Holmes

homz, Oliver Wendell (1809-1894), an American man of letters. He was born in Cambridge, August 29, 1809, and died in Boston, October 8, 1894. His father was the Reverend Abiel Holmes; his mother was a Wendell of Dutch descent. Through her he was related to the orator, Wendell Phillips, and other people of note. He was graduated at Harvard in 1829. His class included more than its share of noted names. At Harvard young Holmes was noted for his waggish contributions to the college paper. The year after his graduation a report came out that the government intended to dismantle the frigate Constitution and to sell it for old iron. Holmes burst into print with an indignant poem named Old Ironsides, one of his best efforts. The poem saved the life of the historic ship for half a century.

Of excellent family, with abundant means, and a favorite in society, Holmes was uncertain for a time what to do with himself. He toyed with law for a year, then abandoned it for the study of medicine. He went abroad for several years, studying chiefly at the University of Paris, but making side trips into England, Germany, and Italy. He finally took his degree at the Harvard Medical School in 1836. About this time he published a small volume of verse, including such poems as My Aunt and The Last Leaf. He now entered upon the practice of medicine, but had few patients. He humorously stated "that the smallest fevers would be thankfully received." In 1839 he received an appointment as a professor of anatomy and physiology at Dartmouth College, a position which he held for a year. He then returned to Boston and took up the practice of medicine. In 1841 he accepted a similar professorship at Harvard, a position which he filled with eminent success until his retirement in 1882. Though his practice had never been extensive, he was made dean of the department of medicine and was regarded as a most acceptable lecturer. Sprightly, witty, and sound, he was ever alert. Students were seldom too weary or listless to hear him with attention. He wrote a series of three novels, Elsie Venner, The Guardian Angel, and A Mortal Antipathy, which bear the stamp of his medical researches. The three constitute a study in heredity, but they do not hold high rank as novels. The interest in them arises from the fact that they were written by so eminent a man as Dr. Holmes.

Leaving Holmes, the lecturer, for Holmes, the essayist and poet, it may be said that he owed much to Lowell, who recognized his rare genius. In 1857 the latter consented to accept the editorship of the Atlantic Monthly on the express condition that Holmes write for its columns. Holmes' first contribution was a series of delightful table chats known as The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. It is his most characteristic work and his best. It is not too much to say that nothing of the sort in print equals the Autocrat. A similar series, called The Professor, and a third, known as The Poet, followed in due order. A fourth volume appeared in 1890. This Dr. Holmes considered the child of his old age. He facetiously dubbed it Over the Tea-cups. Like its predecessors, it is chatty and bright, for Holmes never grew old. It was a standing jest that Dr. Holmes was eighty years young. Our Hundred Days in Europe, published in 1887, is an account of a trip taken in that year, and closes the list of his essay work.

Dr. Holmes' poems fill three of thirteen volumes in the standard edition of his published works. The Chambered Nautilus is, all in all, his greatest poem. Contentment was written in a playful vein. Among his longer poems are The Deacon's Masterpiece, or The Wonderful One Hoss Shay, The Broomstick Train, and How the Old Horse Won the Bet. Nothing else just like them has been written on either side of the Atlantic.

Holmes was much in demand as an after-dinner poet. On the occasion of festivals, club dinners, centennial celebrations, college reunions, dedications, and the like, a program was not considered complete without a poem from Dr. Holmes. Nearly a half of his poems, much of his best work, was written for occasions of this sort. The Boys, For Burns' Centennial, At the Atlanta Dinner, Verses for After Dinner, Once More, For Whittier's Seventieth Birthday, At the Saturday Club, The Old Cruiser, and The Last Survivor are characteristic occasional poems written for after-dinner programs.

Inasmuch as Holmes' poems are quoted more frequently than his prose, room is made here for a paragraph from The Professor, in which the poet-lecturer flays the quacks of his profession:

"Here, look at medicine. Big wigs, gold-headed canes, Latin prescriptions, shops full of abominations, recipes a yard long, `curing' patients by drugging, as sailors bring a wind by whistling, telling lies at a guinea apiece--a routine, in short, of giving unfortunate sick people a mess of things either too odious to swallow or too acrid to hold, or, if that were possible, both at once. You don't know what I mean, indignant and not unintelligent country practitioner? Then you don't know the history of medicine--and that is not my fault."

Stanzas from the Nautilus and the Katydid are quoted under those topics. Other passages are found under GULL; CONSTITUTION; FLOUNDER. See also AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE.

SAYINGS.

The last leaf upon the tree.

Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case and gives the key into the hands of the Angel of Resurrection.

There are but two biographers who can tell the story of a man's life. One is the person himself; the other is the Recording Angel. The autobiographer cannot be trusted to tell the whole truth, though he may tell nothing but the truth; and the Recording Angel never lets his book go out of his own hands.

Wealth is a steep hill, which the father climbs slowly and the son often tumbles down precipitately; but there is a tableland continuous with it, which may be found by those who do not lose their head in looking down from its sharply cloven summit.

I would have a woman as true as death. At the first real lie which works from the heart outward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into a better world, where she can have an angel for a governess, and feed on strange fruits, which shall make her all over again, even to her bones and marrow.

She who nips off the end of a brittle courtesy, as one breaks the tip of an icicle, to bestow upon those whom she ought cordially and kindly to recognize, proclaims the fact that the she comes not merely of low blood, but of bad blood.

God bless all good women! To their soft hands and pitying hearts we must all come at last!

Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else; rarely to those who say to themselves, "Go to, now! let us be a celebrated individual."

TRIBUTES TO HOLMES.

A critic who punctured vice and folly with a lancet so smooth and keen it scarce inflicts any pain.--C. A. Bartol.

Holmes loves fact, yet often salutes with awe the superior angel of imagination. . . . Heaven send us on this side of the Atlantic a teacher so wise and generous, so witty, so tender, and so true!--H. R. Haweis.

I am confident that no writer since Walter Scott has given so much pleasure to so many English-speaking people as he.--Judge Hoar.

A kindlier philosopher never made fun for himself or his fellows.--The Westminster Gazette.

He has become a patriarch of our literature, and all his countrymen are his lovers.--George William Curtis.

A preacher all his life of the most serious gospel of duty and fidelity.--George Willis Cooke.

He is a Montaigne and Bacon under one hat. His varied qualities would suffice for the mental furnishing of half a dozen literary specialists.-John G. Whittier.

As a professional man, he has been thorough and successful; as a man of letters, versatile, brilliant, of the highest culture; as a citizen, patriotic; as a man, an exemplification of elegance of manner and kindliness of heart.--Arthur Gilman.

It may be said truly of Holmes, as Coleridge said of Goldsmith, "He did everything happily."--F. H. Hedge.

The rollicking laugh of Knickerbocker was a solitary sound in the American ear till the blithe carol of Holmes returned a kindred echo.--Curtis.

By his life of spotless purity and transparent sincerity he has crowned the literary life of New England with a diadem of imperishable luster.-Rev. Walter Calley.

His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric, Full of fancy, fun feeling, or spiced with satyric, In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes That are trodden upon are your own or your foes'.--J. R. Lowell.