Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. WorksHolmes, Oliver Wendell
General
Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
American literature; Literature -- Collections
--Amen!--said the young fellow called John--Ten minutes by the watch.
Those that are unanimous will please to signify by holding up their left
foot!
I looked this young man steadily in the face for about thirty seconds.
His countenance was as calm as that of a reposing infant. I think it was
simplicity, rather than mischief, with perhaps a youthful playfulness,
that led him to this outbreak. I have often noticed that even quiet
horses, on a sharp November morning, when their coats are beginning to
get the winter roughness, will give little sportive demi-kicks, with
slight sudden elevation of the subsequent region of the body, and a sharp
short whinny,--by no means intending to put their heels through the
dasher, or to address the driver rudely, but feeling, to use a familiar
word, frisky. This, I think, is the physiological condition of the young
person, John. I noticed, however, what I should call a palpebral spasm,
affecting the eyelid and muscles of one side, which, if it were intended
for the facial gesture called a wink, might lead me to suspect a
disposition to be satirical on his part.
--Resuming the conversation, I remarked,--I am, ex officio, as a
Professor, a conservative. For I don't know any fruit that clings to its
tree so faithfully, not even a "froze-'n'-thaw" winter-apple, as a
Professor to the bough of which his chair is made. You can't shake him
off, and it is as much as you can do to pull him off. Hence, by a chain
of induction I need not unwind, he tends to conservatism generally.
But then, you know, if you are sailing the Atlantic, and all at once find
yourself in a current, and the sea covered with weeds, and drop your
Fahrenheit over the side and find it eight or ten degrees higher than in
the ocean generally, there is no use in flying in the face of facts and
swearing there is no such thing as a Gulf-Stream, when you are in it.
You can't keep gas in a bladder, and you can't keep knowledge tight in a
profession. Hydrogen will leak out, and air will leak in, through
India-rubber; and special knowledge will leak out, and general knowledge
will leak in, though a profession were covered with twenty thicknesses of
sheepskin diplomas.
By Jove, Sir, till common sense is well mixed up with medicine, and
common manhood with theology, and common honesty with law, We the people,
Sir, some of us with nut-crackers, and some of us with trip-hammers, and
some of us with pile-drivers, and some of us coming with a whish! like
air-stones out of a lunar volcano, will crash down on the lumps of
nonsense in all of them till we have made powder of them--like Aaron's
calf.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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