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
Why, I ask again, (of my reader,) should a person who never did anybody
any wrong, but, on the contrary, is an estimable and intelligent, nay,
a particularly enlightened and exemplary member of society, fail to
inspire interest, love, and devotion? Because of the reversed current in
the flow of thought and emotion. The red heart sends all its instincts
up to the white brain to be analyzed, chilled, blanched, and so become
pure reason, which is just exactly what we do not want of woman as
woman. The current should run the other-way. The nice, calm, cold
thought, which in women shapes itself so rapidly that they hardly know
it as thought, should always travel to the lips via the heart. It does
so in those women whom all love and admire. It travels the wrong way in
the Model. That is the reason why the Little Gentleman said “I hate her,
I hate her.” That is the reason why the young man John called her
the “old fellah,” and banished her to the company of the great
Unpresentable. That is the reason why I, the Professor, am picking her
to pieces with scalpel and forceps. That is the reason why the young
girl whom she has befriended repays her kindness with gratitude and
respect, rather than with the devotion and passionate fondness which lie
sleeping beneath the calmness of her amber eyes. I can see her, as
she sits between this estimable and most correct of personages and the
misshapen, crotchety, often violent and explosive little man on the
other side of her, leaning and swaying towards him as she speaks, and
looking into his sad eyes as if she found some fountain in them at which
her soul could quiet its thirst.
Women like the Model are a natural product of a chilly climate and high
culture. It is not
“The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr with Aurora playing,”
when the two meet
“--on beds of violets blue,
And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account