My dear Fields:... I only sat up one whole night, it is true, which
was a great improvement on Montreal; but I do not feel right yet, and
it is quite uncertain whether I shall be in a condition to enjoy the
club by Saturday. So if I come, all the better for me; and if I don't
come, you can say that you have in your realm at Parker's not "five
hundred as good as he," but a score or so that will serve your turn.
I cut the first leaves I wanted to meddle with in the last "Atlantic"
for No. IX. of the "Whispering Gallery," and took it all down like an
oyster in the height of the season. It is captivating, like all the
rest. Why don't you make a book as big as Allibone's out of your store
of unparalleled personal recollections? It seems too bad to keep them
for posterity. When I think of your bequeathing them for the sole
benefit of people that are unborn, I want to cry out with Horace:--
"Eheu--_Postume, Postume!_"
Always yours, O. W. HOLMES.
Again, three years later, he writes: "I hope you are reasonably
careful of yourself during this cold weather. Look out! A hot lecture-
room, a cold ride, the best-chamber sheets like slices of cucumber,
and one gives one's friends the trouble of writing an obituary, when
he might just as well have lived and written theirs. We had a grand
club last Saturday. Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, Adams, Tom Appleton
(just home a few weeks ago), and Norton (who has been sick a good
while) were there, and lots of others, and Lord Hought on as a guest.
You ought to have been there; it was the best club for a long time."
The following note, written in 1873, shows how closely Dr. Holmes kept
the growth of the club in mind, and his eagerness to bring into it the
distinguished intellectual life of Boston.