Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, The

The, a series of papers by Oliver Wendell Holmes. They were published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1857-58, appearing immediately afterward in book form. Twenty-five years before, Dr. Holmes had contributed two papers under the title of The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table to The New England Magazine, a short-lived Boston publication. He now decided to "shake the same bough again, and see if the ripe fruit were better or worse than the early windfalls." Until the appearance of these papers, Dr. Holmes was known chiefly as a medical lecturer, a local wit, and writer of verses. The Autocrat, as he is frequently called, now became famous. Holmes himself declared that Lowell, in demanding a contribution for the Atlantic, awoke him "from a kind of literary lethargy in which he was half slumbering." In form The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table somewhat resembles The Spectator of Addison and Steele. It has the flavor of conversation, but is largely a mono logue-the talk of a thoughtful and learned men enlivened with bright fancy and keen humor. A few quotations will give a hint of pleasing qualities:

As to clever people's hating each other, I think a little extra talent does sometimes make people jealous.

Talk about conceit as much as you like, it is to human character what salt is to the ocean; it keeps it sweet, and renders it endurable...When one has had all his conceit taken out of him, when he has lost all his illusions, his feathers will soon soak through, and he will fly no more. [But] it does not follow that I wish to be pickled in brine because I like a salt-water plunge at Nahant.

Do I think that the particular form of lying often seen in newspapers, under the title, From our Foreign Correspondent, does any harm?- Why, no,-I don't know that it does. I suppose it doesn't really deceive people any more than the Arabian Nights or Gulliver's Travels do. Sometimes the writers compile too carelessly, though, and mix up facts out of geographies, and stories out of the penny papers so as to mislead those who are desirous of information.

You never need think you can turn over any old falsehood without a terrible squirming and scattering of the horrid little population that dwells under it.

Boston State House is the hub of the Solar System. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar.

Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.

Passion never laughs. The wit knows that his place is at the tail of the procession.

Every person's feelings have a front door and a side door by which they may be entered . . . . . Be very careful to whom you trust one of the keys of the side door.

The brain-women never interest us like the heart-women: white roses please less than red.

There are few books that leave more distinctly the impression of a mind teeming with riches of many kinds...The Autocrat, without being a profound book, may be a very profitable one. They greatly err who find in it only the crackling of thorns under a pot; the thorns are there and they crackle, but there is also something in the pot.-Bronson, American Literature.

See Holmes; Atlantic Monthly

Automaton (Greek, signifying self-moving), a lifeless contrivance that imitates the actions of a person or animal. The most familiar automaton is perhaps the cuckoo clock. Not infrequently a wooden cuckoo raises its wings, opens its mouth, and gives the cuckoo call. The celebrated clock in the Cathedral of Strasburg has several automatic features, such as the apostles bowing at the feet of Christ, and Father Time swinging his scythe. Dickens opens his Cricket on the Hearth, it may be remembered, with a convulsive little haymaker on the top of a clock, "jerking away right and left with a scythe in front of a Moorish Palace." In 1738 an ingenious Frenchman made a wooden figure that placed a flageolet to its mouth, blew into the mouthpiece, fingered the stops, and played a piece of music. The same mechanic, by name Vaucanson, made a wonderful duck that was able to swim, dive, shovel up barley, drink, dress its feathers, and quack like a real duck. Another automaton, the accounts of which are somewhat discredited, was made for Louis XIV. It represented a pair of horses, a carriage, a driver, and flunkeys up behind. The driver cracked the lash of his whip, the horses sprang forward at a rapid trot, the carriage came to a stop in front of the throne, a flunkey stepped down and opened the carriage door, and a tiny young lady descended the steps, bowed and presented a petition to the king. Paris is still the center of art works that mimic life. A variety of automatic bears, maidens, cross-legged Turks, musicians, and stage dancers are offered the public at prices varying from a penny to $5,000. Many of the more astonishing contrivances are sold or rented to shopkeepers who place them in their show windows to draw a crowd. See Toys