Produced by Tor Martin Kristiansen, Ron Stephens, Carol Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.] LIFE OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES BY E.E. BROWN Author of "LIFE OF GARFIELD," "LIFE OF WASHINGTON," "FROM NIGHT TO LIGHT," ETC., ETC. CHICAGO NEW YORK THE WERNER COMPANY COPYRIGHT 1884 BY D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT 1895 BY THE WERNER COMPANY Holmes OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE. I. ANCESTRY 9 II. BOYHOOD 20 III. EARLY RECOLLECTIONS 30 IV. OTHER REMINISCENCES 40 V. ABROAD 49 VI. CHANGE IN THE HOME 60 VII. THE PROFESSOR 67 VIII. THE LECTURER 74 IX. NAMING THE NEW MAGAZINE 83 X. ELSIE VENNER 92 XI. FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE 107 XII. FAVORITES OF SONG 114 XIII. THE MAN OF SCIENCE 136 XIV. THE HOLMES BREAKFAST 152 XV. ORATIONS AND ESSAYS 171 XVI. THE HOME CIRCLE 208 XVII. LOVE OF NATURE 227 XVIII. THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL 240 XIX. TOKENS OF ESTEEM 284 XX. IN LATER YEARS 302 XXI. LAST DAYS 320 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY. In a quaint old gambrel-roofed house that once stood on Cambridge Common, Oliver Wendell Holmes--poet, professor, "beloved physician"--was born, on the twenty-ninth of August, 1809. His father, the Rev. Abiel Holmes, was the pastor of the "First Church" in Cambridge-- That ancient church whose lofty tower, Beneath the loftier spire, Is shadowed when the sunset hour Clothes the tall shaft in fire. Here, in Revolutionary times, General Washington frequently worshiped, and the old homestead itself was the headquarters of the American army during the siege of Boston. "It was a great happiness," writes the _Poet at the Breakfast-Table_, "to have been born in an old house haunted by such recollections, with harmless ghosts walking its corridors, with fields of waving grass and trees and singing birds, and that vast territory of four or five acres around it, to give a child the sense that he was born to a noble principality.... "The gambrel-roofed house was not one of those old Tory, Episcopal church-goer's strongholds. One of its doors opens directly upon the Green, always called the Common; the other faces the south, a few steps from it, over a paved foot-walk on the other side of which is the miniature front yard, bordered with lilacs and syringas.