Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER381-1

By Grace E. Sellon

Near the town of Haverhill, Massachusetts, in the old homestead of his father’s family, the poet John Greenleaf Whittier was born December 17, 1807. Like all the other children who generation after generation had come to live in this Quaker dwelling, he was brought up in simple, useful ways, and was early given his full share of the duties about the farm. No matter how sharply the cold of the harsh New England winter pierced his homespun clothes, the snow must be shoveled from the paths, firewood must be brought, the stalls in the barn must be littered, and, worst task of all for him, seven cows must be milked. Yet there was plenty of fun to be had, too. When the snow fell so heavily that it blocked all the roads and closed in tightly about the house, the two Whittier boys found it exciting work to dig their way to the outside world.

When the early twilight fell and passed into night, the boys with their sisters joined the group gathered about the great hearth, and there listened to stories of Indians, witches and Christian martyrs, and to many another weird or adventurous tale told by the older members of the family. While they were being thus entertained, the blaze of the red logs went roaring up the chimney,

“The house-dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat’s dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger’s seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons’ straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.”

All too soon this pleasant time came to an end, and the boys must go to their bare, unheated room upstairs. There, the poet has written,

“Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the lightsifted snowflakes fall;
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams.
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.”

In the warm season, though there was much to do in helping plant and harvest the crops, there were good times to be had in climbing to the top of Job’s hill, next to the house, where the friendly oxen were pastured, or in gathering berries or nuts, or in watching the birds, bees and squirrels as they worked or played about their homes. It was these delights of his childhood that the poet was calling to remembrance when he wrote The Barefoot Boy, which may be found elsewhere in these volumes.

Probably there are few country lads to-day who know so little as did the Whittier boys of the common sights and pleasures of city life. The strict Quaker belief regarding children’s amusement barred them from most of the enjoyment familiar to the young people in the great world that lay beyond their home. So little were they acquainted with the forbidden attractions at the circus that one time when President Monroe visited Haverhill, Greenleaf (as the poet was known in his home), looking next day for traces of the presence of the great man, whom he had not been allowed to see, came upon the tracks of an elephant that had been in town with a traveling menagerie, and in his ignorance believed that these were the footsteps of the famous visitor. The theater, so the children were taught, was to be shunned as a place of wickedness. Once when Greenleaf was visiting in Boston he was asked to go to a play by a lady whom he met in the home where he was staying. When he found that the lady was an actress, he became so much afraid of being led into sinful ways that, not daring to remain longer, he started off at once for home.

Though young Whittier was a wide-awake boy and eager to learn, there was only the district school, held for a few weeks each winter, for him to attend. Yet an opportunity was not lacking for bringing to light his poetic gift. One of his schoolmasters, who lived for part of the term in the Whittier home, used to read to the family from various interesting books, and one night chose for their entertainment a volume of Burns’s poems. As the lines of the much-loved Scotch poet fell from the reader’s lips, the young boy listened as he had never before listened in his life. His own power awakened and responded warmly to that of the older poet. From that hour, whether he was at home or at school, he found great pleasure in writing verses, which he often showed to his young friends. Thus it was that his older sister Mary was able, all unknown to him, to send off one of his poems to the Newburyport Free Press. When the paper containing the verses came, the young poet read the lines over and over again, almost too dazed to recognize them as his own. This contribution was followed by another made to the same paper. By this time the editor’s interest had been so much aroused that, learning from the postman of the author’s whereabouts, he traveled to Haverhill to visit him. This editor was no other than William Lloyd Garrison, who later became famous as a leader of the cause of abolition. He urged strongly that the boy’s education be continued. Perhaps his words would have counted for nothing, however, had it not been that somewhat later the editor of the Haverhill Gazette, in which some of young Whittier’s verses had been published, entreated the boy’s parents to send him to the new Haverhill Academy. His father’s consent having been gained, Greenleaf learned from a man who worked on the farm how to make slippers, and thus he became able to pay his own expenses during a term at the Academy. By teaching school in the winter, and by helping to keep the books of a Haverhill merchant, he was able to provide for a second term. Thus was completed his regular schooling.

In the meanwhile his friend Garrison had kept an eye on him, and at the close of 1825 secured for him the editorship of The American Manufacturer, a weekly magazine published in Boston. Young Whittier entered with great interest into the work, contributing articles on politics and temperance as well as numerous poems. Though he received only nine dollars a week, he was able, when called back to Haverhill in 1829, by his father’s illness, to give about one half of what he had earned to help remove the mortgage on the farm.

He remained at home until his father’s death in 1830, editing for a time the Haverhill Gazette and sending to the New England Review, of Hartford, Connecticut, various poems and articles. So much favor did these find with the editor, George D. Prentice, that he invited the young writer to fill his position during a temporary absence. The offer was highly complimentary, for the Review was the principal political journal in Connecticut supporting Henry Clay. However, Whittier was well prepared for the work, for he had become acquainted with the leaders and with the chief interests of the Whig party while editing the Manufacturer, and was himself an enthusiastic follower of Clay. His common sense and shrewd but kindly reading of human nature, united with a high sense of honor and justice, enabled him to fill this responsible position with marked success until his failing health forced him to give it up in January, 1832.

There was much reason for Whittier to look for success in political life, for his editorial work had made him widely known as a man of sane and practical views, and he was so highly regarded in the district where he lived that had he reached the required age of twenty-five, he would in all probability have been made a candidate for Congress in 1832. Thus it was that although he had published more than a hundred favorably received poems between 1828 and 1832, he wrote in the latter year: “My prospects are too good to be sacrificed for any uncertainty. I have done with poetry and literature.”

A far nobler mission, however, and greater usefulness than he could have planned for himself lay before Whittier. It was not political success that was to draw forth the greatness of his nature. The strong and fearless interest with which his friend Garrison had begun to champion the abolition of slavery in the United States appealed to him, he felt with all his heart that the cause was right, and, closing his eyes to the bright promise of political success, he chose to unite himself with the scorned and mistreated upholders of freedom. After thorough consideration and study, he wrote and published in 1833 the pamphlet Justice and Expediency, in which he set forth fully the arguments against slavery. This was the first of his strong and stirring protests against oppression. From that time until the close of the Civil War his fervent, fearless love of liberty voiced itself through ringing verses, in constant appeals to the conscience of the nation. The greatness of this influence, as it worked silently in men’s hearts, who can estimate?

Whittier’s part in the anti-slavery struggle was not always a quiet one. On one occasion, when in company with a famous but unpopular English reformer he was to address an audience on the subject of abolition, he was attacked by a mob while passing quietly along the street with a friend, and narrowly escaped being tarred and feathered. Somewhat later he was set upon in another town by a crowd armed with sticks and stones and other missiles, from which he fled with more haste than dignity. It was while he was editor of the Freeman that Pennsylvania Hall, where the Philadelphia Abolitionists held their meetings, was burned by a mob, and the papers from Whittier’s editorial room in this building were used to help start the blaze.

In 1836 the farm at Haverhill had been sold, and a cottage was bought in Amesbury near the Quaker meetinghouse. It was in this quiet place, under the loving care of his mother and sister, that Whittier made his home after resigning his position with the Freeman. These two women were in their way as unselfishly devoted to the cause of freedom as was the poet himself, for they encouraged his loyalty and bore privation uncomplainingly. In the darkest hour of their need, when it seemed as if their home must be mortgaged, Whittier was invited to become a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, then being founded, and thus the long period of want was brought to an end.

After the death of his mother, in the following year (1858), Whittier’s association with his sister Elizabeth became even closer than before, though they had always shared each other’s hopes and interests with unusual sympathy and understanding. When she died, in 1864, it seemed to him that part of his life had gone with her. It was with this grief still fresh in his mind that he wrote the best known of his poems, Snow-Bound, A Winter Idyl, in which he pictures in the most simple and lifelike manner the quiet loveliness of his childhood home. With especial tenderness he tells of the much-loved sister, and lets his mingled grief and hope of reunion be seen:

“As one who held herself a part
Of all she saw, and let her heart
Against the household bosom lean,
Upon the motley-braided mat
Our youngest and our dearest sat,
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,
Now bathed within the fadeless green
And holy peace of Paradise.
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill,
Or from the shade of saintly palms,
Or silver reach of river calms,
Do those large eyes behold me still?
With me one little year ago:—
The chill weight of the winter snow
For months upon her grave has lain;
And now, when summer south-winds blow,
And brier and harebell bloom again,
I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
I see the violet-sprinkled sod,
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak,
The hillside flowers she loved to seek,
Yet following me where’er I went
With dark eyes full of love’s content.
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills
The air with sweetness; all the hills
Stretch green to June’s unclouded sky;
But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should be nigh,
A loss in all familiar things,
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.
And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I hold?
What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust with me?
And while in life’s late afternoon
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?”

After the death of Elizabeth Whittier, the Amesbury home was cared for by the poet’s niece. During the remaining years of his life Whittier passed his time here or in the country. He lived in comparative comfort, for the publication of Snow-Bound in 1866 had brought very good returns. These were years of great peace, in which he remained actively interested in the affairs of the nation, yet liked most to dwell upon the beauty of nature and especially upon the thought of God’s goodness that must triumph over all the evil in the world. Among the Hills and the collections Tent on the Beach and At Sundown were produced in the last period; but his religious poems seem best to represent his thought and feeling in the closing years. From these were taken the beautiful verses At Last, read as the poet passed away from earth, September 7, 1892.

Though Whittier remained throughout his life a Quaker not only in dress and speech but in belief and character, yet with his quietness and quaint simplicity was blended no severity nor gloom. He had a great love of fun, which alone can account for his mischievous habit of teasing, and for his keeping such pets as the little bantam rooster that aroused the household each morning with its crowing, and the parrot “Charlie” that swore when excited, stopped the horses in the street with its cries of “whoa,” and nipped the ankles of unwary visitors. Then, too, he was always attractive to children, and often preferred their society to that of older people. But above all else, with each succeeding year he became more just and compassionate towards others. The kindliness of his nature was untouched by the sorrow and sickness that he bore. “Love—love to all the world,” he would often repeat in his last years, and the sweet influence of the benediction is felt by all who read his life and works:

“Best loved and saintliest of our singing train,
Earth’s noblest tributes to thy name belong.
A lifelong record closed without a stain,
A blameless memory shrined in deathless song.”390-2

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

This severity in his home must have made young Bryant, who was by nature grave and thoughtful, even more serious. Then, too, his mental powers developed with surprising quickness, so that by the time he had reached his teens, he was thinking and expressing himself upon subjects usually discussed by men rather than boys. Having begun to write verses when only nine years old, he had had enough practice in this kind of exercise to compose when thirteen years of age a satirical poem addressed to President Jefferson, because of his part in passing the Embargo Act by which New England commerce had been greatly injured. These verses were published and met with a ready sale. But far more remarkable as an early expression of genius was Thanatopsis, written several months before Bryant’s eighteenth birthday. This poem deals with the subject of death with such deep thoughtfulness and in such a stately and powerful style that although it did not appear until six years later, it was even then believed to have been written by the poet’s father, who had sent it to the publisher.

Though he was thoughtful beyond his years and had shown unusual poetic power, young Bryant was in other ways quite an ordinary boy. He was quiet and studious in the school room, but was active enough in the games played outside. Of the sports enjoyed by himself and the other boys of the district school, he writes: “We amused ourselves with building dams across the rivulet, and launching rafts made of old boards on the collected water; and in winter, with sliding on the ice and building snow barricades, which we called forts, and, dividing the boys into two armies, and using snowballs for ammunition, we contended for the possession of these strongholds. I was one of their swiftest runners in the race, and not inexpert at playing ball, but, being of a slight frame, I did not distinguish myself in these sieges.” Sometimes, on long evenings, Cullen and his elder brother Austin would play that they were the heroes of whom they had read in the Iliad, and, fitted out with swords and spears and homemade armor, they would enact in the barn the great battles of the Trojan War.

Not only the Iliad, but other carefully chosen works of literature were discovered by the boy in his father’s library, and he read widely and well. It proved that this reading had to take the place of a much hoped-for course at college. After attending Williams College for only two terms, he left there, expecting to enter Yale, but was forced to give up his plan, owing to his father’s inability to supply him with the necessary means. He did not let this great disappointment overcome him, however, but a few months later began the study of law, with the result that in 1815 he was admitted to the bar.

It is a fact well worth noting that at the very beginning of his career as a lawyer, on the day when he was walking from his home to the little village where he was to start his practice, having learned, in his doubt and loneliness, a great lesson in faith, he wrote the beautiful poem that shows his genius at its best, and probably more than any other made him famous, the ode To a Waterfowl.

When a little boy, he had prayed, in his simple way, that he might be a great poet, and though he had outgrown the prayer, his desire was unchanged. More than this, he had now produced two works that undoubtedly showed genius. It is not surprising, then, that in a few years a literary career was opened to him and he was able to give up the law, for which he had no especial liking.

In 1825, after his marriage to a Miss Fairchild of Great Barrington, he removed from that town to New York. There he became editor of the New York Review and Athenæum Magazine; and a year later he accepted the position of assistant editor of the Evening Post, a newspaper with which he remained for the rest of his life, assuming in 1829 the office of editor-in-chief. Though his contributions to this paper were not a poet’s work, they enabled him to unite his literary power with his deep interest in the political concerns of the country, and for many years to help direct public opinion during the most critical periods in the history of the new nation. More than this, while steadily provided with a good income he could spend his leisure hours among the quiet country scenes where he found inspiration for his greatest works, his simple nature poems.

The busy years of his life as a journalist were several times interrupted by travel. Besides visiting Mexico, Cuba and various parts of the United States, he made six voyages to Europe, and on the fourth extended the journey to Egypt and the Holy Land. His Letters of a Traveller and Letters from the East tell of the impressions he received in these countries.

Besides translating the Iliad and the Odyssey and writing the two fairy stories in verse, Sella and The Little People of the Snow, Bryant undertook no poetic work of any length. The poems for which his name is most honored are the little lyrics in which the calm and beauty of nature tell us of truths that never change. Among these, some that are best liked by readers both young and old are The Yellow Violet, The Fringed Gentian, A Forest Hymn, The Planting of the Apple Tree, Robert of Lincoln, The Gladness of Nature, March and To a Waterfowl.

These poems, when studied, are sure to reveal the simplicity and sincerity not only of Bryant’s love for nature, but of his character as a man. They show the freedom from affectation that marks alike his writings and his everyday life. He followed almost sternly his high ideals both of moral right and literary correctness, and this has made him seem somewhat cold and formal. But probably all who can read most clearly the meaning of his life and works feel that so true-hearted a man could not have been lacking in warm and generous kindliness.

TO A WATERFOWL

Whither, ’midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler’s eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.

Seek’st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast—
The desert and illimitable air—
Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;
Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
Soon, o’er thy sheltered nest.

Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

The old colonial house where his boyhood and youth were spent contained a well-chosen library. Here, he has written, “he bumped about among books from the time when he was hardly taller than one of his father’s or grandfather’s folios.” Yet he did not read many of these volumes thoroughly. He liked to “read in books rather than through them” and would hunt out a paragraph here and there that especially pleased and satisfied him. The collections of sermons were always passed by, the lives of pious children met with the same neglect, and even The Pilgrim’s Progress seemed to picture the world as such a cruel, gloomy place that this great book too was shunned.

The truth was that, being a lively and cheerful boy, he rebelled against the dark and fear-awakening religion preached by his father, a Congregational minister, discussed by visiting pastors and taught in many of the books that he avoided in the library. He seemed to know by instinct which of the clergymen who called at his father’s home were kindly and friendly, and which of them looked on children as “a set of little fallen wretches,” and for the forlorn looks and solemn ways of the latter he had an especial dislike. “Now and then,” he has written, “would come along a clerical visitor with a sad face and a wailing voice, which sounded exactly as if somebody must be lying dead upstairs, who took no interest in us children, except a painful one, as being in a bad way with our cheery looks, and did more to unchristianize us with his woebegone ways than all his sermons were like to accomplish in the other direction.” In fact, he might have pleased his father by becoming a minister if a certain preacher that he knew had not, to use his own words, “looked and talked so like an undertaker.”

But the dreary sermons, the visits of the long-faced clergymen and the drill in the Catechism were only shadows that came and went. Most of the time young Holmes was as light-hearted a boy as was to be found in all New England. He liked best of all to go hunting, carrying on such trips an old gun of the kind used in the Revolution. A good many of his hours at home were spent in working with tools, and thus he became skilful enough to carve out of wood a skate on which he learned to travel about on the ice. He was active and industrious at school, too, and he made such a good record there that though he whispered a great part of the time he got along peaceably with the school-master. The only serious troubles that he had came from two great fears. Many times after he had gone to bed at night he would be awakened by ghosts or evil spirits mysteriously roaming through the house. Perhaps he was ashamed to tell of this dread to his mother or father, and so the foolish belief that there might be ghosts about stayed with him through boyhood. His other fear was of the doctor’s visits. In helpless terror he would look on while the old physician pronounced his doom and began to measure out the bitter medicine.

In his fifteenth year Holmes left the school at Cambridgeport to attend Phillips Academy, at Andover, and in the following year, 1825, entered Harvard College. During his four years at Harvard he took quite as active an interest in the social life of the college as in his classes. He joined the society known as the Knights of the Square Table, and at the lively meetings of the club, where wine and wit passed freely about the table, he was introduced to a kind of gayety undreamed of in his quiet home. In a humorous description of himself, given at this time in a letter to a former classmate at Andover, he writes:

“I, then, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Junior in Harvard University, am a plumeless biped of the height of exactly five feet three inches when standing in a pair of substantial boots made by Mr. Russell of this town, having eyes which I call blue, and hair which I do not know what to call.... Secondly, with regard to my normal qualities, I am rather lazy than otherwise, and certainly do not study as hard as I ought to. I am not dissipated and I am not sedate, and when I last ascertained my college rank, I stood in the humble situation of seventeenth scholar.”

After graduating from Harvard, Holmes entered the Dane Law School at Cambridge. He did not feel at all sure, however, that he wished to be a lawyer, and at the end of a year he had so far lost interest in his studies that he gave them up. As the physician’s calling seemed much more to his liking, he took two courses of study in a private school of medicine. This preparation was not, of course, sufficient to fit him for a larger practice, so a trip to Europe where he could study under the great professors of the School of Medicine at Paris became necessary. Accordingly, his parents, at some sacrifice to themselves, provided him with the required means, and he set sail from New York in the spring of 1833.

During the two years spent abroad, Holmes gave himself up wholly to his chosen study. “I am more and more attached every day to the study of my profession.... I am occupied from morning to night, and as every one is happy when he is occupied, I enjoy myself as much as I could wish,” he wrote home. This period of hard work, however, was interrupted by summer vacations spent in the countries along the Rhine, in England and in Italy.

Early in 1836, the young physician established himself in Boston. Perhaps it was that people thought him too much of a wit to take their troubles seriously, or perhaps it was that he was better fitted to teach than to practice the doctor’s art. At any rate, his success was very moderate. He was very glad, then, to be appointed Professor of Anatomy at Dartmouth College in 1838, a position that he held until 1840. About this time, too, he received prizes for some Medical Essays that are even to-day regarded as valuable. Thus he was gradually fitting himself for the honorable office offered him in 1847, that of Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the Medical School of Harvard University. For thirty-five years Holmes filled this position with the greatest success. He was given the fifth hour in the day as his lecture period because he was the only one able to hold the attention of students who had already been listening to four long and difficult lectures. He enlivened the dry subject with funny stories, droll comparisons and interesting descriptions, teaching while he entertained.

In 1840 the young doctor had married Amelia Lee Jackson, daughter of a highly respected Boston family. His wife was of so gentle and tactful a nature that their home was always a well-ordered and pleasant place of rest for the busy doctor, where unwelcome visitors and other annoyances were not allowed to take his time. Yet he was never too much occupied to find pleasure in what interested his wife and his three children.

During all these years when the profession of medicine had been of chief concern to him, and even before he had begun his medical studies, he had occasionally written poems that won a good deal of praise from friends, but brought no widespread notice. From his very earliest years he could feel very keenly and remember the melody of verse. “The low, soft chirp of the little bird heard in the nest, while his mother is brooding over him,” he has written, “lives in his memory, I doubt not, through all the noisy carols of the singing season; so I remember the little songs my mother sang to me when I was old enough to run about, and had not outgrown the rhymes of the nursery.” He enjoyed writing poems for the yearly meetings held by his college class long after their graduation, and he made several contributions to the Harvard Collegian. Just once in these early years had his fame traveled far, and that was the occasion when he wrote Old Ironsides. The frigate Constitution that had served the country so well was to be done away with as a useless vessel. Learning of this, Holmes penned in haste the stanzas that stirred the nation’s feelings and saved the old boat from destruction.

It came, then, as a surprise to the American people, when upon the founding of the Atlantic Monthly in 1857, the name of Holmes was signed to the articles that probably were most popular of all published in that magazine, to which the greatest literary men in the country were contributing. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, was the title of the delightful series of humorous essays in which the author seemed really to be talking to his readers. A sort of story bound the numbers together. In the fourth issue appeared, perhaps, the best poem written by Holmes—The Chambered Nautilus. This was a favorite with him and was one of those poems of which he said: “I did not write it, but it was written through me,” for he believed it to be a work of inspiration.

The Autocrat, which is Holmes’ greatest work, was followed by two similar but inferior series, The Professor at the Breakfast Table and The Poet at the Breakfast Table. Between the last two series he had published in 1861 his novel Elsie Venner, followed in 1867 by The Guardian Angel, and in 1885 by A Mortal Antipathy. The first of these novels is considerably the best, but none of them ranks high, for they all deal with unusual people who because of weird inherited traits of mind are forced to go through strange if not impossible experiences.

Still another kind of writing was attempted by Holmes. In 1878 he completed a biography of his intimate friend, the historian Motley, and in 1884 wrote a life of Emerson. These are not, however, among his best productions. Over the Teacups, similar to the Breakfast Table papers, appeared in 1890, and was his last important work.

In 1886, accompanied by his daughter, he spent four months in Europe, chiefly in England. The warm welcome and high honor given him by the English people were very gratifying to the aged professor. He was always at his best when talking, and so brilliant and easy was his wit that had not politeness forbidden he could have entertained a roomful of people during a whole evening. This fact as well as his literary achievements made him popular everywhere.

On the occasion when he received a degree of honor from Cambridge University, the young collegemen greeted him by singing at the tops of their voices a song of “Holmes, sweet Holmes;” and on a similar occasion at Oxford one of the students, making good use of the title of a poem especially known to Holmes’ young readers, asked from the gallery whether the Doctor had come in the “One-Hoss Shay.” It is likely that the worthy old gentleman was quite as pleased with this hearty good will as with the more dignified tributes received during his memorable visit.

After 1890, Holmes wrote only occasionally. Yet he continued to take his usual walks and to answer a part of his large correspondence, leaving the rest to a secretary. Now and then he would go to a concert or to a dinner among friends, and in other ways he showed himself remarkably active. In fact, he had not become feeble in mind or body when death quietly came to him, October 7th, 1894.

Though the brightness of his wit makes Holmes one of the most entertaining of writers it is his deep kindness that gives to what he has written an even greater power and attractiveness. More than all else, he tried both in his writings and in his everyday living to drive away the shadows of all kinds of suffering, and to share with others the cheerfulness of his own genial nature.

“Long be it ere the table shall be set
For the last breakfast of the Autocrat,
And love repeat with smiles and tears thereat
His own sweet songs that time shall not forget.”405-1

THE CUBES OF TRUTH

Listen, Benjamin Franklin.406-1 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,406-2 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-behaviour, 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 schoolmistress407-3 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.