The kindliness of Mr. Whittier's nature has always led him to help others, especially young literary aspirants, and he has spent a great deal of his valuable time upon this class. He cannot bear to leave a letter unanswered or a request ungranted, and his correspondence has become very burdensome these latter years. He has long been subject to very severe neuralgic headaches, and can write now but a few minutes at a time; and those few precious minutes he often wastes on some impertinent stranger who has sent a great mass of manuscripts to him for criticism. The little time which these insatiable correspondents leave to him, he occupies very pleasantly in and about the grounds at Oak Knoll. He enjoys working in the fine flower-garden, feeding the squirrels, playing with the dogs, and driving the fine horses. He has many friends within a morning's drive,--Harriet Preston, Gail Hamilton, and others,--and driving about the country has always been one of his choice diversions. He is now seventy-eight years old,--a cheerful, kindly, essentially lovable old man. He still goes up to Boston occasionally to meet friends and look about the city, and runs over to Amesbury, where friends occupy his house and make him welcome; but for the most part he remains in his quiet retreat, cheerfully awaiting the change which must be near. [Illustration] [Illustration] OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. The genial "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" was born in the city of Cambridge, in Massachusetts, in the year 1809, upon the day given to the Commencement exercises of Harvard College. It was the day of small things in that institution, and the day of small things in American literature. The child who was born that day was destined to add much to the estimation in which both were held. He occupied a professor's chair in the University for thirty-five years, and did good work in it too; and he is one of the little group of illustrious men who have helped to make a distinctively American literature, which is now honored throughout the world. As we believe with Dr. Holmes that "it is an ungenerous silence which leaves all the fair words of honestly-earned praise to the writer of obituary notices and the marble-worker," we shall endeavor to set forth in this paper some of the good points in the character and work of this distinguished man,--perhaps the best beloved of our native authors.