FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE.
Between the writing of _Elsie Venner_ and _The Guardian Angel_, Doctor
Holmes wrote a number of essays for the _Atlantic Monthly_, some of
which were afterwards collected in the volume entitled _Soundings from
the Atlantic_.
_Currents and Counter-currents_ was published in 1861, and _Border-lines
of Knowledge_ in 1862. The two latter books deal with scientific
subjects, but are written in such an attractive style that they have
been extremely popular not only with students but with the whole reading
public. _Songs in many Keys_, a volume of poems dedicated to his mother,
was published by Doctor Holmes in 1862. _Mechanism in Thoughts and
Morals_ appeared in 1871, the same year that _The Poet at the
Breakfast-Table_ was running as a serial in the _Atlantic Monthly_,
and numerous stray poems were also written in this prolific decade. In
1872 the poet's breakfast talk was published in book form. It is
interesting to compare these three volumes--The Autocrat, the Professor,
and the Poet. As a series they are as necessary to one another as the
three strands of a cable, and yet each volume is, in a certain way,
completed in itself. Where in the whole range of the English language,
or indeed, of any language, will you find such an overflow of
spontaneous wit and humor? While in no sense a story or even a
narrative, the breakfast talk is enlivened by wonderfully life-like
characters. We can easily imagine ourselves sitting beside them at the
social table, and just as it is in real life, these chance acquaintances
touch us at different points, awaken various degrees of interest, and
are at all times quite distinct from the observer's own individuality.
There is not a page without its sparkle of humor, and nugget of sound
philosophy beneath, which the reader appropriates to himself in a
delightfully unconscious manner--for the time being, it is he who is the
Autocrat, the Professor, the Poet! As some one has truly said, "It is
our thoughts which Doctor Holmes speaks; it is our humor to which he
gives expression; it is the pictures of our own fancy that he clothes in
words, and shows us what we ourselves thought, and only lacked the means
of expressing. We never realized until he taught us by his magic power
over us, how much each of us had of genius and invention and
expression."
Each book has its little romance, and the "Poet" introduces a poor
gentlewoman whose story interests us quite as much as does that of the
two lovers.
"In a little chamber," he says, "into which a small thread of sunshine
finds its way for half an hour or so every day during a month or six
weeks of the spring or autumn, at all other times obliged to content
itself with ungilded daylight, lives this boarder, whom, without
wronging any others of our company, I may call, as she is very generally
called in the household, the Lady....
"From an aspect of dignified but undisguised economy which showed itself
in her dress as well as in her limited quarters, I suspected a story of
shipwrecked fortune, and determined to question our Landlady. That
worthy woman was delighted to tell the history of her most distinguished
boarder. She was, as I had supposed, a gentlewoman whom a change of
circumstances had brought down from her high estate.--Did I know the
Goldenrod family?--Of course I did.--Well, the lady was first cousin to
Mrs. Midas Goldenrod. She had been here in her carriage to call upon
her--not very often.--Were her rich relations kind and helpful to
her?--Well, yes; at least they made her presents now and then. Three or
four years ago they sent her a silver waiter, and every Christmas they
sent her a bouquet--it must cost as much as five dollars, the Landlady
thought.
"And how did the Lady receive these valuable and useful things?
"Every Christmas she got out the silver waiter and borrowed a glass
tumbler and filled it with water, and put the bouquet in it and set it
on the waiter. It smelt sweet enough and looked pretty for a day or two,
but the Landlady thought it wouldn't have hurt 'em if they'd sent a
piece of goods for a dress, or at least a pocket handkercher or two, or
something or other that she could 'a' made use of....
"What did she do?--Why, she read, and she drew pictures, and she did
needlework patterns, and played on an old harp she had; the gilt was
mostly off, but it sounded very sweet, and she sung to it, sometimes,
those old songs that used to be in fashion twenty or thirty years ago,
with words to 'em that folks could understand....
"Poor Lady! She seems to me like a picture that has fallen face downward
on the dusty floor. The picture never was as needful as a window or a
door, but it was pleasant to see it in its place, and it would be
pleasant to see it there again, and I for one, should be thankful to
have the Lady restored by some turn of fortune to the position from
which she has been so cruelly cast down."
Before the Poet closes his breakfast talk, the poor Lady has, through
the efforts of another boarder, the Register of Deeds, recovered her
property. Mrs. Midas Goldenrod makes frequent and longer calls--"the
very moment her relative, the Lady of our breakfast table, began to find
herself in a streak of sunshine she came forward with a lighted candle
to show her which way her path lay before her.
"The Lady saw all this, how plainly, how painfully! yet she exercised a
true charity for the weakness of her relative. Sensible people have as
much consideration for the frailties of the rich as for those of the
poor.
"The Lady that's been so long with me is going to a house of her own,"
said the Landlady, "one she has bought back again, for it used to belong
to her folks. It's a beautiful house, and the sun shines in at the front
windows all day long. She's going to be wealthy again, but it doesn't
make any difference in her ways. I've had boarders complain when I was
doing as well as I knowed how for them, but I never heerd a word from
her that wasn't as pleasant as if she'd been talking to the Governor's
lady."
The strange little man, denominated "Scarabee," who had grown to look so
much like the beetles he studied; the "Member of the House" with his
Down East phrases; the little "Scheherazade" who furnishes a new story
each week for the newspapers;--the good looking, rosy-cheeked salesman
"of very polite manners, only a little more brisk than the approved
style of carriage permits, as one in the habit of springing with a
certain alacrity at the call of a customer;" the good old Master of Arts
who makes so many sage remarks;--the young Astronomer with his heart
confessions in the _Wind-clouds and Star-drifts_--all these are new
acquaintances whom we are loth to part with, when the Landlady announces
her intention of giving up the famous boarding-house, and the Poet drops
the curtain. Would that the Old Master could yet be induced to give to
the public those "notes and reflections and new suggestions" of his
marvellous "interleaved volume!"