October 16, 1863.—Mr. F. went in two evenings since to find Professor Holmes. His wife said he was out. “I don’t know where he is gone, I am sure, Mr. Fields,” she said in her eager way, “but he said he had finished his work and asked if he might go, and I told him he might, though he would not tell where he was going.”
Yesterday the “where” transpired. “By the way,” said the Professor, “have you seen that little poem by Mrs. Waterston upon the death of Colonel Shaw, ‘Together’? It made me cry. However, I don’t know how much that means, for I went to see the ‘beautiful Cubas’ in a pantomime the other night, and the first thing I knew down came a great round fat tear and went splosh on the ground. Wasn’t I provoked!”
FROM THE PLAY-BILL OF THE NIGHT OF DR. HOLMES’S “GREAT ROUND FAT TEAR”
The next fragment is neither a letter nor a passage from the diary, but a bit of excellent fooling, in Dr. Holmes’s handwriting, on a sheet of note paper. The meteorological records of 1864 would probably show that there were heavy rains in the course of the year. From Dr. Holmes’s interest in the tracing of Dr. Johnson’s footsteps an even century before his own, it is easy to imagine his fancy playing about the rainfall of the century ahead. I cannot find that this jeu d’esprit, with its entirely characteristic flavor of the “Breakfast Table,” was ever printed by its author.
Letter from the last man left by the Deluge of the year 1964 to the last woman left by the same
My dear Sole Survivoress:—
Love is natural to the human breast. The passion has seized me, and you, fortunately, cannot doubt as to its object.
Adored one, fairest, and indeed only individual of your sex, can you, could you doubt that if the world still possessed its full complement of inhabitants, 823,060,413 according to the most recent estimate, I should hesitate in selecting you from the 411,530,206½ females in existence previous to the late accident? Believe it not! Trust not the deceivers who—but I forget the late melancholy occurrence for the moment!
It is still damp in our—I beg your pardon—in my neighborhood. I hope you are careful of your precious health—so much depends upon it! The dodo is extinct—what if Man—but pardon me. Let me recommend long india-rubber boots—they will excite no remark, for reasons too obvious to mention.