The Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

O >> Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) >> The Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.


That all spasmodic cerebral action is an evil is not perfectly
clear. Men get fairly intoxicated with music, with poetry, with
religious excitement, oftenest with love. Ninon de l'Enclos said
she was so easily excited that her soup intoxicated her, and
convalescents have been made tipsy by a beef-steak.

There are forms and stages of alcoholic exaltation which, in
themselves, and without regard to their consequences, might be
considered as positive improvements of the persons affected. When
the sluggish intellect is roused, the slow speech quickened, the
cold nature warmed, the latent sympathy developed, the flagging
spirit kindled,--before the trains of thought become confused or
the will perverted, or the muscles relaxed,--just at the moment
when the whole human zoophyte flowers out like a full-blown rose,
and is ripe for the subscription-paper or the contribution-box,--it
would be hard to say that a man was, at that very time, worse, or
less to be loved, than when driving a hard bargain with all his
meaner wits about him. The difficulty is, that the alcoholic
virtues don't wash; but until the water takes their colors out, the
tints are very much like those of the true celestial stuff.

[Here I was interrupted by a question which I am very unwilling to
report, but have confidence enough in those friends who examine
these records to commit to their candor.

A PERSON at table asked me whether I "went in for rum as a steady
drink?"--His manner made the question highly offensive, but I
restrained myself, and answered thus:-]

Rum I take to be the name which unwashed moralists apply alike to
the product distilled from molasses and the noblest juices of the
vineyard. Burgundy "in all its sunset glow" is rum. Champagne,
"the foaming wine of Eastern France," in rum. Hock, which our
friend, the Poet, speaks of as


"The Rhine's breastmilk, gushing cold and bright,
Pale as the moon, and maddening as her light,"


is rum. Sir, I repudiate the loathsome vulgarism as an insult to
the first miracle wrought by the Founder of our religion! I
address myself to the company.--I believe in temperance, nay,
almost in abstinence, as a rule for healthy people. I trust that I
practice both. But let me tell you, there are companies of men of
genius into which I sometimes go, where the atmosphere of intellect
and sentiment is so much more stimulating than alcohol, that, if I
thought fit to take wine, it would be to keep me sober.

Among the gentlemen that I have known, few, if any, were ruined by
drinking. My few drunken acquaintances were generally ruined
before they became drunkards. The habit of drinking is often a
vice, no doubt,--sometimes a misfortune,--as when an almost
irresistible hereditary propensity exists to indulge in it,--but
oftenest of all a PUNISHMENT.

Empty heads,--heads without ideas in wholesome variety and
sufficient number to furnish food for the mental clockwork,
--ill-regulated heads, where the faculties are not under the control
of the will,--these are the ones that hold the brains which their
owners are so apt to tamper with, by introducing the appliances we
have been talking about. Now, when a gentleman's brain is empty or
ill-regulated, it is, to a great extent, his own fault; and so it
is simple retribution, that, while he lies slothfully sleeping or
aimlessly dreaming, the fatal habit settles on him like a vampyre,
and sucks his blood, fanning him all the while with its hot wings
into deeper slumber or idler dreams! I am not such a hard-souled
being as to apply this to the neglected poor, who have had no
chance to fill their heads with wholesome ideas, and to be taught
the lesson of self-government. I trust the tariff of Heaven has an
ad valorem scale for them--and all of us.

But to come back to poets and artists;--if they really are more
prone to the abuse of stimulants,--and I fear that this is true,
--the reason of it is only too clear. A man abandons himself to a
fine frenzy, and the power which flows through him, as I once
explained to you, makes him the medium of a great poem or a great
picture. The creative action is not voluntary at all, but
automatic; we can only put the mind into the proper attitude, and
wait for the wind, that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it.
Thus the true state of creative genius is allied to reverie, or
dreaming. If mind and body were both healthy and had food enough
and fair play, I doubt whether any men would be more temperate than
the imaginative classes. But body and mind often flag,--perhaps
they are ill-made to begin with, underfed with bread or ideas,
overworked, or abused in some way. The automatic action, by which
genius wrought its wonders, fails. There is only one thing which
can rouse the machine; not will,--that cannot reach it; nothing but
a ruinous agent, which hurries the wheels awhile and soon eats out
the heart of the mechanism. The dreaming faculties are always the
dangerous ones, because their mode of action can be imitated by
artificial excitement; the reasoning ones are safe, because they
imply continued voluntary effort.

I think you will find it true, that, before any vice can fasten on
a man, body, mind, or moral nature must be debilitated. The mosses
and fungi gather on sickly trees, not thriving ones; and the odious
parasites which fasten on the human frame choose that which is
already enfeebled. Mr. Walker, the hygeian humorist, declared that
he had such a healthy skin it was impossible for any impurity to
stick to it, and maintained that it was an absurdity to wash a face
which was of necessity always clean. I don't know how much fancy
there was in this; but there is no fancy in saying that the
lassitude of tired-out operatives, and the languor of imaginative
natures in their periods of collapse, and the vacuity of minds
untrained to labor and discipline, fit the soul and body for the
germination of the seeds of intemperance.

Whenever the wandering demon of Drunkenness finds a ship adrift,
--no steady wind in its sails, no thoughtful pilot directing its
course,--he steps on board, takes the helm, and steers straight for
the maelstrom.


--I wonder if you know the TERRIBLE SMILE? [The young fellow whom
they call John winked very hard, and made a jocular remark, the
sense of which seemed to depend on some double meaning of the word
SMILE. The company was curious to know what I meant.]

There are persons--I said--who no sooner come within sight of you
than they begin to smile, with an uncertain movement of the mouth,
which conveys the idea that they are thinking about themselves, and
thinking, too, that you are thinking they are thinking about
themselves,--and so look at you with a wretched mixture of
self-consciousness, awkwardness, and attempts to carry off both,
which are betrayed by the cowardly behaviour of the eye and the
tell-tale weakness of the lips that characterize these unfortunate
beings.

--Why do you call them unfortunate, Sir?--asked the divinity-
student.

Because it is evident that the consciousness of some imbecility or
other is at the bottom of this extraordinary expression. I don't
think, however, that these persons are commonly fools. I have
known a number, and all of them were intelligent. I think nothing
conveys the idea of UNDERBREEDING more than this self-betraying
smile. Yet I think this peculiar habit as well as that of
MEANINGLESS BLUSHING may be fallen into by very good people who met
often, or sit opposite each other at table. A true gentleman's
face is infinitely removed from all such paltriness,--calm-eyed,
firm-mouthed. I think Titian understood the look of a gentleman as
well as anybody that ever lived. The portrait of a young man
holding a glove in his hand, in the Gallery of the Louvre, if any
of you have seen that collection, will remind you of what I mean.

--Do I think these people know the peculiar look they have?--I
cannot say; I hope not; I am afraid they would never forgive me, if
they did. The worst of it is, the trick is catching; when one
meets one of these fellows, he feels a tendency to the same
manifestation. The Professor tells me there is a muscular slip, a
dependence of the platysma myoides, which is called the risorius
Santorini.

--Say that once more,--exclaimed the young fellow mentioned above.

The Professor says there is a little fleshy slip called Santorini's
laughing muscle. I would have it cut out of my face, if I were
born with one of those constitutional grins upon it. Perhaps I am
uncharitable in my judgment of those sour-looking people I told you
of the other day, and of these smiling folks. It may be that they
are born with these looks, as other people are with more generally
recognized deformities. Both are bad enough, but I had rather meet
three of the scowlers than one of the smilers.

--There is another unfortunate way of looking, which is peculiar to
that amiable sex we do not like to find fault with. There are some
very pretty, but, unhappily, very ill-bred women, who don't
understand the law of the road with regard to handsome faces.
Nature and custom would, no doubt, agree in conceding to all males
the right of at least two distinct looks at every comely female
countenance, without any infraction of the rules of courtesy or the
sentiment of respect. The first look is necessary to define the
person of the individual one meets so as to avoid it in passing.
Any unusual attraction detected in a first glance is a sufficient
apology for a second,--not a prolonged and impertinent stare, but
an appreciating homage of the eyes, such as a stranger may
inoffensively yield to a passing image. It is astonishing how
morbidly sensitive some vulgar beauties are to the slightest
demonstration of this kind. When a lady walks the streets, she
leaves her virtuous-indignation countenance at home; she knows well
enough that the street is a picture-gallery, where pretty faces
framed in pretty bonnets are meant to be seen, and everybody has a
right to see them.

--When we observe how the same features and style of person and
character descend from generation to generation, we can believe
that some inherited weakness may account for these peculiarities.
Little snapping-turtles snap--so the great naturalist tells us
--before they are out of the egg-shell. I am satisfied, that, much
higher up in the scale of life, character is distinctly shown at
the age of--2 or--3 months.

--My friend, the Professor, has been full of eggs lately. [This
remark excited a burst of hilarity which I did not allow to
interrupt the course of my observations.] He has been reading the
great book where he found the fact about the little snapping-
turtles mentioned above. Some of the things he has told me have
suggested several odd analogies enough.

There are half a dozen men, or so, who carry in their brains the
OVARIAN EGGS of the next generation's or century's civilization.
These eggs are not ready to be laid in the form of books as yet;
some of them are hardly ready to be put into the form of talk. But
as rudimentary ideas or inchoate tendencies, there they are; and
these are what must form the future. A man's general notions are
not good for much, unless he has a crop of these intellectual
ovarian eggs in his own brain, or knows them as they exist in the
minds of others. One must be in the HABIT of talking with such
persons to get at these rudimentary germs of thought; for their
development is necessarily imperfect, and they are moulded on new
patterns, which must be long and closely studied. But these are
the men to talk with. No fresh truth ever gets into a book.

--A good many fresh lies get in, anyhow,--said one of the company.

I proceeded in spite of the interruption.--All uttered thought, my
friend, the Professor, says, is of the nature of an excretion. Its
materials have been taken in, and have acted upon the system, and
been reacted on by it; it has circulated and done its office in one
mind before it is given out for the benefit of others. It may be
milk or venom to other minds; but, in either case, it is something
which the producer has had the use of and can part with. A man
instinctively tries to get rid of his thought in conversation or in
print so soon as it is matured; but it is hard to get at it as it
lies imbedded, a mere potentiality, the germ of a germ, in his
intellect.

--Where are the brains that are fullest of these ovarian eggs of
thought?--I decline mentioning individuals. The producers of
thought, who are few, the "jobbers" of thought, who are many, and
the retailers of thought, who are numberless, are so mixed up in
the popular apprehension, that it would be hopeless to try to
separate them before opinion has had time to settle. Follow the
course of opinion on the great subjects of human interest for a few
generations or centuries, get its parallax, map out a small arc of
its movement, see where it tends, and then see who is in advance of
it or even with it; the world calls him hard names, probably; but
if you would find the ova of the future, you must look into the
folds of his cerebral convolutions.

[The divinity-student looked a little puzzled at this suggestion,
as if he did not see exactly where he was to come out, if he
computed his arc too nicely. I think it possible it might cut off
a few corners of his present belief, as it has cut off martyr-
burning and witch-hanging;--but time will show,--time will show, as
the old gentleman opposite says.]

--Oh,--here is that copy of verses I told you about.


SPRING HAS COME.

Intra Muros.

The sunbeams, lost for half a year,
Slant through my pane their morning rays
For dry Northwesters cold and clear,
The East blows in its thin blue haze.

And first the snowdrop's bells are seen,
Then close against the sheltering wall
The tulip's horn of dusky green,
The peony's dark unfolding ball.

The golden-chaliced crocus burns;
The long narcissus-blades appear;
The cone-beaked hyacinth returns,
And lights her blue-flamed chandelier.

The willow's whistling lashes, wrung
By the wild winds of gusty March,
With sallow leaflets lightly strung,
Are swaying by the tufted larch.

The elms have robed their slender spray
With full-blown flower and embryo leaf;
Wide o'er the clasping arch of day
Soars like a cloud their hoary chief.

--[See the proud tulip's flaunting cup,
That flames in glory for an hour,--
Behold it withering,--then look up,--
How meek the forest-monarch's flower!--

When wake the violets, Winter dies;
When sprout the elm-buds, Spring is near;
When lilacs blossom, Summer cries,
"Bud, little roses! Spring is here!"]

The windows blush with fresh bouquets,
Cut with the May-dew on their lips;
The radish all its bloom displays,
Pink as Aurora's finger-tips.

Nor less the flood of light that showers
On beauty's changed corolla-shades,--
The walks are gay as bridal bowers
With rows of many-petalled maids.

The scarlet shell-fish click and clash
In the blue barrow where they slide;
The horseman, proud of streak and splash,
Creeps homeward from his morning ride.

Here comes the dealer's awkward string,
With neck in rope and tail in knot,--
Rough colts, with careless country-swing,
In lazy walk or slouching trot.

--Wild filly from the mountain-side,
Doomed to the close and chafing thills,
Lend me thy long, untiring stride
To seek with thee thy western hills!

I hear the whispering voice of Spring,
The thrush's trill, the cat-bird's cry,
Like some poor bird with prisoned wing
That sits and sings, but longs to fly.

Oh for one spot of living green,--
One little spot where leaves can grow,--
To love unblamed, to walk unseen,
To dream above, to sleep below!



CHAPTER IX



[Aqui esta encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro Garcias.

If I should ever make a little book out of these papers, which I
hope you are not getting tired of, I suppose I ought to save the
above sentence for a motto on the title-page. But I want it now,
and must use it. I need not say to you that the words are Spanish,
nor that they are to be found in the short Introduction to "Gil
Blas," nor that they mean, "Here lies buried the soul of the
licentiate Pedro Garcias."

I warned all young people off the premises when I began my notes
referring to old age. I must be equally fair with old people now.
They are earnestly requested to leave this paper to young persons
from the age of twelve to that of fourscore years and ten, at which
latter period of life I am sure that I shall have at least one
youthful reader. You know well enough what I mean by youth and
age;--something in the soul, which has no more to do with the color
of the hair than the vein of gold in a rock has to do with the
grass a thousand feet above it.

I am growing bolder as I write. I think it requires not only
youth, but genius, to read this paper. I don't mean to imply that
it required any whatsoever to talk what I have here written down.
It did demand a certain amount of memory, and such command of the
English tongue as is given by a common school education. So much I
do claim. But here I have related, at length, a string of
trivialities. You must have the imagination of a poet to
transfigure them. These little colored patches are stains upon the
windows of a human soul; stand on the outside, they are but dull
and meaningless spots of color; seen from within, they are
glorified shapes with empurpled wings and sunbright aureoles.

My hand trembles when I offer you this. Many times I have come
bearing flowers such as my garden grew; but now I offer you this
poor, brown, homely growth, you may cast it away as worthless.
And yet--and yet--it is something better than flowers; it is a
SEED-CAPSULE. Many a gardener will cut you a bouquet of his choicest
blossoms for small fee, but he does not love to let the seeds of
his rarest varieties go out of his own hands.

It is by little things that we know ourselves; a soul would very
probably mistake itself for another, when once disembodied, were it
not for individual experiences which differ from those of others
only in details seemingly trifling. All of us have been thirsty
thousands of times, and felt, with Pindar, that water was the best
of things. I alone, as I think, of all mankind, remember one
particular pailful of water, flavored with the white-pine of which
the pail was made, and the brown mug out of which one Edmund, a
red-faced and curly-haired boy, was averred to have bitten a
fragment in his haste to drink; it being then high summer, and
little full-blooded boys feeling very warm and porous in the
low-"studded" school-room where Dame Prentiss, dead and gone, ruled
over young children, many of whom are old ghosts now, and have
known Abraham for twenty or thirty years of our mortal time.

Thirst belongs to humanity, everywhere, in all ages; but that
white-pine pail, and that brown mug belong to me in particular; and
just so of my special relationships with other things and with my
rice. One could never remember himself in eternity by the mere
fact of having loved or hated any more than by that of having
thirsted; love and hate have no more individuality in them than
single waves in the ocean;--but the accidents or trivial marks
which distinguished those whom we loved or hated make their memory
our own forever, and with it that of our own personality also.

Therefore, my aged friend of five-and-twenty, or thereabouts, pause
at the threshold of this particular record, and ask yourself
seriously whether you are fit to read such revelations as are to
follow. For observe, you have here no splendid array of petals
such as poets offer you,--nothing but a dry shell, containing, if
you will get out what is in it, a few small seeds of poems. You
may laugh at them, if you like. I shall never tell you what I
think of you for so doing. But if you can read into the heart of
these things, in the light of other memories as slight, yet as dear
to your soul, then you are neither more nor less than a POET, and
can afford to write no more verses during the rest of your natural
life,--which abstinence I take to be one of the surest marks of
your meriting the divine name I have just bestowed upon you.

May I beg of you who have begun this paper nobly trusting to your
own imagination and sensibilities to give it the significance which
it does not lay claim to without your kind assistance,--may I beg
of you, I say, to pay particular attention to the BRACKETS which
enclose certain paragraphs? I want my "asides," you see, to
whisper loud to you who read my notes, and sometimes I talk a page
or two to you without pretending that I said a word of it to our
boarders. You will find a very long "aside" to you almost as soon
as you begin to read. And so, dear young friend, fall to at once,
taking such things as I have provided for you; and if you turn
them, by the aid of your powerful imagination, into a fair banquet,
why, then, peace be with you, and a summer by the still waters of
some quiet river, or by some yellow beach, where, as my friend the
Professor, says, you can sit with Nature's wrist in your hand and
count her ocean-pulses.]

I should like to make a few intimate revelations relating
especially to my early life, if I thought you would like to hear
them.

[The schoolmistress turned a little in her chair, and sat with her
face directed partly towards me.--Half-mourning now;--purple
ribbon. That breastpin she wears has GRAY hair in it; her
mother's, no doubt;--I remember our landlady's daughter telling me,
soon after the schoolmistress came to board with us, that she had
lately "buried a payrent." That's what made her look so pale,
--kept the poor dying thing alive with her own blood. Ah! long
illness is the real vampyrism; think of living a year or two after
one is dead, by sucking the life-blood out of a frail young
creature at one's bedside! Well, souls grow white, as well as
cheeks, in these holy duties one that goes in a nurse may come out
an angel.--God bless all good women!--to their soft hands and
pitying hearts we must all come at last!--The schoolmistress has a
better color than when she came.--Too late! "It might have been."
--Amen!--How many thoughts go to a dozen heart-beats, sometimes!
There was no long pause after my remark addressed to the company,
but in that time I had the train of ideas and feelings I have just
given flash through my consciousness sudden and sharp as the
crooked red streak that springs out of its black sheath like the
creese of a Malay in his death-race, and stabs the earth right and
left in its blind rage.

I don't deny that there was a pang in it,--yes, a stab; but there
was a prayer, too,--the "Amen" belonged to that.--Also, a vision of
a four-story brick house, nicely furnished,--I actually saw many
specific articles,--curtains, sofas, tables, and others, and could
draw the patterns of them at this moment,--a brick house, I say,
looking out on the water, with a fair parlor, and books and busts
and pots of flowers and bird-cages, all complete; and at the
window, looking on the water, two of us.--"Male and female created
He them."--These two were standing at the window, when a smaller
shape that was playing near them looked up at me with such a look
that I----poured out a glass of water, drank it all down, and then
continued.]

I said I should like to tell you some things, such as people
commonly never tell, about my early recollections. Should you like
to hear them?

Should we LIKE to hear them?--said the schoolmistress;--no, but we
should love to.

[The voice was a sweet one, naturally, and had something very
pleasant in its tone, just then.--The four-story brick house, which
had gone out like a transparency when the light behind it is
quenched, glimmered again for a moment; parlor, books, busts,
flower-pots, bird-cages, all complete,--and the figures as before.]

We are waiting with eagerness, Sir,--said the divinity-student.

[The transparency went out as if a flash of black lightning had
struck it.]

If you want to hear my confessions, the next thing--I said--is to
know whether I can trust you with them. It is only fair to say
that there are a great many people in the world that laugh at such
things. _I_ think they are fools, but perhaps you don't all agree
with me.

Here are children of tender age talked to as if they were capable
of understanding Calvin's "Institutes," and nobody has honesty or
sense enough to tell the plain truth about the little wretches:
that they are as superstitious as naked savages, and such miserable
spiritual cowards--that is, if they have any imagination--that they
will believe anything which is taught them, and a great deal more
which they teach themselves.

I was born and bred, as I have told you twenty times, among books
and those who knew what was in books. I was carefully instructed
in things temporal and spiritual. But up to a considerable
maturity of childhood I believed Raphael and Michael Angelo to have
been superhuman beings. The central doctrine of the prevalent
religious faith of Christendom was utterly confused and neutralized
in my mind for years by one of those too common stories of actual
life, which I overheard repeated in a whisper.--Why did I not ask?
you will say.--You don't remember the rosy pudency of sensitive
children. The first instinctive movement of the little creatures
is to make a cache, and bury in it beliefs, doubts, dreams, hopes,
and terrors. I am uncovering one of these CACHES. Do you think I
was necessarily a greater fool and coward than another?