicable to the one who ut- 
 tered them, as to him to whom they were addressed by 
 the fellow-octogenarian.] 
 
 I congratulate you upon having climbed another 
 glacier and crossed another crevasse in your ascent 
 of the white summit which already begins to see the 
 morning twilight of the coming century. A life so 
 well filled as yours has been cannot be too long for 
 your fellow-men. In their affections you are secure, 
 whether you are with them here, or near them in 
 some higher life than theirs. I hope your years have 
 not become a burden, so that you are tired of living. 
 At our age we must live chiefly in the past : happy is 
 he who has a past like yours to look back upon. . . . 
 We are lonely, very lonely, in these last years. 
 The image which I have used before this in writing 
 to you recurs once more to my thought. We were 
 on deck together as we began the voyage of life two 
 generations ago . . . the craft which held us began 
 going to pieces, until a few of us were left on the 
 raft pieced together of its fragments. And now the 
 
 [ 211 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 
 raft has at last parted and you and I are left cling- 
 ing to the solitary spar, which is all that still remains 
 afloat of the sunken vessel. . . . Long may it be 
 before you leave a world where your influence has 
 been so beneficent, where your example has been 
 such an inspiration, where you are so truly loved, 
 and where your presence is a perpetual benedic- 
 tion. 
 
 If the time comes when you must lay down the 
 fiddle and the bow, because your fingers are too 
 stiff, and drop the ten-foot sculls because your arms 
 are too weak, and, after dallying a while with eye- 
 glasses, come at last to the undisguised reality of 
 spectacles, if the time comes when the fire of life we 
 spoke of has burned so low that where the flames 
 reverberated there is only the sombre stain of regret, 
 and where its coals glowed, only the white ashes 
 that cover the embers of memory, — don't let your 
 heart grow cold, and you may carry cheerfulness 
 and love with you into the teens of your second 
 century, if you can last so long. 
 
 Dear faithful reader, whose patient eyes have 
 followed my reports through these long months, you 
 and I are about to part company. 
 
 [ 212 ] 
 
FAREWELL, BOSTON 
 
 The Play is over. While the light 
 
 Yet lingers in the darkening hall, 
 I come to say a last Good-night 
 
 Before the final Exeunt all. 
 
 We gathered once, a joyous throng: 
 The jovial toasts went gayly round; 
 
 With jest, and laugh, and shout, and song, 
 We made the floors and walls resound. 
 
 We come with feeble steps and slow, 
 
 A little band of four or five, 
 Left from the wrecks of long ago, 
 
 Still pleased to find ourselves alive. 
 
 Why mourn that we, the favored few 
 Whom grasping Time so long has spared 
 
 Life's sweet illusions to pursue, 
 
 The common lot of age have shared? 
 
 In every pulse of Friendship's heart 
 There breeds unfelt a throb of pain, — 
 
 One hour must rend its links apart, 
 
 Though years on years have forged the chain. 
 
 So ends "The Boys," — a lifelong play. 
 
 We too must hear the Prompter's call 
 To fairer scenes and brighter day : 
 
 Farewell ! I let the curtain fall. 
 
 The curtain has now fallen, and I show myself a 
 moment before it to thank my audience and say 
 
 [ 213 ] 
 
DR. HOLMES'S BOSTON 
 farewell. ... I hope I have not wholly disappointed 
 those who have been so kind to my predecessors. 
 To you, Beloved, who have never failed to cut 
 the leaves which hold my record, who have never 
 nodded over its pages, who have never hesitated in 
 your allegiance, who have greeted me with unfailing 
 smiles and part from me with unfeigned regrets, to 
 you I look my last adieu as I bow myself out of 
 sight, trusting my poor efforts to your always kind 
 remembrance. 
 
 Slow toiling upward from the misty vale, 
 
 I leave the bright enamelled zones below; 
 
 No more for me their beauteous bloom shall glow, 
 Their lingering sweetness load the morning gale; 
 Few are the slender flowerets, scentless, pale, 
 
 That on their ice-clad stems all trembling blow 
 
 Along the margin of unmelting snow; 
 Yet with unsaddened voice thy verge I hail, 
 
 White realm of peace above the flowering line; 
 Welcome thy frozen domes, thy rocky spires! 
 
 O 'er thee undimmed the moon-girt planets shine, 
 On thy majestic altars fade the fires 
 That filled the air with smoke of vain desires, 
 
 And all the unclouded blue of heaven is thine ! 
 
 THE END 
 
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