The Doctor was soon chatting about his last trip to Europe, and how, though it was August, he went over to Paris to revisit the haunts of his youth, where he had studied medicine (he was lecturer on anatomy in Boston Hospital up to four years ago); how he found it a desert void of all the "old familiar faces;" but his daughter shopped to her satisfaction.
Then turning to modern French literature:
"Who will ever say again that France has no humorists?" remarked the Doctor. "I have been delighting in Daudet's Tartarin."
At the very thought of the Tarasconnais' droll adventures, he laughed. The Autocrat's laugh is, as I said, infectious. It is quick, merry, hearty; he shakes over it in a way not common with any but stout people.
Skipping past other light literature, he stopped to say a word of admiration for Zola's wonderful descriptions of Paris—in fact, for the artist that is in him—but regretted, as everyone does, that such a great writer should prostitute his genius.
Hung upon the wall in a corner was a caricature of "the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," one of the Vanity Fair series. Upon my espying it, the dear old Doctor said, with his merry laugh: "There, you see, I am not a vain man, or I should hide that away."
Vain, no, Oliver Wendell Holmes is the personification of simplicity and good humour; a sunny-hearted man, with a lively enjoyment still of the pleasures of society.
A lady friend told me that, meeting him one day after he had had an ovation somewhere, she asked him:
"Well, Doctor, and are you not getting a little tired of all this cheering and applause?"
"Not a bit," replied he; "they never greet me loud enough, or clap long enough, to please me."