Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes

by E. E. Brown

"Surely the Autocrat never felt more powerless than he does at this moment. I meant to come here and say a few almost careless words. I was saying to myself, 'You know very well what you've got to talk about, and you can soon say it.' But," and here the Autocrat's bright face grew serious, "at half-past ten this morning there came to me an elegantly engraved copper-plate invitation to appear here, with a formality and a style about it which showed that I had deceived myself in thinking I could utter a few careless words. There was but one refuge for me, and that was the old one. I can only hold up a copy of verses," and he waved the manuscript deprecatingly.

"But not one word, not one thought of it was in my head before half-past ten to-day. There are things in literature," and here Dr. Holmes dropped his voice to a confidential key, "that are christened 'impromptus,' the authenticity of which I am inclined to doubt. I have the idea that a good many impromptus have cost their authors many sleepless nights.

"I shall tell you what I would have spoken about. I should have said, in the first place, that I have a great sympathy with instructors. I have been an instructor myself. I was for thirty-five years professor in Harvard College, and two years before that professor in Dartmouth College. I enjoyed very much the relations I had with my students in both places. Many of them have lasted up to the present time, and it is pleasant for me every now and then to have a bald-headed man come up to me and tell me he was one of my boys thirty or forty years ago.

"A great many changes have taken place since that time, but two of them are especially interesting. One is the sub-division of teaching. There were six of us who taught the medical graduates of Harvard College during a considerable part of the time when I was professor there. There are now seventy. How much better they are taught I do not know. I presume they are taught well. But a wicked thought came into my head just now—it is not every animal that has the most legs who crawls the fastest. It reminds me of the sirloin of beef one day, which was mince-meat on the second."

All these pleasantries were given in the Autocrat's happiest manner, amidst many interruptions of laughter and applause from his audience.

"I don't mean, however," he added, "to deprecate that which I accomplished by the sub-division into specialties. What I say is rather playful than serious. The next point is the education of women, which I have regarded at a distance, to be sure. But, occasionally visiting Wellesley and the Cambridge Annex, it has been a great delight to me to see how the intellects of the fair sex matched with those of the sterner. I then thought I should say something of the importance of implanting ideas on all the most important subjects at a very early period of life, and I was going to recall my theology which came out of the little primer, and my patriotism which was kindled at the shrine of Dr. Dwight's 'Columbia, Queen of the World.' But all these things I would prefer to leave, and what else I would have said I will defer until the next occasion, I also wish to say here, personally, that it was most unwillingly that I appeared before an audience like this. I felt it was, at my age, more becoming that I should be a listener rather than a speaker." Here he was interrupted by cries of "No! No!" but he shook his head determinedly, saying, "I am speaking seriously now, however difficult it may be to do that. These little verses I have written, and which I am going to read, are really impromptu. They are poorly scrawled, for my hand was unsteady."

Then in a clear, strong voice he read:

"Teachers of teachers! yours the task,
Noblest that noble minds can ask,
High up Aonia's murmurous mount
To watch, to guard the sacred fount
That feeds the stream below.
To guide the hurrying flood that fills
A thousand silvery, rippling rills
In ever widening flow.

Rich is the harvest from the fields
That bounteous nature kindly yields;
But fairer growths enrich the soil
Ploughed deep by thought and wearied toil,
In learning's broad domain.
And where the leaves, the flowers, the fruits,
Without your watering at the roots
To fill each branching vein?

Welcome! the author's firmest friends,
Your voice the surest Godspeed lends.
Of you the growing mind demands
The patient care, the guiding hands
Through all the mists of morn.
And knowing well the future's need,
Your prescient wisdom sows the seed
To flower in years unborn."