He always kept his eye on the audience, except slightly turning to one side to explain a diagram or subject, “turning his back on no man.”
“He had no offensive habits. We have known lecturers who never began without making faces;” we might add, “and with many a hem and haw, or nose-blowing.”
“Not long ago we heard a very sensible lecturer, and a very estimable man, produce a most ludicrous effect by the above. He had been stating very clearly some important facts, and he then observed,—
“‘The great importance of these I will now proceed to show—’ when he immediately began to apply his pocket-handkerchief most vigorously to his nose, still facing his audience.”
The ludicrousness of this “illustration” may well be imagined. Of course the students lost their gravity, and laughed and cheered vigorously.
Going in to hear Dr. Holmes lecture, at one o’clock one afternoon, recently, the writer was both shocked and astonished, on the occasion of the professor slipping in a pleasing innuendo, by hearing the students cheer with their hands, and stamp with their thick boots on the seats.
I shall have occasion to refer to this splendid man, the pleasing lecturer, the skilful operator, the able author, the ripe scholar, the pride of Harvard and the state,—Dr. O. W. Holmes,—in another chapter.
The homeless Student.
(Scene from the Early Life of a Boston Physician. By permission.)