The autocrat of the breakfast table : every man his own Boswell
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894
-— — \ AC \ — \ _ IA NAAR SS. SS < ae | hs J A ae te pe t ate oe ih : an h Fj yank oe a ¥ ese e ea ; ie " Ps ee ee : . 3 re A | tabs a R ae a Ks Kiiverside Cdition THE WRITINGS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES IN FOURTEEN VOLUMES VOLUME I. F , f THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKREPSST TABLE Everp flan his own Boswell BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES eV a Za Die i= & <= YO = A CaeRversive Dress] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY Che Hiverside Press, Cambridge Copyright, 1858, 1882, 1886, and 1891, By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, Ali rights reserved. TO THE READERS OF THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. TWENTY-FIVE years more have passed since the si- lence of the preceding twenty-five years was broken by the first words of the self-recording personage who lends his title to these pages, in the “ Atlantic Monthly ” for November, 1857.’ The children of those who first read these papers as they appeared. are still reading them as kindly as their fathers and ‘mothers read them a quarter of a century ago. And now, for the first time for many years I have read them myself, thinking that they might be improved by various corrections and changes. But it is dangerous to tamper in cold blood and in after life with what was written in the glow of an earlier period. Its very defects are a part of its or- ganic individuality. It would spoil any character these records may have to attempt to adjust them to the present age of the world or of the author. We have all of us, writer and readers, drifted away from many of our former habits, tastes, and perhaps beliefs. The world could spare every human being who was living when the first sentence of these papers was written ; its destinies would be safe in the hands of the men and women of twenty-five years and under. vi TO THE READERS OF THE AUTOCRAT. This book was written for a generation which knew nothing or next to nothing of war, and hardly dreamed of it; which felt as if invention must have exhausted itsélf in the miracles it had already wrought. To-day, in a small sea-side village of a few hundred inhabit- ants, I see the graveyard fluttering with little flags that mark the soldiers’ graves; we read, by the light the rocks of Pennsylvania have furnished for us, all that is most important in the morning papers of the civilized world ; the lightning, so swift to run our er- rands, stands shining over us, white and steady as the moonbeams, burning, but unconsumed ; we talk with people in the neighboring cities as if they were at our elbow, and as our equipages flash along the highway, the silent bicycle glides by us and disappears in the distance. All these since 1857, and how much more than these changes in our every-day conditions! I can say without offence to-day that which called out the most angry feelings and the hardest language twenty- five years ago. I may doubt everything to-day if I will only do it civilly. I cannot make over again the book and those which followed it, and I will not try to mend old garments with new cloth. Let the sensible reader take it for granted that the author would agree with him in changing whatever he would alter, in leaving out what- ever he would omit, if it seemed worth while to tam- per with what was finished long ago. The notes which have been added will not interrupt the current of the conversational narrative. I can never be too grateful for the tokens of regard which these papers and those which followed them have brought me. The kindness of my far-off friends has sometimes over-taxed my power of replying to ? Z TO THE READERS OF THE AUTOCRAT. vii them, but they may be assured that their pleasant words were always welcome, however insufficiently ac- knowledged. ny I have experienced the friendship of my readers so long that I cannot help anticipating some measure of its continuance. If I should feel the burden of cor- respondence too heavily in the coming years, I desire to record in advance my gratitude to those whom I may not be able to thank so fully and so cordially as I could desire. Brvyreriy Farms, Mass., August 29, 1882. PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. ANOTHER decade has nearly closed since the above Preface was written. The Autocrat still finds read- ers, among the young as well as among the old. The children of my early readers were writing to me about my books, especially The Autocrat, as I mentioned in that other Preface. Now it is the grandchildren who are still turning to these pages, which I might well have thought would be voted old-fashioned, outworn, an. unvalued bequest to posterity with Oblivion as re- siduary legatee. I have nothing of importance to add in the way of prefatory remarks. I can only repeat my grateful acknowledgments to the reading public at home and abroad for the hospitable manner in which my thoughts have been received. The expressions of personal regard, esteem, confidence, sympathetic affinity, may I not add affection, which this book has brought to me have become an habitual expe- rience and an untiring source of satisfaction. I have thanked hundreds, yes, thousands, and many thou- sands of these kind correspondents, until my eyes have grown dim and I ean no longer read many of their letters except through younger eyes. If my hand does not refuse to hold the pen or to guide it in the form of presentable characters, an occasional cramp of a little muscle which knows its importance and insists ; / PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. ix on having it recognized by striking, after its own fash- ion, is a hint that I must at length.do what I have long said I ought to do, confent myself with an en- cyclical of thanks and write no more letters except to a few relatives and intimates. A single fact strikes me as worth mentioning. Ten years ago I said that there had been a feeling at the time when this book was written as if mechanical in- vention had exhausted itself. I referred in the Pre- face of 1882 to the new miracles of the telephone and of electric illumination. Since then a new wonder has been sprung upon us in the shape of the electric motor, which has already familiarized itself among us as a common carrier. It is not safe to speculate on what the last decade of the century may yet bring us, but it looks as if the wasted energies of the winds and the waters were to be converted into heat, light, and mechanical movement, in that mysterious form which we call electricity, so as to change the material condi- tions of life to an extent to which we can hardly dare to set limits. As to what social and other changes may accompany the altered conditions of human life in the coming era, it is safer to leave the question open to exercise the ingenuity of some as yet youth- ful, perhaps unborn Autocrat. O. W. H. Bevery Farms, Mass., July 28, 1891. THE AUTOCRAT’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Tue interruption referred to in the first sentence of the first of these papers was iust a quarter of a cen- tury in duration. Two articles entitled “The Autocrat of the Break- fast Table” will be found in the “New England Magazine,” formerly published in Boston by J. T. and E. Buckingham. ‘The date of the first of these articles is November, 1831, and that of the second, February, 1832. When “ The Atlantic Monthly ” was begun, twenty-five years afterwards, and the author was asked to write for it, the recollection of these crude products of his uncombed literary boyhood sug- gested the thought that it would be a curious experi- ment to shake the same bough again, and see if the ripe fruit were better or worse than the early wind- falls. So began this series of papers, which naturally brings those earlier attempts to my own notice and that of some few friends who were idle enough to read them at the time of their publication. The man is father to the boy that was, and J am my own son, as -it seems to me, in those papers of the “ New England Magazine.” If I find it hard to pardon the boy’s faults, others would find it harder. They will not, therefore, be reprinted here, nor, as I hope, anywhere. , / THE AUTOCRAT’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. xi But a sentence or two from them will perhaps bear reproducing, and with these I trust the gentle reader, if that kind being still breathes, will be contented. — “Tt is a capital plan to carry a tablet with you, and, when you find yourself felicitous, take notes of your own conversation.”” — — “When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my Dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively, but their shape and lustre have been given by the attrition of ages. Bring me the finest simile from the whole range of imaginative writing, and I will show you a single word which conveys a more profound, a more accu- rate, and a more eloquent analogy.” — — “Once on a time, a notion was started, that if all the people in the world would shout at once, it might be heard in the moon. So the projectors agreed it should be done in just ten years. Some thousand shiploads of chronome- ters were distributed to the selectmen and other great folks of all the different nations. For a year beforehand, noth- ing else was talked about but the awful noise that was to be made on the great occasion. When the time came, everybody had their ears so wide open, to hear the uni- versal ejaculation of Boo, —the word agreed upon, — that nobody spoke except a deaf man in one of the Fejee Isl- ands, and a woman in Pekin, so that the world was never so still since the creation.” — There was nothing better than these things and there was not a little that was much worse. A young fellow of two or three and twenty has as good a right to spoil a magazine-full of essays in learning how to write, as an oculist like Wenzel had to spoil his hat- full of eyes in learning how to operate for cataract, or an elegant like Brummel to point to an armful of fail- ures in the attempt to achieve a perfect neck-tie. This xil THE AUTOCRAT’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. son of mine, whom I have not seen for these twen- ty-five years, generously counted, was a self-willed youth, always too ready to utter his unchastised fan- cies. He, like too many American young people, got the spur when he should have had the rein. He there- fore helped to fill the market with that unripe fruit which his father says in one of these papers abounds in the marts of his native country. All these by-gone shortcomings he would hope are forgiven, did he not feel sure that very few of his readers know anything about them. In taking the old name for the new papers, he felt bound to say that he had uttered un- wise things under that title, and if it shall appear that his unwisdom has not diminished by at least. half while his years have doubled, he promises not to re- peat the experiment if he should live to double them again and become his own grandfather. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. Boston, November 1, 1858. THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. EL I was just going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the many ways of classifying minds is under the heads of arithmetical and algebraical in- tellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an extension or variation of the following arithmetical formula: 2 + 2=—4. Every philosophical proposition has the more general character of the expression a+b=c. We are mere operatives, empirics, and egotists, until we learn to think in letters instead of figures. They all stared. There is a divinity student lately come among us to whom I commonly address remarks like the above, allowing him to take a certain share in the conversation, so far as assent or pertinent ques- tions are involved. He abused his liberty on this oc- casion by presuming to say that Leibnitz had the same observation. — No, sir, I replied, he has not. But he said a mighty good thing about mathematics, that sounds something like it, and you found it, not in the original, but quoted by Dr. Thomas Reid. I will tell the company what he did say, one of these days. 2 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. —If I belong to a Society of Mutual Admiration? —I blush to say that I do not at this present moment. I once did, however. It was the first association to which I ever heard the term applied; a body of scien- tific young men in a great foreign city * who admired their teacher, and to some extent each other. Many of them deserved it; they have become famous since. It amuses me to hear the talk of one of those beings described by Thackeray — “Letters four do form his name” — about a social development which belongs to the very noblest stage of civilization. All generous companies * The ‘‘ body of scientific young men in a great foreion city ’” was the Société d’Observation Médicale, of Paris, of which M. Louis was president, and MM. Barth, Grisotte, and our own Dr. Bowditch were members. They agreed in admiring their justly-honored president, and thought highly of some of their associates, who have since made good their promise of distinc- tion. About the time when these papers were published, the Sat- urday Club was founded, or, rather, found itself in existence, without any organization, almost without parentage. It was natural enough that such men as Emerson, Longfellow, Agassiz, Peirce, with Hawthorne, Motley, Sumner, when within reach, and others who would be good company for them, shou!d meet and dine together once in a while, as they did, in point of fact, every month, and as some who are still living, with other and newer members, still meet and dine. If some of them had not admired each other they would have been exceptions in the world of letters and science. The club deserves being remem- bered for having no constitution or by-laws, for making no speeches, reading no papers, observing no ceremonies, coming and going at will without remark, and acting out, though it did not proclaim the motto, ‘‘ Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn ?”’ There was and is nothing of the Bohemian element about this club, but it has had many good times and not a little good talking. ; f THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 3 of artists, authors, philanthropists, men of science, are, or ought to be, Societies of Mutual Admiration. A man of genius, or any kinds of superiority, is not debarred from admiring the same quality in another, nor the other from returning his admiration. They may even associate together and continue to think highly of each other. And so of a dozen such men, if any one place is fortunate enough to hold so many. The being referred to above assumes several false premises. First, that men of talent necessarily hate each other. Secondly, that intimate knowledge or habitual association destroys our admiration of persons whom we esteemed highly at a distance. Thirdly, that a circle of clever fellows, who meet together to dine ‘and have a good time, have signed a constitutional compact to glorify themselves and to put down him and the fraction of the human race not belonging to their number. Fourthly, that it is an outrage that he is not asked to join them. Here the company laughed a good deal, and the old gentleman who sits opposite said: “That’s it! that’s it!” I continued, for I was in the talking vein. As to elever people’s hating each other, I think a little ' extra talent does sometimes make people jealous. They become irritated by perpetual attempts and failures, and it hurts their tempers and dispositions. Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an essen- tially common person is detestable. It spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wine-glass spoil a draught of fair water. No wonder the poor fellow we spoke of, who always belongs to this class of slightly 4 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. flavored mediocrities, is puzzled and vexed by the strange sight of a dozen men of capacity working and playing together in harmony. He and his fel- lows are always fighting. With them familiarity naturally breeds contempt. If they ever praise each other’s bad drawings, or broken-winded novels, or spavined verses, nobody ever supposed it was from admiration ; it was simply a contract between them- selves and a publisher or dealer. If the Mutuals have really nothing among them worth admiring, that alters the question. But if they are men with noble powers and qualities, let me tell you that, next to youthful love and family affections, there is no human sentiment better than that which unites the Societies of Mutual Admiration. And what would literature or art be without such associa- tions? Who can tell what we owe to the Mutual Admiration Society of which Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were members? Or to that of which Addison and Steele formed the centre, and which gave us the Spectator? Or to that where Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Burke, and Reynolds, and Beauclerk, and Boswell, most admir- ing among all admirers, met together? Was there any great harm in the fact that the Irvings and Paulding wrote in company? or any unpardonable cabal in the literary union of Verplanck and Bryant and Sands, and as many more as they chose to asso- ciate with them ? The poor creature does not know what he is talk- ing about when he abuses this noblest of institutions. Let him inspect its mysteries through the knot-hole he has secured, but not use that orifice as a medium for his popgun. Such a society is the crown of a ; y , THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 5 literary metropolis; if a town has not material for it, and spirit and good feeling enough to organize it, it is a mere caravansary, fit for, a man of genius to lodge in, but not to live in. Foolish people hate and dread and envy such an association of men of varied powers and influence, because it is lofty, serene, im- pregnable, and, by the necessity of the case, exclusive. Wise ones are prouder of the title M. S. M. A. than of all their other honors put together. —All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called “facts.” They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two which they lead after them into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generaliza- tion, or pleasant fancy? I allow no “ facts” at this table. What! Because bread is good and whole- some, and necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust a crumb into my windpipe while I am talking? Do not these muscles of mine represent a hundred loaves of bread? and is not my thought the abstract of ten thousand of these crumbs of truth with which you would choke off my speech ? [The above remark must be conditioned and quali- fied for the vulgar mind. The reader will, of course, understand the precise amount of seasoning which must be added to it before he adopts it as one of the axioms of his life. The speaker disclaims all responsibility for its abuse in incompetent hands. | This business of conversation is a very serious matter. There are men whom it weakens one to talk with an hour more than a day’s fasting would do. Mark this which I am going to say, for it is as good 6 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. as a working professional man’s advice, and costs you nothing: It is better to lose a pint of blood from your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Nobody measures your nervous force as it runs away, nor bandages your brain and marrow after the operation. There are men of esprit who are excessively ex- hausting to some people. They are the talkers who have what may be called jerky minds. Their thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. They say bright things on all possible subjects, but their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting half- hour with one of these jerky companions, talking with a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your lap after holding a squirrel. What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to be sure, at times! A ground-glass shade over a gas- lamp does not bring more solace to our dazzled eyes than such a one to our minds. “Do not dull people bore you?” said one of the lady-boarders,— the same who sent me her autograph- book last week with a request for a few original stanzas, not remembering that ‘The Pactolian ” pays me five dollars a line for every thing I write in its columns. “Madam,” said I (she and the century were in their teens together), “all men are bores, except when ‘ve want them. There never was but one man whom I would trust with my latch-key.” “Who might that favored person be?” “Zimmermann.” ¢ — The men of genius that I fancy most, have * The “‘ Treatise on Solitude’? is not so frequently seen lying about on library tables as in our younger days. I remember that I always respected the title and let the book alone. , sf THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 7 erectile heads like the cobra-di-capello. You remem- ber what they tell of William Pinkney, the great pleader ; how in his eloquent paroxysms the veins of his neck would swell and his face flush and his eyes ‘glitter, until he seemed on the verge of apoplexy. The hydraulic arrangements for supplying the brain with blood are only second in importance to its own organization. The bulbous-headed fellows who steam well when they are at work are the men that draw big audiences and give us marrowy books and pic- tures. It is a good sign to have one’s feet grow cold when he is writing. A great writer and speaker once told me that he often wrote with his feet in hot water; but for this, a// his blood would have run into his head, as the mercury sometimes withdraws into the ball of a thermometer. — You don’t suppose that my remarks made at this table are like so many postage-stamps, do you,— each to be only once uttered? If you do, you are mis- taken. He must be a poor creature who does not often repeat himself. Imagine the author of the ex- cellent piece of advice, “ Know thyself,” never allud- ing to that sentiment again during the course of a protracted existence! Why, the truths a man carries about with him are his tools; and do you think a car- penter is bound to use the same plane but once to smooth a knotty board with, or to hang up his ham- mer after it has driven its first nail? I shall never repeat a conversation, but an idea often. I shall use the same types when I like, but not commonly the same stereotypes. A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations. 8 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. Sometimes, but rarely, one may be caught making the same speech twice over, and yet be held blame- less. Thus, a certain lecturer, after performing in an inland city, where dwells a Littératrice of note, was invited to meet her and others over the social teacup. She pleasantly referred to his many wanderings in his new occupation. “Yes,” he replied, “I am like the Huma,’ the bird that never lights, being always in the cars, as he is always on the wing.” — Years elapsed. The lecturer visited the same place once more for the same purpose. Another social cup after the lecture, and a second meeting with the distinguished lady. “You are constantly going from place to place,” she said. — “ Yes,” he answered, ‘I am like the Huma,” — and finished the sentence as before. What horrors, when it flashed over him that he had made this fine speech, word for word, twice over! Yet it was not true, as the lady might perhaps have fairly inferred, that he had embellished his conversa- tion with the Huma daily during that whole interval of years. On the contrary, he had never once thought of the odious fowl until the recurrence of precisely the same circumstances brought up precisely the same idea. He ought to have been proud of the accuracy of his mental adjustments. Given certain factors, and a sound brain should always evolve the same fixed product with the certainty of Babbage’s calculating machine. “It was an agreeable incident of two consecutive visits ta Hartford, Conn., that I met there the late Mrs. Sigourney. The second meeting recalled the first, and with it the allusion to the Huma, which bird is the subject of a short poem by another New England authoress, which may be found in Mr. Griswold’s collection. , x THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 9 — What a satire, by the way, is that machine on the mere mathematician! A Frankenstein-monster, a thing without brains and without heart, too stupid to make a blunder; which turns d6ut results like a corn- sheller, and never grows any wiser or better, though it grind a thousand bushels of them ! I have an immense respect for a man of talents plus “the mathematics.” But the calculating power alone should seem to be the least human of qualities, and to have the smallest amount of reason in it; since a machine can be made to do the work of three or four calculators, and better than any one of them. Some- times I have been troubled that I had not a deeper in- tuitive apprehension of the relations of numbers. But the triumph of the ciphering hand-organ has consoled me. I always fancy I can hear the wheels clicking in a calculator’s brain. The power of dealing with num- bers is a kind of “ detached lever” arrangement, which may be put into a mighty poor watch. I suppose it is about as common as the power of moving the ears vol- untarily, which is a moderately rare endowment. — Little localized powers, and little narrow streaks of specialized knowledge, are things men are very apt to be conceited about. Nature is very wise; but for this encouraging principle how many small talents and little accomplishments would be neglected! Talk about conceit as much as you like, it is to human character what salt is to the ocean; it keeps it sweet, and renders it endurable. Say rather it is like the natural unguent of the sea-fowl’s plumage, which ena- bles him to shed the rain that falls on him and the wave in which he dips. When one has had ail his conceit taken out of him, when he has lost a// his illu- sions, his feathers will soon soak through, and he will fly no more. 10 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. “So you admire conceited people, do you?” said the young lady who has come to the city to be finished off for — the duties of life. T am afraid you do not study logic at your school, my dear. It does not follow that I wish to be pickled in brine because I like a salt-water plunge at Nahant. I say that conceit is just as natural a thing to human minds as a centre is to a circle. But littleminded people’s thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes’ conversation gives you an are long enough to determine their whole curve. An are in the move- ment of a large intellect does not sensibly differ from a straight line. Even if it have the third vowel as its centre, it does not soon betray it. The highest thought, that is, is the most seemingly impersonal ; it does not obviously imply any individual centre. Audacious self-esteem, with good ground for it, is always imposing. What resplendent beauty that must have been which could have authorized Phryne to “peel” in the way she did! What fine speeches are those two: “ Non omnis moriar,” and “I have taken all knowledge to be my province”! Even in common people, conceit has the virtue of making them cheerful; the man who thinks his wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally une- qualled, is almost sure to be a good-humored person, though liable to be tedious at times. — What are the great faults of conversation ? Want of ideas, want of words, want of manners, are the principal ones, I suppose you think. I don’t doubt it, but I will tell you what I have found spoil more good talks than anything else;—Jlong argu- ments on special points between people who differ on the fundamental principles upon which these points , Z THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 11 depend. No men can have satisfactory relations with each other until they have agreed on certain uwltimata of belief not to be disturbed in, ordinary conversation, and unless they have sense enough to trace the second- _ ary questions depending upon these ultimate beliefs to their source. In short, just as a written constitution is essential to the best social order, so a code of final- ities is a necessary condition of profitable talk between two persons. Talking is like playing on the harp; there is as much in laying the hand on the strings to stop their vibrations as in twanging them to bring out their music. “ —Do you mean to say the pun-question is not clearly settled in your minds? Let me lay down the law upon the subject. Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide — that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life—are alike forbidden. Manslaughter, which is the meaning of the one, is the same as man’s laughter, which is the end of the other. A pun is primd facie an insult to the person you are talking with. It implies utter indifference to or sub. lime contempt for his remarks, no matter how serious. I speak of total depravity, and one says all that is written on the subject is deep raving. I have commit- ted my self-respect by talking with such a person. I should like to commit him, but cannot, because he is a nuisance. Or I speak of geological convulsions, and he asks me what was the cosine of Noah’s,ark; also, whether the Deluge was not a deal huger than any modern inundation. A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and 12 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggra vated character, return a verdict of justifiable homi- cide. Thus, in a case lately decided before Miller, J., Doe presented Roe a subscription paper, and urged the claims of suffering humanity. Roe replied by asking, When charity was like a top? Ii was in evi- dence that Doe preserved a dignified silence. Roe then said, “ When it begins to hum.” Doe then — and not till then — struck Roe, and his head happen- ing to hit a bound volume of the Monthly Rag-Bag and Stolen Miscellany, intense mortification ensued, with a fatal result. The chief laid down his notions of the law to his brother justices, who unanimously replied, “ Jest so.” The chief rejoined, that no man should jest so without being punished for it, and charged for the prisoner, who was acquitted, and the pun ordered to be burned by the sheriff. The bound volume was forfeited as a deodand, but not claimed. People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism. I will thank you, B. F., to bring down two books, of which I will mark the places on this slip of paper. (While he is gone, I may say that this boy, our land- lady’s youngest, is called BensamMIn FRANKLIN, after the celebrated philosopher of that name. A highly merited compliment. ) I wished to refer to two eminent authorities. Now be so good as to listen. The great moralist says: ‘To trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of so. cial intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human intelligence. He who would violate the sanc , Z THE AUTOCRAT OF: THE BREAKFASTI-TABLE. 13 tities of his mother tongue would invade the recesses of the paternal till without remorse, and repeat the banquet of Saturn without an indigestion.” And, once more, listen to thé historian. ‘The Pu- ritans hated puns. The Bishops were notoriously ad: dicted to them. The Lords Temporal carried them to the verge of license. Majesty itself must have its Royal quibble. ‘Ye be burly, my Lord of Burleigh,’ said Queen Elizabeth, ‘ but ye shall make less stir in our realm than my Lord of Leicester.’ The gravest wisdom and the highest breeding lent their sanction to the practice. Lord Bacon playfully declared him- self a descendant of ’Og, the King of Bashan. Sir Philip Sidney, with his last breath, reproached the soldier who brought him water, for wasting a casque full upon a dying man. A courtier, who saw Othello performed at the Globe Theatre, remarked, that the blackamoor was a brute, and nota man. ‘Thou hast reason, replied a great Lord, ‘according to Plato his saying ; for this be a two-legged animal with feath- ers. The fatal habit became universal. The lan- ge was corrupted. The infection spread to the national conscience. Political double-dealings natu- rally grew out of verbal double meanings. The teeth of the new dragon were sown by the Cadmus who in- troduced the alphabet of equivocation. What was levity in the time of the Tudors grew to regicide and revolution in the age of the Stuarts.” Who was that boarder that just whispered some- thing about the Macaulay-flowers of literature ? — There was a dead silence. —I said calmly, I shall henceforth consider any interruption by a pun as a hint to change my boarding-house. Do not plead my example. If J have used any such, it has been only 14 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. as a Spartan father would show up a drunken helot. We have done with them. —TIf a logical mind ever found out anything with its logic? — I should say that its most frequent work was to build a pons asinorum over chasms which shrewd people can bestride without such a structure. You can hire logic, inthe shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to prove. You can buy trea- tises to show that Napoleon never lived, and that no battle of Bunker-hill was ever fought. The great minds are those with a wide span,? which couple truths related to, but far removed from, each other. Logicians carry the surveyor’s chain over the track of which these are the true explorers. I value a man mainly for bis primary relations with truth, as I un- derstand truth,—not for any secondary artifice in handling his ideas. Some of the sharpest men in ar- gument are notoriously unsound in judgment. I should not trust the counsel of a clever debater, any more than that of a good chess-player. Either may of course advise wisely, but not necessarily because he wrangles or plays well. The old gentleman who sits: opposite got his hand up, as a pointer lifts his forefoot, at the expression, “his relations with truth, as I understand truth,” and when I had done, sniffed audibly, and said I talked like a.transcendentalist. For his part, common sense was good enough for him. Precisely so, my dear sir, I replied ; common sense, as you understand it. We all have to assume a standard of judgment in our own minds, either of things or persons. A man who is willing to take * There is something like this in J. H. Newman’s Grammar o Assent. See Characteristics, arranged by W. S. Lilly, p. $1. y THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 15 another’s opinion has to exercise his judgment in the choice of whom to follow, which is often as nice a matter as to judge of things for one’s self. On the whole, I had rather judge men’s minds by comparing their thoughts with my own, than judge of thoughts by knowing who utter them. I must do one or the other. It does not follow, of course, that I may not recognize another man’s thoughts as broader and deeper than my own; but that does not necessarily change my opinion, otherwise this would be at the merey of every superior mind that held a different one. How many of our most cherished beliefs are like those drinking-glasses of the ancient pattern, that serve us well so long as we keep them in our hand, but spill all if we attempt to set them down! I have sometimes compared conversation to the Italian game of mora, in which one player lifts his hand with so many fingers extended, and the other gives the num- ber if he can. I show my thought, another his, if they agree, well; if they differ, we find the largest common factor, if we can, but at any rate avoid dis- puting about remaincers and fractions, which is to real talk what tuning an instrument is to playing on it. — What if, instead of talking this morning, I should read you a copy of verses, with critical re- marks by the author? Any of the company can re tire that like. ALBUM VERSES. When Eve had led her lord away, And Cain had killed his brother, The stars and flowers, the poets say, Agreed with one another 16 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLH. To cheat the cunning tempter’s art, And teach the race its duty, By keeping on its wicked heart Their eyes of light and beauty. A million sleepless lids, they say, Will be at least a warning; And so the flowers would watch by day, The stars from eve to morning. On hill and prairie, field and lawn, Their dewy eyes upturning, The flowers still watch from reddening dawn Till western skies are burning. Alas! each hour of daylight tells A tale of shame so crushing, That some turn white as sea-bleached shells, - And some are always blushing. But when the patient stars look down On all their light discovers, The traitor’s smile, the murderer’s frown, The lips of lying lovers, They try to shut their saddening eyes, And in the vain endeavor We see them twinkling in the skies, And so they wink forever. What do you think of these verses, my friends? — Is that piece an impromptu? said my landlady’s daughter. (Aet.19-+. Tender-eyed blonde. Long ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain. Locket. Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. Ac: cordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvarus Cobb, Junior, while her mother makes the puddings. Says “Yes?” when you tell her anything.) — Oui et non, ma petite,— Yes and no, my child. Five of the seven ; / THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 17 verses were written off-hand; the other two took a week, — that is, were hanging round the desk in a ragged, forlorn, unrhymed condition as long as that. All poets will tell you just “such stories. O’est le DERNIER pas gui cotite. Don’t you know how hard it is for some people to get out of a room after their visit is really over? They want to be off, and you want to have them off, but they don’t know how to manage it. One would think they had been built in your parlor or study, and were waiting to be launched. I have contrived a sort of ceremonial inclined plane for such visitors, which being lubricated with certain smooth ‘phrases, I back them down, metaphorically speaking, stern-foremost, into their “native element,” the great ocean of out-doors. Well, now, there are poems as hard to get rid of as these rural visitors. They come in glibly, use up all the serviceable rhymes, day, ray, beauty, duty, skies, eyes, other, brother, mountain, fountain, and the like; and so they go on until you think it is time for the wind-up, and the wind-up won’t come on any terms. So they lie about until you ge. sick of the sight of them, and end by thrusting some cold scrap of a final couplet upon them, and turning them out of doors. I suspect a good many “impromptus” could tell just such a story as the above. — Here turning to our landlady, I used an illustration which pleased the company much at the time, and has since been highly commended. “ Madam,” I said, “ you can pour three gills and three quarters of honey from that pint jug, if it is full, in less than one minute; but, Madam, you could not empty that last quarter of a gill, though you were turned into a marble Hebe, and held the vessel upside down for a thousand years.” 18 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. One gets tired to death of the old, old rhymes, such as you see in that copy of verses, — which I don’t mean to abuse, or to praise either. I always feel as if I were a cobbler, putting new top-leathers to an old pair of boot-soles and bodies, when I am fitting senti ments to these venerable jingles. youth . . . morning . : . : si : ; truth : b . . : : 5 warning. Nine tenths of the “Juvenile Poems” written spring out of the above musical and suggestive coinci- dences. “Yes?” said our landlady’s daughter. 