The Poet at the Breakfast Table

O >> Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. >> The Poet at the Breakfast Table


The old Master knows ten times more about this matter and about all the
professions, as he does about everything else, than I do. My opinion is
that he has studied two, if not three, of these professions in a regular
course. I don't know that he has ever preached, except as Charles Lamb
said Coleridge always did, for when he gets the bit in his teeth he runs
away with the conversation, and if he only took a text his talk would be
a sermon; but if he has not preached, he has made a study of theology, as
many laymen do. I know he has some shelves of medical books in his
library, and has ideas on the subject of the healing art. He confesses
to having attended law lectures and having had much intercourse with
lawyers. So he has something to say on almost any subject that happens
to come up. I told him my story about my visit to the young doctor, and
asked him what he thought of youthful practitioners in general and of Dr.
Benjamin in particular.

I 'll tell you what,--the Master said,--I know something about these
young fellows that come home with their heads full of "science," as they
call it, and stick up their signs to tell people they know how to cure
their headaches and stomach-aches. Science is a first-rate piece of
furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the
ground-floor. But if a man has n't got plenty of good common sense, the
more science he has the worse for his patient.

--I don't know that I see exactly how it is worse for the patient,--I
said.

--Well, I'll tell you, and you'll find it's a mighty simple matter. When
a person is sick, there is always something to be done for him, and done
at once. If it is only to open or shut a window, if it is only to tell
him to keep on doing just what he is doing already, it wants a man to
bring his mind right down to the fact of the present case and its
immediate needs. Now the present case, as the doctor sees it, is just
exactly such a collection of paltry individual facts as never was
before,--a snarl and tangle of special conditions which it is his
business to wind as much thread out of as he can. It is a good deal as
when a painter goes to take the portrait of any sitter who happens to
send for him. He has seen just such noses and just such eyes and just
such mouths, but he never saw exactly such a face before, and his
business is with that and no other person's,--with the features of the
worthy father of a family before him, and not with the portraits he has
seen in galleries or books, or Mr. Copley's grand pictures of the fine
old Tories, or the Apollos and Jupiters of Greek sculpture. It is the
same thing with the patient. His disease has features of its own; there
never was and never will be another case in all respects exactly like it.
If a doctor has science without common sense, he treats a fever, but not
this man's fever. If he has common sense without science, he treats this
man's fever without knowing the general laws that govern all fevers and
all vital movements. I 'll tell you what saves these last fellows. They
go for weakness whenever they see it, with stimulants and strengtheners,
and they go for overaction, heat, and high pulse, and the rest, with
cooling and reducing remedies. That is three quarters of medical
practice. The other quarter wants science and common sense too. But the
men that have science only, begin too far back, and, before they get as
far as the case in hand, the patient has very likely gone to visit his
deceased relatives. You remember Thomas Prince's "Chronological History
of New England," I suppose? He begins, you recollect, with Adam, and has
to work down five thousand six hundred and twenty-four years before he
gets to the Pilgrim fathers and the Mayflower. It was all very well,
only it did n't belong there, but got in the way of something else. So
it is with "science" out of place. By far the larger part of the facts
of structure and function you find in the books of anatomy and physiology
have no immediate application to the daily duties of the practitioner.
You must learn systematically, for all that; it is the easiest way and
the only way that takes hold of the memory, except mere empirical
repetition, like that of the handicraftsman. Did you ever see one of
those Japanese figures with the points for acupuncture marked upon it?

--I had to own that my schooling had left out that piece of information.

Well, I 'll tell you about it. You see they have a way of pushing long,
slender needles into you for the cure of rheumatism and other complaints,
and it seems there is a choice of spots for the operation, though it is
very strange how little mischief it does in a good many places one would
think unsafe to meddle with. So they had a doll made, and marked the
spots where they had put in needles without doing any harm. They must
have had accidents from sticking the needles into the wrong places now
and then, but I suppose they did n't say a great deal about those. After
a time, say a few centuries of experience, they had their doll all
spotted over with safe places for sticking in the needles. That is their
way of registering practical knowledge: We, on the other hand, study the
structure of the body as a whole, systematically, and have no difficulty
at all in remembering the track of the great vessels and nerves, and
knowing just what tracks will be safe and what unsafe. It is just the
same thing with the geologists. Here is a man close by us boring for
water through one of our ledges, because somebody else got water
somewhere else in that way; and a person who knows geology or ought to
know it, because he has given his life to it, tells me he might as well
bore there for lager-beer as for water.

--I thought we had had enough of this particular matter, and that I
should like to hear what the Master had to say about the three
professions he knew something about, each compared with the others.

What is your general estimate of doctors, lawyers, and ministers?--said
I.

--Wait a minute, till I have got through with your first question,--said
the Master.---One thing at a time. You asked me about the young doctors,
and about our young doctor. They come home tres biens chausses, as a
Frenchman would say, mighty well shod with professional knowledge. But
when they begin walking round among their poor patients, they don't
commonly start with millionnaires,--they find that their new shoes of
scientific acquirements have got to be broken in just like a pair of
boots or brogans. I don't know that I have put it quite strong enough.
Let me try again. You've seen those fellows at the circus that get up on
horseback so big that you wonder how they could climb into the saddle.
But pretty soon they throw off their outside coat, and the next minute
another one, and then the one under that, and so they keep peeling off
one garment after another till people begin to look queer and think they
are going too far for strict propriety. Well, that is the way a fellow
with a real practical turn serves a good many of his scientific wrappers,
flings 'em off for other people to pick up, and goes right at the work of
curing stomach-aches and all the other little mean unscientific
complaints that make up the larger part of every doctor's business. I
think our Dr. Benjamin is a worthy young man, and if you are in need of a
doctor at any time I hope you will go to him; and if you come off without
harm, I will recommend some other friend to try him.

--I thought he was going to say he would try him in his own person, but
the Master is not fond of committing himself.

Now, I will answer your other question, he said. The lawyers are the
cleverest men, the ministers are the most learned, and the doctors are
the most sensible.

The lawyers are a picked lot, "first scholars" and the like, but their
business is as unsympathetic as Jack Ketch's. There is nothing
humanizing in their relations with their fellow-creatures. They go for
the side that retains them. They defend the man they know to be a rogue,
and not very rarely throw suspicion on the man they know to be innocent.
Mind you, I am not finding fault with them; every side of a case has a
right to the best statement it admits of; but I say it does not tend to
make them sympathetic. Suppose in a case of Fever vs. Patient, the
doctor should side with either party according to whether the old miser
or his expectant heir was his employer. Suppose the minister should side
with the Lord or the Devil, according to the salary offered and other
incidental advantages, where the soul of a sinner was in question. You
can see what a piece of work it would make of their sympathies. But the
lawyers are quicker witted than either of the other professions, and
abler men generally. They are good-natured, or, if they quarrel, their
quarrels are above-board. I don't think they are as accomplished as the
ministers, but they have a way of cramming with special knowledge for a
case which leaves a certain shallow sediment of intelligence in their
memories about a good many things. They are apt to talk law in mixed
company, and they have a way of looking round when they make a point, as
if they were addressing a jury, that is mighty aggravating, as I once had
occasion to see when one of 'em, and a pretty famous one, put me on the
witness-stand at a dinner-party once.

The ministers come next in point of talent. They are far more curious
and widely interested outside of their own calling than either of the
other professions. I like to talk with 'em. They are interesting men,
full of good feelings, hard workers, always foremost in good deeds, and
on the whole the most efficient civilizing class, working downwards from
knowledge to ignorance, that is,--not so much upwards, perhaps,--that we
have. The trouble is, that so many of 'em work in harness, and it is
pretty sure to chafe somewhere. They feed us on canned meats mostly.
They cripple our instincts and reason, and give us a crutch of doctrine.
I have talked with a great many of 'em of all sorts of belief, and I
don't think they are quite so easy in their minds, the greater number of
them; nor so clear in their convictions, as one would think to hear 'em
lay down the law in the pulpit. They used to lead the intelligence of
their parishes; now they do pretty well if they keep up with it, and they
are very apt to lag behind it. Then they must have a colleague. The old
minister thinks he can hold to his old course, sailing right into the
wind's eye of human nature, as straight as that famous old skipper John
Bunyan; the young minister falls off three or four points and catches the
breeze that left the old man's sails all shivering. By and by the
congregation will get ahead of him, and then it must, have another new
skipper. The priest holds his own pretty well; the minister is coming
down every generation nearer and nearer to the common level of the useful
citizen,--no oracle at all, but a man of more than average moral
instincts, who, if he knows anything, knows how little he knows. The
ministers are good talkers, only the struggle between nature and grace
makes some of 'em a little awkward occasionally. The women do their best
to spoil 'em, as they do the poets; you find it very pleasant to be
spoiled, no doubt; so do they. Now and then one of 'em goes over the dam;
no wonder, they're always in the rapids.

By this time our three ladies had their faces all turned toward the
speaker, like the weathercocks in a northeaster, and I thought it best to
switch off the talk on to another rail.

How about the doctors?--I said.

--Theirs is the least learned of the professions, in this country at
least. They have not half the general culture of the lawyers, nor a
quarter of that of the ministers. I rather think, though, they are more
agreeable to the common run of people than the men with black coats or
the men with green bags. People can swear before 'em if they want to,
and they can't very well before ministers. I don't care whether they
want to swear or not, they don't want to be on their good behavior.
Besides, the minister has a little smack of the sexton about him; he
comes when people are in extremis, but they don't send for him every time
they make a slight moral slip, tell a lie for instance, or smuggle a silk
dress through the customhouse; but they call in the doctor when a child
is cutting a tooth or gets a splinter in its finger. So it does n't mean
much to send for him, only a pleasant chat about the news of the day; for
putting the baby to rights does n't take long. Besides, everybody does
n't like to talk about the next world; people are modest in their
desires, and find this world as good as they deserve; but everybody loves
to talk physic. Everybody loves to hear of strange cases; people are
eager to tell the doctor of the wonderful cures they have heard of; they
want to know what is the matter with somebody or other who is said to be
suffering from "a complication of diseases," and above all to get a hard
name, Greek or Latin, for some complaint which sounds altogether too
commonplace in plain English. If you will only call a headache a
Cephalgia, it acquires dignity at once, and a patient becomes rather
proud of it. So I think doctors are generally welcome in most companies.

In old times, when people were more afraid of the Devil and of witches
than they are now, they liked to have a priest or a minister somewhere
near to scare 'em off; but nowadays, if you could find an old woman that
would ride round the room on a broomstick, Barnum would build an
amphitheatre to exhibit her in; and if he could come across a young imp,
with hoofs, tail, and budding horns, a lineal descendant of one of those
"daemons" which the good people of Gloucester fired at, and were fired at
by "for the best part of a month together" in the year 1692, the, great
showman would have him at any cost for his museum or menagerie. Men are
cowards, sir, and are driven by fear as the sovereign motive. Men are
idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw
themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you
don't make it of wood, you must make it of words, which are just as much
used for idols as promissory notes are used for values. The ministers
have a hard time of it without bell and book and holy water; they are
dismounted men in armor since Luther cut their saddle-girths, and you can
see they are quietly taking off one piece of iron after another until
some of the best of 'em are fighting the devil (not the zoological Devil
with the big D) with the sword of the Spirit, and precious little else in
the way of weapons of offence or defence. But we couldn't get on without
the spiritual brotherhood, whatever became of our special creeds. There
is a genius for religion, just as there is for painting or sculpture. It
is half-sister to the genius for music, and has some of the features
which remind us of earthly love. But it lifts us all by its mere
presence. To see a good man and hear his voice once a week would be
reason enough for building churches and pulpits. The Master stopped all
at once, and after about half a minute laughed his pleasant laugh.

What is it?--I asked him.

I was thinking of the great coach and team that is carrying us fast
enough, I don't know but too fast, somewhere or other. The D. D.'s used
to be the leaders, but now they are the wheel-horses. It's pretty hard
to tell how much they pull, but we know they can hold back like the----

--When we're going down hill,--I said, as neatly as if I had been a
High-Church curate trained to snap at the last word of the response, so
that you couldn't wedge in the tail of a comma between the end of the
congregation's closing syllable and the beginning of the next petition.
They do it well, but it always spoils my devotion. To save my life, I
can't help watching them, as I watch to see a duck dive at the flash of a
gun, and that is not what I go to church for. It is a juggler's trick,
and there is no more religion in it than in catching a ball on the fly.

I was looking at our Scheherezade the other day, and thinking what a pity
it was that she had never had fair play in the world. I wish I knew more
of her history. There is one way of learning it,--making love to her. I
wonder whether she would let me and like it. It is an absurd thing, and
I ought not to confess, but I tell you and you only, Beloved, my heart
gave a perceptible jump when it heard the whisper of that possibility
overhead! Every day has its ebb and flow, but such a thought as that is
like one of those tidal waves they talk about, that rolls in like a great
wall and overtops and drowns out all your landmarks, and you, too, if you
don't mind what you are about and stand ready to run or climb or swim.
Not quite so bad as that, though, this time. I take an interest in our
Scheherezade. I am glad she did n't smile on the pipe and the
Bohemian-looking fellow that finds the best part of his life in sucking
at it. A fine thing, isn't it; for a young woman to marry a man who will
hold her

"Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse,"

but not quite so good as his meerschaum? It is n't for me to throw
stones, though, who have been a Nicotian a good deal more than half my
days. Cigar-stump out now, and consequently have become very bitter on
more persevering sinners. I say I take an interest in our Scheherezade,
but I rather think it is more paternal than anything else, though my
heart did give that jump. It has jumped a good many times without
anything very remarkable coming of it.

This visit to the Observatory is going to bring us all, or most of us,
together in a new way, and it wouldn't be very odd if some of us should
become better acquainted than we ever have been. There is a chance for
the elective affinities. What tremendous forces they are, if two
subjects of them come within range! There lies a bit of iron. All the
dynamic agencies of the universe are pledged to hold it just in that
position, and there it will lie until it becomes a heap of red-brown
rust. But see, I hold a magnet to it,--it looks to you like just such a
bit of iron as the other,--and lo! it leaves them all,--the tugging of
the mighty earth; of the ghostly moon that walks in white, trailing the
snaky waves of the ocean after her; of the awful sun, twice as large as a
sphere that the whole orbit of the moon would but just girdle,--it leaves
the wrestling of all their forces, which are at a dead lock with each
other, all fighting for it, and springs straight to the magnet. What a
lucky thing it is for well-conducted persons that the maddening elective
affinities don't come into play in full force very often!

I suppose I am making a good deal more of our prospective visit than it
deserves. It must be because I have got it into my head that we are
bound to have some kind of sentimental outbreak amongst us, and that this
will give a chance for advances on the part of anybody disposed in that
direction. A little change of circumstance often hastens on a movement
that has been long in preparation. A chemist will show you a flask
containing a clear liquid; he will give it a shake or two, and the whole
contents of the flask will become solid in an instant. Or you may lay a
little heap of iron-filings on a sheet of paper with a magnet beneath it,
and they will be quiet enough as they are, but give the paper a slight
jar and the specks of metal will suddenly find their way to the north or
the south pole of the magnet and take a definite shape not unpleasing to
contemplate, and curiously illustrating the laws of attraction,
antagonism, and average, by which the worlds, conscious and unconscious,
are alike governed. So with our little party, with any little party of
persons who have got used to each other; leave them undisturbed and they
might remain in a state of equilibrium forever; but let anything give
them a shake or a jar, and the long-striving but hindered affinities come
all at once into play and finish the work of a year in five minutes.

We were all a good deal excited by the anticipation of this visit. The
Capitalist, who for the most part keeps entirely to himself, seemed to
take an interest in it and joined the group in the parlor who were making
arrangements as to the details of the eventful expedition, which was very
soon to take place. The Young Girl was full of enthusiasm; she is one of
those young persons, I think, who are impressible, and of necessity
depressible when their nervous systems are overtasked, but elastic,
recovering easily from mental worries and fatigues, and only wanting a
little change of their conditions to get back their bloom and
cheerfulness. I could not help being pleased to see how much of the
child was left in her, after all the drudgery she had been through. What
is there that youth will not endure and triumph over? Here she was; her
story for the week was done in good season; she had got rid of her
villain by a new and original catastrophe; she had received a sum of
money for an extra string of verses,--painfully small, it is true, but it
would buy her a certain ribbon she wanted for the great excursion; and
now her eyes sparkled so that I forgot how tired and hollow they
sometimes looked when she had been sitting up half the night over her
endless manuscript.

The morning of the day we had looked forward to--promised as good an
evening as we could wish. The Capitalist, whose courteous and bland
demeanor would never have suggested the thought that he was a robber and
an enemy of his race, who was to be trampled underfoot by the beneficent
regenerators of the social order as preliminary to the universal reign of
peace on earth and good-will to men, astonished us all with a proposal to
escort the three ladies and procure a carriage for their conveyance. The
Lady thanked him in a very cordial way, but said she thought nothing of
the walk. The Landlady looked disappointed at this answer. For her part
she was on her legs all day and should be glad enough to ride, if so be
he was going to have a carriage at any rate. It would be a sight
pleasanter than to trudge afoot, but she would n't have him go to the
expense on her account. Don't mention it, madam,--r--said the
Capitalist, in a generous glow of enthusiasm. As for the Young Girl, she
did not often get a chance for a drive, and liked the idea of it for its
own sake, as children do, and she insisted that the Lady should go in the
carriage with her. So it was settled that the Capitalist should take the
three ladies in a carriage, and the rest of us go on foot.

The evening behaved as it was bound to do on so momentous an occasion.
The Capitalist was dressed with almost suspicious nicety. We pedestrians
could not help waiting to see them off, and I thought he handed the
ladies into the carriage with the air of a French marquis.

I walked with Dr. Benjamin and That Boy, and we had to keep the little
imp on the trot a good deal of the way in order not to be too long behind
the carriage party. The Member of the Haouse walked with our two
dummies,--I beg their pardon, I mean the Register of Deeds and the
Salesman.

The Man of Letters, hypothetically so called, walked by himself, smoking
a short pipe which was very far from suggesting the spicy breezes that
blow soft from Ceylon's isle.

I suppose everybody who reads this paper has visited one or more
observatories, and of course knows all about them. But as it may
hereafter be translated into some foreign tongue and circulated among
barbarous, but rapidly improving people, people who have as yet no
astronomers among them, it may be well to give a little notion of what
kind of place an observatory is.

To begin then: a deep and solid stone foundation is laid in the earth,
and a massive pier of masonry is built up on it. A heavy block of
granite forms the summit of this pier, and on this block rests the
equatorial telescope. Around this structure a circular tower is built,
with two or more floors which come close up to the pier, but do not touch
it at any point. It is crowned with a hemispherical dome, which, I may
remark, half realizes the idea of my egg-shell studio. This dome is
cleft from its base to its summit by a narrow, ribbon-like opening,
through which is seen the naked sky. It revolves on cannon-balls, so
easily that a single hand can move it, and thus the opening may be turned
towards any point of the compass. As the telescope can be raised or
depressed so as to be directed to any elevation from the horizon to the
zenith, and turned around the entire circle with the dome, it can be
pointed to any part of the heavens. But as the star or other celestial
object is always apparently moving, in consequence of the real rotatory
movement of the earth, the telescope is made to follow it automatically
by an ingenious clock-work arrangement. No place, short of the temple of
the living God, can be more solemn. The jars of the restless life around
it do not disturb the serene intelligence of the half-reasoning
apparatus. Nothing can stir the massive pier but the shocks that shake
the solid earth itself. When an earthquake thrills the planet, the
massive turret shudders with the shuddering rocks on which it rests, but
it pays no heed to the wildest tempest, and while the heavens are
convulsed and shut from the eye of the far-seeing instrument it waits
without a tremor for the blue sky to come back. It is the type of the
true and steadfast man of the Roman poet, whose soul remains unmoved
while the firmament cracks and tumbles about him. It is the material
image of the Christian; his heart resting on the Rock of Ages, his eye
fixed on the brighter world above.