Over the Teacups

by Oliver Wendell Holmes

I was driving with a friend, the other day, through a somewhat dreary stretch of country, where there seemed to be very little to attract notice or deserve remark. Still, the old spirit infused by “Eyes and No Eyes” was upon me, and I looked for something to fasten my thought upon, and treat as an artist treats a study for a picture. The first object to which my eyes were drawn was an old-fashioned well-sweep. It did not take much imaginative sensibility to be stirred by the sight of this most useful, most ancient, most picturesque, of domestic conveniences. I know something of the shadoof of Egypt,—the same arrangement by which the sacred waters of the Nile have been lifted, from the days of the Pharaohs to those of the Khedives. That long forefinger pointing to heaven was a symbol which spoke to the Puritan exile as it spoke of old to the enslaved Israelite. Was there ever any such water as that which we used to draw from the deep, cold well, in “the old oaken bucket”? What memories gather about the well in all ages! What love-matches have been made at its margin, from the times of Jacob and, Rachel downward! What fairy legends hover over it, what fearful mysteries has it hidden! The beautiful well-sweep! It is too rarely that we see it, and as it dies out and gives place to the odiously convenient pump, with the last patent on its cast-iron uninterestingness, does it not seem as if the farmyard aspect had lost half its attraction? So long as the dairy farm exists, doubtless there must be every facility for getting water in abundance; but the loss of the well-sweep cannot be made up to us even if our milk were diluted to twice its present attenuation.

The well-sweep had served its turn, and my companion and I relapsed into silence. After a while we passed another farmyard, with nothing which seemed deserving of remark except the wreck of an old wagon.

“Look,” I said, “if you want to see one of the greatest of all the triumphs of human ingenuity, one of the most beautiful, as it is one of the most useful, of all the mechanisms which the intelligence of successive ages has called into being.”

“I see nothing,” my companion answered, “but an old broken-down wagon. Why they leave such a piece of lumbering trash about their place, where people can see it as they pass, is more than I can account for.”

“And yet,” said I, “there is one of the most extraordinary products of human genius and skill,—an object which combines the useful and the beautiful to an extent which hardly any simple form of mechanism can pretend to rival. Do you notice how, while everything else has gone to smash, that wheel remains sound and fit for service? Look at it merely for its beauty.

“See the perfect circles, the outer and the inner. A circle is in itself a consummate wonder of geometrical symmetry. It is the line in which the omnipotent energy delights to move. There is no fault in it to be amended. The first drawn circle and the last both embody the same complete fulfillment of a perfect design. Then look at the rays which pass from the inner to the outer circle. How beautifully they bring the greater and lesser circles into connection with each other! The flowers know that secret,—the marguerite in the meadow displays it as clearly as the great sun in heaven. How beautiful is this flower of wood and iron, which we were ready to pass by without wasting a look upon it! But its beauty is only the beginning of its wonderful claim upon us for our admiration. Look at that field of flowering grass, the triticum vulgare,—see how its waves follow the breeze in satiny alternations of light and shadow. You admire it for its lovely aspect; but when you remember that this flowering grass is wheat, the finest food of the highest human races, it gains a dignity, a glory, that its beauty alone could not give it.

“Now look at that exquisite structure lying neglected and disgraced, but essentially unchanged in its perfection, before you. That slight and delicate-looking fabric has stood such a trial as hardly any slender contrivance, excepting always the valves of the heart, was ever subjected to. It has rattled for years over the cobble-stones of a rough city pavement. It has climbed over all the accidental obstructions it met in the highway, and dropped into all the holes and deep ruts that made the heavy farmer sitting over it use his Sunday vocabulary in a week-day form of speech. At one time or another, almost every part of that old wagon has given way. It has had two new pairs of shafts. Twice the axle has broken off close to the hub, or nave. The seat broke when Zekle and Huldy were having what they called 'a ride' together. The front was kicked in by a vicious mare. The springs gave way and the floor bumped on the axle. Every portion of the wagon became a prey of its special accident, except that most fragile looking of all its parts, the wheel. Who can help admiring the exact distribution of the power of resistance at the least possible expenditure of material which is manifested in this wondrous triumph of human genius and skill? The spokes are planted in the solid hub as strongly as the jaw-teeth of a lion in their deep-sunken sockets. Each spoke has its own territory in the circumference, for which it is responsible. According to the load the vehicle is expected to carry, they are few or many, stout or slender, but they share their joint labor with absolute justice,—not one does more, not one does less, than its just proportion. The outer end of the spokes is received into the deep mortise of the wooden fellies, and the structure appears to be complete. But how long would it take to turn that circle into a polygon, unless some mighty counteracting force should prevent it? See the iron tire brought hot from the furnace and laid around the smoking circumference. Once in place, the workman cools the hot iron; and as it shrinks with a force that seems like a hand-grasp of the Omnipotent, it clasps the fitted fragments of the structure, and compresses them into a single inseparable whole.

“Was it not worth our while to stop a moment before passing that old broken wagon, and see whether we could not find as much in it as Swift found in his 'Meditations on a Broomstick'? I have been laughed at for making so much of such a common thing as a wheel. Idiots! Solomon's court fool would have scoffed at the thought of the young Galilean who dared compare the lilies of the field to his august master. Nil admirari is very well for a North American Indian and his degenerate successor, who has grown too grand to admire anything but himself, and takes a cynical pride in his stolid indifference to everything worth reverencing or honoring.”

After calling my companion's attention to the wheel, and discoursing upon it until I thought he was getting sleepy, we jogged along until we came to a running stream. It was crossed by a stone bridge of a single arch. There are very few stone arches over the streams in New England country towns, and I always delighted in this one. It was built in the last century, amidst the doubting predictions of staring rustics, and stands to-day as strong as ever, and seemingly good for centuries to come.

“See there!” said I,—“there is another of my 'Eyes and No Eyes' subjects to meditate upon. Next to the wheel, the arch is the noblest of those elementary mechanical composites, corresponding to the proximate principles of chemistry. The beauty of the arch consists first in its curve, commonly a part of the circle, of the perfection of which I have spoken. But the mind derives another distinct pleasure from the admirable manner in which the several parts, each different from all the others, contribute to a single harmonious effect. It is a typical example of the piu nel uno. An arch cut out or a single stone would not be so beautiful as one of which each individual stone was shaped for its exact position. Its completion by the locking of the keystone is a delight to witness and to contemplate. And how the arch endures, when its lateral thrust is met by solid masses of resistance! In one of the great temples of Baalbec a keystone has slipped, but how rare is that occurrence! One will hardly find another such example among all the ruins of antiquity. Yes, I never get tired of arches. They are noble when shaped of solid marble blocks, each carefully beveled for its position. They are beautiful when constructed with the large thin tiles the Romans were so fond of using. I noticed some arches built in this way in the wall of one of the grand houses just going up on the bank of the river. They were over the capstones of the windows,—to take off the pressure from them, no doubt, for now and then a capstone will crack under the weight of the superincumbent mass. How close they fit, and how striking the effect of their long radiations!”