Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works — John Shaqi
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
[I am so well pleased with my boarding-house that I intend to
remain there, perhaps for years. Of course I shall have a great
many conversations to report, and they will necessarily be of
different tone and on different subjects. The talks are like the
breakfasts,--sometimes dipped toast, and sometimes dry. You must
take them as they come. How can I do what all these letters ask me
to? No. 1. want serious and earnest thought. No. 2. (letter
smells of bad cigars) must have more jokes; wants me to tell a
"good storey" which he has copied out for me. (I suppose two
letters before the word "good" refer to some Doctor of Divinity who
told the story.) No. 3. (in female hand)--more poetry. No. 4.
wants something that would be of use to a practical man.
(Prahctical mahn he probably pronounces it.) No. 5. (gilt-edged,
sweet-scented)--"more sentiment,"--"heart's outpourings."--
My dear friends, one and all, I can do nothing but report such
remarks as I happen to have made at our breakfast-table. Their
character will depend on many accidents,--a good deal on the
particular persons in the company to whom they were addressed. It
so happens that those which follow were mainly intended for the
divinity-student and the school-mistress; though others, whom I
need not mention, saw to interfere, with more or less propriety, in
the conversation. This is one of my privileges as a talker; and of
course, if I was not talking for our whole company, I don't expect
all the readers of this periodical to be interested in my notes of
what was said. Still, I think there may be a few that will rather
like this vein,--possibly prefer it to a livelier one,--serious
young men, and young women generally, in life's roseate parenthesis
from--years of age to--inclusive.
Another privilege of talking is to misquote.--Of course it wasn't
Proserpina that actually cut the yellow hair,--but Iris. (As I
have since told you) it was the former lady's regular business, but
Dido had used herself ungenteelly, and Madame d'Enfer stood firm on
the point of etiquette. So the bathycolpian Here--Juno, in Latin
--sent down Iris instead. But I was mightily pleased to see that one
of the gentlemen that do the heavy articles for the celebrated
"Oceanic Miscellany" misquoted Campbell's line without any excuse.
"Waft us HOME the MESSAGE" of course it ought to be. Will he be
duly grateful for the correction?]
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