Schott. 162 The Dining-Room in M. De Blowitz's Paris Home. 167 M. De Blowitz in His Study. 169 The Lampottes; The Country House of M. De Blowitz. 171 Charlotte Bronte. 180 AN AFTERNOON WITH OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. BY EDWARD E. HALE. My first recollection of Doctor Holmes is seeing him standing on a bench at a college dinner when I was a boy, in the year 1836. He was full of life and fun, and was delivering--I do not say reading--one of his little college poems. He always writes them with joy, and recites them--if that is the word--with a spirit not to be described. For he is a born orator, with what people call a sympathetic voice, wholly under his own command, and entirely free from any of the tricks of elocution. It seems to me that no one really knows his poems to the very best, who has not had the good fortune to hear him read some of them. [Illustration: Oliver Wendell Holmes Boston, May 24th, 1893.] But I had known all about him before that. As little boys, we had by heart, in those days, the song which saved "Old Ironsides" from destruction. That was the pet name of the frigate "Constitution," which was a pet Boston ship, because she had been built at a Boston shipyard, had been sailed with Yankee crews, and, more than once, had brought her prizes into Boston Harbor. We used to spout at school: "Nail to the mast her holy flag, Spread every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale!" Ah me! There had been a Phi Beta anniversary not long before, where Holmes had delivered a poem. You may read "Poetry, a Metrical Essay," in the volumes now. But you will look in vain for the covert allusions to Julia and Susan and Elizabeth and the rest, which, to those who knew, meant the choicest belles of our little company. Have the queens of to-day any such honors? Nobody is more accessible than Doctor Holmes. I doubt if any doorbell in Boston is more rung than his. And nowhere is the visitor made more kindly at home. His own work-room takes in all the width of a large house in Beacon Street; a wide window commands the sweep of the mouth of Charles River; in summer the gulls are hovering above it, in winter you may see them chaffing together on bits of floating ice, which is on its way to the sea. Across that water, by stealthy rowing, the boats of the English squadron carried the men who were to die at Concord the next day, at Concord Bridge. Beyond is Bunker Hill Monument; and just this side of the monument Paul Revere crossed the same river to say that that English army was coming. [Illustration: O. W. HOLMES'S BIRTH-PLACE AT CAMBRIDGE, MASS., ERECTED IN 1725, A.D. FROM PHOTO BY WILFRID A. FRENCH.]