Over the Teacups

by Oliver Wendell Holmes

“My house is on fire!
Bring me my lyre!
Like the flames that rise heavenward my song shall aspire!

“He would n't do any such thing, and you know he wouldn't. He would yell Fire! Fire! with all his might. Not much rhyming for him just yet! Wait until the fire is put out, and he has had time to look at the charred timbers and the ashes of his home, and in the course of a week he may possibly spin a few rhymes about it. Or suppose he was making an offer of his hand and heart, do you think he would declaim a versified proposal to his Amanda, or perhaps write an impromptu on the back of his hat while he knelt before her?

“My beloved, to you
I will always be true.
Oh, pray make me happy, my love, do! do! do!

“What would Amanda think of a suitor who courted her with a rhyming dictionary in his pocket to help him make love?”

You are right, said I,—there's nothing in the world like rhymes to cool off a man's passion. You look at a blacksmith working on a bit of iron or steel. Bright enough it looked while it was on the hearth, in the midst of the sea-coal, the great bellows blowing away, and the rod or the horse-shoe as red or as white as the burning coals. How it fizzes as it goes into the trough of water, and how suddenly all the glow is gone! It looks black and cold enough now. Just so with your passionate incandescence. It is all well while it burns and scintillates in your emotional centres, without articulate and connected expression; but the minute you plunge it into the rhyme-trough it cools down, and becomes as dead and dull as the cold horse-shoe. It is true that if you lay it cold on the anvil and hammer away on it for a while it warms up somewhat. Just so with the rhyming fellow,—he pounds away on his verses and they warm up a little. But don't let him think that this afterglow of composition is the same thing as the original passion. That found expression in a few oh, oh's, eheu's, helas, helas's, and when the passion had burned itself out you got the rhymed verses, which, as I have said, are its ashes.

I thanked Number Seven for his poetical illustration of my thesis. There is great good to be got out of a squinting brain, if one only knows how to profit by it. We see only one side of the moon, you know, but a fellow with a squinting brain seems now and then to get a peep at the other side. I speak metaphorically. He takes new and startling views of things we have always looked at in one particular aspect. There is a rule invariably to be observed with one of this class of intelligences: Never contradict a man with a squinting brain. I say a man, because I do not think that squinting brains are nearly so common in women as they are in men. The “eccentrics” are, I think, for the most part of the male sex.

That leads me to say that persons with a strong instinctive tendency to contradiction are apt to become unprofitable companions. Our thoughts are plants that never flourish in inhospitable soils or chilling atmospheres. They are all started under glass, so to speak; that is, sheltered and fostered in our own warm and sunny consciousness. They must expect some rough treatment when we lift the sash from the frame and let the outside elements in upon them. They can bear the rain and the breezes, and be all the better for them; but perpetual contradiction is a pelting hailstorm, which spoils their growth and tends to kill them out altogether.

Now stop and consider a moment. Are not almost all brains a little wanting in bilateral symmetry? Do you not find in persons whom you love, whom you esteem, and even admire, some marks of obliquity in mental vision? Are there not some subjects in looking at which it seems to you impossible that they should ever see straight? Are there not moods in which it seems to you that they are disposed to see all things out of plumb and in false relations with each other? If you answer these questions in the affirmative, then you will be glad of a hint as to the method of dealing with your friends who have a touch of cerebral strabismus, or are liable to occasional paroxysms of perversity. Let them have their head. Get them talking on subjects that interest them. As a rule, nothing is more likely to serve this purpose than letting them talk about themselves; if authors, about their writings; if artists, about their pictures or statues; and generally on whatever they have most pride in and think most of their own relations with.

Perhaps you will not at first sight agree with me in thinking that slight mental obliquity is as common as I suppose. An analogy may have some influence on your belief in this matter. Will you take the trouble to ask your tailor how many persons have their two shoulders of the same height? I think he will tell you that the majority of his customers show a distinct difference of height on the two sides. Will you ask a portrait-painter how many of those who sit to hint have both sides of their faces exactly alike? I believe he will tell you that one side is always a little better than the other. What will your hatter say about the two sides of the head? Do you see equally well with both eyes, and hear equally well with both ears? Few persons past middle age will pretend that they do. Why should the two halves of a brain not show a natural difference, leading to confusion of thought, and very possibly to that instinct of contradiction of which I was speaking? A great deal of time is lost in profitless conversation, and a good deal of ill temper frequently caused, by not considering these organic and practically insuperable conditions. In dealing with them, acquiescence is the best of palliations and silence the sovereign specific.

I have been the reporter, as you have seen, of my own conversation and that of the other Teacups. I have told some of the circumstances of their personal history, and interested, as I hope, here and there a reader in the fate of different members of our company. Here are our pretty Delilah and our Doctor provided for. We may take it for granted that it will not be very long that the young couple will have to wait; for, as I have told you all, the Doctor is certainly getting into business, and bids fair to have a thriving practice before he saddles his nose with an eyeglass and begins to think of a pair of spectacles. So that part of our little domestic drama is over, and we can only wish the pair that is to be all manner of blessings consistent with a reasonable amount of health in the community on whose ailings must depend their prosperity.