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
I have received many letters of inquiry as to the sound resembling a
woman's voice, which occasioned me so many perplexities. Some thought
there was no question that he had a second apartment, in which he had
made an asylum for a deranged female relative. Others were of opinion
that he was, as I once suggested, a “Bluebeard” with patriarchal
tendencies, and I have even been censured for introducing so Oriental an
element into my record of boarding-house experience.
Come in and see me, the Professor, some evening when I have nothing
else to do, and ask me to play you Tartini's Devil's Sonata on that
extraordinary instrument in my possession, well known to amateurs as one
of the masterpieces of Joseph Guarnerius. The vox humana of the great
Haerlem organ is very lifelike, and the same stop in the organ of the
Cambridge chapel might be mistaken in some of its tones for a human
voice; but I think you never heard anything come so near the cry of
a prima donna as the A string and the E string of this instrument. A
single fact will illustrate the resemblance. I was executing some tours
de force upon it one evening, when the policeman of our district rang
the bell sharply, and asked what was the matter in the house. He
had heard a woman's screams,--he was sure of it. I had to make the
instrument sing before his eyes before he could be satisfied that he had
not heard the cries of a woman. The instrument was bequeathed to me by
the Little Gentleman. Whether it had anything to do with the sounds I
heard coming from his chamber, you can form your own opinion;--I have no
other conjecture to offer. It is not true that a second apartment with
a secret entrance was found; and the story of the veiled lady is the
invention of one of the Reporters.
Bridget, the housemaid, always insisted that he died a Catholic. She had
seen the crucifix, and believed that he prayed on his knees before it.
The last circumstance is very probably true; indeed, there was a
spot worn on the carpet just before this cabinet which might be thus
accounted for. Why he, whose whole life was a crucifixion, should not
love to look on that divine image of blameless suffering, I cannot see;
on the contrary, it seems to me the most natural thing in the world
that he should. But there are those who want to make private property of
everything, and can't make up their minds that people who don't think as
they do should claim any interest in that infinite compassion expressed
in the central figure of the Christendom which includes us all.
The divinity-student expressed a hope before the boarders that he should
meet him in heaven.--The question is, whether he'll meet you,--said the
young fellow John, rather smartly. The divinity-student had n't thought
of that.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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