Springfield weekly Republican. [volume], September 02, 1909, Page 4, Image 4

About Springfield weekly Republican. [volume] (Springfield, Mass.) 1851-1946

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4
-THE CENTENARY OF HOLMES.
THI “AUTOCRAT,” WIT AND POET.
A PARTIAL CHARACTERIZATION
' Of One the Mom Versatile, Most
Wise and Most Helptnl of Ameri
can Men of Letters.
Our wise and witty Dr Holmes has not
been gone from earth so many years that
he is not still a vital personage in our es
sential life of thought nnd feeling and the
perpetual friendships which do not depend
upon immediate contact with another. Cer
taiuiy to the elder folk, men and women,
■who knew the Autocrat in 1857, nnd his
■agreeable- masquerades (or rather alter
egos) the Professor and the Poet as they
distinguished that Breakfast Table, the
•mart peb^e who are writing to-day in
magazincsMthe new Charles. Lambs and
so on, seem rather fiat: whereas this inter
esting congeries of philosophic and scien
tific and .sympathetic connotators of hu
man life ..embodied in that bright and <n
critical Holmes seem just as keen and
clever as at the start, while one feels more
strongly the depth and sincerity and last
ing quality of the man. He is one of the
writers whom the lapse of time will only
make classics—or keep classics. for among
the great New England group his place
is as fixed as anj other.
Holiness ancestry was what he has de
scribed Judds Brahmin class.—with repre
sentatives in state and rimreh arid social
connections far.back to the early days of
New England, when the emigrants from
old England found 'themselves originally
placed as founders of a new tivilizatiou as
well as inheritors of an old one. and be
gan shortly to develop scholarship and
leadership and statesmanship of their own.
The Adamses. Winthrops, Bradfords, Pyn
chons. had no special distinction .n En
gland; gentlemen, yeomen, churchmen,
whatever they hdd been in the land of the
past, they* were transmogrified in a few
generations to characters and types they
might never have reached under the elder
cimditiohr. Men mid women of old En
glish descent were not like the rest of them
left in Groat Britain. It was a new start,
and so with the family of Holmes. He
was descended- from not only English, but
Dutch forbears, for the WendeLs were of
Holland origin, and also through his
mother he became Quincy. Jackson, Oliver,
and among his relations were numbered
Wendel! Phillips. Phillips Brooks, Rich
ard Henry Dana and William Ellery
. Chahriug. His father was Her Abie!
Holmes, a minister of some note, who
dwelt in the old gambrel-roofed mansion
in ■ Cambridge, where Oliver Wendell
Holmes was born. August 29, 1800. He
v .is graduated from Harvard college in
‘ the class of 1829, which his constant muse
’ rendered, fupwitts by poem after poem nt
their anniversaries—a series of most happy
and' eiwer occasional verses such as no
ether class of that or any other college
.. ever, has peen glorified by. Those class
poems of Holmes are in a rank by them
wires (for genial fellowship nnd shining
lyrielsni, and they make a fine showing
Jq the edition of his poems. Thore were
•in that class William H. Channing, Ben
jamin Piercy James Freeman Clarke.
Benjamin It. Curtis. Samuel Francis
Smith, and not a few other men of eon
reipicnce. He was the bright star of the
galaxy.
Holmes began writing as a youth, when
he littered that stirring lyric that saved
the old frigate Constitution in 183 t), when
it was proposed to break up that heroic
relic of the navy of the young republic;
and that saved it again in our later days,
and caused its rebuilding. A voice of pa
triotic sentiment, this spirited appeal keeps
to-day all its superb ring of enthusiasm.
Who has not recited it?—
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down:
Long has it waved on high;
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky!
It was in his early prime, too, that he
wrote that exquisite bit of art, “The Last
Leaf," whose subject was old Maj Mel
; Ville, the father of Herman Melville, the
novelist, and the last Bostonian to wear
, ■ the costume of the colonial days, the
• corked hat, the knee breeches and the sil
ver-buckled shoes.
His first volume of poems was published
in 1886, just after his delivery of th^t
noted Phi Beta Kappa -poem entitled
, “Poetry: a Metrical Essay,"—the first of
many poems in rhymed heroics,—a favor
ite form with him, and very easy in its
moyenient, so that he himself rather aptly
described it as "sing-song.” Nothing but
bis peculiar genius could have imparted to
this meter tne freshness and ease these
■ poems exemplified. He published this in
the first volume referred to. in which had
>» place a great many of his ready humors,
as ' The Sunday Breeches,” “The Stetho
scope,”. and the like: but also one at least
of his most beautiful poems,—"The Last
Leaf.” President Lincoln, whose literary
sense was keen, though so slightly culti
vated, said of this that "for pure pathos,
in my judgment, there is nothing finer
than those six lines in the English lan
guage.” The reference was to the stanza
. beginning “The mossy marbles rest." When
Holmes wag 30 years old he was appoint
cd professor of anatomy and physiology at
. Eartmouth, but in the next year he mar
ried Amelia Lee Jackson, and removed to
Boston to practice medicine. It was seven
years later that he was given the same
professorship in Harvard medical, school,
end there he remained until in 1882 he
‘ resigned, being 73 years old, and was made
professor emeritus. All his life was hap
py, he was beloved as a professor; his stu
dents called him “the little doctor," and
they all loved him. That was what all his
renders grew to do, and a more enviable
life could not be imagined.
But Dr Holmes had the extraordinary
experieace of beginning his real career as
author In middle age, for what went be
fore affords but little to fill the fame of
letters Notwithstanding the rare beauty
& brief lyrics, it was as the wit that
Hollas was known, at the wit that Low
ell charai-teriaod him in his brilliant ut»d
•aucy Fable for Critics” In 1848, and
when “The Autocrat of the Breakfast
Table" made his appeorunee in th* first
Cumber of the Atlantic Monthly in 1857,
■' we, had the ripe and rich maturity of a
tu'ered man, to whom the wisdom of life
had accrued without arty abatement of the
g»y«y of temper and the free faculty
of youth. It was a blessed thing that the
Autocrat grew Unto full experience be
he fulfilled'the design c.f the youth
of 22. when he begun in the New England
magazine. We believe it was' Lowell
who made, not precisely a condition, but
an earnest request that. Dr Holmes be
engaged as one of the principal contribu
tors of the Atlantic. There were
many who suspected the practically
inexhaustible resources of Holmes ih
prose as well as in verse. where
in his line nobody in America or
anywhere else had surpassed him.
And those who knew were the intimate
friends who had heard him talk, over cho
Coffee or the lea, or even now and then
over rhe wine; and they knew he had only
to send out Uis conversation for author’s
copy, and to take the country.
Probably no other magazine ever started
out with so superb a staff of contributors as
the Atlantic, w ith a'l the great Boston group,
ami Concord besides; and among them all,
nothing else so won the favor* of readers
- ■ “
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‘ ‘ 1 1 1 —' ~TT“ — ■ ■ — ' ■ 111 n" - ~ > ~ l
OLIVER WEXDELL HOLMES.
[From the portrait prefixed to "Over the Teacpp»,” Houghton Mifflin company.]
as “The Autocrat." Will ever a youth
of 15 forget how the new Atlantic came
up to the farm cn the hill and took him
by a surprise, as if not yet had the days
gone by when Lamb or Hazlitt or lie
Qnincey might be paralleled or sur
paased! What one gets of Holmes in
those Autocrat papers is a brightness and
vitality in the survey of humanity and of
letters and religions which bad been lack
ing. One session at that boarding-house
breakfast table was a liberation of
thought, an enlargement of charity and
a. conviction that wit and humor were not
for mere amusement, but good. food for
iho soul. He opened a hundred loop
holes of vision into the domain of science,
as it was known; he hesitated not
to puncture a venerable sham, though
labeled with respectability; he stimulated
free thought and yet reinforced it with
reverence; and he created interesting char
acters. —perhaps a bit overstrained and
modified by the doctor s superior sense of
Brahminity. but very much realities, from
the Landlady's Daughter with her “spit
curls" to the Schoolmistress and the Auto
crat himself, neither of whom are de
scribed. but whom we know intimately.
It is interesting to note that while we
know the hand of Holmes is there, yet the
Autocrat in his own person is quite differ
ent front his creator, who might'not "toss
'his facial eminence rather smartly.” as
Holmes, while the Autocrat with a very
different nose could not help really tossing
it. We never fancy the Autocrat looking
like Holmes, nor yet the Professor and
the Poet, —when we get to the Dictator
“over the teacups,” ’tis a different mat
ter: and he seems once ftfain "the little
doctor.” The representative and vital
work of Holmes was in that incomparable
succession. Of the four, the first is most
brilliant and vigorous; but "the Professor
'at the Breakfast Table” is possessed by
deeper thought, although the professor is
in the story less like Holmes than was
the Autocrat. The boarding-house bad
changed when the Poet came there, and
it is in n measure more impersonal than
either, but his record is not the least of
the three, for it contains the most
spiritual thought of the poet himself,—the
scries of studies entitled "Wind Clouds and
Star Drifts.”
In this series the wide gamut of human
nature in the upper range is well round
ed; that is, the exhibition of our traits is
such a» we may get without descending
into any inferno or reaching the criminal
courts, although there are persons brought
before our vision who indicate that the
writer could well have stirred deeper the
waters of evil were it not for the natural
limitations of his purpose to reach no
lower a level than the experience of well
bred people, with a certain always per
ceptible recognition of grades. The board
ing-house where the famous table was set
gets cheap and offensive persons in its
chairs at times, but they are mere acci
dents, soon got rid of. And the whole
atmosphere of the boarding-house is a
wholesome environment for the genuine
New England character, which none knew
better. In “Over the Teacups” we find
the old Dictator, consciously the senior of
his predecessors, to whom the original Au
tocrat is himself a memory, and instead
of the breakfast table lire find the tea table
spread and the delicate aroma of the
oriental beverage—perhaps oolong, perhaps
now orange pekog,—but with a different
effect from the bsarty table that began
the day with coffee, and included pie in
its order of f<>od. Yet, though the Auto
crat came to the head of the board at 48
years of age, and the Dictator was an
octogenarian, there is little if any abate
ment in the Interest with which we greet
him. He is as omnivorous in Jtl* focal of
opinions, and as free, in spreading, them
• broad as ever. * ;-•
.Thvougtiout all those lawks rami p.vary
ing but continuous stream of religious
•
THE SPRINGFIELD WEEKLY REPUBLICAN: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1909.
opinion, which was quarreled with by
many a dogmatist.—for Holmes was one
of the truest of Christians, of the class
that tries to follow the way of Jesus
rather than tlio theology of Tani or Cal
vin or any of the popes. He had no
room or temper for illiberal hatred of any
sect, yet more than once he was attacked
as a dangerous heretic—that of course be
cause lie was a Tnitarian. but especially
because he had sueh frightful excellences,
—ns Clarice and Collyer, Hale and Lowell,
Longfellow mid Bryant, and such mon
also displayed, when they ought not to
have bidden their horns and hoofs. It is
certainly tno bad that these heretics should
insist on holding the faith of (Jesus. In
his prefaces to the several volumes Dr
Holmes spoke of these antagonisms, con
cluding (in the preface to the edition of
1891 of "The professor”) that "there is
no rest for the Protestant until he gives
up his legendary anthropology and all its
dogmatic dependencies." And his "here
sies“ against an assumed orthodoxy are
never thought of. The clear original Chris
tian’s life and purpose is a keynote of
Holmes in alt his writings.
These books of consideration of human
life, intellectual, always, but sympathetic
always, take their place not only as the
finest of literature, but also as sources
of moral and religions inspiration. With
the rich and yet simple style of Holmes, —a
definite and personal style, as much his own
as Charles Lamb's,—and a mind far deeper,
broader and stronger than Lamb’s, both
as literature and as thought, sweeping an
aite, of science which that delightful essay
ist never entered, —and would not have en
tered even harl he written in our period.—
Holmes was far the finest essayist of the
last century and of this, so far as it has
advanced, for there is now nobody who
shows a promise at all equal to the com
prehensive views of Holmes.
One of the most interesting phases of
D. Holmes’s -genius was his story writ
ing. He said early in the Autocrat
papers that he meant to write a novel. He
believed that every man of capacity had
at least one novel in him: and while he
wrote this, he was developing in that par
ticular series one of the daintiest of love
stories, eiilminatinp in the memorable mo
ment when the Autocrat asked the school
mistress “Will you walk the long path
with me?” The gingko tree on Boston
Common has been an object of romantic
interest because of that. So in the Poet's
chronicles there is i) pretty weft of love,
which pleases, and in "Over the Teacups”
there is simply a puzzle as to what is
likely to take place,—the essayist had
grown perhaps weary at his age of work
ing out these pleasant problems of affec
tion. But the most remarkable of ail his
interwoven stories is that of “Little Bos
ton" and Iris. Iris is the most exquisite,
the most subtle of his creations. This
young girl is a pearl of pearls, as the
"Little Gentleman" is the most marvel
ous of intellectual conceptions. It is in
the mysterious, but singularly beautiful
relation of this young girl with the de
formed man, descending to his death, that
Holmes struck his deepest note of spirit
ual tragedy. Not for the woman,—a very
lovely creation—but for that great soul
imprisoned in the broken body. The spirit
ual engrossment of Iris in this wreck of
humanity is a very extraordinary study
of woman's nature. She was the mother,
—her love was to cure, and we are told
that it did cure. But if it is to be felt
how- woman s emotions may nobly work,
here is the record of remark.
For his novels, we have the romances of
“Elsie Vcnner" and “The Guardian
Angel." They are both based upon prob
lems of heredity. There is much interest
in Elsie Venner. Given the conditions
which Dr Holmes assumes—nothing of
which will bear the test of truth,—here
is this magnetieally beautiful Elsie, daugh
ter of a dreamy creature, Dudley Vcnner,
whose wife died after a long illness caused
by the bite of a rattlesnake, and in the
midst of this maniac possession is the
child Elsie born, to be an abnormal crea
ture, with strange influence on those who
are associated with her. Even natural
human love fails to touch her. and all is
tragedy. The study of Elsie is wrought
with great power, and she is one of the
lasting figures of our last century litera
ture. It is a pathologic study, in a way,
but based on conditions which could never
exist. The geene has been laid in the
Western Massachusetts "egion, sometimes
on Mt Tom, where there have always been
rattlesnakes enough, but where nothing
has ever happened to remotely suggest the
grewsoffie tale of Dudley Venner^ wife
and daughter.
Holmes; moreover, was also honored in.
his vocation'as a scholar of the human
frame; he taught soundly his anatomy and
physiology, and he took his profession most
serloualy. While hU gift of wi|.wa« mak
ing him spokeu of as jester of the poets
' of his early years, it was far superior to ,
( that punning wit of Faxe. modeled on I
। Hood's poor pot boilers. Thore Holmes '
' never went. He punned, but with apology. -
| In his professorial chair he was as exact- ;
! .ing, though cordial, as any don of the col- ■
; lege. He wrote many valuable medical '
I works, among them "Currents mid Conn-j
! ter Currents in Medical Science" (18dl>: I
' "Borderland in Sonic Provinces of Medi- ;
j cal Science”’ 11862): and a treatise on
, "Puerperal Fever." in which lie embodied i
■ researches intb the transmission of this
; tci rible disease by incorrect obstetrics, ;
] which were of the utmost value in saving
' the lives jof mothers. It caused him no
j little opprobrium when he began this ex-
I position of medical error, but in his own
I mind it was the best service he did. Nor '
■ did’he neglect psychology, and his brief
I treatise, "Mechhnism in Thought and Mor- .
I als," is an admirable contribution to pliilos
i ophy. Also he wrote biographies of Mot- !
I ley, the historian, and of Emerson. He
was not thought to be in sympathy with
the Concord philosopher, but his life of i
Emerson is a treasure.
Altogether, there was no better all- 1
round man in the famous group of New ;
England, now all departed Ulis life. In
our selections of poem's for this centenary i
we have not choseu any of bis clever ;
verses of wit .and humor, for they are
transient from the nature of them; nnd i
have omitted some that the reader I
naa^ probably expect to find, especially
"The Chambered Nautilus,” concerning
which ho said: "That was when 1 wrote
better than I could." But we present
some of tile choicest of his work.
REPRESENTATIVE POEMS.
The l.a»t Leaf.
I saw him once before
As lie passed by the door.
And itgaiii
The pavi-mFW sfones resound
As he totters o’er rhe ground.
With his cane.
They say that in his prime,
Ere tile prunipg knife of rime
Cut him down.
Not a better jmm was found
By tils < Tier ou his round
Through the town.
But new he walks the streets.
And he looks at all he meets.
Sad and wan;
And he shakes'his feeble head
That it M-etns as if he said;
"They are gone.”
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he lias prest
In theii bloom:
And the names he loved to hear
Have been curved for many a year
On the tomb.
My grandmamma, she said—
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago,—
That Im had a roman nose
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow.
But now his nose is thin
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back
And a melancholy crack .
In his laugh.
I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here,—
But the phi threr-i-ornered hat,
And the breevhes.-aud al! that,—
Arc so .qijec}” .
And if I shotild Jive to he "/
The last leaf njimi the tree
In the spring,—
Let them smile, as I do now
At the old forsaken bough
Where 1 cling.
My Aviary.
Through my north window, in the wintry
weather,—
My airy oriel on the river shore.—
I watch the sea-fowl as they flock together
Where Into the boatman flashed his drip
ping oar.
Th J gull, high floating, like a sloop un
laden
Lets the loose water -w aft him as it will;
The duck, round-breasted as a rusric
maiden.
Paddles and plunges, busy, busy still.
I see the solemn gulls in council sitting
On some broad ice-floe, pondering long
and late.
While overhead the home-hound ducks are
flitting.
And leave the tardy conclave in debate,
Those weighty questions in their breasts
revolving
Whose deeper meaning science never
learns,
Till at some reverend elder's look dis
solving,
Thu speechless senate silently adjourns.
But when along the naves the shrill
northeaster ,
Shrieks through the laboring coaster's
shrouds "Beware!”
The pule bird, kindling like a Christmas
fenster
When some wild chorus shakes the
vinous air,
Flaps from the leaden wave in fierce re
joicing,
Feels heaven’s dumb lightning thrill his
torpid nerves,
Now on the blast his whistling plumage
poising,
Non' wheeling, whirling in fantastic
curves.
Sucli is our gull; a gentleman of leisure.
Less fleshed than feathered; bagged
you’ll find him such:
His virtue silence; bls employment pleas
ure;
Not bad to look at, and not good for
■ much.
What of our duck? He has some high
bred cousins, —
His Grace the Canvas back, My Lord
the Brant.—
Anas and Anser,—both served up by doz
ens.
At Boston’s Rocher, half-way to Na
hrnt.
As for himself, he seems alert and thriv
ing,—
Grubs up a living somehow—what, who
knows?
Crabs? mussels? weeds?—Look quick!
there's one just diving!
Flop! Splash! Ills White breast glistens—
down he goes!
And while he’s under—just about a min-
Ut(* —-
I take advantage of the fact to say
His fishy carcaw has no virtue in it
The gunning idiot’s worthless hire to
pay-
He knows you! "sportsmen" from subur
ban alleys,
Sttetchod under seaweed in the treach
erous punt;
Knows every lazy, shiftless lout that sal
lies
Forth to waste powder—as he says, to
•‘hunt.’!
I wntch you with a patient satisfaction,
Well pleased to discount your pr»des ;
tined lurk;
The float that tigurciTtri your sly transac
tion
Mill carry back a goose, but not a
duck. t
Shrewd I* onr bird; not easy to outwit
him!
Sharp is the outlook of those plu-head
eyca;
Still, hr is mortal and a tb°t orty hit
him, ’
One cannot always miw him if be trie*.
Look !~thefe’s n young one, dreaming not
of danger;
Secs a flat log come floating down the
stream;
Stares undismayed upon the harmless
stranger:
Airi were all strangers harmless as they
seem!
Ha bet!, a leaden shower his breast hag
shattered:
Mainly he flutters, not again to rise:
His soft white plumes along the waves
arc scattered:
Helpless the wing that brits-ed the tem
pest lies.
He see* his comrades high above him
flying
To sc-ek their nests among the island
reeds:
Strong is their flight: all lonely he is
lying
Washed by the crimsoned water as he
bleeds.
O Thov who rarest for the falling spar
row.
Const t'liou the sinless sufferer’s pang
forget?
Or is Thy drend account book’s page so
nn now
Its on<- long column scores Thy creature's
debt ?
Toor gentle guest, by nature kindly cher
ished,
A world -grows dark with thee in blind
ing-death;
Oi c little gasp—thy universe has perished.
Wrecked by the idle thief who stole tliy
breath!
Is this the wii’ole sad story of creation,
Lived by its breathing myriads o'er and
o’er,—
Oue glimpse of day, then black annihila
tion.—
A sunlit passage to a sunless shore?
Give back our faith, ye mystery-solving
lynxes!
Robe t;s' once more in heaven-aspiring
creeds!
Hqppier iris dreaming Egypt with her
spby n-.\i>s.
Til l -lolly convent with its cross and
beads!
11 > v often gazing where a bird reposes.
!. «1 ' d nn liie wavelets, drifting with
t'.li- tide.
I ho-o myself in strange metempsychosis
Ai.d float a sec-fowl at a sea-fowl's side.
From rain, hail, snow in feathery mantle
muffled,
Cleai-cyed, strong-limbed, with keenest
sense to hear
My n ine's soft murmuring, who, with
plumes unruffled,
Where'er I wander still is nestling near;
The grfa.t blue hollow like a garment
o'er me:
Space all tmmeasored, unrecorded time;
W hiie seen with inward eye moves on be
fore mo
Thoughts pictured train in wordless
pantomime.
— A voice recalls me.—From my window
turning
I find myself a plunioless biped still;
No beak, no claws, no sign of wings dis
cerning.—
In fact with nothing bird-like but my
quill.
The Voiceless.
We count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet nailing singers slum
ber,
But o'er their silent sister's breast
The nild-flowers who will stoop to num
ber?
A fevv can touch the magic string.
And noisy Fame is proud to win them:—
Alas ibr those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
Nay. grieve nut for the dead alone
Whose song has told their hearts' sad
story
Weep for the voiceless, who have known
The cross without the crown of glory'l
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep
O'er Sytpho's memory-haunted billow.
But where the glistening night-dews weep
O'er nameless sorrow's churchyard pil
low.
O hearts that break and give no sign
Save whitening lips and fading tresses.
Till Death pours out his cordial wine
Slow-dropped from Misery’s crushing
presses,—
If singing breath or echoing chord
To eveiy hidden pang were given.
What endless melodies were poured.
As stid as earth, as sweet ns heaven!
Vader the Violets.
Her handr are cold; her face is white;
No more her pulses come and ga;
Her eyes are shut to life and light;—
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
And lay lier where the violets blow.
But not beneath a graven stone,
To plead for tears with alien eyes;
A slender cross of wood alone
Shall say. that here a maiden lies
In peace beneath the peaceful skies.
And gi-iiy old trees of hugest limb
Shall wheel their circling shadows round
To make the scorching sunlight dim
That drinks the greenness from the
ground,
And diop their dead leaves on her
motaid.
When o'er their boughs the squirrels run.
And through their leaves the robins call,
Atul, ripening in the autumn sun.
c The acorns and the chestnuts fall.
Doubt not that she will heed them all.
For her the morning choir shall sing
Its matins from the branches high,
And every minstrel-voice of Spring,
That trills beneath the April sky.
ShaU greet jher with its earliest cry.
When, turning round their dial-track,
Eastward the lengthening shadows pass.
Her little mourners clad in black.
The crickets, sliding through the grass.
Shall pipe for her an evening mass.
At last the rootlets of the trees
Shall find the prison where she lies
And bear the buried dust they .seize
In leaves anrl blossoms to the skies.
So may the soul that, warmed it rise!
If imy. born of kindlier blood,
Should ask. What maiden lies below!
Say only this: A tender bud.
That tried to blossom in the snow,
Lies withered where the violets blow.
The Iron Gate.
[The Peet's 70th Birthday Poem, read at
the Atlantic Monthly Breakfast, Decem
ber 3,1570. J
■Where is this patriarch you are kindly
greetir.^?
Not ititfiin-.iliar to my ear his name.
Nor yet unknown to many a joyous meet
ing
lu days long vanished,—is he still the
same.
Or ebnnged by years, forgotten and for
getting. c
Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow ‘of speech
nnd thought.
Still o’er the -oad, degenerate present fret
ting,
Where nil goes wrong, and nothing as it
ought?
Old age. the graybeard! Well, indeed, I
know him.—
Shrunk, tottering, bent, of aches nnd
ills the prey;
In sermoip story, fable, picture, poem,
Olt hn+c I met him from my earliest
day:
In my old Aesop, toiling wjth his bundle,
His load of sticks,—politely asking
Death
Who eiimes when called for,—would be
lug or trundle
His fagot for him?—he was scant out of
breath.
And sod ’‘Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher,"—
Has ho not stamped the image on my
soul.
In that last chapter, where the worn-out
Teacher
Sighs o'ol the loosened eord, the broken
bowl? A
Yes, long, Indeed, I’ve known him at a
distance, i
And now my lifted dbor-lateh shows him (
here:
I take his shriveled hand without resist
ances
Am] tinJ him smiling ns his step draws
neai.
What though of gilded baubles he be- i
reaves us.
Dear to the heart of youth, to man- |
hcod’s prime; , ■
Think of the culm he brings, the wealth
he leaves us. . . ,
The hoarded spoils, the legacies of time.
Altars onee flaming, still with incense fra
grant.
Passion’s uneasy nurslings rocked asleep.
Hope’s anchor faster, wild desire less va
grant.
Life’s flow less noisy, but the stream
how deep!
Still as the silver cord gets worn and
slender,
Ils lightened task-work tugs with lessen
ing strain.
Hands get more helpful, voices, grown
mon tender.
Soothe with their softened tones the
slumberous brain,
Touth longs and manhood strives, but age
remembers.
Sits by the rnkert-up ashes of the past.
Spreads its thin hands above the whiten
ing embers .
That warm its creeping life-blood till the
last.
Dear to its heart is every loving token
That comes unbidden ere its pulse grows
cold,
Ere-the last lingering tics of life are
broken.
Its labors ended and its story told.
Ah. while around u? rosy youth rejoices,
For us- the sorrow-laden breezes sigh,
And through the chorus of its jocund
voices.
Throbs the sharp note of misery’s hope
less cry.
As on the gauzy wings of fancy flying
ITotn some far orb I track our watery
sphere.
Home of the struggling, suffering, doubt--
ing. dying.
The srlydred globule seemk a glistening
tear.
But Nature lends her mirror of illusion --
To win from saddening scenes our age
din.med eyes.
And misty day-dreams blend in sweet con
fusion
The wintry landscape and the summer
skies.
So w ben the iron portal shuts behind us,
And life forgets us in its noise and
whirl.
Visions that shunned the glaring noon
day find us,
And glimmering -starlight shows the
gates of pearl.
—I come not here yonr morning hour to
sadden,
A limping pilgrim, leaning on his staff.—
I, who have never deemed it sin to glad
den
This vale of sorrows with a wholesome
laugh.
If werd of mine another's gloom has
brightened,
Through my dumb lips the heaven-sent
message came;
If hand of mine another's task has light
ened,
It felt the guidance that it dares not
claim.
Bui. O my gentle sisters, O roy brothers.
These thick-sown snow-flakes hint of
toil’s release: %
These feebler pulses bid me leave to
others
The tasks once welcome; evening asks,
for peace.
Time claims his tribute; silence now is
golden;
Let me not vex the too long suffering
lyre;
Though to your Jove untiring still be
holden.
The curfew tolls me—cover np the fire.;
And now with grateful smile and accents
cheerful,
And warmer heart than look or word can
toll.
In simplest phrase—these traitorous eyes
arc tearful-
Thanks. Brothers, Sisters—Children—
and farewell!
A Part of “The Story of Irie,”
IRIS HER BOOK.
I pray thee by the soul of her that bore
thee.
By thine own sister’s spirit I implore thee,
Deal gently with the leaver that lie before
thee!
For Iris had no mother to infold her,
Nor ever leaned upon a sister’s shoulder.
Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature
told her.
She had not learned the mystery of awak
ing
Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow's
aching, .
Giving the dumb heart voice, that else
were breaking.
Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pic
tured token!
Why should her fleeting day drcams fade
unspoken,
Like daffodils that die with sheaths un
broken?
She knew not love, yet lived in maiden
fancies.—
Walked, simply clad, a queen of high
romances.
And talked strange tongues with angels
in her trances.
Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature
wearing,—
Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring.
Then a poor mateiess dove that droops
despairing.
Questioning all things: Why her Lord had
sent her?
What were those torturing gifts, and
wherefore lent her?
Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tor
mentor.
And then all tears nnd anguish:—Queen
of Heaven.
Sweet saints, and tbou by mortal sorrows
riven.
Save me! oh, save me! Shall I die for
given?
And then—Ah, God! But nay, it little
matters:
Look at the wasted seeds that autumn
scatters,
The myriad germs that Nature shapes
and shatters!
If she had—Well! She longed and knew '
not wherefore.
Had the world nothing she might live to
care for?
No second self to say her evening prayer
for?
She knew the marble shapes that sot men
dreaming.
Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses
streaming
Showed not unlovely to her simple seem
ing.
Vain? I.et it be so! Nature was her
teacher.
\Vhat. if a lonely and unsiatered creature
Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing
feature.
Saying, unsaddened,—This shall soon be
faded.
And double hued the shining treszes
braided,
And all the sunlight of the morning
shalcd?
—This hsr poor book is full of saddest
follies.
Of tearful smiles and laughing melan
cholies.
With anmmer roses, twined and wintry
hollies.
In the strange crossing of uncertain,
ehanees, ‘ ■
Somewhere, bewth some maiden's tear
. . ..
May fall her little book' of dreams and
fancies.
Sweet sister! Iris, who shall .nevci: name
thee.
Trembling for fear her open heart niay
shanie thee. ~
Speaks from thia vision-haunted page to
claim thee,
Sphre Her. I pray theet If the maid is
sleeping.
Peace with her! she has had ben hour of
weeping.
No more! she leaves her memory in thy
keeping,
* * * ~ ■
These verses wore written in the first
leaves of the locked volume. As I turned
the pages. 1 hesitated for a moment. Is
it quite fair to take advantage of a gen
erous, trusting impulse to read the un
sunned depths of' a young girl's nature,
which I can look through, as the balloon
voyagers tell us they see from their hang
ing baskets through the translucent wa
ters which the keenest eye of such as sail
over them in ships might strive, to pierce
in vain? Why has the child trusted m«
with such artless confessions.--self-revela
tior.s, nh.ich might be. whispered by trem
bling lips, under the veil of twilight, in
sacred confessionals, but which I cannot
look at in .the light of day .without a feel
ing of wronging a. yacred. confidence?
* * *
I found the soul-of Iris-in the one that
lay open before, me. Sometimes it was a
poem that held it. sometimes a drawing,
—angel, arabesque, caricature, or a mere
hieroglyphic symbol of which I could make
nothing. A rag of cloud on one page, as
I remember, with a streak of red zigzag
ging out of it across the paper ns naturally
as a crnck runs through a china bowl.
On the next page a dend bird,—some little
favorite, I suppose: for it was worked
out with a special love, nnd I saw on the
leaf that sign with which once or twice
in my life I have had a letter sealed,—a
round spot where the paper is slightly
corrugated, and. if there is writing there,
the letters are somewhat faint and
blurred. Most of the pages were surround
ed with emblematic traceries. It was
strange to me at first to see how often
she introduced those homelier w’ild flowers
which we call weeds—for it seemed there
was none of them too humble for her to
love, and none too little cared for ■by
Nature to be without its beauty for her
artist eye and pencil. By the side of the
garden flowers.—of spriiig’s curled dar
lings. the hyacinths, of rosebuds, dear to
sketching maidens, of flower-de-luces and
morning, glories,—nay, oftener than these,
and more tenderly caressed by the colored
brush that rendered them,—where those
common growths, which fling themselves
to be crushed under our feet and our
wheels, making themselves so cheap in this
perpetual martyrdom that we forget each
o-f them is a ray of the divine beauty.
I confess I did expect to see something
•that would remind me of the girl's little
deformed neighbor, if not portraits of him.
—There is a left arm again, though:—no,
—that is from the ‘‘Fighting Gladiator,”—
the “Jeune Heros comhattant” of the
Louvre;—there is the broad ring of the
shield. From a cast, doubtless. The sep
arate casts of the “Gladiator's” arm look
immense: but in'its place the limb looks
light, almost slender,—such is the perfec
tion of that miraculous marble. I never
felt ns if I touched the life of the old
Greeks until I looked on that statue. Here
is something very odd, to he sure. Au
Eden of all the humped and crooked creat
ures! What could have been in her head
when she worked out such a fantasy?
She has contrived to give them all beauty
or dignity or melancholy grace. A Bac
trian cnmel lying under a palm. A drom
edary flashing up the sands.—spray of the
dry ocean sailed by the “ship of the des
ert.” A herd of buffaloes, uncouth,
shaggy maned, heavy in the forehand,
light in the hindquarter. ... A very odd
page indeed! Not a creature in it with
out a curve or a twist, and not one of
them a moan figure to look at. I believe
she is trying to idealize what we vulgarly
call deformity, which she strives to look
at in the light of one of Nature's eccentric
curves, belonging to her system of beau
ty, as the hyperbola and parabola belong
to the conic sections, though we cannot
see them as symmetrical and entire fig
ures. like the circle nnd ellipse. At any
rate, I cannot help referring this paradise
of twisted spines to some idea fleatiug in
her head connected with her friend whom
Nature has warped in the molding.
» » »
That is nothing to another transcendent
al fancy of mine. I believe her soul thinks
itself in his little crooked body at times,—
if it does not really get freed or half
freed from her own. Did you ever see n
ease of catalepsy? You know what I
mean,—transient loss of sense,• will and
motion; body and limbs- taking any posi
tion in which they are put. as if they be
longed' to a lay figure. She had been talk
ing with him and listening to him one day
when the boarders moved from the table
nearly all at once. But she sat as before,
her cheek resting on her hand, her amber
eyes wide open and still. I went to her.—
slie was breathing as usual, and her heart
was beating naturally enough,—but she did
not answer. I bent her arm: it was ns
plastic ns softened Wax, and kept the
place I gave it.—This will never do.
though,—and I sprinkled a few drops of
water on her forehead. She started nnd
looked round.—l have been in a- flream, —
she said; I feel as if all my strengtli wore
in this arm:—give me your hnudl—She
tool; my right hand in her left, which
looked soft and white enough, but—Good
heaven! I believe she will crack my
bones! All the nervous power in.her body
must have flashed through those muscles;
as when a crazy lady snaps n«r iron win
dow-bars, —she who could hardly glove
herself wln.n in her common ’lealt’a. Iris
turned pale, and the teaw came to het
eyes;—she saw she had given pain. Then
she trembled, and might have fallen but
for me;—the poor little soul had been in
one of those tranyes that belong. *0 jhe
spiritual pathology of higher natures,
mostly those of women.
THE HOLMES CENTENARY.
Public Exercises In King’s Chapel,
Where the Autocrat Formerly At
tended.
Scrawled in pencil in a musty farmer’s
almange, “August 29, 1809,’’ was the sim
ple inscription that recorded the birth U*)
years a^o Sunday of Oliver Wendell
Holmes, poet, physician and humorist, the
celebration of whose centenary was ob
served quietly in the vicinity of Boston
yesterday. The only public observance
was a service held in King's chapel on
Tremont street, where Dr Holmes regular
ly attended for many years prior to his
death, October 10, 1894. The address was
by Rev Charles E. St John of Philadel
phia. At the Boston public library an
exhibition of Holmes’s works, portraits,
se nes connected witli his life, treasures
aau relies, were showi:. z
Large'Attendance nt Special Service*
In the Plttslleld Flrat Church.
There was a special observance of the
100th anniversary of the birth of Dr Oliver
Mendel) Holmes at the Pittsfield First
church Sunday morning and evening. In the
morning Rev W. V. W. Davis devoted his
sermon to Dr Holmes. He took as his
subject “Tin? enlarging faith,” and during
it he characterized Dr Holmes as the con
necting link between the old and the new
Puritans. Mr Davis devoted a portion of
bis sermon to describing Holmes’s affection
for New England, and Pittsfield in l\ar
tidilar, where be spent much Of his time
and wrote many ot his best works. In
the evening Mr Davis took for his text
"The new and living way," during which
,ho referred th the life of Holmes. Thepe
were larga congregations at both services.
The nawspuper men massed in Bet&rly
cannot', coinplain of President Taft He
is doing u lot of talking.