Oliver Wendell Holmes

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Men are never long together without speaking of women, and I said how
inevitably men's lives ended where they began, in the keeping of women,
and their strength failed at last and surrendered itself to their care. I
had not finished before I was made to feel that I was poaching, and
"Yes," said the owner of the preserve, "I have spoken of that," and he
went on to tell me just where. He was not going to have me suppose I had
invented those notions, and I could not do less than own that I must have
found them in his book, and forgotten it.

He spoke of his pleasant summer life in the air, at once soft and fresh,
of that lovely coast, and of his drives up and down the country roads.
Sometimes this lady and sometimes that came for him, and one or two
habitually, but he always had his own carriage ordered, if they failed,
that he might not fail of his drive in any fair weather. His cottage was
not immediately on the sea, but in full sight of it, and there was a
sense of the sea about it, as there is in all that incomparable region,
and I do not think he could have been at home anywhere beyond the reach
of its salt breath.

I was anxious not to outstay his strength, and I kept my eye on the clock
in frequent glances. I saw that he followed me in one of these, and I
said that I knew what his hours were, and I was watching so that I might
go away in time, and then he sweetly protested. Did I like that chair I
was sitting in? It was a gift to him, and he said who gave it, with a
pleasure in the fact that was very charming, as if he liked the
association of the thing with his friend. He was disposed to excuse the
formal look of his bookcases, which were filled with sets, and presented
some phalanxes of fiction in rather severe array.

When I rose to go, he was concerned about my being able to find my way
readily to the station, and he told me how to go, and what turns to take,
as if he liked realizing the way to himself. I believe he did not walk
much of late years, and I fancy he found much the same pleasure in
letting his imagination make this excursion to the station with me that
he would have found in actually going.

I saw him once more, but only once, when a day or two later he drove up
by our hotel in Magnolia toward the cottage where his secretary was
lodging. He saw us from his carriage, and called us gayly to him, to
make us rejoice with him at having finally got that commemorative poem
off his mind. He made a jest of the trouble it had cost him, even some
sleeplessness, and said he felt now like a convalescent. He was all
brightness, and friendliness, and eagerness to make us feel his mood,
through what was common to us all; and I am glad that this last
impression of him is so one with the first I ever had, and with that
which every reader receives from his work.

That is bright, and friendly and eager too, for it is throughout the very
expression of himself. I think it is a pity if an author disappoints
even the unreasonable expectation of the reader, whom his art has invited
to love him; but I do not believe that Doctor Holmes could inflict this
disappointment. Certainly he could disappoint no reasonable expectation,
no intelligent expectation. What he wrote, that he was, and every one
felt this who met him. He has therefore not died, as some men die, the
remote impersonal sort, but he is yet thrillingly alive in every page of
his books. The quantity of his literature is not great, but the quality
is very surprising, and surprising first of all as equality. From the
beginning to the end he wrote one man, of course in his successive
consciousnesses. Perhaps every one does this, but his work gives the
impression of an uncommon continuity, in spite of its being the effect of
a later and an earlier impulse so very marked as to have made the later
an astonishing revelation to those who thought they knew him.




IX.

It is not for me in such a paper as this to attempt any judgment of his
work. I have loved it, as I loved him, with a sense of its limitations
which is by no means a censure of its excellences. He was not a man who
cared to transcend; he liked bounds, he liked horizons, the constancy of
shores. If he put to sea, he kept in sight of land, like the ancient
navigators. He did not discover new continents; and I will own that I,
for my part, should not have liked to sail with Columbus. I think one
can safely affirm that as great and as useful men stayed behind, and
found an America of the mind without stirring from their thresholds.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Appeal, which he had come to recognize as invasive
Appeared to have no grudge left
Could make us feel that our faults were other people's
Hard of hearing on one side. But it isn't deafness
Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Autocrat clashed upon homeopathy
He was not bored because he would not be
He was not constructive; he was essentially observant
His readers trusted and loved him
Men's lives ended where they began, in the keeping of women
Not a man who cared to transcend; he liked bounds
Not much patience with the unmanly craving for sympathy
Old man's disposition to speak of his infirmities
Old man's tendency to revert to the past
Person who wished to talk when he could listen
Reformers, who are so often tedious and ridiculous
Secret of the man who is universally interesting
Sought the things that he could agree with you upon
Spare his years the fatigue of recalling your identity
Study in a corner by the porch
Those who have sorrowed deepest will understand this best
Times when a man's city was a man's country
Turn of the talk toward the mystical
Work gives the impression of an uncommon continuity