The Professor at the Breakfast-TableHolmes, Oliver Wendell
General
The Professor at the Breakfast-Table
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
American fiction -- 19th century; Conversation -- Fiction; Poetry
soon acquire the last franchise which men withhold from man,--that
of stating the laws of his spiritual being and the beliefs he accepts
without hindrance except from clearer views of truth,--he seems to want
nothing for a large, wholesome, noble, beneficent life. In fact, the
chief danger is that he will think the whole planet is made for him,
and forget that there are some possibilities left in the debris of the
old-world civilization which deserve a certain respectful consideration
at his hands.
The combing and clipping of this shaggy wild continent are in some
measure done for him by those who have gone before. Society has
subdivided itself enough to have a place for every form of talent. Thus,
if a man show the least sign of ability as a sculptor or a painter, for
instance, he finds the means of education and a demand for his services.
Even a man who knows nothing but science will be provided for, if
he does not think it necessary to hang about his birthplace all his
days,--which is a most unAmerican weakness. The apron-strings of an
American mother are made of India-rubber. Her boy belongs where he is
wanted; and that young Marylander of ours spoke for all our young men,
when he said that his home was wherever the stars and stripes blew over
his head.
And that leads me to say a few words of this young gentleman, who
made that audacious movement lately which I chronicled in my last
record,--jumping over the seats of I don't know how many boarders to
put himself in the place which the Little Gentleman's absence had left
vacant at the side of Iris. When a young man is found habitually at the
side of any one given young lady,--when he lingers where she stays, and
hastens when she leaves,--when his eyes follow her as she moves and rest
upon her when she is still,--when he begins to grow a little timid,
he who was so bold, and a little pensive, he who was so gay, whenever
accident finds them alone,--when he thinks very often of the given young
lady, and names her very seldom,--
What do you say about it, my charming young expert in that sweet science
in which, perhaps, a long experience is not the first of qualifications?
--But we don't know anything about this young man, except that he is
good-looking, and somewhat high-spirited, and strong-limbed, and has a
generous style of nature,--all very promising, but by no means proving
that he is a proper lover for Iris, whose heart we turned inside out
when we opened that sealed book of hers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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