Hand written Poem signed by Oliver Wendell Holmes
The view from the broad bay window in Doctor Holmes' study, recalled his own description:
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.
The gull, high floating, like a sloop unladen,
Lets the loose water waft him as it will;
The duck, round-breasted as a rustic maiden,
Paddles and plunges, busy, busy still.
A microscopical apparatus placed under another window in the study, reminds the visitor of the "man of science," while the books—
A mingled race, the wreck of chance and time
That talk all tongues and breathe of every clime—
speak in eloquent numbers of the "man of letters."
There is the Plato on the lower shelf, with the inscription, Ezra Stiles, 1766, to which Doctor Holmes alludes in his tribute to the New England clergy. Here is the hand-lens imported by the Reverend John Prince, of Salem, and just before us, in the "unpretending row of local historians," is Jeremy Belknap's History of New Hampshire, "in the pages of which," says Doctor Holmes, "may be found a chapter contributed in part by the most remarkable man in many respects, among all the older clergymen,—preacher, lawyer, physician, astronomer, botanist, entomologist, explorer, colonist, legislator in State and national governments, and only not seated on the bench of the Supreme Court of a Territory because he declined the office when Washington offered it to him. This manifold individual," adds Doctor Holmes, "was the minister of Hamilton, a pleasant little town in Essex County, Massachusetts, the Reverend Manasseh Cutler."