Baldwin^ s Biographical Booklets \ 
 
 THE STORY OF 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 
 FOR YOUNG READERS 
 
 I 
 
 BY 
 
 SHERWIN CODY 
 
 WERNER SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY 
 
 CHICAGO NEW YORK flOST<)N 
 
BALDWIN'S BIOGRAPHICAL BOOKLETS 
 
 THE STORY 
 
 OF 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
 FOR YOUNG READERS 
 
 BY 
 
 SHERWIN CODY 
 
 Author of "The Art of Short Story Writing," 'Story Composition," 
 "In the Heart of the Hills," etc. 
 
 WERNER SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
HOLMES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE TRUE HUMORIST 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes was the humorist among 
 American poets, always with a smile around his 
 mouth and a twinkle in his eye, and a kindly little 
 half-hidden joke in everything he had to say. He 
 was a humorist of the genuine good-humored sort, 
 the ''genial Autocrat," the kindly and obliging 
 friend (for did he not write a poem on every pos- 
 sible occasion at the request of all sorts of people?) 
 How kind, how pathetic, yet how amusing, are the 
 sweet, quaint lines of "The Last Leaf": 
 
 My grandmamma has said — 
 Poor old lady, she is dead 
 
 Long ago — 
 That he had a Roman nose, 
 And his cheek was like a rose 
 
 In the snow; 
 
 5 
 
But now his nose is thin, 
 And it rests upon his chin 
 
 Like a staff; 
 And a crook is in his back, 
 And a melancholy crack 
 
 In his laugh. 
 
 I know it is a sin 
 
 For me to sit and grin 
 
 At him here; 
 But the old three-cornered hat, 
 And the breeches, and all that, 
 
 Are so queer! 
 
 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. 
 
 Dear Doctor Holmes! He did indeed live to be 
 the last leaf upon the tree ; but to the very end he 
 went scattering his humorous and good-humored 
 words among his friends wherever he was, making 
 people happier as well as wiser, more light-hearted 
 
as well as more thoughtful, until they turned from 
 crying to laughing. "The Last Leaf" is a httle 
 sad, notwithstanding its lightness and fun. But 
 there is no sadness in this, the funniest poem that 
 Holmes ever wrote: 
 
 THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS 
 
 I wrote some lines once on a time 
 
 In wondrous merry mood, 
 And thought, as usual, men would say 
 
 They were exceeding good. 
 
 They were so queer, so very queer, 
 
 I laughed as I would die; 
 Albeit in the general way, 
 
 A sober man am I. 
 
 I called my servant, and he came; 
 
 How kind it was of him 
 To mind a slender man like me. 
 
 He of the mighty limb! 
 
 'These to the printer," I exclaimed, 
 And, in my humorous way, 
 I added (as a trifling jest), 
 
 "There '11 be the devil to pay." 
 
8 
 
 He took the paper, and I watched^ 
 
 And saw him peep within; 
 At the first line he read, his face 
 
 Was all upon the grin. 
 
 He read the next, the grin grew broad, 
 
 And shot from ear to ear; 
 He read the third, a chuckling noise 
 
 I now began to hear. 
 
 The fourth, he broke into a roar; 
 
 The fifth, his waistband split; 
 The sixth, he burst five buttons off, 
 
 And tumbled in a fit. 
 
 Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye 
 I watched that wretched man; 
 
 And since, I never dare to write 
 As funny as I can. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE BIRTH OF OLIVER HOLMES 
 
 " In the last week of August used to fall Com- 
 mencement day at Cambridge," remarks the 
 doctor. ' ' I remember that week well, for some- 
 
thing happened to me once at that time, namely, 
 I was born." 
 
 It was in the year 1809 — the same year that 
 Gladstone, Tennyson, Darwin, and Lincoln were 
 born — and on August 29. There is still in exist- 
 ence an old and yellow almanac that belonged once 
 to Dr. Abiel Holmes, Oliver's father. On the page 
 given to August the numbers of the days run down 
 the left-hand side, i, 2, 3, down to 28, 29, 30, 31. 
 Opposite 29 are two little parallel lines, used as a 
 star or mark of reference, and at the bottom of the 
 page the two little lines are repeated, and after 
 them is written in ink ''son ^. " Of course ''U' 
 stands for ' ' born. " A few grains of black sand 
 were scattered over the wet ink to prevent it from 
 blotting, and some of those grains of sand may be 
 I seen glistening there to this day. Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes was born, and the fact of his birth was 
 thus recorded in the almanac — ''son ^. " 
 
 Samuel Johnson was born in 1709; or, as Holmes 
 expresses it, ''the year 1709 was made ponder- 
 ous and illustrious in English history by his birth. " 
 It appeared to strike Holmes as a huge joke that 
 
lO 
 
 he had been born just one hundred years after Dr. 
 Johnson, and he amused himself by following out 
 the parallel of their lives. Every year he used 
 to take down his copy of Boswell's "Life of John- 
 son" to see what the big, wise old grumbler was 
 doing in that year, just a hundred years before. 
 At last, in the year 1884, when he came to the 
 end of Johnson's life, he said that he felt that 
 the incubus was raised; he had outlived the pon- 
 derous parallel. 
 
 The birth of the ''laughing philosopher," as 
 Holmes has been called, took place in a very old 
 house in Cambridge, close to Harvard College, and 
 'made famous in his poems as ''the old gambrel- 
 roofed house." After the battle of Lexington, 
 General-in-chief Artemas Ward had made this 
 house the headquarters for the rallying of the 
 patriots, and General Warren had stopped there 
 on his way to Bunker Hill. George Washington 
 and other famous men in those days must often 
 have darkened its doors. 
 
 For years it stood, this quaint old house in which 
 Holmes was born and ^rew to manhood, and from 
 
II 
 
 which he went to Harvard College; but before he 
 died the property was sold to the University and 
 the house was torn down. Holmes admitted that 
 it was "a case of justifiable domicide. " He went 
 to pay it a last visit, and ''found a ghost in each 
 and every chamber and closet," and to each he 
 said a fond goodbye. When the land was leveled 
 down he did not care to go that way again. 
 
 Oliver s father, Dr. Abiel Holmes, was an ortho- 
 dox clergyman of the strictest kind. But he was 
 nearly as good-natured as his son. He was a hand- 
 some young man, and all the girls used to say, 
 '' There goes Holmes — look !" 
 
 Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson once 
 found a letter written by his mother when she was 
 a girl, in which she gives some gossip about Dr. Abiel. 
 He sent it to his friend Oliver Wendell and you 
 can imagine the doctor's amusement when he read 
 the following paragraph: 
 
 ' ' Now, mamma, I am going to surprise you. 
 Mr. Abiel Holmes, of Cambridge, whom we so 
 kindly chalked out for Miss N. W., is going to be 
 married and, of all folks in the world, guess who 
 
12 
 
 to! Miss Sally Wendell! I am sure you will not 
 believe it. However, it is an absolute fact, for Harriet 
 and M. Jackson told Miss P. Russell so, who told 
 us; it has been kept secret for six weeks, nobody 
 knows for what. I could not believe it for some 
 time, and scarcely can now; however, it is a fact, 
 they say." 
 
 Evidently girls a hundred years ago wrote much 
 as they do now. 
 
 CHAPTER HI 
 
 AN AMERICAN ARISTOCRAT 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes belonged to one of 
 the most aristocratic families of Boston, and he 
 seemed proud of it. But he was an aristocrat 
 of the right sort. Said he : " I go for the man 
 with the family portraits against the one with the 
 twenty-cent daguerreotype, nnlcss I find out that 
 the latter is the better of the two." He said also: 
 'T like to see worthless rich people yield their 
 places to deserving poor ones, who, beginning 
 with sixpence or nothing, come out at last on 
 
Beacon street and have the sun come into their 
 windows all the year round. " 
 
 He inherited good blood through three lines, 
 each of which was represented in his own name. 
 The Oliver represents his Boston ' ' blue blood, " 
 which came to him from both his father's and his 
 mother's family. One of his ancestors was Lieu- 
 tenant-Governor Andrew Oliver, the distributor of 
 stamps in Boston, whom the people hated so, 
 though he was one of the richest of the old 
 Bostonians, had coaches, a chariot, and negro 
 slaves, as well as good sterling silver plate that 
 exists in the Holmes and Oliver families to this 
 day. 
 
 The Wendell stands for the old Dutch family 
 of Wendells, who had moved from Albany to 
 Boston, and who came originally from Embden, 
 in East Friesland, just on the border line between 
 Germany and the Netherlands. The Wendells 
 are still a wealthy and influential family in Albany, 
 solid old Dutch burghers. Two of Dr. Holmes's 
 Dutch ancestors were shoemakers ; one was a fur 
 trader. 
 
Another of Holmes's forefathers on his mother's 
 side was Governor Thomas Dudley, of whom the 
 famous Cotton Mather wrote these verses : 
 
 " In books a prodigal, they say ; 
 A living cyclopedia ; 
 Of histories of church and priest, 
 A full compendium, at least ; 
 A table-talker, rich in sense, 
 And witty without wit's pretense." 
 
 Governor Dudley's daughter, Mrs. Anne Brad- 
 street, from whom Holmes was descended, was 
 the first American poet. In 1650 she published 
 the first volume of verse ever written by an 
 American. It came out in London, and was enti- 
 tled "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in 
 America," and so popular was it that it went 
 through eight editions. Among the other descend- 
 ants of this first American poetess were William 
 Ellery Channing and Wendell Phillips. 
 
 The first Holmes in the genealogy was a lawyer | 
 of Gray's Inn, London. John Holmes was born 
 near Boston, and went in 1686 to help settle 
 Woodstock, Connecticut. Holmes's great-grand- 
 
15 
 
 mother Bathsheba, the wife of David Hohnes, 
 was a most remarkable lady. She was famous as 
 a doctor and nurse. 
 
 They tell a fine story of her daring, how once, 
 in 1 717, when the snow almost buried the houses 
 after a terrible storm, she climbed out of the 
 upper window of her house in Woodstock and 
 traveled on snowshoes over hill and dale to 
 Dudley, Massachusetts, to attend a sick woman. 
 I She was accompanied by two men, who held the 
 
 Sends of a long pole, while she held on in the 
 middle. 
 
 There is another remarkable story told of her. 
 
 Those were the days of Indian massacres. When 
 
 the men went out to work they took their guns 
 
 with them, leaving the women in the fort or gar- 
 
 ( rison house. 
 
 Once the women when alone asked, "Who will 
 go to the garden for vegetables?" Bathsheba 
 Holmes alone dared venture out. She got her 
 vegetables and came back, but not until years 
 afterward did she know in what danger she had 
 been. Then a solitary, decrepit Indian, broken 
 
i6 
 
 in spirit, called at her door to beg for cider, prom- 
 ising to tell her a story if he got his drink. 
 
 She gave him the cider and he told his story. 
 It related to the brave lady herself. He said that 
 when she went to the garden for vegetables, on 
 that occasion long ago, he had been hidden in 
 the woods and had seen her, and had determined 
 to kill her. He had bent his bow and aimed his 
 arrow well, and in a moment he would have let 
 it fly ; but a mysterious power stayed his arm ; he 
 couldn't shoot. When she had gone safely into 
 the garden he called himself a coward and deter- 
 mined to have her life when she came out. 
 But, as she passed on her way back to the fort, the 
 same power stayed his arm again, and he won- 
 dered that he could not kill a squaw. He had 
 always thought that it was the Great Spirit who 
 held his arm and saved her life. It was in this 
 mysterious way that God preserved the line that 
 was finally to give us the * ' genial autocrat, " the 
 '* good doctor." 
 
 Our poet's grandfather Holmes was a captain 
 in the French and Indian war, and a suro^eon in 
 
17 
 
 the Revolution, dying a year or two before the 
 close of the latter war. 
 
 So you see what a thorough aristocrat, of the 
 true American kind, Oliver Wendell Holmes was. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 Holmes, the poet, was born and brought up in a 
 \ poetic town. The old, yellow, hip-roofed house 
 stood close beside the grounds of Harvard College; 
 and all around were homes of men who were 
 famous or were to be famous. Cambridge has 
 always been a quaint, quiet, peaceful, well-bred 
 town. It stands at the back door of Boston, a half 
 hour's walk from that ' ' hub of the solar system. " 
 Elms and poplars line its streets, its houses look 
 like rich old relics, and everywhere are evidences 
 of comfort and culture. Imagine how George 
 Washington and General Warren, and all the Rev- 
 ( olutionary heroes walked up and down these streets! 
 Already in the time of Washington many famous 
 
i8 
 
 people had lived there; and after him came a whole 
 procession of great men, one after another — Long- 
 fellow, Emerson, Sumner, Garrison, Motley — their 
 names are too many to mention. 
 
 In the center of the town are the Harvard Col- 
 leg^e buildings, of brick and stone, some old, some 
 new, surrounded by broad green lawns, and some 
 of them overrun with ivy. Then, running out from 
 the college grounds as a hub, are streets like the 
 spokes of a wheel. In one direction is Mount 
 Auburn cemetery, where hundreds of the famous 
 dead lie buried, and which is the most beautiful 
 cemetery in the United States. In another direc- 
 tion are Lexington and Concord, while on another 
 side the Charles River flows serenely along 
 towards Boston Bay. 
 
 Everywhere about are to be seen college students 
 and professors. Here is a dapper young man with 
 a pointed beard — the new professor of Eng- 
 lish; there is a bent old man, white-haired, totter- 
 ing in his gait — he is the famous professor of Greek. 
 Some of the students are gay and always cracking 
 jokes ; others have deepset eyes and shabby 
 
19 
 
 clothes — ''plugs " the others call them, for they are 
 very serious minded young fellows and never waste 
 a moment of time. Then there are many more 
 , who go singing and shouting through the streets at 
 ' late hours in the night, causing the people who are 
 abed and asleep to be aroused from their slumbers 
 only to stick their heads out of the windows and 
 silently wish the young fellows were anywhere but 
 in Cambridge. 
 
 Such is this famous college town; and a very en- 
 j joyable place it is to live in. A great many famous 
 ' people come here to preach in the churches, or to 
 I lecture, or to speak at banquets and meetings. A 
 • great many pretty girls come here to see the sights 
 and visit their brothers — and look at the crowds of 
 handsome young men. 
 
 In this old college town, this young aristocrat, 
 the descendant of patriots and governors and men 
 of wealth and women of beauty, grew quietly up 
 to manhood. He went to school, learned his les- 
 sons well, but not too well, never got into trouble, 
 had a good time, and did not fret or worry about 
 anything, or annoy anybody, even his teachers. 
 
20 
 
 There is a story of a famous feruling that he got — 
 only one — and years afterward the teacher came to 
 him to apologize. Holmes in a letter tells in his 
 humorous way how the repentant master came and 
 introduced himself to the now famous poet, how in 
 an embarrassed manner he recalled old days, and 
 finally the feruling, and then said he was sorry he 
 had given it. Holmes declared he had richly de- 
 served it; but the schoolmaster was glad to get 
 away. Apologizing to a pupil for whipping him is 
 indeed an embarrassing thing. 
 
 It was not at school, however, but in his father's 
 library that Oliver learned most. That room in 
 the' corner of the old house where were the dents 
 of the British muskets, was the study, and it was 
 filled from floor to ceiling, every wall, with books. 
 He says he " bumped about among books from the 
 time when he was hardly taller than one of his 
 father's or grandfather's folios. " 
 
 Beside the library, there was the old garden, 
 which he himself has quaintly described. "There 
 were old lilac bushes at the right of the entrance, 
 and in the corner at the left that remarkable moral 
 
21 
 
 pear tree which gave me one of my first lessons in 
 hfe. Its fruit never ripened, but always rotted at 
 the core just before it began to grow mellow. It 
 was a vulgar specimen at best, and was set there 
 no doubt to preach its annual sermon. But in the 
 northern border was a high-bred Saint Michael 
 pear tree, which taught a lesson that all of gentle 
 blood might take to heart; for its fruit used to get 
 hard and dark, and break into unseemly cracks, so 
 that when the lord of the harvest came for it, it 
 was like those rich men's sons we see too often, who 
 have never ripened, but only rusted, hardened, and 
 shrunken. We had peaches, lovely nectarines, 
 and sweet white grapes, growing and coming to 
 kindly maturity in those days. 
 
 ' ' As for the garden beds, they were cared 
 for by the Jonathan or Ephraim of the household, 
 sometimes assisted by one Rube, a little old 
 Scotch gardener, with a stippled face and a 
 lively temper. Nothing but old-fashioned flowers 
 in them — hyacinths pushing their green beaks 
 through as soon as the snow was gone, or 
 earlier; tulips, coming up in the shapes of cornu- 
 
22 
 
 copise; peonies, butting their blunt way through the 
 loosened earth; lilies, roses — damask, white, blush, 
 cinnamon; larkspurs, lupines, and gorgeous holly- 
 hocks. 
 
 "The yellow-birds used to be very fond of some 
 sunflowers that grew close to the pear tree with 
 a moral. I remember their flitting about, golden 
 in the golden light, over the golden flowers, as if 
 they were flakes of curdled sunshine. " 
 
 Oliver had a younger brother John, who was as 
 light of heart and full of fun as he; and gay times 
 they had together in this quiet old town, and this 
 old house with its books and its garden. He says 
 that as a boy he was afraid of the tall masts 
 of ships that used to come up the river, and he 
 would hide his eyes from them. And he was 
 afraid, too, of a great wooden hand, the sign of a 
 glove-maker whose shop he sometimes passed. 
 
 So in happiness and comfort he dreamed his 
 early years away, with his brothers and sisters and 
 father and mother. He was like a fine, luscious 
 pear in that old garden, ripening without rotting at 
 the core, or yet getting hard and full of cracks. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 SCHOOL LIFE 
 
 When young Oliver was ten, he was sent about 
 a mile away to a school where one of the pupils 
 was Margaret Fuller, who afterwards became a 
 famous writer. As a girl, says Holmes, she had 
 the reputation of being ' 'smart. " Once she wrote a 
 school essay which was shown to the father of 
 Oliver. It began, ''It is a trite remark." But 
 Oliver didn't know what trite meant. It was to him 
 a crushing discovery of her superiority. She was 
 stately and distant, as if she had great thoughts of 
 her own ; she was a diligent student, and read a great 
 many of what she called ' ' naw-vels. " "A remark- 
 able point about her, " says Holmes, ' ' was that 
 long, flexile neck, arching and undulating in 
 strange sinuous movements, which one who loved 
 her compared to those of a swan, and one who 
 loved her not to the serpent that tempted Eve." 
 
 After five years at this school, Oliver was taken 
 to Andover, and left at the house of a professor in 
 the theological seminary. He went to Phillips 
 
24 
 
 Academy, where he studied a year preparatory to 
 entering Harvard College. There he met a rosy- 
 faced boy named Phineas Barnes, and the two 
 became great friends. Phineas did not go to Har- 
 vard College, and they were soon separated; but 
 they always remained friends, and kept up a cor- 
 respondence as long as they lived. 
 
 At this time, says one of his biographers, he was 
 an energetic and lively youngster, full of fun and 
 mischief, with tendencies in the way of flageolets 
 and flutes, and with a weakness for pistols and 
 guns and cigars, which latter he would hide in the 
 barrel of the pistol, where his mother's eyes would 
 never care to look for them. 
 
 One of the objects of most interest to the boys 
 at this school was a tutor who had had a dream, 
 that he would fall dead while he was praying. He 
 regarded the dream as a warning, and asked the 
 boys to come in turn to see him before he died. 
 Says Holmes, '^More than one boy kept his eye 
 on him during his devotions, possessed by the same 
 feeling^ the man had who followed Van Amburo-h 
 about with the expectation, let us not say hope, 
 
25 
 
 of seeing the lion bite his head off sooner or 
 later. " 
 
 Years later he revisited these scenes. He says 
 that the ghost of a boy was at his side as he wan- 
 dered among the places he knew so well: " 'Two 
 tickets for Boston, ' I said to the man at the station. 
 
 ' ' But the little ghost whispered, * When you 
 leave this place you will leave me behind you.' 
 
 ' ' ' One ticket for Boston, if you please. Good- 
 bye, little ghost.' " 
 
 At last Holmes returned to Cambridge and 
 immediately entered Harvard College, in ''the 
 famous class of '29." He had many well-known 
 classmates, among them the Rev. Samuel Francis 
 Smith, the Rev. Dr. James Freeman Clarke, and 
 others. Smith was afterwards famous as the 
 author of " My Country, Tis of Thee, "and Dr. 
 Holmes, in one of his poems, thus writes about 
 him: 
 
 And there's a nice 3^oungster of excellent pith, — 
 Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith; 
 But he shouted a song for the brave and the free, — 
 Just read on his medal, * My country ' ' of thee!' 
 
26 
 
 Charles Sumner was in the next class below, and 
 the famous historian Motley two classes below. 
 Though Motley was the youngest student in the 
 college, he and Holmes afterward became the most 
 intimate of friends, and so remained through life; 
 and when Motley was dead Holmes wrote his 
 biography. 
 
 Holmes said Motley looked the ideal of a young 
 poet, and he goes on to describe him: "His 
 finely shaped and expressive features, his large, 
 luminous eyes, his dark waving hair, the singu- 
 larly spirited set of his head, his well outlined 
 figure, gave promise of manly beauty." 
 
 After this description of Motley, read the follow- 
 ing which Holmes gives of himself in a letter to 
 Phineas Barnes: 
 
 "I, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Junior in Harvard 
 University, am a plumeless biped of exactly five 
 feet three inches when standing in a pair of sub- 
 stantial boots made by Mr. Russell of this town, 
 having eyes which I call blue, and hair which I do 
 not know what to call. 
 
 * ' Secondly, with regard to my moral qualities. 
 
27 
 
 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. " 
 
 In another letter written when in college to his 
 friend Phineas he says: 
 
 '''What do I do?' I read a httle, study a 
 little, smoke a little, and eat a good deal. ' What 
 do I think ? ' I think that's a deuced hard ques- 
 tion. 'What have I been doing these three 
 years ? ' Why, I have been growing a little in 
 body, and I hope in mind; I have been learning a 
 little of almost everything, and a good deal of some 
 things." 
 
 And in still another letter, he says: "I have 
 been writing poetry like a madman, and then I 
 have been talking sentiment like a turtle-dove, 
 and gadding about among the sweet faces, and 
 doing all such silly things that spoil you for 
 everything else. This month of May is too good 
 for anything but love." 
 
28 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 COLLEGE LIFE 
 
 Holmes was not only born within the present 
 grounds of Harvard, he grew up there, was a stu- 
 dent of Harvard, and a loyal member of the 
 '' famous class of '29," a lecturer and professor at 
 Harvard, and he became Harvard's most famous 
 poet and man of letters, though Harvard has had 
 so many that were great. So the life at Harvard 
 College was always a part of his life ; and perhaps 
 that is why he was so merry. 
 
 College students are great jokers. In the days 
 of Holmes the students decidedly objected to going 
 to chapel early in the morning, rising as they had 
 to do before daylight on cold winter days. To 
 show that they didn't like this idea of early prayers, 
 they would sometimes fasten firecrackers to the 
 lids of the big Bible, so that when the president 
 or a professor came to lead the exercises and 
 opened the book, they would go off with a snap. 
 
 In those days, too, they had only candles, and 
 as prayers were held before daylight the chapel 
 
29 
 
 candles had to be lighted. Sometimes the stu- 
 dents would put pieces of lead where the wick 
 ought to be, and when the candles burned down 
 to the lead the lights went out, of course leaving 
 the chapel in darkness. At other times the presi- 
 dent would be startled on entering the pulpit by 
 seeing a pig's head standing upright and bristly on 
 his desk. 
 
 The rooms in the college dormitories were very 
 poorly furnished. Instead of matches they had 
 flint and steel and a tinder-box; and in almost 
 every room was a cannon ball, which the boys 
 would heat red-hot and set on a metal frame of 
 some sort to help keep the room warm. Some- 
 times in the middle of the night a wicked student 
 or two would send one of these cannon balls rolling, 
 bump, bump, bump, down the stairs, waking every 
 one and getting the proctor out of bed. Some- 
 times, too, the cannon ball was hot and burned the 
 fingers of the proctor when he tried to pick it up. 
 Then woe to the young lad who was caught and 
 proved to be the culprit. 
 
 In college. Holmes belonged to two or three 
 
30 
 
 clubs. One was the Hasty Pudding Club, which 
 met in the rooms of the members. A worthy old 
 lady of the village called Sister Stimson prepared 
 the pudding in two huge pots; and the "providers" 
 of the evening would sling these, filled with the 
 boiling mush, on a stout pole, and, resting the ends 
 upon their shoulders, mount gallantly to the room 
 where the members were assembled, often in the 
 third or fourth story. A bowl of hasty pudding 
 was always carried to the officer in the entry, as a 
 sort of peace offering; and when the members had 
 eaten as much as they could, and had told all the 
 stories they had to tell, the occupants of nearby 
 rooms were invited to help finish up the repast. 
 
 Another club to which he belonged was called the 
 ** Med. Facs.," and each member or officer had the 
 title of a supposed professor in the Medical Faculty 
 of the University. The first meeting of the year 
 was held in an upper room, draped in black cotton 
 and decorated with death's-heads and cross-bones 
 in chalk; a table, also hung in black, extended 
 lengthwise through the room. In the center sat 
 the mock president and about him were the "pro- 
 
fessors" and ''assistant professors," all in black. 
 Near at hand stood two policemen, usually the two 
 strongest men in the class, dressed in flesh-colored 
 tights. On the stairs outside were crowds of 
 Juniors, from which twenty or thirty were to be 
 initiated into the society. This initiation consisted 
 usually in answering disagreeable questions put by 
 the ''professors," or in doing such things as 
 standing on one's head, crawling about the floor, 
 singing Mother Goose melodies, or making a 
 Latin or Greek oration. 
 
 College Commencement in those days was like 
 a country fair. The people pitched tents on the 
 western side of the college yard (for there were then 
 no hotels, and boarding was expensive), and opposite 
 them were various stands and shows, making a 
 street which by nightfall was paved with water- 
 melon rinds, peachstones, and various refuse, on a 
 ground of straw, — all flavored with rum and tobacco 
 smoke. 
 
 Holmes himself has well described this festival 
 of the college year: 
 
 ' ' The fair plain (the Common), not then, as now. 
 
32 
 
 cut up into cattle pens by the ugliest of known 
 fences, swarmed with the joyous crowds. The 
 ginger-beer carts rang their bells and popped their 
 bottles, the fiddlers played Money Musk over and 
 over and over, the sailors danced the double-shuffle, 
 the gentlemen of the city capered in rusty jigs, the 
 town ladies even took a part in the lusty exercise, the 
 confectioners rattled red and white sugar plums, 
 long sticks of candy, sugar and burnt almonds into 
 their brass scales, the wedges of pie were driven 
 into splitting mouths, the mountains of (clove- 
 sprinkled) hams were cut down as Fort Hill is being 
 sliced to-day; the hungry feeders sat still and con- 
 centrated about the boards where the grosser viands 
 were served, while the milk flowed from cracking 
 cocoanuts, the fragrant muskmelons were cloven 
 into new-moon crescents, and the great water- 
 melons showed their cool pulps sparkling and roseate 
 as the dewy fingers of Aurora. " 
 
 And besides all this, there were the orations of 
 the students, and the speeches of old graduates 
 who now came back famous, and all the bustle and 
 importance of the college men themselves, hurry- 
 
33 
 
 ing to entertain their fair lady friends, their mothers, 
 and their fathers, who had come up to see how 
 they behaved. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 A BUDDING POET 
 
 We have already seen in one of Holmes's letters 
 to Phineas Barnes that while in college he was 
 ''writing poetry like mad." In the appendix to 
 the latest complete edition of his poems you will 
 find some lines translated from the yE^neid while 
 he was a student at Andover, not yet sixteen years 
 old. In college he was poet to the Hasty Pudding 
 Club; had a poem at Exhibition, one at Commence- 
 ment, and was elected class poet; besides that, he 
 joined several classm.ates in a volume of satirical 
 poems on the first regular art exhibition in Boston. 
 
 When he finished his college course he studied 
 law for a year, though his father rather wished him 
 to be a clergyman. Says he, "I might have been 
 a clergyman myself, for aught I know, if a certain 
 clergyman had not looked and talked so like an 
 
34 
 
 undertaker. " Think of the Httle smooth-voiced joker 
 in the pulpit! In another place he says, ''How 
 grandly the procession of old clergymen who filled 
 our pulpit from time to time, and passed the day 
 under our roof, marches before my closed eyes!" 
 You must remember that Holmes was the son of 
 the orthodox clergyman of Cambridge, and these 
 were the men who exchanged pulpits with his father. 
 At first, as an experiment, he studied law for a 
 year; but he did not work very hard. He was 
 writing poetry. A paper called the Collegian was 
 started, and he contributed twenty-five or more 
 poems to it, among which were some of his fun- 
 niest and best. "The Last Leaf" and "The 
 Height of the Ridiculous " were among the work of 
 that first poetic year of his. He never thought 
 much of these poems, though some people consider 
 them quite as good as the poems of the famous 
 Thomas Hood, who wrote — 
 
 ''Take her up tenderly, 
 Lift her with care, — 
 Fashioned so slenderly, 
 Young and so fair!" 
 
35 
 
 Because he didn't like them, or thought them 
 too rolhcking, he did not reprint many of them. 
 Here is one, perhaps the first of his poems ever 
 printed with his name, which appeared in Feb- 
 ruary, 1830, under the title ** Runaway Ballad": 
 
 I 
 
 Wake from thy slumbers, Isabel, the stars are in the sky, 
 And night has hung her silver lamp, to light her altar by; 
 The flowers have closed their faded leaves, and drooped 
 
 upon the plain; 
 Oh! wake thee, and their dying hues shall blush to life 
 
 again. 
 
 II 
 
 Get up! get up! Miss Polly Jones, the tandem's at the 
 
 door; 
 Get up and shake your lovely bones, it's twelve o'clock 
 
 and more; 
 The chaises they have rattled by, and nothing stirs around. 
 And all the world but you and me are snoring safe and 
 
 sound. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I've got my uncle's bay, and trotting Peggy, too, 
 I've lined their tripes with oats and hay, and now for love 
 and you! 
 
36 
 
 The lash is curling in the air, and I am at your side; 
 To-morrow 3^ou are Mrs. Snaggs, my bold and blooming 
 bride. 
 
 Here is another, entitled *' Romance": 
 
 Oil! she was a maid of a laughing eye, 
 And she lived in a garret cold and high; 
 And he was a threadbare, whiskered beau, 
 And he lived in a cellar damp and low. 
 
 But not all his early poems were nonsense like 
 these. One day, in the fall of 1830, he read in the 
 Boston Advertise}' a paragraph saying that the 
 Navy Department at Washington intended to 
 break up the frigate Constitution, which had 
 fought so bravely in the War of 18 12, and won 
 such glory for the American people. Immediately 
 he wrote the following poem, which stands at the 
 beginning of his collected works: 
 
 OLD IRONSIDES. 
 
 Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! ' 
 
 Long has it waved on high, 
 And many an eye has danced to see 
 
 The banner in the sky; 
 
37 
 
 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! 
 
 This stirring poem was published on the next 
 day but one, and was immediately copied into 
 nearly every newspaper in the United States. 
 Copies were even printed as handbills and distrib- 
 
38 
 
 uted about the city of Washington. Because 
 the people felt so badly about it, the Navy 
 Department at last decided not to break up Old 
 Ironsides. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 DOCTOR HOLMES 
 
 Young Mr. Holmes wrote so much poetry he 
 had little time for law during the twelve months 
 after his graduation. So at the end of the year 
 he gave up law and began to study medicine. At 
 first he felt his heart come up into his throat at 
 the sight of skeletons grinning at him from the 
 walls; and his cheek grew pale as the hospital 
 sheets when he passed among the sufferers and 
 saw the dead and dying, or helped to perform a 
 surgical operation ; but after a time these things 
 were to him as nothing, mere every-day affairs. 
 
 About the same time, too, he became a collector 
 of rare old books. In 1833, when he had finished 
 his medical education as far as he could at home, 
 he went to Europe to complete his studies in the 
 
39 
 
 hospitals of Paris and other cities. He remained 
 there two years and a half, and in that time he 
 had a chance to pick up some rare and queer old 
 volumes. 
 
 He returned a full-fledged doctor; but he seems 
 to have felt that he had neglected poetry long 
 enough, and soon published his first book, which 
 is dated 1836. He had been invited to read a 
 long and serious poem before the Phi Beta 
 Kappa society of Harvard, and this he made the 
 chief poem of his little volume, including more 
 than forty others. Beside the early humorous 
 poems which we have already referred to, there 
 was the well-known poem ''The September 
 Gale," beginning, — 
 
 I'm not a chicken ; I have seen 
 Full many a chill September, — 
 
 and ending, — 
 
 And not till fate has cut the las<: 
 
 Of all my earthly stitches, 
 This aching heart shall cease to mourn 
 
 My loved, my long-lost breeches ! 
 
40 
 
 George Ticknor Curtis describes the youthful 
 poet in the following bright paragraph: 
 
 ''Dr. Holmes had then just returned from 
 Europe. Extremely youthful in his appearance, 
 bubbhng over with the mingled humor and pathos 
 that have always marked his poetry, and spark- 
 ling with coruscations of his peculiar genius, his 
 Phi Beta Kappa poem of 1836, delivered with a 
 clear, ringing enunciation, which imparted to the 
 hearers his own enjoyment of his thoughts and 
 expressions, delighted a cultivated audience to a 
 very uncommon degree. " 
 
 Here is another description of the reading of 
 the same poem, which was printed in TJie Atlantic 
 Monthly: 
 
 "A brilliant, airy, and spiritiielle manner, 
 varied with striking flexibility to the changing 
 sentiment of the poem, — now deeply impassioned, 
 now gayly joyous and nonchalant, and anon 
 springing up almost into an actual flight of rhap- 
 sody, — rendered the delivery of this poem a rich, 
 nearly a dramatic, entertainment, such as we have 
 rarely witnessed." 
 
41 
 
 Abraham Lincoln read and admired the poems 
 in this first Httle volume. Once, in conversation, 
 he remarked, ''There are some quaint, queer 
 verses, written, I think, by Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes, entitled ' The Last Leaf, ' one of which 
 is to me inexpressibly touching." He then re- 
 peated the poem from memory, and as he finished 
 this much-admired stanza, — 
 
 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, — 
 
 he said, "For pure pathos, in my judgment, 
 there is nothing finer than those six lines in the 
 English language." Perhaps Lincoln was thinking 
 of the lonely grave of his own first love in Illinois, 
 for he once said, " Oh, I cannot bear the thought 
 of her lying out there with the storms beating 
 upon her." 
 
 Holmes, having received his degree of M.D. 
 from Harvard College, began practicing med- 
 
42 
 
 icine in Boston. He was young and popular, 
 he was related to the best families, and he had 
 the best medical education the world could give. 
 The result was that he had plenty of practice. 
 He didn't believe much in giving medicine, and 
 his doses were usually very small. He would 
 enter the sick-room with a bright, cheerful smile 
 on his face that of itself made the patient soon 
 feel better. In one of his books he gives this 
 maxim : ' ' When visiting a patient enter the sick- 
 room at once, without keeping the patient in the 
 torture of suspense by discussing the case with 
 others in another room." 
 
 Prize medals were offered in Boston for medical 
 essays, and in the first two years after he began 
 practicing medicine he gained three of these 
 medals. In 1838, after two years in Boston, he 
 was appointed professor of anatomy and physiol- 
 ogy in Dartmouth College. He remained there two 
 years, at the end of which time he resigned. He 
 then came back to Boston and married the dau^rh- 
 ter of Judge Charles Jackson. He and his wife 
 took a house in the very heart of Boston, in a 
 
43 
 
 little court leading out of Tremont street, and 
 there they lived for nearly twenty years. ' ' When 
 he first entered that house two shadows glided 
 over the threshold ; five lingered in the doorway 
 when he passed through it for the last time, — and 
 one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to 
 be longer than his own." Those other shadows 
 were his children, his eldest son being taller than 
 the doctor himself. In the surrounding houses 
 there had been sorrow and disappointment and 
 death. ' ' The whole drama of life was played in 
 that stock company's theatre of a dozen houses, 
 one of which was his, and no deep sorrow or severe 
 calamity ever entered his dwelling. Peace be to 
 those walls, forever," the professor said, *'for 
 the many pleasant years he has passed within 
 them. " 
 
 He had two sons and a daughter. The oldest 
 son was named Oliver Wendell, and became a 
 judge. The other son, Edward, was also a law- 
 yer. The daughter, named after his wife Amelia 
 Jackson, married Mr. John Turner Sargent, and 
 it was at her country home at Beverly Farms that 
 
44 
 
 Holmes spent much of his time toward the end of 
 his hfe. 
 
 He practiced medicine again in Boston for seven 
 years, when he accepted an appointment as pro- 
 fessor of anatomy and physiology in Harvard 
 Medical School. This professorship he held for 
 thirty-five years, when he resigned on account of 
 old age. 
 
 He had a beautiful country home called Canoe 
 Place, in the Berkshire Hills, in western Massa- 
 chusetts. There he spent ''seven happy summer 
 vacations, which," he declares, "stand in his 
 memory like the seven golden candlesticks seen in 
 the beatific vision of the holy dreamer." Some 
 famous literary people lived near by, among them 
 Herman Melville, the novelist and traveler, and 
 not far away were Miss Sedgwick and Fanny 
 Kemble, and for a short time Hawthorne. The 
 doctor's dwelling was a modest one, he tells us, — 
 "not glorious, yet not unlovely in the youth of its 
 drab and mahogany, — full of great and little boys' 
 playthings." This place had come to him by 
 inheritance from his mother. 
 
45 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE AUTOCRAT 
 
 In 1852 Holmes delivered a course of lectures 
 on the ''English Poets of the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury," — Wordsworth, Moore, Keats, Shelley, and 
 others. At the end of each lecture he read a 
 poem, and these poems now appear in his collected 
 works as ' * After a Lecture on Wordsworth, " 
 "After a Lecture on Moore," etc. 
 
 In a letter to an official he states the terms on 
 which he is willing to give this course of lectures in 
 various towns and cities: 
 
 ' ' My terms for a lecture, when I stay over 
 night, are fifteen dollars and expenses, a room 
 with a fire in it, in a public house, and a mattress to 
 sleep on, — not a feather bed. As you write in 
 your individual capacity, I tell you at once all my 
 habitual exigencies. I am afraid to sleep in a cold 
 room ; I can't sleep on a feather bed ; I will not 
 go to private houses ; and I have fixed upon the 
 sum mentioned as what it is worth to go away for 
 the night to places that cannot pay more." 
 
46 
 
 The landlady in the "Autocrat of the Break- 
 fast Table " also has something to say about his 
 lectures: 
 
 "He was a man that loved to stick around 
 home as much as any cat you ever see in your life. 
 He used to say he'd as lief have a tooth pulled as 
 go away anywheres. Always got sick, he said, 
 when he went away, and never sick when he 
 didn't. Pretty nigh killed himself goin' about 
 lecturing two or three winters, — talkin' in cold 
 country lyceums, — as he used to say, — goin' home 
 to cold parlors and bein' treated to cold apples and 
 cold water ; and then goin' up into a cold bed in a 
 cold chamber, and comin' home next mornin' with 
 a cold in his head as bad as the horse distemper." 
 
 Perhaps this is why Holmes was not more of a 
 traveler, going to Europe but twice, and hardly 
 ever leaving his birthplace of Cambridge or his 
 home in Boston. 
 
 So twenty years passed by after he published 
 his first volume of poems before he did anything 
 else very literary. His fellow professor Long- 
 fellow had become famous ; and so had Haw- 
 
47 
 
 thorne ; and so, too, had Lowell and Whittier. 
 But Holmes seemed to have no desire for fame. 
 He had written a few amusing poems, and delivered 
 some lectures. 
 
 But when the Atlantic Monthly was about to be 
 started, all the literary folk turned to Holmes and 
 said, ' ' That jolly old fellow could write something 
 good, if he only would. " 
 
 The young publishers, Phillips & Sampson, were 
 enthusiastic about the new magazine. Lowell was 
 chosen editor, and Francis H. Underwood was 
 assistant, though the idea was originally his. 
 They called in Longfellow and Emerson, and 
 Motley and Holmes. This distinguished company 
 met at a dinner and talked over the new project. 
 Holmes suggested the name Atlantic Monthly. 
 Longfellow would contribute a poem now and 
 then, and Emerson an essay from time to time ; 
 but poems and essays do not fill up a magazine 
 very fast. So Lowell determined to get some- 
 thing from Holmes, some light, gossipy prose, 
 that should continue on from month to month. 
 The doctor remembered that he had written some 
 
48 
 
 papers twenty-five years before for the ATew Eng- 
 land Jlfao-azine, and he determined to ' ' shake the 
 same bough again " and see what fruit he could 
 oret. So he began where he had left off all those 
 years before with an " As-I-was-saying." And for 
 a year or more, every month in the Atlantic, the 
 *' Autocrat " gave his opinions of life, cracked his 
 little jokes on men and things, recited a poem, or 
 gossiped with his landlady and fellow boarders. 
 And each month that distinguished literary com- 
 pany met at some hotel or restaurant in Boston 
 and had a dinner which was a feast of reason and 
 good things for the mind and heart as well as for 
 the stomach ; and Holmes was the wit and soul of 
 every banquet. 
 
 At last Oliver Wendell Holmes had come before 
 the world as a great poet and a great humorist. 
 The ' ' Autocrat " is the very soul of humor, so 
 genial, so wise in his good advice, so gay in his 
 good nature, so light and sparkling and kind. 
 Now was published "The Deacon's Masterpiece, 
 or, The Wonderful One-Hoss Sha}^"; and by its 
 side that most beautiful of all the poems Holmes 
 
49 
 
 ever wrote, ''The Chambered Nautilus." When 
 the Princess of Wales asked him to write in her 
 album, he copied the last verse of "The Cham.- 
 bered Nautilus," as he had done in the album of 
 many a subject of our great republic. Listen ! 
 Holmes could be stately and beautiful as well as 
 gay and humorous : 
 
 Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
 
 As the swift seasons roll! 
 
 Leave thy low-vaulted past! 
 Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
 Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
 
 Till thou at length art free, 
 Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! 
 
 If you wish to know the wise things Holmes 
 said about anything and everything, read * ' The 
 Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." Here are a 
 few bright sayings which you will not find in that 
 book, but which will give you an idea of the kind 
 of things with which the volume is filled : 
 
 "An Indian is a few instincts on legs, and hold- 
 ing a tomahawk." 
 
 " If a doctor has the luck to find out a new 
 
50 
 
 malady, it is tied to his name like a tin kettle to a 
 dog's tail, and he goes clattering down the highway 
 of fame to posterity with his seolian attachment 
 following at his heels. " 
 
 Gunpowder : * ' Chemistry seals up a few dark 
 grains in iron vases, and lo! at the touch of a 
 single spark, rises in smoke and flames a mighty 
 Afrit with a voice like thunder and an arm that 
 shatters like an earthquake." 
 
 "The scholar's mind is furnished with shelves 
 like his library. Each book knows its place in the 
 brain as well as against the wall or in the alcove. 
 His consciousness is doubled by the books which 
 encircle him, as the trees that surround a lake 
 repeat themselves in its unruffled waters. Men 
 talk of the nerve that runs to the pocket, but one 
 who loves his books, and has lived long with them, 
 has a nervous filament v/hich runs from his sen- 
 sorium to every one of them. " 
 
 * * Slang — is the way in which a lazy adult shifts 
 the trouble of finding any exact meaning in his (or 
 her) conversation on the other party. If both 
 talkers are indolent, all their talk lapses into the 
 
51 
 
 vague generalities of childhood. It is a prevalent 
 social vice of the time, as it has been of times that 
 are past." 
 
 Perhaps the most famous expression in the 
 ''Autocrat" is that in which he calls Boston 
 ' ' the hub of the solar system " (often wrongly 
 quoted as "the hub of the universe"). 
 
 "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" was 
 such a success that it sold the Atlantic Monthly 
 by the thousands of copies. The editors and pub- 
 lishers both said, "This is just the thing : give us 
 more, give us more." So Holmes wrote another 
 book, which he called ' ' The Professor at the 
 Breakfast Table"; and then "The Poet at the 
 Breakfast Table. " 
 
 In the "Autocrat" Holmes said that every man 
 had in him the writing of at least one novel. As 
 the demand for his work was great, he thought he 
 would write one. So he produced ' ' Elsie Venner, 
 a Romance of Destiny." It is a strange story of 
 a girl who has the nature of a snake. Holmes 
 had heard of cases like that of Elsie Venner, and 
 he worked her story oat in a scientific manner. 
 
52 
 
 We read it as if it were really true, and it exer- 
 cises a weird fascination over us. 
 
 Later he wrote another novel, entitled *'The 
 Guardian Angel. " 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 "THE FAMOUS CLASS OF '29" 
 
 Holmes was the poet of the occasional, if ever 
 there was one. If anybody held a meeting about 
 anything, and Holmes was asked to read a poem, 
 he kindly consented to do so. Who ever heard of 
 opening a meeting of a medical society with a poem? 
 Yet Holmes read an original poem at many a 
 meeting of the Massachusetts Medical Society. 
 
 It was at the yearly meeting of *'the famous 
 class of '29" that he read his poems oftenest. 
 Every year for sixty years, this loyal poet remained 
 true to class traditions. A poem from Holmes 
 was always expected, and the class always got it. 
 
 A college class is a band of friends, friends who 
 have passed the merriest years of their lives 
 together. They come to college from the country 
 over, from homes poor and rich, distant and near. 
 
53 
 
 For four years they live together, all on an equal 
 footing, all together blooming into manhood. 
 Then they scatter to their various duties in the 
 world. One is a lawyer, another a journalist, 
 another a clergyman, another a doctor, and others 
 are business men. Yet how can they ever forget 
 those happy years together? 
 
 Each year all those members of the class of '29 
 who could do so would come together at Com- 
 mencement time to renew old memories. Some of 
 the class were perhaps over seas and in foreign 
 lands; some, alas! were dead. So, as the years 
 passed by, the number grew smaller and smaller, 
 and the gathering became sadder and sadder; yet 
 none of them would have missed it. 
 
 The first class poem in Holmes's works is en- 
 titled "Bill and Joe," and begins thus: 
 
 Come, dear old comrades, you and I 
 Will steal an hour from days gone by, 
 The shining days when life was new, 
 And all was bright with morning dew, 
 The lusty days of long ago, 
 When you were Bill and I was Joe. 
 
54 
 
 Most of these verses are of sad memories of 
 happy times gone forever: 
 
 Where, oh, where are the visions of morning, 
 
 Fresh as the dews of our prime? 
 Gone, like the tenants that quit without warning, 
 
 Down the back entry of time. 
 
 But some are poems of dear friendship and 
 pleasure at seeing friends again, hke this, called 
 ' ' Indian Summer " : 
 
 You'll believe me, dear boys, 'tis a pleasure to rise, 
 With a welcome like this in your darling old eyes; 
 To meet the same smiles and to hear the same tone 
 Which have greeted me oft in the years that have flown. 
 
 One poem entitled "The Boys" is well worth 
 remembering, especially the last stanzas: 
 
 Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray! 
 The stars of its winter, the dews of its May! 
 And when we have done with our life-lasting toys, 
 Dear Father, take care of thy children, the Boys! 
 
 During the times of the great Civil War the 
 poems were mostly of a patriotic kind. Here, for 
 
55 
 
 instance, is the way he opens his poem in 1862, 
 entitled "The Good Ship Union": 
 
 'Tis midnight: through my troubled dream 
 
 Loud wails the tempest's cry; 
 Before the gale, with tattered sail, 
 
 A ship goes plunging by. 
 What name? Where bound? — The rocks around 
 
 Repeat the loud halloo. 
 . — The good ship Union, Southward bound: 
 
 God help her and her crew ! 
 
 In 1878 he wrote a poem on "The Last Sur-= 
 vivor, " which opens with these beautiful lines: 
 
 Yes! the vacant chairs tell sadly we are going, going fast. 
 And the thought comes strangely o'er me. Who will live to 
 be the last ? 
 
 Let US add one more verse, a humorous verse 
 in which the joker pretends he's not so very old: 
 
 I don't think I feel much older; I'm aware I'm rather gray; 
 But so are many young folks, — I meet 'em every day. 
 I confess I'm more particular in what I eat and drink. 
 But one's taste improves with culture; that is all it means, 
 I think, 
 
56 
 
 Cayi you read as once you used to? Well, the printing is so bad, 
 No young folks' eyes can read it like the books that once 
 
 we had. 
 Are you quite as quick of hearing? Please to say that once 
 
 again. 
 Do7i't I use plain words, your Revere?ice? Yes, I often use 
 
 a cane. 
 
 Ah, well, — I know — at every age life has a certaiii charm, — 
 You're going? Come, permit me, please, I beg you' II take 
 
 viy arm. 
 I take your arm! Why take your arm? I'd thank you to 
 
 be told 
 I'm old enough to walk alone, but not so very old. 
 
 At last, in 1889, the poems stopped, because 
 there were so few of the class left, and the meet- 
 ings were so sad. In 1891, Holmes writes to a 
 friend: " Our old raft of eighteen-twenty-niners is 
 going to pieces; for the first time no class-meeting 
 is called for the 8th of Januar3^ I shall try to get 
 the poor remnant of the class together at my 
 house; but it is doubtful whether there is life 
 enough left for a gathering of half a dozen. I 
 have a very tender feeling to my coevals." 
 
57 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 A FEW STRAY FACTS 
 
 In 1858 Holmes moved from his house in Mont- 
 gomery Place to 2 1 Charles street, near the 
 Charles River; and here he was neighbor to Gov- 
 ernor Andrew, the war governor of Massachusetts, 
 and James T. Fields, the publisher. He afterward 
 occupied another house on Charles street, and 
 finally, in 1871, moved to Beacon street, where 
 was his home to the end of his life. 
 
 In 1882 he resigned his professorship at Har- 
 vard and devoted himself to literary work, writing, 
 after this, his last book of table talks, which he 
 called ''Over the Teacups." In 1886 he visited 
 Europe. With the exception of the journey which 
 he took when a young man studying medicine, this 
 was his only trip abroad. He was gone only four 
 months, including the voyage both ways, and spent 
 most of his time in the little isle of Britain. It 
 seemed as if he disliked being long away from 
 home, or even away from Boston. 
 
 Dr. Holmes was an ingenious man, and had 
 
58 
 
 many fads and fancies. He was the inventor of 
 the small stereoscope for hand use, — such as those 
 used for looking at photographs. The first one he 
 made himself entirely, all but the lenses, and he 
 often used to say that he might have made a for- 
 tune out of this invention if he had patented it. 
 Yet, he seems never to have regretted that he had 
 not done so, thinking perhaps that the public had 
 been the gainer by his loss. 
 
 A life-long hobby of his was photography — be- 
 ginning in the days when this art was not so easy 
 and common as it is now. He became a really 
 skillful artist in it, and made many pictures of the 
 old gambrel-roofed house and scenes about Harvard 
 College, which have been preserved and may prove 
 useful to future historians. 
 
 Once he thought he could learn to play on 
 the violin. As a matter of fact, he had no ear 
 for harmony, and could never produce music. 
 Still, he shut himself up in his study and 
 scraped away hour after hour, for two or three 
 winters. At the end of that time he could play 
 two or three simple tunes so that they could be 
 
59 
 
 recognized; then he gave it up and never played 
 any more. 
 
 One of his fads was the measuring of large 
 trees. When he traveled about the country he 
 always had a measuring tape in his pocket, and 
 this he would stretch around the trunk of every 
 bio- tree he saw. When he went to England he 
 pulled out his bit of string to see if the giant trees 
 of Old England were as big as the giant trees of 
 New England. He tells with what bated breath 
 and beating, fearful heart he measured one tree in 
 particular in England with a string on which he had 
 measured off the trunk of another big tree in 
 America. - Twenty feet, and a long piece of 
 string left !" he exclaims, when telling of it. 
 ' ' Twenty-one feet — twenty-two — twenty-three, — 
 an extra heart-beat or two,— twenty-four— twenty- 
 five, and six inches over ! ! " 
 
 He finally became so noted as an authority on 
 big trees that he was consulted even by the 
 famous botanist, Professor Asa Gray. 
 
 In "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" 
 you may read of a slice of a hemlock tree, going 
 
6o 
 
 straight to the center, and showing three hundred 
 and forty-two rings, each ring representing a year 
 of hfe. Holmes really had this tree section, and 
 spent much time sticking pins in at the various 
 rings, each pin tagged with the date of some event 
 that was taking place when the ring was forming. 
 
 We have already spoken of his love for old 
 books. In the "Autocrat" he says: "I like 
 books — I was born and bred among them, and 
 have the easy feelings, when I get into their pres- 
 ence, that a stable-boy has among horses. I don't 
 think I undervalue them, either as companions or 
 instructors." He was not only an expert in judg- 
 ing an old and beautiful book, but he understood 
 the art of bookbinding, and sometimes practiced 
 it. Here is a sentence of his about books that we 
 should all remember: "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." 
 
 Any one who has read the stirring ballad of 
 "Old Blue," entitled " How the Old Horse Won 
 
6i 
 
 the Bet, " will guess that Holmes knew something 
 about horse-racing. What could be more vivid 
 than this: 
 
 *'Go !" — Through his ears the summons stung 
 
 As if a battle-trump had rung; 
 
 The slumbering instincts long unstirred 
 
 Started at the old familiar word; 
 
 It thrills like flame through every limb, — 
 
 What means his twent}' years to him? 
 
 The savage blow his rider dealt 
 
 Fell on his hollow flanks unfelt; 
 
 The spur that pricked his staring hide 
 
 Unheeded tore his bleeding side; 
 
 Alike to him are spur and rein, — 
 
 He steps a five-year-old again I 
 
 One of his most cherished memories was that of 
 seeing the famous steed Plenipotentiary win the 
 Derby; this was when Holmes was in England as 
 a young man; and indeed he knew "a neat, snug 
 hoof, a delicate pastern, a broad haunch, a deep 
 chest, a close ribbed-up barrel, as well as any 
 other man in the town. " 
 
 Besides these things, he was fond of boxincr, of 
 
62 
 
 boating, and other forms of sport; and he knew the 
 fine points about all of these manly pastimes. 
 
 You must not think, however, that Holmes was 
 not a hard worker and a careful student. He 
 wrote easily and freely, but revised with the great- 
 est care; and he prepared his college lectures over 
 every year, keeping them up to date while he was 
 constantly studying and reading and learning new 
 things about his profession. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE END COMES 
 
 The life of Oliver Wendell Holmes flowed like 
 a placid river, with scarcely a ripple upon its sur- 
 face. He was born and grew up and passed all his 
 life near that *'hub " he has made so famous, sur- 
 rounded by throngs of friends, never visited by 
 sorrow, always fortunate, always happy. He 
 found amusement in everything, for he looked 
 on the bright side of life and turned everything into 
 humor. And at last he died, painlessly, serenely, 
 
63 
 
 sitting in his chair, having been up and about to 
 the very last day. This final event — we cannot 
 call it sad — occurred October 7, 1894. He was 
 eighty-five years old. 
 
 We cannot better close this study of America's 
 most genial poet-humorist than by quoting the fol- 
 lowing appreciative and most touching Imes from 
 an English journal: 
 
 ''THE AUTOCRAT" 
 
 *' The Last Leaf ! " Can it be true. 
 We have turned it, and on you, 
 
 Friend of all ? 
 That the years at last have power ? 
 That life's foliage and its flower 
 
 Fade and fall ? 
 
 Was there one who ever took 
 From its shelf, by chance, a book 
 
 Penned by you, 
 But was fast your friend for life, 
 With one refuge from its strife 
 
 Safe and true ? 
 
 ^ 5fC 5|s ?tC -^ 
 
64 
 
 From the Boston breakfast table 
 Wit and wisdom, fun and fable, 
 
 Radiated 
 Through all English-speaking places. 
 When were science and the Graces 
 
 So well mated ? 
 
 Of sweet singers the most sane, 
 Of keen wits the most humane. 
 
 Wide, yet clear. 
 Like the blue, above us bent, 
 Giving sense and sentiment 
 
 Each its sphere ; 
 
 With a manly breadth of soul. 
 And a fancy quaint and droll, 
 
 Ripe and mellow ; 
 With a virile power of ''hit," 
 Finished scholar, poet, wit, 
 
 And good fellow ! 
 
 Years your spirit could not tame, 
 
 And they will not dim your fame; 
 
 England joys 
 
 In your songs, all strength and ease, 
 
 And the "dreams " you "wrote to please 
 
 Gray-haired boys." 
 
 — Lo7ido7i Pimch. 
 
I'CJUry (jrvCA. I James Baldwin, Ph. D. 
 
 AMERICANS'' SERIES 
 
 For Young American Readers. 
 
 Baldwin's Biographical Booklets are bound in cloth, 
 four Booklets to the volume, as follows: 
 VOLUMES NOW READY". 
 
 /. Four Great Americans. 
 
 George "Washington^ Benjamin Franklin, 
 Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 By JAMES BALDWIN, Ph. D. 
 
 Cloth. Illustrated. 246 Pages. Price, 50 Cents. 
 
 //. Four American Patriots. 
 
 Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton, 
 
 Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant. 
 
 By ALMA HOLMAN BURTON, 
 Author of " The Story of Our Country," and 
 " Lafayette, the Friend of American Liberty." 
 
 Cloth. Illustrated. 254 Pages. Price, 50 Cents. 
 
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 Paul Jones, Oliver H. Perry, 
 David G. Farragut, George Dewey. 
 
 By MABEL BORTON BEEBE. 
 
 Cloth. Illustrated. 254 Pages. Price, 50 Cents. 
 
 IV. Four American Poets. 
 
 William CuUen Bryant, Henry W. Longfellow, 
 John G. Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
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 Cloth. Illustrated. 254 Pages. Price, 50 Cents, 
 Other Volumes in Preparation. 
 
 WERNER SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY, 
 
 Educational Publishers, 
 
 NEW YORK. CHICAGO. BOSTON. 
 
" FOR BEGINNERS IN READING." • 
 
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 J t2 Pages. Price 30 Cents. 
 
 'T^HE Werner Primer is a growth. It is based on the 
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 most perfect inductive, correlative exercises. 
 
 This famous book has accomplished two results: 
 
 1. It has revolutionized methods of teaching" be- 
 ginners in reading". 
 
 2. It has revolutionized the making of text-books 
 for beginners in reading. 
 
 The * * old style ' ' Primers, First Readers, Primary 
 Readers, etc. , have all been relegated to the past. THE 
 vVERNER PRIMER stands without a rival in original- 
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 in everything needed in the schoolroom for beginners in 
 reading. 
 
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THE 
 
 First Year Nature Reader, 
 
 o? o? o? 
 
 'Pnr firnrlf^fs T nnrl TT By Katherine Beebe 
 
 ror urraaes i ana ii. and nellie f. kingsley 
 
 154 Pages. Price 35 Cents. 
 
 'T^HIS is a remarkably interesting book for children. 
 -*" It is designed to be taken up after the Werner 
 Primer, and has been prepared in the same thorough 
 and beautiful manner. The subject matter follows the 
 seasons as they change from fall to summer, calling 
 attention to the flowers, fruits, birds, and activities of 
 every-day interest. 
 
 The study of Nature is always attractive to the child, 
 and in the First Year Nature Reader are some of the 
 most interesting phases of out-door life, put in a form 
 easily understood and enjoyed by the youngest reader. 
 
 A valuable feature of the book is a list of appropriate 
 stories by well-known authors. These are to be read or 
 told in connection with the reading lessons. At the end 
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 work, such as painting, drawing, modeling, sewing, etc. 
 The book is beautifully illustrated in colors and forms an 
 "ideal First Reader." 
 
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Legends of the Red Children 
 
 o? o? o^ 
 
 For Grades IV and V. mara l. pratt 
 
 J 28 Pages. Price 30 Cents. 
 
 TN contrast with the old, classic tales and the lessons 
 ^ from Nature are these poetic legends of Indian life. 
 Children delight in beautiful stories like these, which 
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 directly cultivate the child's imagination by means of the 
 delightful, poetic fancies. 
 
 The literary style of the author is picturesque and 
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 children. The following extract, from the preface, shows 
 the pleasing character of the writings: 
 
 "Many years ago, when this country of ours was one great forest, 
 * * * there dwelt a race of happy little children. The Red Children, 
 we call them * * * Some wise men, who loved the Red Children and 
 saw the sweetness of their simple stories, gathered them together and 
 told them in a book, so that you and I might read these legends of the 
 Red Children." 
 
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The Story of Our Country. 
 
 ^Ct 0J7 o? 
 
 For Grades V and VI. ^{[^a holman burton 
 
 240 Pages. Price 60 Cents. 
 
 npHIS is a unique and charming work, which not only 
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 ing. It is the story of the people of the United States, 
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 day. 
 
 So skillfully is our country's growth depicted that the 
 whole is one continuous story, as charming as any ro- 
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 The captivating and picturesque style in which it is writ- 
 ten makes the work especially desirable as a supplemen- 
 tary reading book. 
 
 The illustrations are numerous, and are much more 
 than mere pictures, for each one assists in telling the 
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 lishment. 
 
 The author's aim throughout is to awaken in the child 
 an interest in our country's progress and to cherish feel- 
 ings of patriotic pride and love of country. 
 
 Liberal Terms for Supplies to Schools. 
 
SOHRAB AND RUSTUM 
 
 AN EPISODE 
 
 For Higher Grades. matthew arnold 
 
 t23 Pages. Price 40 Cents. 
 
 'T^HIS little volume presents one of the greatest epics 
 -^ of modern times, and introduces the student to 
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 traditional data were gathered together by the ' ' Homer 
 of Persia " into one great epic, and it is on the crowning 
 episode of this great saga that Arnold has based his poem. 
 
 Sohrab and Rustum, more than any other of his 
 works, has placed Arnold among the poets of modern 
 England. It is the masterpiece of his classic and heroic 
 poems. A most interesting introduction, and valuable 
 and abundant notes, have been prepared by Merwin 
 Marie Snell. There is also a bibliography for the use of 
 students. 
 
 This poem has been selected as one of the English 
 requirements for admission into the colleges of the 
 United States. 
 
 Liberal Terms for Supplies to Schools. 
 
afaj/ettcy 
 
 The 
 
 THE BOOK OF 
 THE HOUR for 
 THE YOUTH 
 OF AMERICA.. 
 
 
 Just 
 Published. 
 
 ^rioncf^^^mer/can jCiberti/ 
 
 Z^hc proposal to erect a monument in Paris to the 
 early friend of American liberty, GENERAL 
 LAFAYETTE, by contributions from the patriotic 
 school children of the United States, has aroused 
 national enthusiasm for the memory of this noble 
 
 man. 
 
 In view of the great interest which this 
 fitting and significant movement has awakened in 
 the life, character and services of the heroic soldier 
 and patriot, the Werner School Book Company has 
 just issued, edited by Dr. James Baldwin, 
 
 ''LAFAYETTE 
 
 THE FRIEND OF AMERICAN LIBERTY," 
 
 By Mrs. ALMA HOLMAN BURTON, 
 
 The author of ** Four American Patriots," 
 " The Story of Our Country,' 
 
 A TIMELY CONTRIBUTION OF GREAT VALUE 
 TO PATRIOTIC EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE. 
 
 Etc. 
 
 merner School Book 
 
 ...Company* 
 
 CHICAGO: 378-388 Wabash Ave. 
 NEW YORK: 78 Fifth Ave. 
 BOSTON: 73 Tremont St. 
 
 Educational Publishers, 
 
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 Hall's Elementary Arithmetic 35 
 
 Hall's Complete Arithmetic 60 
 
 DeGarmo's Language Lessons, Book 1 30 
 
 DeGarmo's Language Lessons, Book II 40 
 
 DeGarmo's Complete Language Lessons (One-Book Course) 50 
 
 Brown and DeGarmo's Elements of English Grammar 60 
 
 The Werner Introductory Geography (Tarbell) 55 
 
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 Baldwin's Primary Lessons in Physiology and Hygiene 35 
 
 Baldwin's Essential Lessons in Physiology and Hygiene 50 
 
 Baldwin's Advanced Lessons in Physiology and Hygiene 80 
 
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 First Year Nature Keader ( Beebe and Kingsley) 35 
 
 Old Time Stories Retold (Smythe) 30 
 
 Legends of the Red Children (Pratt) 30 
 
 Baldwin's Biographical Booklets (each) 10 
 
 Bald\\-in's Four Great Americans 50 
 
 Burton's Four American Patriots 50 
 
 Beebe's Four American Naval Heroes 50 
 
 Cody's Four American Poets 50 
 
 Winship's Great American Educators 50 
 
 Burton's Lafayette, the Friend of American Liberty 35 
 
 Burton's Story of Our Country 60 
 
 The Werner Mental Arithmetic 30 
 
 Giffin's Grammar School Algebra 50 
 
 Adams's Physical Laboratory Manual 75 
 
 Hinsdale's Studies in Education 1 00 
 
 Hinsdale's Training for Citizenship 10 
 
 Hinsdale's American Government I 25 
 
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 Barnard's History and Civil Government of Missouri 1 00 
 
 Lewis's History and Civil Government of West Virginia 1 00 
 
 Niles's History and Civil Government of Minnesota 1 00 
 
 Seerley and Parish's History and Civil Gov't of Iowa 1 00 
 
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