Too grateful for the blessing lent Of simple tastes and mind content! GLOSSARY. Plenipo; St. James; gubernator; baubles; Titians; Raphaels; Turner; vellum; cameos; Stradivarius; meerschaums; buhl; Midas. STUDY. Notice the quotation at the head of this selection. Each stanza deals with a special class of wants. Do you find that they are simple and few? Would you call a person possessing all the things mentioned rich and luxurious, or poor and abstemious? Do you think most people who pretend to want little are aptly portrayed in the speaker? This poem has been called "a fine piece of subtle humor.' Can you tell why? In reading be sure to let your expression indicate of how little worth the few things are which you would possess. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Few literary men have had such nimble wits as Dr. Holmes. He is always bubbling over, and as a result he has furnished us with an abundance of entertainment. We are never bored in his company. Oliver Wendell Holmes was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1809. After graduating from Harvard at the age of twenty he first studied law and then medicine. Two years were spent at Paris in medical study, and he began practice in 1836. He did not like general practice, 10 however, and two years later became professor of anatomy and physiology at Dartmouth College. He married in 1840; in 1847 he became a professor at Harvard, and for thirty-five years continued to lecture in that institution. He died in 1894. 15 The book with which we most closely connect Dr. Holmes's name appeared in 1858, when he was nearly forty years of age. The Atlantic Monthly had just been founded, and James Russell Lowell had accepted the editorship on condition that Holmes should be a regular con20 tributor. In the first issue appeared the first installment of The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. The "table talk" idea gave an opportunity for the wide range of brilliant wit and observation on all topics, which is the characteristic of Holmes's work. So successful was this book that it was 25 followed by The Professor at the Breakfast Table and The Poet at the Breakfast Table, and years later by a fourth series called Over the Teacups. "The Chambered Nautilus,” Holmes's masterpiece in poetry, is in the Autocrat; and most of his poems that we know best are scattered through30 out these four volumes. Dr. Holmes was particularly happy in writing what is known as "occasional" verse, that is, something called forth by some special event or occasion. When it was proposed to break up the old frigate Constitution he 35 wrote a ringing little lyric so full of patriotic fervor that it stirred the people to protest and the government had to give up the plan. In this poem, called "Old Ironsides," it is suggested that rather than turn the old ship over to the "harpies of the shore" we should 40 Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the God of storms, The lightning, and the gale! For nearly half a century after his graduation he wrote 45 a poem for each annual meeting of his class, the most famous called "The Boys." At celebrations, at banquets, or when an influential man died, Dr. Holmes was always ready with just the appropriate thing to say in neatly turned verse. Dr. Holmes wrote three novels of more than passing 50 interest. They all deal with problems of special concern to the students of mind and body, problems of heredity or early influences in determining character. Holmes himself applied to them the term "medicated novels." Their titles are Elsie Venner, The Guardian Angel, and 55 A Mortal Antipathy. In 1886, when Holmes was an old man, he made his final trip to Europe. He tells of his splendid reception there in his Our Hundred Days in Europe. He was plainly and properly delighted with the evidences on all 60 sides of his popularity. The universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh all conferred degrees on him. The noisy greetings from the undergraduates in the galleries especially pleased him, and he records that one of them wanted to know if he had come in the "one-hoss shay." 65 The ability to wholesomely entertain humanity is no common or unworthy gift. It goes along with more than ordinary insight into life. "The Last Leaf," "Sun and Shadow," "The Boys," "Dorothy Q.," "The Chambered Nautilus," and many other poems appeal to us because 70 they are proofs of this power. A BALLAD OF HEROES AUSTIN DOBSON Because you passed, and now are not,- Your sacred dust from doubtful spot Though, it may be, above the plot The unregarding grasses sway;- The deeds you wrought are not in vain! No. For while yet in tower or cot ENVOY Heroes of old! I humbly lay The laurel on your graves again; The deeds you wrought are not in vain. |