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
The Lady moved to the house where she had passed many of her prosperous
years. It had been occupied by a rich family who had taken it nearly as
it stood, and as the pictures had been dusted regularly, and the books
had never been handled, she found everything in many respects as she had
left it, and in some points improved, for the rich people did not know
what else to do, and so they spent money without stint on their house
and its adornments, by all of which she could not help profiting. I do
not choose to give the street and number of the house where she lives,
but a-great many poor people know very well where it is, and as a matter
of course the rich ones roll up to her door in their carriages by the
dozen every fine Monday while anybody is in town.
It is whispered that our two young folks are to be married before
another season, and that the Lady has asked them to come and stay with
her for a while. Our Scheherezade is to write no more stories. It is
astonishing to see what a change for the better in her aspect a few
weeks of brain-rest and heart's ease have wrought in her. I doubt very
much whether she ever returns to literary labor. The work itself was
almost heart-breaking, but the effect upon her of the sneers and cynical
insolences of the literary rough who came at her in mask and brass
knuckles was to give her what I fear will be a lifelong disgust against
any writing for the public, especially in any of the periodicals. I am
not sorry that she should stop writing, but I am sorry that she should
have been silenced in such a rude way. I doubt, too, whether the Young
Astronomer will pass the rest of his life in hunting for comets and
planets. I think he has found an attraction that will call him down from
the celestial luminaries to a light not less pure and far less remote.
And I am inclined to believe that the best answer to many of those
questions which have haunted him and found expression in his verse
will be reached by a very different channel from that of lonely
contemplation, the duties, the cares, the responsible realities of a
life drawn out of itself by the power of newly awakened instincts and
affections. The double star was prophetic,--I thought it would be.
The Register of Deeds is understood to have been very handsomely treated
by the boarder who owes her good fortune to his sagacity and activity.
He has engaged apartments at a very genteel boarding-house not far from
the one where we have all been living. The Salesman found it a simple
matter to transfer himself to an establishment over the way; he had very
little to move, and required very small accommodations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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