SONNET.

I must leave thee, lady sweet!Months shall waste before we meet;Winds are fair and sails are spread,Anchors leave their ocean bed;Ere this shining day grows dark,Skies shall guide my shoreless bark;Through thy tears, O lady mine,Read thy lover's parting line.When the first sad sun shall set,Thou shalt tear thy locks of jet;When the morning star shall riseThou shalt wake with weeping eyes;When the second sun goes downThou more tranquil shalt be grown,Taught too well that wild despairDims thine eyes, and spoils thy hair.All the first unquiet weekThou shalt wear a smileless cheek;In the first month's second halfThou shalt once attempt to laugh;Then inPickwickthou shalt dip,Lightly puckering round the lip,Till at last, in sorrow's spite,Samuel makes thee laugh outright.While the first seven mornings last,Round thy chamber bolted fastMany a youth shall fume and pout,"Hang the girl, she's always out!"While the second week goes round,Vainly shall they sing and pound;When the third week shall begin,"Martha, let the creature in!"Now once more the flattering throngRound thee flock with smile and song,But thy lips unweaned as yet,Lisp, "O, how can I forget!"Men and devils both contriveTraps for catching girls alive;Eve was duped, and Helen kissed,How, O how can you resist?First, be careful of your fan,Trust it not to youth or man;Love has filled a pirate's sailOften with its perfumed gale.Mind your kerchief most of all,Fingers touch when kerchiefs fall;Shorter ell than mercers clipIs the space from hand to lip.Trust not such as talk in tropesFull of pistols, daggers, ropes;All the hemp that Russia bearsScarce would answer lovers' prayers;Never thread was spun so fine,Never spider stretched the line,Would not hold the lovers trueThat would really swing for you.Fiercely some shall storm and swear,Beating breasts in black despair;Others murmur with a sighYou must melt or they will die;Painted words on empty lies,Grubs with wings like butterflies;Let them die, and welcome, too;Pray what better could they do?Fare thee well, if years effaceFrom thy heart love's burning trace,Keep, O keep that hallowed seatFrom the tread of vulgar feet;If the blue lips of the seaWait with icy kiss for me,Let not thine forget that vow,Sealed how often, love, as now!

When the first sad sun shall set,Thou shalt tear thy locks of jet;When the morning star shall riseThou shalt wake with weeping eyes;When the second sun goes downThou more tranquil shalt be grown,Taught too well that wild despairDims thine eyes, and spoils thy hair.

All the first unquiet weekThou shalt wear a smileless cheek;In the first month's second halfThou shalt once attempt to laugh;Then inPickwickthou shalt dip,Lightly puckering round the lip,Till at last, in sorrow's spite,Samuel makes thee laugh outright.

While the first seven mornings last,Round thy chamber bolted fastMany a youth shall fume and pout,"Hang the girl, she's always out!"While the second week goes round,Vainly shall they sing and pound;When the third week shall begin,"Martha, let the creature in!"

Now once more the flattering throngRound thee flock with smile and song,But thy lips unweaned as yet,Lisp, "O, how can I forget!"Men and devils both contriveTraps for catching girls alive;Eve was duped, and Helen kissed,How, O how can you resist?

First, be careful of your fan,Trust it not to youth or man;Love has filled a pirate's sailOften with its perfumed gale.Mind your kerchief most of all,Fingers touch when kerchiefs fall;Shorter ell than mercers clipIs the space from hand to lip.

Trust not such as talk in tropesFull of pistols, daggers, ropes;All the hemp that Russia bearsScarce would answer lovers' prayers;Never thread was spun so fine,Never spider stretched the line,Would not hold the lovers trueThat would really swing for you.

Fiercely some shall storm and swear,Beating breasts in black despair;Others murmur with a sighYou must melt or they will die;Painted words on empty lies,Grubs with wings like butterflies;Let them die, and welcome, too;Pray what better could they do?

Fare thee well, if years effaceFrom thy heart love's burning trace,Keep, O keep that hallowed seatFrom the tread of vulgar feet;If the blue lips of the seaWait with icy kiss for me,Let not thine forget that vow,Sealed how often, love, as now!

In hisMechanism in Thought and Morals, Doctor Holmes reveals one of the secrets of humorous writing. "The poet," he says, "sits down to his desk with an odd conceit in his brain; and presently his eyes filled with tears, his thought slides into the minor key, and his heart is full of sad and plaintive melodies. Or he goes to his work, saying—

"'To-night I would have tears;' and before he rises from his table he has written a burlesque, such as he might think fit to send to one of the comic papers, if these were not so commonly cemeteries of hilarity interspersed with cenotaphs of wit and humor. These strange hysterics of the intelligence which make us pass from weeping to laughter, and from laughter back again to weeping, must be familiar to every impressible nature; and all this is as automatic, involuntary, as entirely self-evolved by a hidden, organic process, as are the changing moods of the laughing and crying woman. The poet always recognizes a dictationab extra; and we hardly think it a figure of speech when we talk of his inspiration."

Of Doctor Holmes' inimitablevers d'occasionwe select the following:

At the reception given to Harriet Beecher Stowe on her seventieth birthday, at Governor Claflin's beautiful summer residence in Newtonville, Doctor Holmes read the following witty and characteristic poem:

If every tongue that speaks her praiseFor whom I shape my tinkling phraseWere summoned to the table,The vocal chorus that would meetOf mingling accents harsh or sweetFrom every land and tribe would beatThe polyglots of Babel.Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane,Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine,Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi,High Dutchman and Low Dutchman, too,The Russian serf, the Polish Jew,Arab, Armenian and MantchooWould shout, "We know the lady."Know her! Who knows not Uncle TomAnd her he learned his gospel fromHas never heard of Moses;Full well the brave black hand we knowThat gave to freedom's grasp the hoeThat killed the weed that used to growAmong the Southern roses.When Archimedes, long ago,Spoke out so grandly "dos pou sto,—Give me a place to stand on,I'll move your planet for you, now,"He little dreamed or fancied howThestoat last should find itspouFor woman's faith to land on.Her lever was the wand of art,Her fulcrum was the human heartWhence all unfailing aid is;She moved the earth! its thunders pealed,Its mountains shook, its temples reeled,The blood-red fountains were unsealed,And Moloch sunk to Hades.All through the conflict, up and downMarched Uncle Tom and Old John Brown,One ghost, one form ideal,And which was false and which was true.And which was mightier of the two,The wisest sibyl never knew,For both alike were real.Sister, the holy maid does wellWho counts her beads in convent cell,Where pale devotion lingers;But she who serves the sufferer's needs,Whose prayers are spelt in loving deedsMay trust the Lord will count her beadsAs well as human fingers.When Truth herself was Slavery's slaveThy hand the prisoned suppliant gaveThe rainbow wings of fiction.And Truth who soared descends to-dayBearing an angel's wreath away,Its lilies at thy feet to layWith heaven's own benediction.

Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane,Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine,Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi,High Dutchman and Low Dutchman, too,The Russian serf, the Polish Jew,Arab, Armenian and MantchooWould shout, "We know the lady."

Know her! Who knows not Uncle TomAnd her he learned his gospel fromHas never heard of Moses;Full well the brave black hand we knowThat gave to freedom's grasp the hoeThat killed the weed that used to growAmong the Southern roses.

When Archimedes, long ago,Spoke out so grandly "dos pou sto,—Give me a place to stand on,I'll move your planet for you, now,"He little dreamed or fancied howThestoat last should find itspouFor woman's faith to land on.

Her lever was the wand of art,Her fulcrum was the human heartWhence all unfailing aid is;She moved the earth! its thunders pealed,Its mountains shook, its temples reeled,The blood-red fountains were unsealed,And Moloch sunk to Hades.

All through the conflict, up and downMarched Uncle Tom and Old John Brown,One ghost, one form ideal,And which was false and which was true.And which was mightier of the two,The wisest sibyl never knew,For both alike were real.

Sister, the holy maid does wellWho counts her beads in convent cell,Where pale devotion lingers;But she who serves the sufferer's needs,Whose prayers are spelt in loving deedsMay trust the Lord will count her beadsAs well as human fingers.

When Truth herself was Slavery's slaveThy hand the prisoned suppliant gaveThe rainbow wings of fiction.And Truth who soared descends to-dayBearing an angel's wreath away,Its lilies at thy feet to layWith heaven's own benediction.

The following poem was read by Doctor Holmes at the Unitarian Festival, June 2, 1882.

The waves upbuild the wasting shore:Where mountains towered the billows sweep:Yet still their borrowed spoils restoreAnd raise new empires from the deep.So, while the floods of thought lay wasteThe old domain of chartered creeds,The heaven-appointed tides will hasteTo shape new homes for human needs.Be ours to mark with hearts unchilledThe change an outworn age deplores;The legend sinks, but Faith shall buildA fairer throne on new-found shores,The star shall glow in western skies,That shone o'er Bethlehem's hallowed shrine,And once again the temple riseThat crowned the rock of Palestine.Not when the wondering shepherds bowedDid angels sing their latest song,Nor yet to Israel's kneeling crowdDid heaven's one sacred dome belong—Let priest and prophet have their dues,The Levite counts but half a man,Whose proud "salvation of the Jews"Shuts out the good Samaritan!Though scattered far the flock may stray,His own the shepherd still shall claim,—The saints who never learned to pray,—The friends who never spoke his name.Dear Master, while we hear thy voice,That says, "The truth shall make you free,"Thy servant still, by loving choice,O keep us faithful unto Thee!

Doctor Holmes being unable to attend the annual reunion of the Harvard Club in New York City, February 21, 1882, sent the following letter and sonnet which were read at the banquet:

Dear Brothers Alumni:As I am obliged to deny myself the pleasure of being with you, I do not feel at liberty to ask many minutes of your time and attention. I have compressed into the limits of a sonnet the feelings I am sure we all share that, besides the roof that shelters us we have need of some wider house where we can visit and find ourselves in a more extended circle of sympathy than the narrow ring of a family, and nowhere can we seek a truer and purer bond of fellowship than under the benignant smile of ourAlma Mater. Let me thank you for the kindness which has signified to me that I should be welcome at your festival.In all the rewards of a literary life none is more precious than the kindly recognition of those who have clung to the heart of the same nursing mother, and will always flee to each other in the widest distances of space, and let us hope in those unbounded realms in which we may not utterly forget our earthly pilgrimage and its dear companions.Very sincerely yours,Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Dear Brothers Alumni:

As I am obliged to deny myself the pleasure of being with you, I do not feel at liberty to ask many minutes of your time and attention. I have compressed into the limits of a sonnet the feelings I am sure we all share that, besides the roof that shelters us we have need of some wider house where we can visit and find ourselves in a more extended circle of sympathy than the narrow ring of a family, and nowhere can we seek a truer and purer bond of fellowship than under the benignant smile of ourAlma Mater. Let me thank you for the kindness which has signified to me that I should be welcome at your festival.

In all the rewards of a literary life none is more precious than the kindly recognition of those who have clung to the heart of the same nursing mother, and will always flee to each other in the widest distances of space, and let us hope in those unbounded realms in which we may not utterly forget our earthly pilgrimage and its dear companions.

Very sincerely yours,Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Yes, home is sweet! and yet we needs must sigh,Restless until our longing souls have foundSome realm beyond the fireside's narrow bound,Where slippered ease and sleepy comfort lie,Some fair ideal form that cannot die,By age dismantled and by change uncrowned,Else life creeps circling in the self-same round,And the low ceiling hides the lofty sky.Ah, then to thee our truant hearts return,Dear mother, Alma, Casta—spotless, kind!Thy sacred walls a larger home we find,And still for thee thy wandering children yearn,While with undying fires thine altars burn,Where all our holiest memories rest enshrined.

I believe that the copies of verses I've spun,Like Scheherazade's tales, are a thousand and one,You remember the story—those mornings in bed—'Twas the turn of a copper—a tale or a head.A doom like Scheherazade's falls upon meIn a mandate as stern as the Sultan's decree;I'm a florist in verse, and whatwouldpeople sayIf I came to a banquet without my bouquet?It is trying, no doubt, when the company knowsJust the look and the smell of each lily and rose,The green of each leaf in the sprigs that I bring,And the shape of the bunch and the knot of the string.Yes, 'the style is the man,' and the nib of one's penMakes the same mark at twenty, and threescore and ten;It is so in all matters, if truth may be told;Let one look at the cast he can tell you the mould.How we all know each other! No use in disguise;Through the holes in the mask comes the flash of the eyes;We can tell by his—somewhat—each one of our tribe,As we know the old hat which we cannot describe.Though in Hebrew, in Sanscrit, in Choctaw, you write,Sweet singer who gave us the Voices of Night,Though in buskin or slipper your song may be shod,Or the velvety verse that Evangeline trod.We shall say, 'You can't cheat us—we know it is you—There is one voice like that, but there cannot be two.Maëstro, whose chant like the dulcimer rings;And the woods will be hushed when the nightingale sings.And he, so serene, so majestic, so true,Whose temple hypæthral the planets shine through,Let us catch but five words from that mystical penWe should know our one sage from all children of men.And he whose bright image no distance can dim,Through a hundred disguises we can't mistake him,Whose play is all earnest, whose wit is the edge(With a beetle behind) of a sham-splitting wedge.Do you know whom we send you, Hidalgos of Spain?Do you know your old friends when you see them again?Hosea was Sancho! you Dons of Madrid,But Sancho that wielded the lance of the Cid!And the wood-thrush of Essex—you know whom I mean,Whose song echoes round us when he sits unseen,Whose heart-throbs of verse through our memories thrillLike a breath from the wood, like a breeze from the hill.So fervid, so simple, so loving, so pure,We hear but one strain and our verdict is sure—Thee cannot elude us—no further we search—'Tis Holy George Herbert cut loose from his church!We think it the voice of a cherub that sings—Alas! we remember that angels have wings—What story is this of the day of his birth?Let him live to a hundred! we want him on earth!One life has been paid him (in gold) by the sun;One account has been squared and another begun;But he never will die if he lingers belowTill we've paid him in love half the balance we owe!

I believe that the copies of verses I've spun,Like Scheherazade's tales, are a thousand and one,You remember the story—those mornings in bed—'Twas the turn of a copper—a tale or a head.

A doom like Scheherazade's falls upon meIn a mandate as stern as the Sultan's decree;I'm a florist in verse, and whatwouldpeople sayIf I came to a banquet without my bouquet?

It is trying, no doubt, when the company knowsJust the look and the smell of each lily and rose,The green of each leaf in the sprigs that I bring,And the shape of the bunch and the knot of the string.

Yes, 'the style is the man,' and the nib of one's penMakes the same mark at twenty, and threescore and ten;It is so in all matters, if truth may be told;Let one look at the cast he can tell you the mould.

How we all know each other! No use in disguise;Through the holes in the mask comes the flash of the eyes;We can tell by his—somewhat—each one of our tribe,As we know the old hat which we cannot describe.

Though in Hebrew, in Sanscrit, in Choctaw, you write,Sweet singer who gave us the Voices of Night,Though in buskin or slipper your song may be shod,Or the velvety verse that Evangeline trod.

We shall say, 'You can't cheat us—we know it is you—There is one voice like that, but there cannot be two.Maëstro, whose chant like the dulcimer rings;And the woods will be hushed when the nightingale sings.

And he, so serene, so majestic, so true,Whose temple hypæthral the planets shine through,Let us catch but five words from that mystical penWe should know our one sage from all children of men.

And he whose bright image no distance can dim,Through a hundred disguises we can't mistake him,Whose play is all earnest, whose wit is the edge(With a beetle behind) of a sham-splitting wedge.

Do you know whom we send you, Hidalgos of Spain?Do you know your old friends when you see them again?Hosea was Sancho! you Dons of Madrid,But Sancho that wielded the lance of the Cid!

And the wood-thrush of Essex—you know whom I mean,Whose song echoes round us when he sits unseen,Whose heart-throbs of verse through our memories thrillLike a breath from the wood, like a breeze from the hill.

So fervid, so simple, so loving, so pure,We hear but one strain and our verdict is sure—Thee cannot elude us—no further we search—'Tis Holy George Herbert cut loose from his church!

We think it the voice of a cherub that sings—Alas! we remember that angels have wings—What story is this of the day of his birth?Let him live to a hundred! we want him on earth!

One life has been paid him (in gold) by the sun;One account has been squared and another begun;But he never will die if he lingers belowTill we've paid him in love half the balance we owe!

"WHATdecided me," says Doctor Holmes, "to give up Law and apply myself to Medicine, I can hardly say, but I had from the first looked upon my law studies as an experiment. At any rate, I made the change, and soon found myself introduced to new scenes and new companionships.

"I can scarcely credit my memory when I recall the first impressions produced upon me by sights afterwards become so familiar that they could no more disturb a pulse-beat than the commonest of every-day experiences. The skeleton, hung aloft like a gibbeted criminal, looked grimly at me as I entered the room devoted to the students of the school I had joined, just as the fleshless figure of Time, with the hour-glass and scythe, used to glare upon me in my childhood from theNew England Primer. The white faces in the beds at the Hospital found their reflection in my own cheeks whichlost their color as I looked upon them. All this had to pass away in a little time; I had chosen my profession, and must meet all its aspects until they lost their power over my sensibility....

"After attending two courses of lectures in the School of the University, I went to Europe to continue my studies. I can hardly believe my own memory when I recall the old practitioners and professors who were still going round the hospitals when I mingled with the train of students in the École de Médicine."

Of the famous Baron Boyer, author of a nine-volumed book on surgery, Doctor Holmes says, "I never saw him do more than look as if he wanted to cut a good collop out of a patient he was examining." Baron Larrey, the favorite surgeon of Napoleon, he describes as a short, square, substantial man, with iron-gray hair, red face, and white apron. To go round the Hotel des Invalides with Larrey was to live over the campaign of Napoleon, to look on the sun of Austerlitz, to hear the cannon of Marengo, to struggle through the icy waters of the Beresina, to shiver in the snows of the Russian retreat, and to gaze through the battle smoke upon the last charge of the red lancers on the redder field of Waterloo.

Then there was Baron Dupuytren, "ce grand homme de lautre côté de la rivièrè,—with his high, full-doomed head and oracular utterances; Lisfrance, the great drawer of blood and hewer of members; Velpeau, who, coming to Paris in wooden shoes, and starving, almost, at first, raised himself to great eminence as surgeon and author; Broussais, the knotty-featured, savage old man who reminded one of a volcano, which had well-nigh used up its fire and brimstone, and Gabriel Audral, the rapid, fluent, fervid and imaginative speaker.

"The object of our reverence, however, I might almost say idolatry," adds Doctor Holmes, "was Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis, a tall, rather spare, dignified personage, of serene and grave aspect, but with a pleasant smile and kindly voice for the student with whom he came into personal relations.

"If I summed up the lessons of Louis in two expressions, they would be these: First, always make sure that you form a distinct and clear idea of the matter you are considering. Second, always avoid vague approximations where exact estimates are possible....

"Yes, as I say, I look back on the long hours of the many days I spent in the wards and inthe autopsy room of La Pitié, where Louis was one of the attending physicians—yes, Louis did a great work for practical medicine. Modest in the presence of nature, fearless in the face of authority, unwearying in the pursuit of truth, he was a man whom any student might be happy and proud to claim as his teacher and his friend. And yet, as I look back on the days when I followed his teachings, I feel that I gave myself up too exclusively to his methods of thought and study. There is one part of their business that certain medical practitioners are too apt to forget; namely, that what they should most of all try to do is to ward off disease, to alleviate suffering, to preserve life, or at least to prolong it if possible. It is not of the slightest interest to the patient to know whether three or three and a quarter inches of his lungs are hepatized. His mind is not occupied with thinking of the curious problems which are to be solved by his own autopsy, whether this or that strand of the spinal marrow is the seat of this or that form of degeneration. He wants something to relieve his pain, to mitigate the anguish of dyspnæa, to bring back motion and sensibilityto the dead limb, to still the tortures of neuralgia. What is it to him that you can localize and name by some uncouth term, the disease which you could not prevent and which you can not cure? an old woman who knows how to make a poultice and how to put it on, and does ittuto,cito,jucunde, just when and where it is wanted, is better—a thousand times better in many cases—than a staring pathologist who explores and thumps and doubts and guesses and tells his patient he will be better to-morrow, and so goes home to tumble his books over and make out a diagnosis.

"But in those days I, like most of my fellow students, was thinking much more of 'science' than of practical medicine, and I believe if we had not clung so closely to the skirts of Louis, and had followed some of the courses of men like Rousseau,—therapeutists, who gave special attention to curative methods, and not chiefly to diagnosis—it would have been better for me and others. One thing, at any rate, we did learn in the wards of Louis. We learned that a very large proportion of diseases get well of themselves, without any special medication—the great fact formulated, enforced and popularized by Doctor Jacob Bigelow."

It is well known that Doctor Holmes detests the habit of drugging practised by so many physicians of the "old school," and in his address before the Massachusetts Medical Society, entitled Currents and Counter Currents in Medical Science, he makes a severe attack upon the inordinate use of medicines.

"What is the honest truth," he says at another time, "about the medical art? By far the largest number of diseases which physicians are called to treat will get well at any rate, even in spite of reasonably bad treatment. Of the other fraction, a certain number will inevitably die, whatever is done: there remains a small margin of cases where the life of the patient depends on the skill of the physician. Drugs now and then save life; they often shorten disease and remove symptoms; but they are second in importance to food, air, temperature, and the other hygienic influences. That was a shrewd trick of Alexander's physician on the occasion of his attack after bathing. He asked three days to prepare his medicine. Time is the great physician as well as the great consoler. Sensible men in all ages have trusted most to nature."

Of quacks and other humbugs, Doctor Holmes had an undisguised, wholesome contempt.

"Shall we try," he says, "the medicines advertised with the certificates of justices of the peace, of clergymen, or even members of Congress? Certainly, it may be answered, any one of them which makes a good case for itself. But the difficulty is, that the whole class of commercial remedies are shown by long experience, with the rarest exceptions, to be very sovereign cures for empty pockets, and of no peculiar efficacy for anything else. You may be well assured that if any really convincing evidence was brought forward in behalf of the most vulgar nostrum, the chemists would go at once to work to analyze it, the physiologists to experiment with it, and the young doctors would all be trying it on their own bodies, if not on their patients. But we do not think it worth while, as a general rule, to send a Cheap Jack's gilt chains and lockets to be tested for gold. We know they are made to sell, and so with the pills and potions.... Think how rapidly any real discovery is appropriated and comes into universal use. Take anæsthetics, take the use of bromide of potassium, and see how easily they obtained acceptance. If you are disposed to think any of the fancy systems has brought forward any new remedy of value which the medical profession has been slow to accept,ask any fancy practitioner to name it. Let him name one,—the best his system claims,—not a hundred, but one. A single new, efficient, trustworthy remedy which the medical profession can test as they are ready to test before any scientific tribunal, opium, quinine, ether, the bromide of potassium. There is no such remedy on which any of the fancy practitioners dare stake his reputation. If there were, it would long ago have been accepted, though it had been flowers of brimstone from the borders of Styx or Cocytus."

Homœopathy is classed by Doctor Holmes among such "Kindred Delusions" as the Royal Cure for the King's Evil, the Weapon Ointment, the Sympathetic Powder, the Tar-water mania of Bishop Berkeley, and the Metallic Tractors, or Perkinsism.

In making a direct attack upon the pretentions of Homœopathy, Doctor Holmes declares at the outset that he shall treat it not by ridicule, but by argument; with great freedom, but with good temper and in peaceable language.

Similia similibus curantur.Like cures like, is one of the fundamental principles of Homœopathy, and "improbable though it may seem to some," says Doctor Holmes with his usual impartial fairness, "there is no essential absurdity involved in the proposition that diseases yield to remedies capable of producing like symptoms. There are, on the other hand, some analogies which lend a degree of plausibility to the statement. There are well-ascertained facts, known from the earliest periods of medicine, showing that under certain circumstances, the very medicine which from its known effects, one would expect to aggravate the disease, may contribute to its relief. I may be permitted to allude, in the most general way, to the case in which the spontaneous efforts of an over-tasked stomach are quieted by the agency of a drug which that organ refuses to entertain upon any terms. But thateverycure ever performed by medicine should have been founded upon this principle, although without the knowledge of a physician, that the Homœopathy axiom is, as Hahnemann asserts, "thesolelaw of nature in therapeutics," a law of which nothing more than a transient glimpse ever presented itself to the innumerable host of medical observers, is a dogma of such sweeping extent and pregnant novelty, that it demands a corresponding breath and depth of unquestionable facts to cover its vast pretensions."

Among the many facts of which great use has been made by the Homœopathists, is that found in the precept given for the treatment of parts which have been frozen, by friction with snow, etc.

"But," says Doctor Holmes, "we deceive ourselves by names, if we suppose the frozen part to be treated by cold, and not by heat. The snow may even be actuallywarmerthan the part to which it is applied. But even if it were at the same temperature when applied, it never did and never could do the least good to a frozen part, except as a mode of regulating the application of what? ofheat. But the heat must be appliedgradually, just as food must be given a little at a time to those perishing with hunger. If the patient were brought into a warm room, heat would be appliedvery rapidly, were not something interposed to prevent this, and allow its gradual admission. Snow or iced water is exactly what is wanted; it is not cold to the part; it is very possibly warm, on the contrary, for theseterms are relative, and if it does not melt and let the heat in, or is not taken away, the part will remain frozen up until doomsday. Now the treatment of a frozen limb by heat, in large or small quantities, is not Homœopathy."

Another supposed illustration of the Homœopathic law is the alleged successful management of burns, by holding them to the fire. "This is a popular mode of treating those burns which are of too little consequence to require any more efficacious remedy, and would inevitably get well of themselves, without any trouble being bestowed upon them. It produces a most acute pain in the part, which is followed by some loss of sensibility, as happens with the eye after exposure to strong light, and the ear after being subjected to very intense sounds. This is all it is capable of doing, and all further notions of its efficacy must be attributed merely to the vulgar love of paradox. If this example affords any comfort to the Homœopathist, it seems as cruel to deprive him of it as it would be to convince the mistress of the smoke-jack or the flatiron that the fire does not literally draw the fire out, which is her hypothesis.

"But if it were true that frost-bites were cured by cold and burns by heat, it would be subversive, so far as it went, of the great principle of Homœopathy. For you will remember that this principle is thatLikecuresLike, and not thatSamecuresSame; that there isresemblanceand notidentitybetween the symptoms of the disease and those produced by the drug which cures it, and none have been readier to insist upon this distinction than the Homœopathists themselves. For ifSamecuresSame, then every poison must be its own antidote,—which is neither a part of their theory nor their so-called experience. They have been asked often enough, why it was that arsenic could not cure the mischief which arsenic had caused, and why the infectious cause of small-pox did not remedy the disease it had produced, and then they were ready enough to see the distinction I have pointed out. "O no! it was not the hair of the same dog, but only of one very much like him!"

The belief in and employment of the "Infinitesimal doses," Doctor Holmes handles with the same fairness and acumen; but the absurdidea affirmed by Hahnemann that Psora is the cause of the great majority of chronic diseases, he treats as it deserves, with unqualified contempt.

In conclusion, he says, "As one humble member of a profession which for more than two thousand years has devoted itself to the pursuit of the best earthly interests of mankind always assailed and insulted from without by such as are ignorant of its infinite perplexities and labors, always striving in unequal contest with the hundred armed giants who walk in the noonday and sleep not in the midnight, yet still toiling not merely for itself and the present moment, but for the race and the future, I have lifted up my voice against this lifeless delusion, rolling its shapeless bulk into the path of a noble science it is too weak to strike or to injure."

Upon the contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, Doctor Holmes wrote an able treatise some forty years ago. This was reprinted with some additions, in 1855, and in an introductory note which accompanies the still later addition (1883), Doctor Holmes says, "The subject of this Paper has the same profound interest for me at thepresent moment as it had when I was first collecting the terrible evidence out of which, as it seems to me, the commonest exercise of reason could not help shaping the truth it involved. It is not merely on account of the bearing of the question—if there is a question—on all that is most sacred in human life and happiness that the subject cannot lose its interest. It is because it seems evident that a fair statement of the facts must produce its proportion of well-constituted and unprejudiced minds."

The essay, a most valuable one, is republished without the change of a word or syllable, as the author upon reviewing finds that it anticipates and eliminates those secondary questions which cannot be for a moment entertained until the one great point of fact is peremptorily settled.

There are but very few subjects, indeed, in medical science, that Doctor Holmes has not investigated, and investigated, too, most thoroughly....

In his article on "Reflex Vision," published in Volume IV. of the Proceedings of the American Academy, will be found a very interesting account of his experiments in optics. One, indeed, that will both interest and instruct.

To him, as is well known, we are indebted for numerous improvements in the stereoscope; and in microscopes also, he has done some original and important work.

Said an admirer of Doctor Holmes in referring to his career as a medical professor:

"He always makes people attentive, and I have been told that there is no professor whom the students so much like to listen to. In one of his books he says that every one of us is three persons, and I think that if the statement is true in regard to ordinary men and women, Doctor Holmes himself is at least half a dozen persons. He lectures so well on anatomy that his students never suspect him to be a poet, and he writes verses so well that most people do not suspect him of being an authority among scientific men. Though he illustrates his medical lectures by quotations of the most appropriate and interesting sort, from a wonderful variety of authors, he has never been known to refer to his own writings in that way."

In celebrating the silver anniversary year ofhis wedding with the Muse of the monthlies—meaning his reappearance in theAtlantic—he observed that during the larger part of his absence, his time had been in a great measure occupied with other duties. "I never forgot the advice of Coleridge," he said, "that a literary man should have a regular calling. I may say, in passing, that I have often given the advice to others, and too often wished that I could supplement it with the words, "And confine himself to it.'"

ASthe seventieth birthday of Doctor Holmes drew near, the publishers of theAtlantic Monthlyresolved to give a "Breakfast" in his honor. The twenty-ninth of August, 1879, was, of course, the true anniversary, but knowing it would be difficult to bring together at that season of the year the friends and literary associates of Doctor Holmes, Mr. Houghton decided to postpone the invitations until the thirteenth of November. Upon that day a brilliant company assembled at noon in the spacious parlors of the Hotel Brunswick, in Boston.

Doctor Holmes and his daughter, Mrs. Sargent, received the guests, who numbered in all about one hundred. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Ralph Waldo Emerson and John G. Whittier assisted in thisceremony, and after a couple of hours spent in sparkling converse, the company adjourned to the dining-room, where a sumptuous "Breakfast" was served to the "Autocrat" and his friends.

At the six tables were seated writers of eminence in every department of literature. Grace was said by the Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D., and after the cloth was removed, Mr. H.O. Houghton introduced the guest of the day in a few happily-chosen words.

The company then rose and drank the health of the poet, after which Doctor Holmes read the following beautiful poem:

Where is the patriarch you are kindly greeting?Not unfamiliar to my ear his name,Not yet unknown to many a joyous meetingIn days long vanished,—is he still the same,Or changed by years forgotten and forgetting,Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech and thought,Still o'er the sad, degenerate present fretting,Where all goes wrong and nothing as it ought?Old age, the gray-beard! Well, indeed, I know him,—Shrunk, tottering, bent, of aches and ills the prey;In sermon, story, fable, picture, poem,Oft have I met him from my earliest day.In my old Æsop, toiling with his bundle,—His load of sticks,—politely asking Death,Who comes when called for,—would he lug or trundleHis fagot for him?—he was scant of breath.And sad "Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher,"Has he not stamped the image on my soul,In that last chapter, where the worn-out TeacherSighs o'er the loosened cord, the broken bowl?Yes, long, indeed, I've known him at a distance,And now my lifted door-latch shows him here;I take his shrivelled hand without resistance,And find him smiling as his step draws near.What though of gilded baubles he bereaves us,Dear to the heart of youth, to manhood's prime,Think of the calm he brings, the wealth he leaves us,The hoarded spoils, the legacies of time!Altars once flaming, still with incense fragrant,Passion's uneasy nurslings rocked asleep,Hope's anchor faster, wild desire less vagrant,Life's flow less noisy, but the stream how deep!Still as the silver cord gets worn and slender,Its lightened task-work tugs with lessening strain,Hands get more helpful, voices grown more tender,Soothe with their softened tones the slumberous brain.Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers,Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past,Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embersThat warm its creeping life-blood till the last.Dear to its heart is every loving tokenThat comes unbidden ere its pulse grows cold,Ere the last lingering ties of life are broken,Its labors ended, and its story told.Ah, while around us rosy youth rejoices,For us the sorrow-laden breezes sigh,And through the chorus of its jocund voicesThrobs the sharp note of misery's hopeless cry.As on the gauzy wings of fancy flyingFrom some far orb I track our watery sphere,Home of the struggling, suffering, doubting, dying,The silvered globule seems a glistening tear.But Nature lends her mirror of illusionTo win from saddening scenes our age-dimmed eyes,And misty day-dreams blend in sweet confusionThe wintery landscape and the summer skies.So when the iron portal shuts behind us,And life forgets us in its noise and whirl,Visions that shunned the glaring noonday find us,And glimmering starlight shows the gates of pearl.I come not here your morning hour to saddenA limping pilgrim leaning on his staff,—I, who have never deemed it sin to gladdenThis vale of sorrows with a wholesome laugh.If word of mine another's gloom has brightened,Through my dumb lips the heaven-sent message came;If hand of mine another's task has lightened,It felt the guidance that it dares not claim.But, O my gentle sisters, O my brothers,These thick-sown snow-flakes hint of toil's release;These feebler pulses bid me leave to othersThe tasks once welcome; evening asks for peace.Time claims his tribute; silence now is golden;Let me not vex the too long suffering lyre;Though to your love untiring still beholden,The curfew tells me—cover up the fire.And now with grateful smile and accents cheerful,And warmer heart than look or word can tell,In simplest phrase—these traitorous eyes are tearful—Thanks, Brothers, Sisters,—Children, and farewell!

Where is the patriarch you are kindly greeting?Not unfamiliar to my ear his name,Not yet unknown to many a joyous meetingIn days long vanished,—is he still the same,

Or changed by years forgotten and forgetting,Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech and thought,Still o'er the sad, degenerate present fretting,Where all goes wrong and nothing as it ought?

Old age, the gray-beard! Well, indeed, I know him,—Shrunk, tottering, bent, of aches and ills the prey;In sermon, story, fable, picture, poem,Oft have I met him from my earliest day.

In my old Æsop, toiling with his bundle,—His load of sticks,—politely asking Death,Who comes when called for,—would he lug or trundleHis fagot for him?—he was scant of breath.

And sad "Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher,"Has he not stamped the image on my soul,In that last chapter, where the worn-out TeacherSighs o'er the loosened cord, the broken bowl?

Yes, long, indeed, I've known him at a distance,And now my lifted door-latch shows him here;I take his shrivelled hand without resistance,And find him smiling as his step draws near.

What though of gilded baubles he bereaves us,Dear to the heart of youth, to manhood's prime,Think of the calm he brings, the wealth he leaves us,The hoarded spoils, the legacies of time!

Altars once flaming, still with incense fragrant,Passion's uneasy nurslings rocked asleep,Hope's anchor faster, wild desire less vagrant,Life's flow less noisy, but the stream how deep!

Still as the silver cord gets worn and slender,Its lightened task-work tugs with lessening strain,Hands get more helpful, voices grown more tender,Soothe with their softened tones the slumberous brain.

Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers,Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past,Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embersThat warm its creeping life-blood till the last.

Dear to its heart is every loving tokenThat comes unbidden ere its pulse grows cold,Ere the last lingering ties of life are broken,Its labors ended, and its story told.

Ah, while around us rosy youth rejoices,For us the sorrow-laden breezes sigh,And through the chorus of its jocund voicesThrobs the sharp note of misery's hopeless cry.

As on the gauzy wings of fancy flyingFrom some far orb I track our watery sphere,Home of the struggling, suffering, doubting, dying,The silvered globule seems a glistening tear.

But Nature lends her mirror of illusionTo win from saddening scenes our age-dimmed eyes,And misty day-dreams blend in sweet confusionThe wintery landscape and the summer skies.

So when the iron portal shuts behind us,And life forgets us in its noise and whirl,Visions that shunned the glaring noonday find us,And glimmering starlight shows the gates of pearl.

I come not here your morning hour to saddenA limping pilgrim leaning on his staff,—I, who have never deemed it sin to gladdenThis vale of sorrows with a wholesome laugh.

If word of mine another's gloom has brightened,Through my dumb lips the heaven-sent message came;If hand of mine another's task has lightened,It felt the guidance that it dares not claim.

But, O my gentle sisters, O my brothers,These thick-sown snow-flakes hint of toil's release;These feebler pulses bid me leave to othersThe tasks once welcome; evening asks for peace.

Time claims his tribute; silence now is golden;Let me not vex the too long suffering lyre;Though to your love untiring still beholden,The curfew tells me—cover up the fire.

And now with grateful smile and accents cheerful,And warmer heart than look or word can tell,In simplest phrase—these traitorous eyes are tearful—Thanks, Brothers, Sisters,—Children, and farewell!

After the reading of the poem, the following reminiscence from Doctor Holmes' pen, was read by Mr. Houghton:—

"The establishment of theAtlantic Monthlywas due to the liberal enterprise of the then flourishing firm of Phillips & Sampson. Mr. Phillips, more especially, was most active and sanguine. The publishers were fortunate enoughto secure the services of Mr. Lowell as editor. Mr. Lowell had a fancy that I could be useful as a contributor, and woke me from a kind of literary lethargy in which I was half slumbering, to call me to active service. Remembering some crude contributions of mine to an old magazine, it occurred to me that their title might serve for some fresh papers, and so I sat down and wrote off what came into my head under the titleThe Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. This series of papers was not the result of an express premeditation, but was, as I may say, dipped from the running stream of my thoughts. Its very kind reception encouraged me, and you know the consequences, which have lasted from that day to this.

"But what I want especially to say here is, that I owe the impulse which started my second growth, to the urgent hint of my friend Mr. Lowell, and that you have him to thank, not only for his own noble contributions to our literature, but for the spur which moved me to action, to which you owe any pleasure I may have given, and I am indebted for the crowning happiness of this occasion. His absence I most deeply regret for your and myown sake, while I congratulate the country to which in his eminent station he is devoting his services."

As Mr. Whittier had been obliged to leave the company before this, Mr. James T. Fields read his fine poem entitled "Our Autocrat," from which we quote the last verses:

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