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
The seasons pass by so rapidly, that I am startled to think how much
has happened since these events I was describing. Those two young
people would insist on having their own way about their own affairs,
notwithstanding the good lady, so justly called the Model, insisted that
the age of twenty-five years was as early as any discreet young lady
should think of incurring the responsibilities, etc., etc. Long
before Iris had reached that age, she was the wife of a young Maryland
engineer, directing some of the vast constructions of his native
State,--where he was growing rich fast enough to be able to decline that
famous Russian offer which would have made him a kind of nabob in a
few years. Iris does not write verse often, nowadays, but she sometimes
draws. The last sketch of hers I have seen in my Southern visits was of
two children, a boy and girl, the youngest holding a silver goblet,
like the one she held that evening when I--I was so struck with her
statue-like beauty. If in the later, summer months you find the grass
marked with footsteps around that grave on Copp's Hill I told you of,
and flowers scattered over it, you may be sure that Iris is here on her
annual visit to the home of her childhood and that excellent lady whose
only fault was, that Nature had written out her list of virtues an ruled
paper, and forgotten to rub out the lines.
One thing more I must mention. Being on the Common, last Sunday, I
was attracted by the cheerful spectacle of a well-dressed and somewhat
youthful papa wheeling a very elegant little carriage containing a stout
baby. A buxom young lady watched them from one of the stone seats,
with an interest which could be nothing less than maternal. I at once
recognized my old friend, the young fellow whom we called John. He was
delighted to see me, introduced me to “Madam,” and would have the lusty
infant out of the carriage, and hold him up for me to look at.
Now, then,--he said to the two-year-old,--show the gentleman how you hit
from the shoulder. Whereupon the little imp pushed his fat fist straight
into my eye, to his father's intense satisfaction.
Fust-rate little chap,--said the papa.--Chip of the old block. Regl'r
little Johnny, you know.
I was so much pleased to find the young fellow settled in life, and
pushing about one of “them little articles” he had seemed to want so
much, that I took my “punishment” at the hands of the infant pugilist
with great equanimity.--And how is the old boarding-house?--I asked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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