Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes

by E. E. Brown

The genial, kindly nature of Doctor Holmes is strikingly shown throughout the whole volume. Good, quaint Byles Gridley endears himself more and more to the reader, Gifted Hopkins finds in his heart's choice an appreciative, admiring audience of at least one, Cyprian Eveleth and young Doctor Hurlbut are most happily disposed of, Clement Lindsay receives his reward, Myrtle Hazard emerges from the conflict of mingled lives in her blood with the dross of her nature burned away, aunt Silence throws off her melancholy, Miss Cynthia Badlam repents of her evil manœuvrings and dies "with the comfortable assurance that she is going to a better world," the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker learns to appreciate his patient wife—even Murray Bradshaw, the acknowledged villain of the book, is not without a few redeeming traits, and we close the volume with a sense of hearty goodwill and fervent charity toward all mankind.

CHAPTER XI.

FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE.

BETWEEN the writing of Elsie Venner and The Guardian Angel, Doctor Holmes wrote a number of essays for the Atlantic Monthly, some of which were afterwards collected in the volume entitled Soundings from the Atlantic.

Currents and Counter-currents was published in 1861, and Border-lines of Knowledge in 1862. The two latter books deal with scientific subjects, but are written in such an attractive style that they have been extremely popular not only with students but with the whole reading public. Songs in many Keys, a volume of poems dedicated to his mother, was published by Doctor Holmes in 1862. Mechanism in Thoughts and Morals appeared in 1871, the same year that The Poet at the Breakfast-Table was running as a serial in the Atlantic Monthly, and numerous stray poems were also written in this prolific decade. In 1872 the poet's breakfast talk was published in book form. It is interesting to compare these three volumes—The Autocrat, the Professor, and the Poet. As a series they are as necessary to one another as the three strands of a cable, and yet each volume is, in a certain way, completed in itself. Where in the whole range of the English language, or indeed, of any language, will you find such an overflow of spontaneous wit and humor? While in no sense a story or even a narrative, the breakfast talk is enlivened by wonderfully life-like characters. We can easily imagine ourselves sitting beside them at the social table, and just as it is in real life, these chance acquaintances touch us at different points, awaken various degrees of interest, and are at all times quite distinct from the observer's own individuality.

There is not a page without its sparkle of humor, and nugget of sound philosophy beneath, which the reader appropriates to himself in a delightfully unconscious manner—for the time being, it is he who is the Autocrat, the Professor, the Poet! As some one has truly said, "It is our thoughts which Doctor Holmes speaks; it is our humor to which he gives expression; it is the pictures of our own fancy that he clothes in words, and shows us what we ourselves thought, and only lacked the means of expressing. We never realized until he taught us by his magic power over us, how much each of us had of genius and invention and expression."

Each book has its little romance, and the "Poet" introduces a poor gentlewoman whose story interests us quite as much as does that of the two lovers.

"In a little chamber," he says, "into which a small thread of sunshine finds its way for half an hour or so every day during a month or six weeks of the spring or autumn, at all other times obliged to content itself with ungilded daylight, lives this boarder, whom, without wronging any others of our company, I may call, as she is very generally called in the household, the Lady....

"From an aspect of dignified but undisguised economy which showed itself in her dress as well as in her limited quarters, I suspected a story of shipwrecked fortune, and determined to question our Landlady. That worthy woman was delighted to tell the history of her most distinguished boarder. She was, as I had supposed, a gentlewoman whom a change of circumstances had brought down from her high estate.—Did I know the Goldenrod family?—Of course I did.—Well, the lady was first cousin to Mrs. Midas Goldenrod. She had been here in her carriage to call upon her—not very often.—Were her rich relations kind and helpful to her?—Well, yes; at least they made her presents now and then. Three or four years ago they sent her a silver waiter, and every Christmas they sent her a bouquet—it must cost as much as five dollars, the Landlady thought.