The Poet at the Breakfast-TableHolmes, Oliver Wendell
General
The Poet at the Breakfast-Table
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
American fiction -- 19th century; Conversation -- Fiction; Poetry
--I like a gentleman that is a gentleman. But there's a difference in
what folks call gentlemen as there is in what you put on table. There is
cabbages and there is cauliflowers. There is clams and there is oysters.
There is mackerel and there is salmon. And there is some that knows
the difference and some that doos n't. I had a little account with that
boarder that he forgot to settle before he went off, so all of a suddin.
I sha'n't say anything about it. I've seen the time when I should have
felt bad about losing what he owed me, but it was no great matter; and
if he 'll only stay away now he 's gone, I can stand losing it, and not
cry my eyes out nor lay awake all night neither. I never had ought to
have took him. Where he come from and where he's gone to is unbeknown to
me. If he'd only smoked good tobacco, I wouldn't have said a word; but
it was such dreadful stuff, it 'll take a week to get his chamber sweet
enough to show them that asks for rooms. It doos smell like all possest.
--Left any goods?--asked the Salesman.
--Or dockermunts?--added the Member of the Haouse.
The Landlady answered with a faded smile, which implied that there was
no hope in that direction. Dr. Benjamin, with a sudden recurrence of
youthful feeling, made a fan with the fingers of his right hand, the
second phalanx of the thumb resting on the tip of the nose, and the
remaining digits diverging from each other, in the plane of the median
line of the face,--I suppose this is the way he would have described
the gesture, which is almost a specialty of the Parisian gamin. That Boy
immediately copied it, and added greatly to its effect by extending
the fingers of the other hand in a line with those of the first, and
vigorously agitating those of the two hands,--a gesture which acts like
a puncture on the distended self-esteem of one to whom it is addressed,
and cheapens the memory of the absent to a very low figure.
I wish the reader to observe that I treasure up with interest all the
words uttered by the Salesman. It must have been noticed that he
very rarely speaks. Perhaps he has an inner life, with its own deep
emotional, and lofty contemplative elements, but as we see him, he is
the boarder reduced to the simplest expression of that term. Yet,
like most human creatures, he has generic and specific characters not
unworthy of being studied. I notice particularly a certain electrical
briskness of movement, such as one may see in a squirrel, which clearly
belongs to his calling. The dry-goodsman's life behind his counter is a
succession of sudden, snappy perceptions and brief series of coordinate
spasms; as thus:
“Purple calico, three quarters wide, six yards.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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