"Doctor Holmes humorously suggests the following restrictions: 'A licensed corps of interviewers, to be appointed by the municipal authorities, each interviewer to wear, in a conspicuous position, a number and a badge, for which the following emblems and inscriptions are suggested: Zephyrus, with his lips at the ear of Boreas, who holds a speaking trumpet, signifying that what is said by the interviewed in a whisper will be shouted to the world by the interviewer through that brazen instrument. For mottoes, either of the following: Fænum halct in cornu; Hunc tu Romane caveto. No person to be admitted to the corps of interviewers without a strict preliminary examination. The candidate to be proved free from color blindness and amblyopia, ocular and mental strabismus, double refraction of memory, kleptomania, mendacity of more than average dimensions, and tendency to alcholic endosmosis. His moral and religious character to be vouched for by three orthodox clergymen of the same belief, and as many deacons who agree with them and each other. All reports to be submitted to the interviewed, and the proofs thereof to be corrected and sanctioned by him before being given to the public. Until the above provisions are carried out no record of an alleged interview to be considered as anything more than the untrustworthy gossip of an irresponsible impersonality.'"
"What business have young scribblers to send me their verses and ask my opinion of the stuff?" said Doctor Holmes one day, annoyed by the officiousness of certain would-be aspirants to literary fame. "They have no more right to ask than they have to stop me on the street, run out their tongues, and ask what the matter is with their stomachs, and what they shall take as a remedy." At another time he made the remark: "Everybody that writes a book must needs send me a copy. It's very good of them, of course, but they're not all successful attempts at bookmaking, and most of them are relegated to my hospital for sick books up-stairs."
But once a young writer sent from California a sample of his poetry, and asked Holmes if it was worth while for him to keep on writing. It was evident that the doctor was impressed by something decidedly original in the style of the writer, for he wrote back that he should keep on, by all means.
Some time afterward a gentleman called at the home of Professor Holmes in Boston and asked him if he remembered the incident. "I do, indeed," replied Holmes. "Well," said his visitor, who was none other than Bret Harte, "I am the man."
CHAPTER XVII.
LOVE OF NATURE.
IT is city-life, Boston-life, in fact, that forms the fitting frame of any pen-picture one might draw of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and yet even his prose writings are full of all a poet's love for country sights and sounds. Listen, for instance, to this rich word-picture of the opening spring: "A flock of wild geese wedging their way northward, with strange, far-off clamor, are the heralds of April; the flowers are opening fast; the leaves are springing bright green upon the currant bushes; dark, almost livid, upon the lilacs; the grass is growing apace, the plants are coming up in the garden beds, and the children are thinking of May-day....
"The birds come pouring in with May. Wrens, brown thrushes, the various kinds of swallows, orioles, cat-birds, golden robins, bobo'links, whippoorwills, cuckoos, yellow-birds, hummingbirds, are busy in establishing their new households. The bumble-bee comes in with his 'mellow, breezy bass,' to swell the song of the busy minstrels.
"And now June comes in with roses in her hand ... the azalea—wild honeysuckle—is sweetening the road-sides; the laurels are beginning to blow, the white lilies are getting ready to open, the fireflies are seen now and then flitting across the darkness; the katydids, the grasshoppers, the crickets, make themselves heard; the bull-frogs utter their tremendous voices, and the full chorus of birds makes the air vocal with melody."