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.


[I write down the above remarks this morning, January 26th, making
this record of the date that nobody may think it was written in
wrath, on account of any particular grievance suffered from the
invasion of any individual scarabaeus grammaticus.]

--I wonder if anybody ever finds fault with anything I say at this
table when it is repeated? I hope they do, I am sure. I should be
very certain that I had said nothing of much significance, if they
did not.

Did you never, in walking in the fields, come across a large flat
stone, which had lain, nobody knows how long, just where you found
it, with the grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round
it, close to its edges,--and have you not, in obedience to a kind
of feeling that told you it had been lying there long enough,
insinuated your stick or your foot or your fingers under its edge
and turned it over as a housewife turns a cake, when she says to
herself, "It's done brown enough by this time"? What an odd
revelation, and what an unforeseen and unpleasant surprise to a
small community, the very existence of which you had not suspected,
until the sudden dismay and scattering among its members produced
by your turning the old stone over! Blades of grass flattened
down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been bleached and
ironed; hideous crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous or
horny-shelled,--turtle-bugs one wants to call them; some of them
softer, but cunningly spread out and compressed like Lepine
watches; (Nature never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, or a
joint in a tavern bedstead, but she always has one of her
flat-pattern five timekeepers to slide into it;) black, glossy
crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like the whips of
four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, slug-like creatures, young
larvae, perhaps more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in
the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned
and the wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded
community of creeping things, than all of them which enjoy the luxury
of legs--and some of them have a good many--rush round wildly,
butting each other and everything in their way, and end in a general
stampede for underground retreats from the region poisoned by
sunshine. NEXT YEAR you will find the grass growing tall and green
where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle
had his hole; the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and
the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden
disks, as the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate
through their glorified being.

--The young fellow whom they call John saw fit to say, in his very
familiar way,--at which I do not choose to take offence, but which
I sometimes think it necessary to repress,--that I was coming it
rather strong on the butterflies.

No, I replied; there is meaning in each of those images,--the
butterfly as well as the others. The stone is ancient error. The
grass is human nature borne down and bleached of all its colour by
it. The shapes which are found beneath are the crafty beings that
thrive in darkness, and the weaker organisms kept helpless by it.
He who turns the stone over is whosoever puts the staff of truth to
the old lying incubus, no matter whether he do it with a serious
face or a laughing one. The next year stands for the coming time.
Then shall the nature which had lain blanched and broken rise in
its full stature and native hues in the sunshine. Then shall God's
minstrels build their nests in the hearts of a new-born humanity.
Then shall beauty--Divinity taking outlines and color--light upon
the souls of men as the butterfly, image of the beatified spirit
rising from the dust, soars from the shell that held a poor grub,
which would never have found wings, had not the stone been lifted.

You never need think you can turn over any old falsehood without a
terrible squirming and scattering of the horrid little population
that dwells under it.

--Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of
somebody or other. As soon as his breath comes back, he very
probably begins to expend it in hard words. These are the best
evidence a man can have that he has said something it was time to
say. Dr. Johnson was disappointed in the effect of one of his
pamphlets. "I think I have not been attacked enough for it," he
said;--"attack is the reaction; I never think I have hit hard
unless it rebounds."

--If a fellow attacked my opinions in print would I reply? Not I.
Do you think I don't understand what my friend, the Professor, long
ago called THE HYDROSTATIC PARADOX OF CONTROVERSY?

Don't know what that means?--Well, I will tell you. You know,
that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a
pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would
stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy
equalizes fools and wise men in the same way,--AND THE FOOLS KNOW
IT.

--No, but I often read what they say about other people. There are
about a dozen phrases which all come tumbling along together, like
the tongs, and the shovel, and the poker, and the brush, and the
bellows, in one of those domestic avalanches that everybody knows.
If you get one, you get the whole lot.

What are they?--Oh, that depends a good deal on latitude and
longitude. Epithets follow the isothermal lines pretty accurately.
Grouping them in two families, one finds himself a clever, genial,
witty, wise, brilliant, sparkling, thoughtful, distinguished,
celebrated, illustrious scholar and perfect gentleman, and first
writer of the age; or a dull, foolish, wicked, pert, shallow,
ignorant, insolent, traitorous, black-hearted outcast, and disgrace
to civilization.

What do I think determines the set of phrases a man gets?--Well, I
should say a set of influences something like these:---1st.
Relationships, political, religious, social, domestic. 2d.
Oyster, in the form of suppers given to gentlemen connected with
criticism. I believe in the school, the college, and the clergy;
but my sovereign logic, for regulating public opinion--which means
commonly the opinion of half a dozen of the critical gentry--is the
following MAJOR PROPOSITION. Oysters au naturel. Minor
proposition. The same "scalloped." Conclusion. That--(here
insert entertainer's name) is clever, witty, wise, brilliant,--and
the rest.

--No, it isn't exactly bribery. One man has oysters, and another
epithets. It is an exchange of hospitalities; one gives a "spread"
on linen, and the other on paper,--that is all. Don't you think
you and I should be apt to do just so, if we were in the critical
line? I am sure I couldn't resist the softening influences of
hospitality. I don't like to dine out, you know,--I dine so well
at our own table, [our landlady looked radiant,] and the company is
so pleasant [a rustling movement of satisfaction among the
boarders]; but if I did partake of a man's salt, with such
additions as that article of food requires to make it palatable, I
could never abuse him, and if I had to speak of him, I suppose I
should hang my set of jingling epithets round him like a string of
sleigh-bells. Good feeling helps society to make liars of most of
us,--not absolute liars, but such careless handlers of truth that
its sharp corners get terribly rounded. I love truth as chiefest
among the virtues; I trust it runs in my blood; but I would never
be a critic, because I know I could not always tell it. I might
write a criticism of a book that happened to please me; that is
another matter.

--Listen, Benjamin Franklin! This is for you, and such others of
tender age as you may tell it to.

When we are as yet small children, long before the time when those
two grown ladies offer us the choice of Hercules, there comes up to
us a youthful angel, holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and
in his left spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless
ivory, and on each is written in letters of gold--TRUTH. The
spheres are veined and streaked and spotted beneath, with a dark
crimson flush above, where the light falls on them, and in a
certain aspect you can make out upon every one of them the three
letters L, I, E. The child to whom they are offered very probably
clutches at both. The spheres are the most convenient things in
the world; they roll with the least possible impulse just where the
child would have them. The cubes will not roll at all; they have a
great talent for standing still, and always keep right side up.
But very soon the young philosopher finds that things which roll so
easily are very apt to roll into the wrong corner, and to get out
of his way when he most wants them, while he always knows where to
find the others, which stay where they are left. Thus he learns
--thus we learn--to drop the streaked and speckled globes of
falsehood and to hold fast the white angular blocks of truth. But
then comes Timidity, and after her Good-nature, and last of all
Polite-behavior, all insisting that truth must ROLL, or nobody can
do anything with it; and so the first with her coarse rasp, and the
second with her broad file, and the third with her silken sleeve,
do so round off and smooth and polish the snow-white cubes of
truth, that, when they have got a little dingy by use, it becomes
hard to tell them from the rolling spheres of falsehood.

The schoolmistress was polite enough to say that she was pleased
with this, and that she would read it to her little flock the next
day. But she should tell the children, she said, that there were
better reasons for truth than could be found in mere experience of
its convenience and the inconvenience of lying.

Yes,--I said,--but education always begins through the senses, and
works up to the idea of absolute right and wrong. The first thing
the child has to learn about this matter is, that lying is
unprofitable,--afterwards, that it is against the peace and dignity
of the universe.

--Do I think that the particular form of lying often seen in
newspapers, under the title, "From our Foreign Correspondent," does
any harm?--Why, no,--I don't know that it does. I suppose it
doesn't really deceive people any more than the "Arabian Nights" or
"Gulliver's Travels" do. Sometimes the writers compile TOO
carelessly, though, and mix up facts out of geographies, and
stories out of the penny papers, so as to mislead those who are
desirous of information. I cut a piece out of one of the papers,
the other day, which contains a number of improbabilities, and, I
suspect, misstatements. I will send up and get it for you, if you
would like to hear it.--Ah, this is it; it is headed


"OUR SUMATRA CORRESPONDENCE.

"This island is now the property of the Stamford family,--having
been won, it is said, in a raffle, by Sir--Stamford, during the
stock-gambling mania of the South-Sea Scheme. The history of this
gentleman may be found in an interesting series of questions
(unfortunately not yet answered) contained in the 'Notes and
Queries.' This island is entirely surrounded by the ocean, which
here contains a large amount of saline substance, crystallizing in
cubes remarkable for their symmetry, and frequently displays on its
surface, during calm weather, the rainbow tints of the celebrated
South-Sea bubbles. The summers are oppressively hot, and the
winters very probably cold; but this fact cannot be ascertained
precisely, as, for some peculiar reason, the mercury in these
latitudes never shrinks, as in more northern regions, and thus the
thermometer is rendered useless in winter.

"The principal vegetable productions of the island are the pepper
tree and the bread-fruit tree. Pepper being very abundantly
produced, a benevolent society was organized in London during the
last century for supplying the natives with vinegar and oysters, as
an addition to that delightful condiment. [Note received from Dr.
D. P.] It is said, however, that, as the oysters were of the kind
called NATIVES in England, the natives of Sumatra, in obedience to
a natural instinct, refused to touch them, and confined themselves
entirely to the crew of the vessel in which they were brought over.
This information was received from one of the oldest inhabitants, a
native himself, and exceedingly fond of missionaries. He is said
also to be very skilful in the CUISINE peculiar to the island.

"During the season of gathering the pepper, the persons employed
are subject to various incommodities, the chief of which is violent
and long-continued sternutation, or sneezing. Such is the
vehemence of these attacks, that the unfortunate subjects of them
are often driven backwards for great distances at immense speed, on
the well-known principle of the aeolipile. Not being able to see
where they are going, these poor creatures dash themselves to
pieces against the rocks or are precipitated over the cliffs and
thus many valuable lives are lost annually. As, during the whole
pepper-harvest, they feed exclusively on this stimulant, they
become exceedingly irritable. The smallest injury is resented with
ungovernable rage. A young man suffering from the PEPPER-FEVER as
it is called, cudgelled another most severely for appropriating a
superannuated relative of trifling value, and was only pacified by
having a present made him of a pig of that peculiar species of
swine called the Peccavi by the Catholic Jews, who, it is well
known, abstain from swine's flesh in imitation of the Mahometan
Buddhists.

"The bread-tree grows abundantly. Its branches are well known to
Europe and America under the familiar name of maccaroni. The
smaller twigs are called vermicelli. They have a decided animal
flavor, as may be observed in the soups containing them.
Maccaroni, being tubular, is the favorite habitat of a very
dangerous insect, which is rendered peculiarly ferocious by being
boiled. The government of the island, therefore, never allows a
stick of it to be exported without being accompanied by a piston
with which its cavity may at any time be thoroughly swept out.
These are commonly lost or stolen before the maccaroni arrives
among us. It therefore always contains many of these insects,
which, however, generally die of old age in the shops, so that
accidents from this source are comparatively rare.

"The fruit of the bread-tree consists principally of hot rolls.
The buttered-muffin variety is supposed to be a hybrid with the
cocoa-nut palm, the cream found on the milk of the cocoa-nut
exuding from the hybrid in the shape of butter, just as the ripe
fruit is splitting, so as to fit it for the tea-table, where it is
commonly served up with cold"--

--There,--I don't want to read any more of it. You see that many
of these statements are highly improbable.--No, I shall not mention
the paper.--No, neither of them wrote it, though it reminds me of
the style of these popular writers. I think the fellow who wrote
it must have been reading some of their stories, and got them mixed
up with his history and geography. I don't suppose HE lies;--he
sells it to the editor, who knows how many squares off "Sumatra"
is. The editor, who sells it to the public--By the way, the papers
have been very civil haven't they?--to the--the what d'ye call it?
--"Northern Magazine,"--isn't it?--got up by some of those
Come-outers, down East, as an organ for their local peculiarities.

--The Professor has been to see me. Came in, glorious, at about
twelve o'clock, last night. Said he had been with "the boys." On
inquiry, found that "the boys," were certain baldish and grayish
old gentlemen that one sees or hears of in various important
stations of society. The Professor is one of the same set, but he
always talks as if he had been out of college about ten years,
whereas. . . [Each of these dots was a little nod, which the
company understood, as the reader will, no doubt.] He calls them
sometimes "the boys," and sometimes "the old fellows." Call him by
the latter title, and see how he likes it.--Well, he came in last
night glorious, as I was saying. Of course I don't mean vinously
exalted; he drinks little wine on such occasions, and is well known
to all the Peters and Patricks as the gentleman who always has
indefinite quantities of black tea to kill any extra glass of red
claret he may have swallowed. But the Professor says he always
gets tipsy on old memories at these gatherings. He was, I forget
how many years old when he went to the meeting; just turned of
twenty now,--he said. He made various youthful proposals to me,
including a duet under the landlady's daughter's window. He had
just learned a trick, he said, of one of "the boys," of getting a
splendid bass out of a door-panel by rubbing it with the palm of
his hand. Offered to sing "The sky is bright," accompanying
himself on the front-door, if I would go down and help in the
chorus. Said there never was such a set of fellows as the old boys
of the set he has been with. Judges, mayors, Congress-men, Mr.
Speakers, leaders in science, clergymen better than famous, and
famous too, poets by the half-dozen, singers with voices like
angels, financiers, wits, three of the best laughers in the
Commonwealth, engineers, agriculturists,--all forms of talent and
knowledge he pretended were represented in that meeting. Then he
began to quote Byron about Santa Croce, and maintained that he
could "furnish out creation" in all its details from that set of
his. He would like to have the whole boodle of them, (I
remonstrated against this word, but the Professor said it was a
diabolish good word, and he would have no other,) with their wives
and children, shipwrecked on a remote island, just to see how
splendidly they would reorganize society. They could build a
city,--they have done it; make constitutions and laws; establish
churches and lyceums; teach and practise the healing art; instruct
in every department; found observatories; create commerce and
manufactures; write songs and hymns, and sing 'em, and make
instruments to accompany the songs with; lastly, publish a
journal almost as good as the "Northern Magazine," edited by the
Come-outers. There was nothing they were not up to, from a
christening to a hanging; the last, to be sure, could never be called
for, unless some stranger got in among them.

--I let the Professor talk as long as he liked; it didn't make much
difference to me whether it was all truth, or partly made up of
pale Sherry and similar elements. All at once he jumped up and
said,--

Don't you want to hear what I just read to the boys?

I have had questions of a similar character asked me before,
occasionally. A man of iron mould might perhaps say, No! I am not
a man of iron mould, and said that I should be delighted.

The Professor then read--with that slightly sing-song cadence which
is observed to be common in poets reading their own verses--the
following stanzas; holding them at a focal distance of about two
feet and a half, with an occasional movement back or forward for
better adjustment, the appearance of which has been likened by some
impertinent young folks to that of the act of playing on the
trombone. His eyesight was never better; I have his word for it.


MARE RUBRUM.


Flash out a stream of blood-red wine!--
For I would drink to other days;
And brighter shall their memory shine,
Seen flaming through its crimson blaze.
The roses die, the summers fade;
But every ghost of boyhood's dream
By Nature's magic power is laid
To sleep beneath this blood-red stream.

It filled the purple grapes that lay
And drank the splendors of the sun
Where the long summer's cloudless day
Is mirrored in the broad Garonne;
It pictures still the bacchant shapes
That saw their hoarded sunlight shed,--
The maidens dancing on the grapes,--
Their milk-white ankles splashed with red.

Beneath these waves of crimson lie,
In rosy fetters prisoned fast,
Those flitting shapes that never die,
The swift-winged visions of the past.
Kiss but the crystal's mystic rim,
Each shadow rends its flowery chain,
Springs in a bubble from its brim
And walks the chambers of the brain.

Poor Beauty! time and fortune's wrong
No form nor feature may withstand,--
Thy wrecks are scattered all along,
Like emptied sea-shells on the sand;--
Yet, sprinkled with this blushing rain,
The dust restores each blooming girl,
As if the sea-shells moved again
Their glistening lips of pink and pearl.

Here lies the home of school-boy life,
With creaking stair and wind-swept hall,
And, scarred by many a truant knife,
Our old initials on the wall;
Here rest--their keen vibrations mute--
The shout of voices known so well,
The ringing laugh, the wailing flute,
The chiding of the sharp-tongued bell.

Here, clad in burning robes, are laid
Life's blossomed joys, untimely shed;
And here those cherished forms have strayed
We miss awhile, and call them dead.
What wizard fills the maddening glass
What soil the enchanted clusters grew?
That buried passions wake and pass
In beaded drops of fiery dew?

Nay, take the cup of blood-red wine,--
Our hearts can boast a warmer grow,
Filled from a vantage more divine,--
Calmed, but not chilled by winter's snow!
To-night the palest wave we sip
Rich as the priceless draught shall be
That wet the bride of Cana's lip,--
The wedding wine of Galilee!



CHAPTER VI



Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.

--I think, Sir,--said the divinity-student,--you must intend that
for one of the sayings of the Seven Wise Men of Boston you were
speaking of the other day.

I thank you, my young friend,--was my reply,--but I must say
something better than that, before I could pretend to fill out the
number.

--The schoolmistress wanted to know how many of these sayings there
were on record, and what, and by whom said.

--Why, let us see,--there is that one of Benjamin Franklin, "the
great Bostonian," after whom this lad was named. To be sure, he
said a great many wise things,--and I don't feel sure he didn't
borrow this,--he speaks as if it were old. But then he applied it
so neatly!--

"He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you
another than he whom you yourself have obliged."

Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, uttered by my
friend, the Historian, in one of his flashing moments:-

"Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its
necessaries."

To these must certainly be added that other saying of one of the
wittiest of men:-

"Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris."--

The divinity-student looked grave at this, but said nothing.

The schoolmistress spoke out, and said she didn't think the wit
meant any irreverence. It was only another way of saying, Paris is
a heavenly place after New York or Boston.

A jaunty-looking person, who had come in with the young fellow they
call John,--evidently a stranger,--said there was one more wise
man's saying that he had heard; it was about our place, but he
didn't know who said it.--A civil curiosity was manifested by the
company to hear the fourth wise saying. I heard him distinctly
whispering to the young fellow who brought him to dinner, SHALL I
TELL IT? To which the answer was, GO AHEAD!--Well,--he said,--this
was what I heard:-

"Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't
pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation
straightened out for a crowbar."

Sir,--said I,--I am gratified with your remark. It expresses with
pleasing vivacity that which I have sometimes heard uttered with
malignant dulness. The satire of the remark is essentially true of
Boston,--and of all other considerable--and inconsiderable--places
with which I have had the privilege of being acquainted. Cockneys
think London is the only place in the world. Frenchmen--you
remember the line about Paris, the Court, the World, etc.---I
recollect well, by the way, a sign in that city which ran thus:
"Hotel l'Univers et des Etats Unis"; and as Paris IS the universe
to a Frenchman, of course the United States are outside of it.
--"See Naples and then die."--It is quite as bad with smaller places.
I have been about, lecturing, you know, and have found the
following propositions to hold true of all of them.

1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of
each and every town or city.

2. If more than fifty years have passed since its foundation, it
is affectionately styled by the inhabitants the "GOOD OLD town of"
--(whatever its name may happen to be.)

3. Every collection of its inhabitants that comes together to
listen to a stranger is invariably declared to be a "remarkably
intelligent audience."

4. The climate of the place is particularly favorable to
longevity.

5. It contains several persons of vast talent little known to the
world. (One or two of them, you may perhaps chance to remember,
sent short pieces to the "Pactolian" some time since, which were
"respectfully declined.")