What shapes and fancies, grave or gay,Before us at his bidding come!The Treadmill tramp, the "One Hoss Shay,"The dumb despair of Elsie's doom!The tale of Aris and the Maid,The plea for lips that cannot speak,The holy kiss that Iris laidOn Little Boston's pallid cheek!Long may he live to sing for usHis sweetest songs at evening time,And like his Chambered NautilusTo holier heights of beauty climb!Though now unnumbered guests surroundThe table that he rules at will,Its Autocrat, however crowned,Is but our friend and comrade still.The world may keep his honored name,The wealth of all his varied powers;A stronger claim has love than fameAnd he himself is only ours!
What shapes and fancies, grave or gay,Before us at his bidding come!The Treadmill tramp, the "One Hoss Shay,"The dumb despair of Elsie's doom!The tale of Aris and the Maid,The plea for lips that cannot speak,The holy kiss that Iris laidOn Little Boston's pallid cheek!Long may he live to sing for usHis sweetest songs at evening time,And like his Chambered NautilusTo holier heights of beauty climb!Though now unnumbered guests surroundThe table that he rules at will,Its Autocrat, however crowned,Is but our friend and comrade still.The world may keep his honored name,The wealth of all his varied powers;A stronger claim has love than fameAnd he himself is only ours!
What shapes and fancies, grave or gay,Before us at his bidding come!The Treadmill tramp, the "One Hoss Shay,"The dumb despair of Elsie's doom!
The tale of Aris and the Maid,The plea for lips that cannot speak,The holy kiss that Iris laidOn Little Boston's pallid cheek!
Long may he live to sing for usHis sweetest songs at evening time,And like his Chambered NautilusTo holier heights of beauty climb!
Though now unnumbered guests surroundThe table that he rules at will,Its Autocrat, however crowned,Is but our friend and comrade still.
The world may keep his honored name,The wealth of all his varied powers;A stronger claim has love than fameAnd he himself is only ours!
Mr W.D. Howells then took the chair and was introduced to the company as the representative of the "mythical editor."
In his remarks, Mr. Howells paid the following tribute to the Autocrat:
"The fact is known to you all, and I will not insist upon it, but it was Oliver Wendell Holmes who not only named, but who made theAtlantic. How did he do this? Oh, very simply! He merely invented a new kind of literature, something so beautiful and rare and fine that while you were trying to determine its character as monologue or colloquy, prose or poetry, philosophy or humor, it was gradually penetrating your consciousness with a sense that the best of all these had been fused in one—a perfect form, an exquisite wisdom, an unsurpassable grace. This, and much more than any poor words of mine can say, was the Autocrat, followed by the Professor, and then by the Poet, at the same Breakfast-Table. We pledge him by all these names to-day, not only with the wine in our cups, but with the pride and love in our hearts, where we have enshrined him immortally young, in spite of the birthdays that come and go, and wherewe defy the future that lies in wait for our precious things, to know his quality better, or value his genius more highly than we."
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe was then called upon to respond to the toast, "The girls we havenotleft behind us," and after a few words in reply, she read a fine poem in honor of the illustrious guest.
Charles Dudley Warner was then introduced, and after a short speech, read a poem by H. H., "To Oliver Wendell Holmes, on his seventieth birthday." In these charming lines almost every poem of Doctor Holmes is mentioned with rare tact and skill.
At the close of the poem, President Eliot of Harvard, rose and said:
"It seems to me that it is my duty to remind all these poets, essayists and story-tellers who are gathered here, that the main work of our friend's life has been of an altogether different nature. I know him as the professor of anatomy and physiology in the Medical School of Harvard University for the last thirty-two years, and I know him to-day as one of the most active and hard-working of our lecturers. Some of you gentlemen, I observe, are lecturersby profession, at least during the winter months. Doctor Holmes delivers four lectures every week for eight months of the year. I am sure the lecturers by profession will understand that this task requires an extraordinary amount of mental and physical vigor. And I congratulate our friend on the weekly demonstration of that vigor which he gives in our medical school. Most of you have perhaps the impression that Doctor Holmes chiefly enjoys a pretty couplet, a beautiful verse, an elegant sentence. It has fallen to me to observe that he has other great enjoyments. I never heard any other mortal exhibit such enthusiasm over an elegant dissection. And perhaps you think it is the pen with which Doctor Holmes is chiefly skilful. I assure you that he is equally skilful with scalpel and with microscope. And I think that none of us can understand the meaning and scope of Doctor Holmes' writing, unless we have observed that the daily work of his life has been to study and teach a natural science, the noble science of anatomy. It is his to know with absolute exactness the form of every bone in this wonderful body of ours, the course of every artery, and vein, and nerve,the form and function of every muscle, and not only to know it, but to describe it with a fascinating precision and enthusiasm. When I read his writings I find the traces of this life-work of his on every page. There are three thousand men scattered through New England at this moment who will remember Doctor Holmes through their lives, and transmit to their children the memory of him, as student and teacher of exact science. And let us honor him to-day, not forgetting—they can never be forgotten—his poems and essays, as a noble representative of the profession of the scientific student and teacher."
Mr. S.L. Clemens (Mark Twain) followed President Eliot.
"I would have travelled," he began, "a much greater distance than I have come to witness the paying of honors to Doctor Holmes, for my feeling toward him has always been one of peculiar warmth. When one receives a letter from a great man for the first time in his life, it is a large event to him, as all of you know by your own experience. Well, the first great man who ever wrote me a letter was our guest—Oliver Wendell Holmes. Hewas also the first great literary man I ever stole anything from, and that is how I came to write to him and he to me. When my first book was new, a friend of mine said, 'The dedication is very neat.' 'Yes,' I said, 'I thought it was.' My friend said, 'I always admired it even before I saw it inThe Innocents Abroad.' I naturally said, 'What do you mean? Where did you ever see it before?' 'Well, I saw it some years ago, as Doctor Holmes' dedication to hisSongs in Many Keys.' Of course my first impulse was to prepare this man's remains for burial, but upon reflection I said I would reprieve him for a moment or two and give him a chance to prove his assertion if he could. We stepped into a bookstore and he did prove it. I had really stolen that dedication almost word for word. I could not imagine how this curious thing happened, for I knew one thing for a dead certainty—that a certain amount of pride always goes along with a teaspoonful of brains, and that this pride protects a man from deliberately stealing other people's ideas. That is what a teaspoonful of brains will do for a man, and admirers had often told me I hadnearly a basketful, though they were rather reserved as to the size of the basket. However, I thought the thing out and solved the mystery. Two years before I had been laid up a couple of weeks in the Sandwich Islands, and had read and re-read Doctor Holmes's poems till my mental reservoir was filled with them to the brim. The dedication lay on top and handy, so by and by I unconsciously stole it. Perhaps I unconsciously stole the rest of the volume, too, for many people have told me that my book was pretty poetical in one way or another. Well, of course I wrote Doctor Holmes and told him I hadn't meant to steal, and he wrote back and said in the kindest way that it was all right and no harm done; and added that he believed we all unconsciously worked over ideas gathered in reading and hearing, imagining they were original with ourselves. He stated a truth and did it in such a pleasant way, and salved over my sore spot so gently and so healingly that I was rather glad I had committed the crime, for the sake of the letter. I afterward called on him and told him to make perfectly free with any ideas of mine that struck himas being good protoplasm for poetry. He could see by that that there wasn't anything mean about me; so we got along right from the start.
"I have met Doctor Holmes many times since; and lately he said—however, I am wandering away from the one thing which I got on my feet to do, that is, to make my compliments to you, my fellow-teachers of the great public, and likewise to say I am right glad to see that Doctor Holmes is still in his prime and full of generous life; and as age is not determined by years, but by trouble and by infirmities of mind and body, I hope it may be a very long time yet before any one can truthfully say, 'He is growing old.'"
Mr. Howells then introduced Mr. J.W. Harper of New York, who gave in his remarks a delightful pen portrait of Doctor Holmes, the lyceum lecturer, which we have elsewhere quoted. Mr. E.C. Stedman followed Mr. Harper with a brief speech and graceful poem. Mr. T.B. Aldrich spoke of the "inexhaustible kindness of Doctor Holmes to his younger brothers in literature," and Mr. William Winter paid his tribute to the honoredguest by "The Chieftain," a poem which he named for the occasionHearts and Holmes.
Mr. J.T. Trowbridge then read a poem entitled "Filling an Order," in which Nature compounds for Miss Columbia "three geniuses A 1.," to grace her favorite city. She concludes her mixture as follows:
Says she, "The fault I'm well aware, with genius is the presenceOf altogether too much clay with quite too little essence,And sluggish atoms that obstruct the spiritual solution;So now instead of spoiling these by over-much dilutionWith their fine elements I'll make a single rare phenomenon,And of three common geniuses concoct a most uncommon one,So that the world shall smile to see a soul so universal,Such poesy and pleasantry, packed in so small a parcel.So said, so done; the three in one she wrapped, and stuck the labelPoet, Professor, Autocrat of Wit's own Breakfast-Table."
Says she, "The fault I'm well aware, with genius is the presenceOf altogether too much clay with quite too little essence,And sluggish atoms that obstruct the spiritual solution;So now instead of spoiling these by over-much dilutionWith their fine elements I'll make a single rare phenomenon,And of three common geniuses concoct a most uncommon one,So that the world shall smile to see a soul so universal,Such poesy and pleasantry, packed in so small a parcel.So said, so done; the three in one she wrapped, and stuck the labelPoet, Professor, Autocrat of Wit's own Breakfast-Table."
Says she, "The fault I'm well aware, with genius is the presenceOf altogether too much clay with quite too little essence,And sluggish atoms that obstruct the spiritual solution;So now instead of spoiling these by over-much dilutionWith their fine elements I'll make a single rare phenomenon,And of three common geniuses concoct a most uncommon one,So that the world shall smile to see a soul so universal,Such poesy and pleasantry, packed in so small a parcel.
So said, so done; the three in one she wrapped, and stuck the labelPoet, Professor, Autocrat of Wit's own Breakfast-Table."
C.P. Cranch then read a fine sonnet, and Colonel T.W. Higginson followed with felicitous remarks, a portion of which referring to the father of Doctor Holmes we have quoted elsewhere in the book.
Letters of regrets were then read from R. B. Hayes, John Holmes, the poet's brother, George William Curtis and George Bancroft.
Among others unable to be present, but who sent regrets, were Rebecca Harding Davis, Carl Schurz, Edwin P. Whipple, Noah Porter, George Ripley, Henry Watterson, George H. Boker, Frances Hodgson Burnett, L. Maria Child, Gail Hamilton, Parke Godwin, Donald G. Mitchell, John J. Piatt, Richard Grant White, D.C. Gilman, J.W. DeForest, Frederick Douglass, J.G. Holland, George W. Childs, John Hay and W.W. Story.
Mr. James T. Fields was obliged to fulfil a lecture engagement soon after the speaking began, else he would have read the following fairy tale:—
Once upon a time a company of good-natured fairies assembled for a summer moonlight dance on a green lawn in front of a certain picturesque old house in Cambridge. They had come out for a midnight lark, and as their twinkling feet flew about among the musical dewdrops they were suddenly interrupted by the well-known figure of the village doctor, which,emerging from the old mansion, rapidly made its way homeward.
"Another new mortal has alighted on our happy planet," whispered a fairy gossip to her near companion.
"Evidently so," replied the tiny creature, smiling good-naturedly on the doctor's footprints in the grass.
"That is the minister's house," said another small personage, with a wink of satisfaction.
"Perhaps it is a boy," ejaculated Fairy Number One.
"Iknowit is a boy!" said Fairy Number Two. I read it in the Doctor's face when the moon lighted up his countenance as he shut the door so softly behind him.
"Itisa boy!" responded the Fairy Queen, who always knew everything, and that settled the question.
"If that is the case," cried all the fairies at once, "let us try what magic still remains to us in this busy, bustling New England. Let us make that child's life a happy and a famous one if we can."
"Agreed," replied the queen; "and I will lead off with a substantial gift to the littlenew-comer. I will crown him with Cheerfulness, a sunny temperament, brimming over with mirth and happiness."
"And I will second your Majesty's gift to the little man," said a sweet-voiced creature, "and tender him the ever-abiding gift of Song. He shall be a perpetual minstrel to gladden the hearts of all his fellow-mortals."
"And I," said another, "will shower upon him the subtle power of Pathos and Romance, and he shall take unto himself the spell of a sorcerer whenever he chooses to scatter abroad his wise and beautiful fancies."
"And I," said a very astute-looking fairy, "will touch his lips with Persuasion; he shall be a teacher of knowledge, and the divine gift of eloquence shall be at his command, to uplift and instruct the people."
"And I," said a quaint, energetic little body, "will endow him with a passionate desire to help forward the less favored sons and daughters of earth, who are struggling for recognition and success in their various avocations."
"And I," said a motherly-looking, amiable fairy, "will see that in due time he finds the best among women for his companionship, a helpmeetindeed, whose life shall be happily bound up inhislife."
"Do give me a chance," cried a beautiful young fairy "and I will answer for his children, that they may be worthy of their father, and all a mother's heart may pray that Heaven will vouchsafe to her."
And after seventy years have rolled away into space, the same fairies assembled on the same lawn at the same season of the year, to compare notes with reference to their now famousprotégé. And they declared that their magic had been thoroughly successful, and that their charms had all worked without a single flaw.
Then they took hands, and dancing slowly around the time-honored mansion, sang this roundelay, framed in the words of their own beloved poet:—
Strength to his hours of manly toil!Peace to his star-lit dreams!He loves alike the furrowed soil,The music-haunted streams!Sweet smiles to keep forever brightThe sunshine on his lips,And faith that sees the ring of lightRound Nature's last eclipse!
Strength to his hours of manly toil!Peace to his star-lit dreams!He loves alike the furrowed soil,The music-haunted streams!Sweet smiles to keep forever brightThe sunshine on his lips,And faith that sees the ring of lightRound Nature's last eclipse!
Strength to his hours of manly toil!Peace to his star-lit dreams!He loves alike the furrowed soil,The music-haunted streams!
Sweet smiles to keep forever brightThe sunshine on his lips,And faith that sees the ring of lightRound Nature's last eclipse!
INPages from an old Volume of Life, one of the latest books published by Doctor Holmes, we have a collection of most delightful orations and essays. Some of them we recognize as old, familiar friends. "Bread and the Newspaper," for instance, recalls vividly those sad, terribly earnest days when the civil war was rending not only our land but our hearts. Something to eat, and the daily papers to read—these we must have, no matter what else we had to give up!
War taught us, as nothing else could, what we really were. It exalted our manhood and our womanhood, and showed us our substantial human qualities for a long time kept out of sight, it may be, by the spirit of commerce, the love of art, science, or literature. Those who had called Doctor Holmes "an aristocrat,""a Tory," forgot all their bitter feelings when he said, "We are finding out that not only 'patriotism is eloquence,' but that heroism is gentility. All ranks are wonderfully equalized under the fire of a masked battery. The plain artisan, or the rough fireman, who faces the lead and iron like a man, is the truest representative we can show of the heroes of Crécy and Agincourt. And if one of our fine gentlemen puts off his straw-colored kids and stands by the other, shoulder to shoulder, or leads him on to the attack, he is as honorable in our eyes and in theirs as if he were ill-dressed and his hands were soiled with labor.
InThe Inevitable Trial, an oration delivered on the 4th of July, 1863, before the City Authorities of Boston, Doctor Holmes who had been falsely classed among the enemies of the Anti-slavery movement, spoke as follows:—
"Long before the accents of our famous statesmen resounded in the halls of the Capitol, long before theLiberatoropened its batteries, the controversy now working itself out by trial of battle was foreseen and predicted. Washington warned his countrymen of the danger of sectional divisions, well knowing the line of clearage that ran through the seemingly solid fabric. Jefferson foreshadowed the judgment to fall upon the land for its sins against a just God. Andrew Jackson announced a quarter of a century beforehand that the next pretext of revolution would be slavery. De Tocqueville recognized with that penetrating insight which analyzed our institutions and conditions so keenly, that the Union was to be endangered by slavery not through its interests, but through the change of character it was bringing about in the people of the two sections, the same fatal change which George Mason, more than half a century before, had declared to be the most pernicious effect of the system, adding the solemn warning, now fearfully justifying itself in the sight of his descendants, that 'by an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities.'
"The Virginian romancer pictured the far-off scenes of the conflict which he saw approaching as the prophets of Israel painted the coming woes of Jerusalem, and the strong iconoclast of Boston announced the very year when the curtain should rise on the yet unopened drama.
"The wise men of the past, and the shrewd men of our own time, who warned us of the calamities in store for our nation, never doubted what was the cause which was to produce first alienation and finally rupture. The descendants of the men, 'daily exercised in tyranny,' the 'petty tyrants,' as their own leading statesmen called them long ago, came at length to love the institution which their fathers had condemned while they tolerated. It is the fearful realization of that vision of the poet where the lost angels snuff up with eager nostrils the sulphurous emanations of the bottomless abyss,—so have their natures become changed by long breathing the atmosphere of the realm of darkness."
In this same grand oration occur also these eloquent words:—
"Whether we know it or not, whether we mean it or not, we cannot help fighting against the system that has proved the source of all those miseries which the author of the Declaration of Independence trembled to anticipate. And this ought to make us willing to do and to suffer cheerfully. There were Holy Wars ofold, in which it was glory enough to die; wars in which the one aim was to rescue the sepulchre of Christ from the hands of infidels. The sepulchre of Christ is not in Palestine! He rose from that burial-place more than eighteen hundred years ago. He is crucified wherever his brothers are slain without cause; he lies buried wherever man, made in his Maker's image, is entombed in ignorance lest he should learn the rights which his Divine Master gave him! This is our Holy War, and we must bring to it all the power with which he fought against the Almighty before he was cast from heaven."
In hisHunt after the Captain, we realize how near the "dull dead ghastliness of War" came to the fond father's heart as he sought his wounded hero through those dreary hospital wards! He knew of what he spake when appealing so eloquently to his fellow-patriots:—
"Sons and daughters of New England, men and women of the North, brothers and sisters in the bond of the American Union, you have among you the scarred and wasted soldiers who have shed their blood for your temporal salvation. They bore your nation's emblemsbravely through the fire and smoke of the battle-field; nay, their own bodies are starred with bullet-wounds and striped with sabre-cuts, as if to mark them as belonging to their country until their dust becomes a portion of the soil which they defended. In every Northern graveyard slumber the victims of this destroying struggle. Many whom you remember playing as children amidst the clover blossoms of our Northern fields, sleep under nameless mounds with strange Southern wild flowers blooming over them. By those wounds of living heroes, by those graves of fallen martyrs, by the hopes of your children, and the claims of your children's children yet unborn, in the name of outraged honor, in the interest of violated sovereignty, for the life of an imperilled nation, for the sake of men everywhere, and of our common humanity, for the glory of God and the advancement of his kingdom on earth, your country calls upon you to stand by her through good report and through evil report, in triumph and in defeat, until she emerges from the great war of Western civilization, Queen of the broad continent, Arbitress in the councils of earth's emancipated peoples."
It will be remembered that this heart-stirring oration,The Inevitable Trial, from which the above is quoted, was delivered at one of the most discouraging periods of the war; when Lee was in Pennsylvania, and just before the capture of Vicksburg.
Among the other essays and orations inPages from an old Volume of Life, we find thePhysiology of Walking, which contains many interesting facts concerning the human wheel, with its spokes and felloes.
"Walking," says Doctor Holmes, "is a perpetual falling with a perpetual self-recovery. It is a most complex, violent, and perilous operation, which we divest of its extreme danger only by continual practice from a very early period of life. We find how complex it is when we attempt to analyze it, and we see that we never understood it thoroughly until the time of the instantaneous photograph. We learn how violent it is, when we walk against a post or a door in the dark. We discover how dangerous it is when we slip or trip and come down, perhaps breaking or dislocating our limbs, or overlook the last step of a flight of stairs, and discover with whatheadlong violence we have been hurling ourselves forward.
"Two curious facts are easily proved. First, a man is shorter when he is walking than when at rest. We have found a very simple way of showing this by having a rod or stick placed horizontally, so as to touch the top of the head forcibly, as we stand under it. In walking rapidly beneath it, even if the eyes are shut, the top of the head will not even graze the rod. The other fact is, that one side of a man always tends to outwalk the other side, so that no person can walk far in a straight line, if he is blindfolded.The Seasons, andThe Human Body and its Management, were originally published in the Atlantic Almanac.Cinders from the Ashesgives some exceedingly interesting reminiscences.
Richard Henry Dana, the schoolboy, is described by Doctor Holmes as ruddy, sturdy, quiet and reserved; and of Margaret Fuller he says, "Sitting on the girls' benches, conspicuous among the schoolgirls of unlettered origin, by that look which rarely fails to betray hereditary and congenital culture, was a young person very nearly of my own age. She camewith the reputation of being 'smart,' as we should have called it; clever, as we say nowadays. Her air to her schoolmates was marked by a certain stateliness and distance; as if she had other thoughts than theirs, and was not of them. She was a great student and a great reader of what she used to call 'náw-véls;' I remember her so well as she appeared at school and later, that I regret that she had not been faithfully given to canvas or marble in the day of her best looks. None know her aspect who have not seen her living. Margaret, as I remember her at school and afterwards, was tall, fair complexioned, with a watery, aquamarine lustre in her light eyes, which she used to make small, as one does who looks at the sunshine.
"A remarkable point about her was that long, flexile neck, arching and undulating in strange, sinuous movements, which one who loved her would compare to those of a swan, and one who loved her not, to those of the ophidian who tempted our common mother. Her talk was affluent, magisterial,de haut en bas, some would say euphuistic, but surpassing the talk of women in breadth and audacity. Her facekindled and reddened and dilated in every feature as she spoke, and, as I once saw her in a fine storm of indignation at the supposed ill treatment of a relative, showed itself capable of something resembling what Milton calls the Viraginian aspect."
A composition of Margaret's was one day taken up by the boy Oliver.
"It is a trite remark," she began.
Alas! the embryo-poet did not know the meaning of the word trite.
"How could I ever judge Margaret fairly," he exclaims, "after such a crushing discovery of her superiority?"
Of his instructors and schoolmates at Andover, Doctor Holmes has given us numerous pen portraits. The old Academy building had a dreary look to the homesick boy, but he soon recovered from his "slightly nostalgic" state, and found not a few congenial spirits in his new surroundings.
One fine, rosy-faced boy with whom he had a school discussion upon Mary, Queen of Scots, and for whom he has always cherished a lasting friendship, is now the well-known Phinehas Barnes. Another little fellow, with black hairand very black eyes, studying with head between his hands, and eyes fastened to his book as if reading a will that made him heir to a million, was the future professor, Greek scholar and Bible Commentator, Horatio Balch Hackett. One of the masters was the late Rev. Samuel Horatio Stearns, "an excellent and lovable man," says Doctor Holmes, "who looked kindly on me, and for whom I always cherished a sincere regard." Professor Moses Stuart he describes as "tall, lean, with strong, bold features, a keen, scholarly, accipitrine nose, thin, expressive lips, and great solemnity and impressiveness of voice and manner. His air was Roman, his neck long and bare, like Cicero's, and his toga,—that is, his broadcloth cloak,—was carried on his arm, whatever might have been the weather, with such a statue-like, rigid grace that he might have been turned into marble as he stood, and looked noble by the side of the antiques of the Vatican." Then, there was Doctor Porter, an invalid, with the prophetic handkerchief bundling his throat; and Doctor Woods, who looked his creed decidedly, and had the firm fibre of a theological athlete. But none of the preceptors, it may be presumed,was so closely watched as the one to whom a dream had come that he should drop dead when praying. "More than one boy kept his eye on him during his public devotions, possessed by the same feeling the man had who followed Van Amburgh about, with the expectation, let us not say hope, of seeing the lion bite his head off sooner or later."
InMechanism in Thought and Morals, we find a deal of psychology as well as science.
"It is in the moral world," says Doctor Holmes, "that materialism has worked the strangest confusion. In various forms, under imposing names and aspects, it has thrust itself into the moral relations, until one hardly knows where to look for any first principles without upsetting everything in searching for them.
"The moral universe includes nothing but the exercise of choice: all else is machinery. What we can help and what we cannot help are on two sides of a line which separates the sphere of human responsibility from that of the Being who has arranged and controls the order of things.
"The question of the freedom of the will has been an open one, from the days of Milton'sdemons in conclave to the noteworthy essay of Mr. Hazard, our Rhode Island neighbor. It still hangs suspended between the seemingly exhaustive strongest motive argument and certain residual convictions. The sense that we are, to a limited extent, self-determining; the sense of effort in willing; the sense of responsibility in view of the future, and the verdict of conscience in review of the past,—all of these are open to the accusation of fallacy; but they all leave a certain undischarged balance in most minds. We can invoke the strong arm of theDeus in machina, as Mr. Hazard, and Kant and others, before him have done. Our will may be a primary initiating cause or force, as unexplainable, as unreducible, as indecomposable, as impossible if you choose, but as real to our belief as theœternitas a parte ante. The divine foreknowledge is no more in the way of delegated choice than the divine omnipotence is in the way of delegated power. The Infinite can surely slip the cable of the finite if it choose so to do."
With outspoken braveness Doctor Holmes rejects "the mechanical doctrine which makes me," he says, "the slave of outside influences,whether it work with the logic of Edwards, or the averages of Buckle; whether it come in the shape of the Greek's destiny, or the Mahometan's fatalism."
But he claims, too, the right to eliminate all mechanical ideas which have crowded into the sphere of intelligent choice between right and wrong. "The pound of flesh," he declares, "I will grant to Nemesis; but in the name of human nature, not one drop of blood,—not one drop."
And this leads us to speak of Doctor Holmes' religious views. He attended King's Chapel, and is classed among the most liberal-minded of the Unitarian creed.
When chairman of the Boston Unitarian Festival, in 1877, he gave the following list of certain theological beliefs that he has always delighted to combat.
"May I," he begins, "without committing any one but myself, enumerate a few of the stumbling blocks which still stand in the way of some who have many sympathies with what is called the liberal school of thinkers?
"The notion of sin as a transferable object. As philanthropy has ridded us of chattelslavery, so philosophy must rid us of chattel sin and all its logical consequences.
"The notion that what we call sin is anything else than inevitable, unless the Deity had seen fit to give every human being a perfect nature, and develop it by a perfect education.
"The oversight of the fact that all moral relations between man and his Maker are reciprocal, and must meet the approval of man's enlightened conscience before he can render true and heartfelt homage to the power that called him into being, and is not the greatest obligation to all eternity on the side of the greatest wisdom and the greatest power?
"The notion that the Father of mankind is subject to the absolute control of a certain malignant entity known under the false name of justice, or subject to any law such as would have made the father of the prodigal son meet him with an account-book and pack him off to jail, instead of welcoming him back and treating him to the fatted calf.
"The notion that useless suffering is in any sense a satisfaction for sin, and not simply an evil added to a previous one."
In reviewing the life and the writings of Jonathan Edwards, Doctor Holmes with his usual fairness and kindly spirit toward all mankind, declares that the spiritual nature seems to be a natural endowment, like a musical ear.
"Those who have no ear for music must be very careful how they speak about that mysterious world of thrilling vibrations which are idle noises to them. And so the true saint can be appreciated only by saintly natures. Yet the least spiritual man can hardly read the remarkable 'Resolutions' of Edwards without a reverence akin to awe for his purity and elevation. His beliefs and his conduct we need not hesitate to handle freely. The spiritual nature is no safeguard against error of doctrine or practice; indeed it may be doubted whether a majority of all the spiritual natures in the world would be found in Christian countries. Edwards' system seems, in the light of to-day, to the last degree barbaric, mechanical, materialistic, pessimistic. If he had lived a hundred years later, and breathed the air of freedom, he could not have written with such old-world barbarism as we find in his volcanic sermons....
"There is no sufficient reason for attacking the motives of a man so saintly in life, so holy in aspirations, so patient, so meek, so laborious, so thoroughly in earnest in the work to which his life was given. But after long smothering in the sulphurous atmosphere of his thought, one cannot help asking, is this,—or anything like this,—the accepted belief of any considerable part of Protestantism? If so, we must say with Bacon, 'It were better to have no opinion of God than such an opinion as is unworthy of him.'"
In speaking of the old reproach against physicians, that where there were three of them together there were two atheists, Doctor Holmes pertinently remarks: "There is, undoubtedly, a strong tendency in the pursuits of the medical profession to produce disbelief in that figment of tradition and diseased human imagination which has been installed in the seat of divinity by the priesthood of cruel and ignorant ages. It is impossible, or, at least, very difficult, for a physician who has seen the perpetual efforts of Nature—whose diary is the book he reads oftenest—to heal wounds, to expel poisons, to do the best that can be done under the given conditions,—it isvery difficult for him to believe in a world where wounds cannot heal, where opiates cannot give a respite from pain, where sleep never comes with its sweet oblivion of suffering, where the art of torture is the only faculty which remains to the children of that same Father who cares for the falling sparrow. The Deity has often been pictured as Moloch, and the physician has, no doubt, frequently repudiated him as a monstrosity.
"On the other hand, the physician has often been renounced for piety as well as for his peculiarly professional virtue of charity, led upward by what he sees the source of all the daily marvels wrought before his own eyes. So it was that Galen gave utterance to that song of praise which the sweet singer of Israel need not have been ashamed of; and if this heathen could be lifted into such a strain of devotion, we need not be surprised to find so many devout Christian worshippers among the crowd of medical 'atheists.'"
In coming back again as a regular contributor to the magazine which Doctor Holmes was so prominently identified with a quarter of a century ago, he indulges in a few entertainingreflections. "When I sat down to write the first paper I sent to theAtlantic Monthly," he says, "I felt somewhat as a maiden of more than mature effloresence may be supposed to feel as she passes down the broad aisle in her bridal veil and wealth of orange blossoms. I had written little of late years. I was at that time older than Goldsmith was when he died, and Goldsmith, as Doctor Johnson says, was a plant that flowered late. A new generation had grown up since I had written the verses by which, if remembered at all, I was best known. I honestly feared that I might prove the superfluous veteran who has no business behind the footlights. I can as honestly say that it turned out otherwise. I was most kindly welcomed, and now I am looking back on that far-off time as the period—I will not say of youth—for I was close upon the five-barred gate of thecinquantaine, though I had not yet taken the leap—but of marrowy and vigorous manhood. Those were the days of unaided vision, of acute hearing, of alert movements, of feelings almost boyish in their vivacity. It is a long cry from the end of a second quarter of a century in a man's life to theend of the third quarter. His companions have fallen all around him, and he finds himself in a newly peopled world. His mental furnishing looks old-fashioned and faded to the generation which is crowding about him with its new patterns and fresh colors. Shall he throw open his apartments to visitors, or is it not wiser to live on his memories in a decorous privacy, and not risk himself before the keen young eyes and relentless judgment of the new-comers, who have grown up in strength and self-reliance while he has been losing force and confidence. If that feeling came over me a quarter of a century ago, it is not strange that it comes back upon me now. Having laid down the burden, which for more than thirty-five years I have carried cheerfully, I might naturally seek the quiet of my chimney corner, and purr away the twilight of my life, unheard beyond the circle of my own fireplace. But when I see what my living contemporaries are doing, I am shamed out of absolute inertness and silence. The men of my birth year are so painfully industrious at this very time that one of the same date hardly dares to be idle. I look across the Atlantic and see Mr. Gladstone, only four months younger than myself, and standing erect with patriots' grievances on one shoulder, and Pharaoh's pyramids on the other—an Atlas whose intervals of repose are paroxysms of learned labor; I listen to Tennyson, another birth of the same year, filling the air with melody long after the singing months of life are over; I come nearer home, and here is my very dear friend and college classmate, so certain to be in every good movement with voice or pen, or both, that, where two or three are gathered together for useful ends, if James Freeman Clarke is not with them, it is because he is busy with a book or a discourse meant for a larger audience; I glance at the placards on the blank walls that I am passing, and there I see the colossal head of Barnum, the untiring, inexhaustible, insuperable, ever-triumphant and jubilant Barnum, who came to his atmospheric life less than a year before I began to breathe the fatal mixture, and still wages his Titanic battle with his own past superlatives. How can one dare to sit down inactive with such examples before him? One must do something,were it nothing more profitable than the work of that dear old Penelope, of almost ninety years, whom I so well remember hemming over and over again the same piece of linen, her attendant scissors removing each day's work at evening; herself meantime being kindly nursed in the illusion that she was still the useful martyr of the household."
An author, in Doctor Holmes' opinion, should know that the very characteristics which make him the object of admiration to many, and endear him to some among them, will render him an object of dislike to a certain number of individuals of equal, it may be of superior, intelligence. The converse of all this is very true.
"There will be individuals—they may be few, they may be many—who will so instantly recognize, so eagerly accept, so warmly adopt, even so devoutly idolize, the writer in question, that self-love itself, dulled as its palate is by the hot spices of praise, draws back overcome by the burning stimulants of adoration. I was told, not long since, by one of our most justly admired authoresses, that a correspondent wroteto her that she had read one of her stories fourteen times in succession."
There is a deep meaning in these elective affinities. Each personality is more or less completely the complement of some other. Doctor Holmes thinks it should never be forgotten by the critic that "every grade of mental development demands a literature of its own; a little above its level, that it may be lifted to a higher grade, but not too much above it, so that it requires too long a stride—a stairway, not a steep wall to climb. The true critic is not the sharpcaptator verborum; not the brisk epigrammatist, showing off his own cleverness, always trying to outflank the author against whom he has arrayed his wits and his learning. He is a man who knows the real wants of the reading world, and can prize at their just value the writings which meet those wants."
There is also another side of the picture. Doctor Holmes does not forget the trials of authorship. The writer who attains a certain measure of popularity "will be startled to find himself the object of an embarrassing devotion, and almost appropriation, by some of his parishof readers. He will blush at his lonely desk, as he reads the extravagances of expression which pour over him like the oil which ran down upon the beard of Aaron, and even down to the skirts of his garments—an extreme unction which seems hardly desirable. We ought to have his photograph as he reads one of those frequent missives, oftenest traced, we may guess, in the delicate, slanting hand which betrays the slender fingers of the sympathetic sisterhood.
"A slight sense of the ridiculous at being made so much of qualifies the placid tolerance with which the rhymester or the essayist sees himself preferred to the great masters in prose and verse, and reads his name glowing in a halo of epithets which might belong to Bacon or Milton. We need not grudge him such pleasure as he may derive from the illusion of a momentary revery, in which he dreams of himself as clad in royal robes and exalted among the immortals. The next post will probably bring him some slip from a newspaper or critical journal, which will strip him of his regalia, as Thackeray, in one of his illustrations, has disrobed and denuded thegrand monarque. He saw himself but a moment ago a colossal figure in a drapery of rhetorical purple, ample enough for an Emperor, as Bernini would clothe him. The image breaker has passed by, belittling him by comparison, jostling him off his pedestal, levelling his most prominent feature, or even breaking a whole ink bottle against him as the indignant moralist did on the figure in the vestibule of the opera house—the shortest and most effective satire that ever came from that fountain of approval and commendation. Such are some of the varied experiences of authorship."
Out of his literary career as a successful writer, Doctor Holmes was able to formulate many rules for the self-protection of authors, which were adopted unanimously at an authors' association which was held in Washington last September, and the remainder of his "talk" is devoted to extracts from their proceedings. Appended are a few of them:
Of visits of strangers to authors. These are not always distinguishable from each other, and may justly be considered together. The stranger should send up his card if hehas one; if he has none, he should, if admitted, at once announce himself and his object, without circumlocution, as thus; "My name is M. or N., from X. or Y. I wish to see and take the hand of a writer whom I have long admired for his," etc., etc. Here the author should extend his hand, and reply in substance as follows: "I am pleased to see you, my dear sir, and very glad that anything I have written has been a source of pleasure or profit to you." The visitor has now had what he says he came for, and, after making a brief polite acknowledgment, should retire, unless, for special reasons, he is urged to stay longer.
Of autograph-seekers. The increase in the number of applicants for autographs is so great that it has become necessary to adopt positive regulations to protect the author from the exorbitant claims of this class of virtuosos. The following propositions were adopted without discussion:
No author is under any obligation to answer any letter from an unknown person applying for his autograph. If he sees fit to do so, it is a gratuitous concession on his part.
No stranger should ask for more than one autograph.
No stranger should request an author to copy a poem, or even a verse. He should remember that he is one of many thousands; that one thousand fleas are worse than one hornet, and that a mob of mosquitoes will draw more blood than a single horse leech.
Every correspondent applying for an autograph should send a card or blank paper, in a stamped envelope, directed to himself (or herself). If he will not take the trouble to attend to all this, which he can just as well as to make the author do it, he must not expect the author to make good his deficiencies. [Accepted by acclamation].
Sending a stamp does not constitute a claim on an author for answer. [Received with loud applause]. The stamp may be retained by the author, or, what is better, devoted to the use of some appropriate charity, as for instance, the asylum for idiots and feeble-minded persons.
Albums. An album of decent external aspect may, without impropriety, be offered to an author, with the request that he willwrite his name therein. It is not proper, as a general rule, to ask for anything more than the name. The author may, of course, add a quotation from his writings, or a sentiment, if so disposed; but this must be considered as a work of supererogation, and an exceptional manifestation of courtesy.
Bed-quilt autographs. It should be a source of gratification to an author to contribute to the soundness of his reader's slumbers, if he cannot keep him awake by his writings. He should therefore cheerfully inscribe his name on the scrap of satin or other stuff (provided always that it be sent him in a stamped and directed envelope), that it may take its place in the patchwork mosaic for which it is intended.
Letters of admiration. These may be accepted as genuine, unless they contain specimens of the writer's own composition, upon which a critical opinion is requested, in which case they are to be regarded in the same light as medicated sweetmeats, namely, as meaning more than their looks imply. Genuine letters of admiration, being usually considered by the recipient as proofs of goodtaste and sound judgment on the part of his unknown correspondent, may be safely left to his decision as to whether they shall be answered or not.
The author ofElsie Vennerthus excuses himself for opening the budget of the grievances of authors. "In obtaining and giving to the public this abstract of the proceedings of the association, I have been impelled by the same feelings of humanity which led me to join the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, believing that the sufferings of authors are as much entitled to sympathy and relief as those of the brute creation."
The birthday of the Emperor of Japan is the principal holiday of the year among his subjects, and as Saturday, November 3d, 1883, was the thirty-third anniversary of the birthday of Mutsuhito Tenno, the reigning Emperor, it was appropriately celebrated by the Japanese gentlemen in Boston. The Japanese department at the Foreign Exhibition was closed, and in the evening a banquet was given at the Parker House, about sixty gentlemen assembling in response to the invitation of Mr. S.R. Takahashi, chief of the imperial Japanese commission to the Boston Foreign Exhibition. The entrance to the banquet rooms was decorated with the Japanese and American colors, and at the head of the hall were portraits of the Emperor and Empress of Japan, with the colors of that country between them. The occasion was a very enjoyable one, and was especially interesting as it was a departure from the custom at ordinary dinners here, several gentlemen dividing with the presiding officer the duty of proposing the toasts. One of the most delightful orations of the evening given by Oliver Wendell Holmes, was as follows:
"I have heard of 'English' as she is spoke," being taught in ten lessons, but I never heard that a nation's literature could have justice done to it in ten minutes. An ancestress of mine—one of my thirty-two great-great-great-great-grandmothers—a noted poetess in her day, thus addressed her little brood of children: