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.


At the first moment of my new consciousness,--for I seemed to have just
emerged from a deep slumber, I was aware that there was a companion at my
side. Nothing could be more gracious than the way in which this being
accosted me. I will speak of it as she, because there was a delicacy, a
sweetness, a divine purity, about its aspect that recalled my ideal of
the loveliest womanhood.

"I am your companion and your guide," this being made me understand, as
she looked at me. Some faculty of which I had never before been
conscious had awakened in me, and I needed no interpreter to explain the
unspoken language of my celestial attendant.

"You are not yet outside of space and time," she said, "and I am going
with you through some parts of the phenomenal or apparent universe,--what
you call the material world. We have plenty of what you call time before
us, and we will take our voyage leisurely, looking at such objects of
interest as may attract our attention as we pass. The first thing you
will naturally wish to look at will be the earth you have just left.
This is about the right distance," she said, and we paused in our flight.

The great globe we had left was rolling beneath us. No eye of one in the
flesh could see it as I saw or seemed to see it. No ear of any mortal
being could bear the sounds that came from it as I heard or seemed to
hear them. The broad oceans unrolled themselves before me. I could
recognize the calm Pacific and the stormy Atlantic,--the ships that
dotted them, the white lines where the waves broke on the shore,--frills
on the robes of the continents,--so they looked to my woman's perception;
the--vast South American forests; the glittering icebergs about the
poles; the snowy mountain ranges, here and there a summit sending up fire
and smoke; mighty rivers, dividing provinces within sight of each other,
and making neighbors of realms thousands of miles apart; cities;
light-houses to insure the safety of sea-going vessels, and war-ships to
knock them to pieces and sink them. All this, and infinitely more,
showed itself to me during a single revolution of the sphere: twenty-four
hours it would have been, if reckoned by earthly measurements of time. I
have not spoken of the sounds I heard while the earth was revolving under
us. The howl of storms, the roar and clash of waves, the crack and crash
of the falling thunderbolt,--these of course made themselves heard as
they do to mortal ears. But there were other sounds which enchained my
attention more than these voices of nature. As the skilled leader of an
orchestra hears every single sound from each member of the mob of
stringed and wind instruments, and above all the screech of the straining
soprano, so my sharpened perceptions made what would have been for common
mortals a confused murmur audible to me as compounded of innumerable
easily distinguished sounds. Above them all arose one continued,
unbroken, agonizing cry. It was the voice of suffering womanhood, a
sound that goes up day and night, one long chorus of tortured victims.

"Let us get out of reach of this," I said; and we left our planet, with
its blank, desolate moon staring at it, as if it had turned pale at the
sights and sounds it had to witness.

Presently the gilded dome of the State House, which marked our
starting-point, came into view for the second time, and I knew that this
side-show was over. I bade farewell to the Common with its Cogswell
fountain, and the Garden with its last awe-inspiring monument.

"Oh, if I could sometimes revisit these beloved scenes!" I exclaimed.

"There is nothing to hinder that I know of," said my companion. "Memory
and imagination as you know them in the flesh are two winged creatures
with strings tied to their legs, and anchored to a bodily weight of a
hundred and fifty pounds, more or less. When the string is cut you can
be where you wish to be,--not merely a part of you, leaving the rest
behind, but the whole of you. Why shouldn't you want to revisit your old
home sometimes?"

I was astonished at the human way in which my guide conversed with me.
It was always on the basis of my earthly habits, experiences, and
limitations. "Your solar system," she said, "is a very small part of the
universe, but you naturally feel a curiosity about the bodies which
constitute it and about their inhabitants. There is your moon: a bare
and desolate-looking place it is, and well it may be, for it has no
respirable atmosphere, and no occasion for one. The Lunites do not
breathe; they live without waste and without supply. You look as if you
do not understand this. Yet your people have, as you well know, what
they call incandescent lights everywhere. You would have said there can
be no lamp without oil or gas, or other combustible substance, to feed
it; and yet you see a filament which sheds a light like that of noon all
around it, and does not waste at all. So the Lunites live by influx of
divine energy, just as the incandescent lamp glows,--glows, and is not
consumed; receiving its life, if we may call it so, from the central
power, which wears the unpleasant name of 'dynamo.'"

The Lunites appeared to me as pale phosphorescent figures of ill-defined
outline, lost in their own halos, as it were. I could not help thinking
of Shelley's

"maiden
With white fire laden."

But as the Lunites were after all but provincials, as are the tenants of
all the satellites, I did not care to contemplate them for any great
length of time.

I do not remember much about the two planets that came next to our own,
except the beautiful rosy atmosphere of one and the huge bulk of the
other. Presently, we found ourselves within hailing distance of another
celestial body, which I recognized at once, by the rings which girdled
it, as the planet Saturn. A dingy, dull-looking sphere it was in its
appearance. "We will tie up here for a while," said my attendant. The
easy, familiar way in which she spoke surprised and pleased me.

Why, said I,--The Dictator,--what is there to prevent beings of another
order from being as cheerful, as social, as good companions, as the very
liveliest of God's creatures whom we have known in the flesh? Is it
impossible for an archangel to smile? Is such a phenomenon as a laugh
never heard except in our little sinful corner of the universe? Do you
suppose, that when the disciples heard from the lips of their Master the
play of words on the name of Peter, there was no smile of appreciation on
the bearded faces of those holy men? From any other lips we should have
called this pleasantry a--

Number Five shook her head very slightly, and gave me a look that seemed
to say, "Don't frighten the other Teacups. We don't call things by the
names that belong to them when we deal with celestial subjects."

We tied up, as my attendant playfully called our resting, so near the
planet that I could know--I will not say see and hear, but apprehend--all
that was going on in that remote sphere; remote, as we who live in what
we have been used to consider the centre of the rational universe regard
it. What struck me at once was the deadness of everything I looked upon.
Dead, uniform color of surface and surrounding atmosphere. Dead
complexion of all the inhabitants. Dead-looking trees, dead-looking
grass, no flowers to be seen anywhere.

"What is the meaning of all this?" I said to my guide.

She smiled good-naturedly, and replied, "It is a forlorn home for
anything above a lichen or a toadstool; but that is no wonder, when you
know what the air is which they breathe. It is pure nitrogen."

The Professor spoke up. "That can't be, madam," he said. "The
spectroscope shows the atmosphere of Saturn to be--no matter, I have
forgotten what; but it was not pure nitrogen, at any rate."

Number Five is never disconcerted. "Will you tell me," she said, "where
you have found any account of the bands and lines in the spectrum of
dream-nitrogen? I should be so pleased to become acquainted with them."

The Professor winced a little, and asked Delilah, the handmaiden, to pass
a plate of muffins to him. The dream had carried him away, and he
thought for the moment that he was listening to a scientific paper.

Of course, my companion went on to say, the bodily constitution of the
Saturnians is wholly different from that of air-breathing, that is
oxygen-breathing, human beings. They are the dullest, slowest, most
torpid of mortal creatures.

All this is not to be wondered at when you remember the inert
characteristics of nitrogen. There are in some localities natural
springs which give out slender streams of oxygen. You will learn by and
by what use the Saturnians make of this dangerous gas, which, as you
recollect, constitutes about one fifth of your own atmosphere. Saturn has
large lead mines, but no other metal is found on this planet. The
inhabitants have nothing else to make tools of, except stones and shells.
The mechanical arts have therefore made no great progress among them.
Chopping down a tree with a leaden axe is necessarily a slow process.

So far as the Saturnians can be said to have any pride in anything, it is
in the absolute level which characterizes their political and social
order. They profess to be the only true republicans in the solar system.
The fundamental articles of their Constitution are these:

All Saturnians are born equal, live equal, and die equal.

All Saturnians are born free,--free, that is, to obey the rules laid down
for the regulation of their conduct, pursuits, and opinions, free to be
married to the person selected for them by the physiological section of
the government, and free to die at such proper period of life as may best
suit the convenience and general welfare of the community.

The one great industrial product of Saturn is the bread-root. The
Saturnians find this wholesome and palatable enough; and it is well they
do, as they have no other vegetable. It is what I should call a most
uninteresting kind of eatable, but it serves as food and drink, having
juice enough, so that they get along without water. They have a tough,
dry grass, which, matted together, furnishes them with clothes
sufficiently warm for their cold-blooded constitutions, and more than
sufficiently ugly.

A piece of ground large enough to furnish bread-root for ten persons is
allotted to each head of a household, allowance being made for the
possible increase of families. This, however, is not a very important
consideration, as the Saturnians are not a prolific race. The great
object of life being the product of the largest possible quantity of
bread-roots, and women not being so capable in the fields as the stronger
sex, females are considered an undesirable addition to society. The one
thing the Saturnians dread and abhor is inequality. The whole object of
their laws and customs is to maintain the strictest equality in
everything,--social relations, property, so far as they can be said to
have anything which can be so called, mode of living, dress, and all
other matters. It is their boast that nobody ever starved under their
government. Nobody goes in rags, for the coarse-fibred grass from which
they fabricate their clothes is very durable. (I confess I wondered how
a woman could live in Saturn. They have no looking-glasses. There is no
such article as a ribbon known among them. All their clothes are of one
pattern. I noticed that there were no pockets in any of their garments,
and learned that a pocket would be considered prima facie evidence of
theft, as no honest person would have use for such a secret receptacle.)
Before the revolution which established the great law of absolute and
lifelong equality, the inhabitants used to feed at their own private
tables. Since the regeneration of society all meals are taken in common.
The last relic of barbarism was the use of plates,--one or even more to
each individual. This "odious relic of an effete civilization," as they
called it, has long been superseded by oblong hollow receptacles, one of
which is allotted to each twelve persons. A great riot took place when
an attempt was made by some fastidious and exclusive egotists to
introduce partitions which should partially divide one portion of these
receptacles into individual compartments. The Saturnians boast that they
have no paupers, no thieves, none of those fictitious values called
money,--all which things, they hear, are known in that small Saturn
nearer the sun than the great planet which is their dwelling-place.

"I suppose that now they have levelled everything they are quiet and
contented. Have they any of those uneasy people called reformers?"

"Indeed they have," said my attendant. "There are the Orthobrachians,
who declaim against the shameful abuse of the left arm and hand, and
insist on restoring their perfect equality with the right. Then there
are Isopodic societies, which insist on bringing back the original
equality of the upper and lower limbs. If you can believe it, they
actually practise going on all fours,--generally in a private way, a few
of them together, but hoping to bring the world round to them in the near
future."

Here I had to stop and laugh.

"I should think life might be a little dull in Saturn," I said.

"It is liable to that accusation," she answered. "Do you notice how many
people you meet with their mouths stretched wide open?"

"Yes," I said, "and I do not know what to make of it. I should think
every fourth or fifth person had his mouth open in that way."

"They are suffering from the endemic disease of their planet, prolonged
and inveterate gaping or yawning, which has ended in dislocation of the
lower jaw. After a time this becomes fixed, and requires a difficult
surgical operation to restore it to its place."

It struck me that, in spite of their boast that they have no paupers, no
thieves, no money, they were a melancholy-looking set of beings.

"What are their amusements?" I asked.

"Intoxication and suicide are their chief recreations. They have a way
of mixing the oxygen which issues in small jets from certain natural
springs with their atmospheric nitrogen in the proportion of about twenty
per cent, which makes very nearly the same thing as the air of your
planet. But to the Saturnians the mixture is highly intoxicating, and is
therefore a relief to the monotony of their every-day life. This mixture
is greatly sought after, but hard to obtain, as the sources of oxygen are
few and scanty. It shortens the lives of those who have recourse to it;
but if it takes too long, they have other ways of escaping from a life
which cuts and dries everything for its miserable subjects, defeats all
the natural instincts, confounds all individual characteristics, and
makes existence such a colossal bore, as your worldly people say, that
self-destruction becomes a luxury."

Number Five stopped here.

Your imaginary wholesale Shakerdom is all very fine, said I. Your
Utopia, your New Atlantis, and the rest are pretty to look at. But your
philosophers are treating the world of living souls as if they were, each
of them, playing a game of solitaire,--all the pegs and all the holes
alike. Life is a very different sort of game. It is a game of chess,
and not of solitaire, nor even of checkers. The men are not all pawns,
but you have your knights, bishops, rooks,--yes, your king and queen,--to
be provided for. Not with these names, of course, but all looking for
their proper places, and having their own laws and modes of action. You
can play solitaire with the members of your own family for pegs, if you
like, and if none of them rebel. You can play checkers with a little
community of meek, like-minded people. But when it comes to the handling
of a great state, you will find that nature has emptied a box of chessmen
before you, and you must play with them so as to give each its proper
move, or sweep them off the board, and come back to the homely game such
as I used to see played with beans and kernels of corn on squares marked
upon the back of the kitchen bellows.

It was curious to see how differently Number Five's narrative was
received by the different listeners in our circle. Number Five herself
said she supposed she ought to be ashamed of its absurdities, but she did
not know that it was much sillier than dreams often are, and she thought
it might amuse the company. She was herself always interested by these
ideal pictures of society. But it seemed to her that life must be dull
in any of them, and with that idea in her head her dreaming fancy had
drawn these pictures.

The Professor was interested in her conception of the existence of the
Lunites without waste, and the death in life of the nitrogen-breathing
Saturnians. Dream-chemistry was a new subject to him. Perhaps Number
Five would give him some lessons in it.

At this she smiled, and said she was afraid she could not teach him
anything, but if he would answer a few questions in matter-of-fact
chemistry which had puzzled her she would be vastly obliged to him.

"You must come to my laboratory," said the Professor.

"I will come to-morrow," said Number Five.

Oh, yes! Much laboratory work they will do! Play of mutual affinities.
Amalgamates. No freezing mixtures, I'll warrant!

Why shouldn't we get a romance out of all this, hey?

But Number Five looks as innocent as a lamb, and as brave as a lion. She
does not care a copper for the looks that are going round The Teacups.

Our Doctor was curious about those cases of anchylosis, as he called it,
of the lower jaw. He thought it a quite possible occurrence. Both the
young girls thought the dream gave a very hard view of the optimists, who
look forward to a reorganization of society which shall rid mankind of
the terrible evils of over-crowding and competition.

Number Seven was quite excited about the matter. He had himself drawn up
a plan for a new social arrangement. He had shown it to the legal
gentleman who has lately joined us. This gentleman thought it
well-intended, but that it would take one constable to every three
inhabitants to enforce its provisions.

I said the dream could do no harm; it was too outrageously improbable to
come home to anybody's feelings. Dreams were like broken mosaics,--the
separated stones might here and there make parts of pictures. If one
found a caricature of himself made out of the pieces which had
accidentally come together, he would smile at it, knowing that it was an
accidental effect with no malice in it. If any of you really believe in
a working Utopia, why not join the Shakers, and convert the world to this
mode of life? Celibacy alone would cure a great many of the evils you
complain of.

I thought this suggestion seemed to act rather unfavorably upon the
ladies of our circle. The two Annexes looked inquiringly at each other.
Number Five looked smilingly at them. She evidently thought it was time
to change the subject of conversation, for she turned to me and said,
"You promised to read us the poem you read before your old classmates the
other evening."

I will fulfill my promise, I said. We felt that this might probably be
our last meeting as a Class. The personal reference is to our greatly
beloved and honored classmate, James Freeman Clarke.

AFTER THE CURFEW.

The Play is over. While the light
Yet lingers in the darkening hall,

I come to say a last Good-night
Before the final Exeunt all.

We gathered once, a joyous throng:
The jovial toasts went gayly round;
With jest, and laugh, and shout, and song
we made the floors and walls resound.

We come with feeble steps and slow,
A little band of four or five,
Left from the wrecks of long ago,
Still pleased to find ourselves alive.

Alive! How living, too, are they
whose memories it is ours to share!
Spread the long table's full array,
There sits a ghost in every chair!

One breathing form no more, alas!
Amid our slender group we see;
With him we still remained "The Class,"
without his presence what are we?

The hand we ever loved to clasp,
That tireless hand which knew no rest,
Loosed from affection's clinging grasp,
Lies nerveless on the peaceful breast.

The beaming eye, the cheering voice,
That lent to life a generous glow,
whose every meaning said "Rejoice,"
we see, we hear, no more below.

The air seems darkened by his loss,
Earth's shadowed features look less fair,
And heavier weighs the daily cross
His willing shoulders helped as bear.

Why mourn that we, the favored few

Whom grasping Time so long has spared
Life's sweet illusions to pursue,
The common lot of age have shared?

In every pulse of Friendship's heart
There breeds unfelt a throb of pain,
One hour must rend its links apart,
Though years on years have forged the chain.

So ends "The Boys,"--a lifelong play.
We too must hear the Prompter's call
To fairer scenes and brighter day
Farewell! I let the curtain fall.




IV

If the reader thinks that all these talking Teacups came together by mere
accident, as people meet at a boarding-house, I may as well tell him at
once that he is mistaken. If he thinks I am going to explain how it is
that he finds them thus brought together, whether they form a secret
association, whether they are the editors of this or that periodical,
whether they are connected with some institution, and so on,--I must
disappoint him. It is enough that he finds them in each other's company,
a very mixed assembly, of different sexes, ages, and pursuits; and if
there is a certain mystery surrounds their meetings, he must not be
surprised. Does he suppose we want to be known and talked about in
public as "Teacups"? No; so far as we give to the community some records
of the talks at our table our thoughts become public property, but the
sacred personality of every Teacup must be properly respected. If any
wonder at the presence of one of our number, whose eccentricities might
seem to render him an undesirable associate of the company, he should
remember that some people may have relatives whom they feel bound to keep
their eye on; besides the cracked Teacup brings out the ring of the sound
ones as nothing else does. Remember also that soundest teacup does not
always hold the best tea, or the cracked teacup the worst.

This is a hint to the reader, who is not expected to be too curious about
the individual Teacups constituting our unorganized association.

The Dictator Discourses.

I have been reading Balzac's Peau de Chagrin. You have all read the
story, I hope, for it is the first of his wonderful romances which fixed
the eyes of the reading world upon him, and is a most fascinating if
somewhat fantastic tale. A young man becomes the possessor of a certain
magic skin, the peculiarity of which is that, while it gratifies every
wish formed by its possessor, it shrinks in all its dimensions each time
that a wish is gratified. The young man makes every effort to ascertain
the cause of its shrinking; invokes the aid of the physicist, the
chemist, the student of natural history, but all in vain. He draws a red
line around it. That same day he indulges a longing for a certain
object. The next morning there is a little interval between the red line
and the skin, close to which it was traced. So always, so inevitably.
As he lives on, satisfying one desire, one passion, after another, the
process of shrinking continues. A mortal disease sets in, which keeps
pace with the shrinking skin, and his life and his talisman come to an
end together.

One would say that such a piece of integument was hardly a desirable
possession. And yet, how many of us have at this very moment a peau de
chagrin of our own, diminishing with every costly wish indulged, and
incapable, like the magical one of the story, of being arrested in its
progress.

Need I say that I refer to those coupon bonds, issued in the days of
eight and ten per cent interest, and gradually narrowing as they drop
their semiannual slips of paper, which represent wishes to be realized,
as the roses let fall their leaves in July, as the icicles melt away in
the thaw of January?

How beautiful was the coupon bond, arrayed in its golden raiment of
promises to pay at certain stated intervals, for a goodly number of
coming years! What annual the horticulturist can show will bear
comparison with this product of auricultural industry, which has flowered
in midsummer and midwinter for twenty successive seasons? And now the
last of its blossoms is to be plucked, and the bare stem, stripped of its
ever maturing and always welcome appendages, is reduced to the narrowest
conditions of reproductive existence. Such is the fate of the financial
peau de chagrin. Pity the poor fractional capitalist, who has just
managed to live on the eight per cent of his coupon bonds. The shears of
Atropos were not more fatal to human life than the long scissors which
cut the last coupon to the lean proprietor, whose slice of dry toast it
served to flatter with oleomargarine. Do you wonder that my thoughts
took the poetical form, in the contemplation of these changes and their
melancholy consequences? If the entire poem, of several hundred lines,
was "declined with thanks" by an unfeeling editor, that is no reason why
you should not hear a verse or two of it.