Over the Teacups

by Oliver Wendell Holmes

I take from the top shelf of the hospital department of my library—the section devoted to literary cripples, imbeciles, failures, foolish rhymesters, and silly eccentrics—one of the least conspicuous and most hopelessly feeble of the weak-minded population of that intellectual almshouse. I open it and look through its pages. It is a story. I have looked into it once before,—on its first reception as a gift from the author. I try to recall some of the names I see there: they mean nothing to me, but I venture to say the author cherishes them all, and cries over them as he did when he was writing their history. I put the book back among its dusty companions, and, sitting down in my reflective rocking-chair, think how others must forget, and how I shall remember, the company that gathered about this table.

Shall I ever meet any one of them again, in these pages or in any other? Will the cracked Teacup hold together, or will he go to pieces, and find himself in that retreat where the owner of the terrible clock which drove him crazy is walking under the shelter of the high walls? Has the young Doctor's crown yet received the seal which is Nature's warrant of wisdom and proof of professional competency? And Number Five and her young friend the Tutor,—have they kept on in their dangerous intimacy? Did they get through the tutto tremante passage, reading from the same old large edition of Dante which the Tutor recommended as the best, and in reading from which their heads were necessarily brought perilously near to each other?

It would be very pleasant if I could, consistently with the present state of affairs, bring these two young people together. I say two young people, for the one who counts most years seems to me to be really the younger of the pair. That Number Five foresaw from the first that any tenderer feeling than that of friendship would intrude itself between them I do not believe. As for the Tutor, he soon found where he was drifting. It was his first experience in matters concerning the heart, and absorbed his whole nature as a thing of course. Did he tell her he loved her? Perhaps he did, fifty times; perhaps he never had the courage to say so outright. But sometimes they looked each other straight in the eyes, and strange messages seemed to pass from one consciousness to the other. Will the Tutor ask Number Five to be his wife; and if he does, will she yield to the dictates of nature, and lower the flag of that fortress so long thought impregnable? Will he go on writing such poems to her as “The Rose and the Fern” or “I Like You and I Love You,” and be content with the pursuit of that which he never can attain? That is all very well, on the “Grecian Urn” of Keats,—beautiful, but not love such as mortals demand. Still, that may be all, for aught that we have yet seen.

“Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never, canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal,—yet do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
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“More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm, and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting and forever young!”

And so, good-bye, young people, whom we part with here. Shadows you have been and are to my readers; very real you have been and are to me,—as real as the memories of many friends whom I shall see no more.

As I am not in the habit of indulging in late suppers, the reader need not think that I shall spread another board and invite him to listen to the conversations which take place around it. If, from time to time, he finds a slight refection awaiting him on the sideboard, I hope he may welcome it as pleasantly as he has accepted what I have offered him from the board now just being cleared.

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It is a good rule for the actor who manages the popular street drama of Punch not to let the audience or spectators see his legs. It is very hard for the writer of papers like these, which are now coming to their conclusion, to keep his personality from showing itself too conspicuously through the thin disguises of his various characters. As the show is now over, as the curtain has fallen, I appear before it in my proper person, to address a few words to the friends who have assisted, as the French say, by their presence, and as we use the word, by the kind way in which they have received my attempts at their entertainment.

This series of papers is the fourth of its kind which I have offered to my readers. I may be allowed to look back upon the succession of serial articles which was commenced more than thirty years ago, in 1857. “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table” was the first of the series. It was begun without the least idea what was to be its course and its outcome. Its characters shaped themselves gradually as the manuscript grew under my hand. I jotted down on the sheet of blotting paper before me the thoughts and fancies which came into my head. A very odd-looking object was this page of memoranda. Many of the hints were worked up into formal shape, many were rejected. Sometimes I recorded a story, a jest, or a pun for consideration, and made use of it or let it alone as my second thought decided. I remember a curious coincidence, which, if I have ever told in print,—I am not sure whether I have or not,—I will tell over again. I mention it, not for the pun, which I rejected as not very edifying and perhaps not new, though I did not recollect having seen it.

Mulier, Latin for woman; why apply that name to one of the gentle but occasionally obstinate sex? The answer was that a woman is (sometimes) more mulish than a mule. Please observe that I did not like the poor pun very well, and thought it rather rude and inelegant. So I left it on the blotter, where it was standing when one of the next numbers of “Punch” came out and contained that very same pun, which must have been hit upon by some English contributor at just about the same time I fell upon it on this side of the Atlantic. This fact may be added to the chapter of coincidences which belongs to the first number of this series of papers.