TOKENS OF ESTEEM.
Said one of the medical students in Doctor Holmes' last class at
Harvard:
"We always welcomed Professor Holmes with enthusiastic cheers when he
came into the class room, and his lectures were so brimful of witty
anecdotes that we sometimes forgot it was a lesson in anatomy we had
come to learn. But the instruction--deep, sound and thorough--was there
all the same, and we never left the room without feeling what a fund of
knowledge and what a clear insight upon difficult points in medical
science had been imparted to us through the sparkling medium!"
The position of Parkman Professor of Anatomy in Harvard University, was
resigned by Doctor Holmes in the autumn of 1882, that he might give his
time more exclusively to literary pursuits. He was immediately appointed
Professor Emeritus by the college, and Doctor Thomas Dwight, a teacher
in the Medical School, succeeded him in the active duties of the chair.
The last lecture of Doctor Holmes before his students, was delivered in
the anatomical room, on the twenty-eighth of November. As he entered the
room, a storm of applause greeted him, and then as it died away, one of
the students came forward and presented him, in behalf of his last
class, with an exquisite "Loving Cup." On one side of this beautiful
souvenir was the happy quotation from his own writings: "Love bless
thee, joy crown thee, God speed thy career."
Doctor Holmes was so deeply affected by this delicate token of esteem
that, afterwards, in acknowledging the cup by letter, he said that the
tribute was so unexpected it made him speechless. He was quite sure,
however, that they did not mistake _aphasia_ for _acardia_--his heart
was in its right place, though his tongue forgot its office.
In the address to his class, the Professor gave an interesting review of
his thirty-five years' connection with the school. Then he referred to
his early college days, and to his studies in Paris, and added many
delightful reminiscences of the famous French savants whose lectures he
attended at that time. A full report of this address may be found in the
_Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, for December 7, 1882.
This, one of his most interesting essays, is also reprinted in one of
Doctor Holmes' later volumes, entitled _Medical Essays_.
On the evening of April 12, 1883, a complimentary dinner was given
Doctor Holmes at Delmonico's, by the medical profession of New York
City. The reception opened at about half-past six, and soon after that
hour Doctor Holmes entered the rooms with Doctor Fordyce Barker. The
guests, numbering some two hundred and twenty-five in all, were seated
at six tables, the table of honor occupying the upper end of the room,
and decorated with banks of choice flowers.
The _menus_ were cleverly arranged in the form of small books bound in
various-colored plush. A dainty design in gilt, representing a scalpel
and pen, surrounded by a laurel wreath, adorned the covers, and inside
was the stanza:
A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy fame is proud to win them,
Alas, for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them.
At the top of the leaf containing the bill of fare were the lines:
You know your own degree; sit down; at first and last a hearty
welcome.
at the end:
Prithee, no more; thou dost talk nothing to me.
A few minutes before the coffee was brought in, each guest received what
purported to be a telegram from Boston, dated April 1, 1883. The message
read as follows:
The dinner bell, the dinner bell
Is ringing loud and clear,
Through hill and plain, through street and lane
It echoes far and near.
I hear the voice! I go, I go!
Prepare your meat and wine;
They little heed their future need
Who pay not when they dine.
--_O.W.H._
The back of the despatch was decorated with two pictures; one showing
Doctor Fordyce Barker ringing a dinner bell and brandishing a knife and
fork, the other Doctor Holmes hurrying to answer the bell, with a pile
of books under one arm and a bundle of bones under the other.
Among the guests present were George William Curtis, Hon. William M.
Evarts, Bishop Clark, Whitelaw Reid, Doctors Post, Emmett, Sayre,
Billing, Vanderpoel Metcalfe, Detmoold Draper, Doremus, Hammond, St. J.
Roosa, Flint, Dana, Peabody, Ranney, Jacobi, Austin, and many others.
The first toast was as follows:
The hour's now come;
The very minute bids thee ope thine ear
Obey, and be attentive.
--_The Tempest._
After a few brief words of introduction, Doctor Barker called upon
Doctor A.H. Smith to complete the greeting, which he did in the
following happy lines:
You've heard of the deacon's one hoss shay
Which, finished in Boston the self-same day
That the City of Lisbon went to pot,
Did a century's service, and then was not.
But the record's at fault which says that it burst
Into simply a heap of amorphous dust,
For after the wreck of that wonderful tub
Out of the ruins they saved a hub;
And the hub has since stood for Boston town,
Hub of the universe, note that down.
But an orderly hub as all will own,
Must have something central to turn upon,
And, rubber-cushioned, and true and bright
We have the axle here to-night.
Thrice welcome then to our festal board
The doctor-poet, so doubly stored
With science as well as with native wit,
_Poeta nascitur_, you know, _non fit_,
Skilled to dissect with knife or pen
His subjects dead or living men;
With thought sublime on every page
To swell the veins with virtuous rage,
Or with a syringe to inject them
With sublimate to disinfect them;
To show with demonstrator's art
The complex chambers of the heart,
Or armed with a diviner skill
To make it pulsate at his will;
With generous verse to celebrate
The loaves and fishes of some giver;
And then proceed to demonstrate
The lobes and fissures of the liver;
To soothe the pulses of the brain
With poetry's enchanting strain.
Or to describe to class uproarious
_Pes hippocampi accessorious_;
To nerve with fervor of appeal
The sluggish muscles into steel,
Or, pulling their attachments, show
Whence they arise and where they go;
To fire the eye by wit consummate,
Or draw the aqueous humor from it;
In times of peril give the tone
To public feeling, called backbone,
Or to discuss that question solemn,
The muscles of the spinal column.
And now I close my artless ditty
As per agreement with committee,
And making place for those more able
I leave the subject on the table.
The toast "Our Guest," was prefaced by the following quotation from
Emerson:
"One would say here is a man with such an abundance of thought! He is
never dull, never insincere, and has the genius to make the reader care
for all that he cares for."
As Doctor Holmes rose, the room fairly shook with applause. Without any
prefatory remarks, he then read the following poem:
Have I deserved your kindness? Nay, my friends;
While the fair banquet its illusion lends,
Let me believe it, though the blood may rush
And to my cheek recall the maiden blush
That o'er it flamed with momentary blaze
When first I heard the honeyed words of praise;
Let me believe it while the roses wear
Their bloom unwithering in the heated air;
Too soon, too soon their glowing leaves must fall,
The laughing echoes leave the silent hall,
Joy drop his garland, turn his empty cup,
And weary labor take his burden up,--
How weigh that burden they can tell alone
Whose dial marks no moment as their own.
Am I your creditor? Too well I know
How Friendship pays the debt it does not owe,
Shapes a poor semblance fondly to its mind,
Adds all the virtues that it fails to find,
Adorns with graces to its heart's content,
Borrows from love what nature never lent,
Till what with halo, jewels, gilding, paint,
The veriest sinner deems himself a saint.
Thus while you pay these honors as my due,
I owe my value's larger part to you;
And in the tribute of the hour I see
Not what I am, but what I ought to be.
Friends of the Muse, to you of right belong
The first staid footsteps of my square-toed song;
Full well I know the strong heroic line
Has lost its fashion since I made it mine;
But there are tricks old singers will not learn,
And this grave measure still must serve my turn,
So the old bird resumes the self-same note
His first young summer wakened in his throat;
The self-same tune the old canary sings,
And all unchanged the bobolink's carol rings;
When the tired songsters of the day are still,
The thrush repeats his long-remembered trill;
Age alters not the crow's persistent caw,
The Yankee's "Haow," the stammering Briton's "Haw;"
And so the hand that takes the lyre for you
Plays the old tune on strings that once were new,
Nor let the rhymester of the hour deride
The straight-backed measure with its stately stride;
It gave the mighty voice of Dryden scope:
It sheathed the steel-bright epigrams of Pope;
In Goldsmith's verse it learned a sweeter strain,
Byron and Campbell wore its clanking chain;
I smile to listen while the critic's scorn
Flouts the proud purple kings have nobly worn;
Bid each new rhymer try his dainty skill
And mould his frozen phrases as he will;
We thank the artist for his neat device--
The shape is pleasing though the stuff is ice.
Fashions will change--the new costume allures--
Unfading still the better type endures;
While the slashed doublet of the cavalier
Gave the old knight the pomp of chanticleer,
Our last-hatched dandy with his glass and stick
Recalls the semblance of a new-born chick
(To match the model he is aiming at
He ought to wear an eggshell for a hat),
Which of these objects would a painter choose,
And which Velasquez or Vandyke refuse?
When your kind summons reached my calm retreat,
Who are the friends, I questioned, I shall meet?
Some in young manhood, shivering with desire
To feel the genial warmth of Fortune's fire--
Each with his bellows ready in his hand
To puff the flame just waiting to be fanned;
Some heads half-silvered, some with snow-white hair;
A crown ungarnished glistening here and there,
The mimic moonlight gleaming on the scalps
As evening's empress lights the shining Alps.
But count the crowds that throng your festal scenes--
How few that knew the century in its teens!
Save for the lingering handful fate befriends,
Life's busy day the Sabbath decade ends;
When that is over, how with what remains
Of Nature's outfit--muscle, nerve and brains?
Were this a pulpit, I should doubtless preach;
Were this a platform, I should gravely teach;
But to no solemn duties I pretend
In my vocation at the table's end,
So as my answer let me tell instead
What Landlord Porter--rest his soul--once said.
A feast it was that none might scorn to share;
Cambridge and Concord demigods were there--
And who were they? You know as well as I
The stars long glittering in our Eastern sky--
The names that blazon our provincial scroll
Ring round the world with Britain's drumbeat roll!
Good was the dinner, better was the talk;
Some whispered, devious was the homeward walk;
The story came from some reporting spy--
They lie, those fellows--Oh, how they do lie!
Not ours those foot tracks in the new fallen snow--
Poets and sages never zigzagged so!
Now Landlord Porter, grave, concise, severe,
Master, nay, monarch, in his proper sphere,
Though to belles-lettres he pretended not,
Lived close to Harvard, so knew what was what;
And having bards, philosophers and such
To eat his dinner, put the finest touch
His art could teach, those learned mouths to fill
With the best proofs of gustatory skill;
And finding wisdom plenty at his board,
Wit, science, learning, all his guests had stored,
By way of contrast, ventured to produce,
To please their palates, an inviting goose.
Better it were the company should starve
Than hands unskilled that goose attempt to carve;
None but the master artist shall assail
The bird that turns the mightiest surgeon pale.
One voice arises from the banquet hall,--
The landlord answers to the pleading call;
Of stature tall, sublime of port he stands,
His blade and trident gleaming in his hands;
Beneath his glance the strong-knit joints relax
As the weak knees before the headsman's axe.
And Landlord Porter lifts his glittering knife
As some stout warrior armed for bloody strife;
All eyes are on him; some in whispers ask--
What man is he who dares this dangerous task?
When, lo! the triumph of consummate art,
With scarce a touch the creature drops apart!
As when the baby in his nurse's lap
Spills on the carpet a dissected map.
Then the calm sage, the monarch of the lyre,
Critics and men of science all admire,
And one whose wisdom I will not impeach,
Lively, not churlish, somewhat free of speech,
Speaks thus: "Say, master, what of worth is left
In birds like this, of breast and legs bereft?"
And Landlord Porter, with uplifted eyes,
Smiles on the simple querist, and replies--
"When from a goose you've taken legs and breast,
Wipe lips, thank God, and leave the poor the rest!"
Kind friends, sweet friends, I hold it hardly fair
With that same bird your minstrel to compare,
Yet in a certain likeness we agree--
No wrong to him, and no offence to me;
I take him for the moral he has lent,
My partner--to a limited extent.
When the stern landlord, whom we all obey,
Has carved from life its seventh great slice away,
Is the poor fragment left in blank collapse
A pauper remnant of unvalued scraps?
I care not much what Solomon has said,
Before his time to nobler pleasures dead;
Poor man! he needed half a hundred lives
With such a babbling wilderness of wives!
But is there nothing that may well employ
Life's winter months--no sunny hour of joy?
While o'er the fields the howling tempests rage,
The prisoned linnet warbles in his cage;
When chill November through the forest blows
The greenhouse shelters the untroubled rose,
Round the high trellis creeping tendrils twine,
And the ripe clusters fill with blameless wine,
We make the vine forget the winter's cold,
But how shall age forget it's growing old?
Though doing right is better than deceit,
Time is a trickster it is fair to cheat;
The honest watches ticking in your fobs
Tell every minute how the rascal robs.
To clip his forelock and his scythe to hide,
To lay his hour-glass gently on its side,
To slip the cards he marked upon the shelf,
And deal him others you have marked yourself,
If not a virtue, cannot be a sin,
For the old rogue is sure at last to win.
What does he leave when life is well-nigh spent
To lap its evening in a calm content?
Art, Letters, Science, these at least befriend
Our day's brief remnant to its peaceful end--
Peaceful for him who shows the setting sun
A record worthy of his Lord's "well done!"
When he, the Master whom I will not name,
Known to our calling, not unknown to fame,
At life's extremest verge half-conscious lay,
Helpless and sightless, dying day by day,
His brain, so long with varied wisdom fraught,
Filled with the broken enginery of thought,
A flitting vision often would illume
His darkened world and cheer its deepening gloom,--
A sunbeam struggling through the long eclipse,--
And smiles of pleasure play around his lips.
He loved the Art that shapes the dome and spire;
The Roman's page, the ring of Byron's lyre,
And oft, when fitful memory would return
To find some fragment in her broken urn,
Would wake to life some long-forgotten hour,
And lead his thought to Pisa's terraced tower,
Or trace in light before his rayless eye
The dome-crowned Pantheon printed on the sky;
Then while the view his ravished soul absorbs
And lends a glitter to the sightless orbs,
The patient watcher feels the stillness stirred
By the faint murmur of some classic word,
Or the long roll of Harold's lofty rhyme,
"Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime,"--
Such were the dreams that soothed his couch of pain,
The sweet nepenthe of the worn-out brain.
Brothers in art, who live for others' needs
In duty's bondage, mercy's gracious deeds,
Of all who toil beneath the circling sun
Whose evening rest than yours more fairly won?
Though many a cloud your struggling morn obscures,
What sunset brings a brighter sky than yours?
I, who your labors for a while have shared,
New tasks have sought, with new companions fared,
For Nature's servant far too often seen
A loiterer by the waves of Hippocrene;
Yet round the earlier friendship twines the new;
My footsteps wander, but my heart is true,
Nor e'er forgets the living or the dead
Who trod with me the paths where science led.
How can I tell you, O my loving friends,
What light, what warmth, your joyous welcome lends
To life's late hour? Alas! my song is sung,
Its fading accents falter on my tongue.
Sweet friends, if shrinking in the banquet's blaze,
Your blushing guest must face the breath of praise,
Speak not too well of one who scarce will know
Himself transfigured in its roseate glow;
Say kindly of him what is--chiefly--true,
Remembering always he belongs to you;
Deal with him as a truant, if you will,
But claim him, keep him, call him brother still!
The next toast was to "The Clergy."
He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one, exceeding
wise, fair-spoken and persuading.
--_King Henry VIII._
Bishop Clark of Rhode Island responded. "We honor," he said, "the high
priesthood of science and art. We honor the man who has brought life and
joy to many weary dwellings, and therefore we extend the right hand of
fellowship to him." When after tracing the lineage of the guest, he
reviewed his life, quoted from his writings, and said in conclusion,
that he stood side by side with Oliver Goldsmith.
The toast to "The Bar"--
Why might that not be the skull
Of a lawyer? Where be his quidet's now?
--_Hamlet._
was answered by Hon. Wm. M. Evarts, in a witty and characteristic
address.
Doctor T. Gaillard Thomas responded to the toast, "The Medical
Profession"--
She honors herself in honoring a favorite son,--
and George William Curtis followed in an address, answering to the toast
"Literature"--
A kind of medicine in itself.
--_Measure for Measure._
All factions, he declared, claimed Oliver Wendell Holmes, and all
peoples spoke of him in praise. He then mentioned many of the poet's
songs, reciting a stanza occasionally and commenting on them in a
touching manner. The next toast was "The Press"--
But words are things, and a small drop of ink
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
--_Byron._
This was responded to by Whitelaw Reid in a humorous address in which he
closely connected Doctor Holmes with the profession of journalism. It
was a late hour when the company separated, and the last toast given,
found a hearty, though silent response from all present--
Good-night, good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good-night till it be to-morrow.
--_Romeo and Juliet._
* * * * *
Before closing this long chapter of "honors to Doctor Holmes," we cannot
refrain from giving the following cordial tribute from John Boyle
O'Reilly:
"Oliver Wendell Holmes:--the wise, the witty, the many ideald,
philosopher, poet, physician, novelist, essayist, professor, but, best
of all, the kind, the warm heart. A man of unexpected tastes, ranging in
all directions from song to science, and from theology to boatracing.
Me met one day on Tremont street an acquaintance fond of athletic
exercise, and he stopped himself with a pathetic little sigh.
"'Ah, you send me back fifty years,' he said. 'As you walked then with a
swing, you reminded me of an old friend who was dead before you were
born; and he was a good man with his hands, too.'
"Never was a more healthy, natural, lovable man than Doctor Holmes."