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
--My friend, says she, that you have seen with me so often lately, was
hunting among his old Record books, when all at once he come across an
old deed that was made by somebody that had my family name. He took it
into his head to read it over, and he found there was some kind of a
condition that if it was n't kept, the property would all go back to
them that was the heirs of the one that gave the deed, and that he found
out was me. Something or other put it into his head, says she, that the
company that owned the property--it was ever so rich a company and owned
land all round everywhere--hadn't kept to the conditions. So he went to
work, says she, and hunted through his books and he inquired all round,
and he found out pretty much all about it, and at last he come to me--it
's my boarder, you know, that says all this--and says he, Ma'am, says
he, if you have any kind of fancy for being a rich woman you've only got
to say so. I didn't know what he meant, and I began to think, says she,
he must be crazy. But he explained it all to me, how I'd nothing to do
but go to court and I could get a sight of property back. Well, so she
went on telling me--there was ever so much more that I suppose was all
plain enough, but I don't remember it all--only I know my boarder was
a good deal worried at first at the thought of taking money that other
people thought was theirs, and the Register he had to talk to her, and
he brought a lawyer and he talked to her, and her friends they talked to
her, and the upshot of it all was that the company agreed to settle the
business by paying her, well, I don't know just how much, but enough to
make her one of the rich folks again.
I may as well add here that, as I have since learned, this is one of the
most important cases of releasing right of reentry for condition broken
which has been settled by arbitration for a considerable period. If I
am not mistaken the Register of Deeds will get something more than a
new coat out of this business, for the Lady very justly attributes her
change of fortunes to his sagacity and his activity in following up the
hint he had come across by mere accident.
So my supernumerary fellow-boarder, whom I would have dispensed with as
a cumberer of the table, has proved a ministering angel to one of the
personages whom I most cared for.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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