my child. Five of the seven verses were written off-hand; the other two took a week-that is, were hanging round the desk in a ragged, forlorn, unrimed condition as long as that. All poets will tell you just such stories. C'est le dernier pas qui coute. Don't you know how hard it is for some people to get out of a room 10 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 20 down, metaphorically speaking, sternforemost, into their "native element," the great ocean of outdoors. Well, now, there are poems as hard to get rid of as these rural visitors. They come in glibly, use up all the serviceable rimes, 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 30 wind-up, and the wind-up won't come on any terms. So they lie about until you get 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 com40 pany 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

7. C'est, etc., it is the last step which is most difficult.

But remember that talking is one of the fine arts-the noblest, the most important, and the most difficult-and that its fluent harmonies may be spoiled by the intrusion of a 70 single harsh note. Therefore conversation which is suggestive rather than argumentative, which lets out the most of each talker's results of thought, is commonly the pleasantest and the most profitable. It is not easy, at the best, for two persons talking together to make the most of each other's thoughts, there are so many of them.

[The company looked as if they wanted an explanation.]

When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking together, it is natural enough that among the six there should be more or less confusion and misapprehension.

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[Our landlady turned pale-no doubt she thought there was a screw loose in my intellects-and that in- 90 volved the probable loss of a boarder. 48. Hebe, the cup-bearer of the gods.

3. John's ideal Thomas.

Only one of the three Johns is taxed; only one can be weighed on a platformbalance; but the other two are just as important in the conversation. Let us suppose the real John to be old, dull, and ill-looking. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred on men the 40 gift of seeing themselves in the true light, John very possibly conceives himself to be youthful, witty, and fascinating, and talks from the point of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him to be an artful rogue, we will say; therefore he is so far as Thomas's attitude in the conversation

is concerned, an artful rogue, though really simple and stupid. The same conditions apply to the three Thom- 50 ases. It follows that, until a man can be found who knows himself as his Maker knows him, or who sees himself as others see him, there must be at least six persons engaged in every dialogue between two. Of these, the least important, philosophically speaking, is the one that we have called the real person. No wonder two disputants often get angry, when 60 there are six of them talking and listening all at the same time.

[A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks was made by a young fellow, answering to the name of John, who sits near me at table. A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to boarding houses, was on its way to me via this unlettered Johannes. He appropri- 70 ated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the meantime he had eaten the peaches.]

CHAPTER XI

-I think there is one habit—I said to our company a day or two afterwards-worse than of punning. It is the gradual substitution of cant so or flash terms for words which truly characterize their objects. I have known several very genteel idiots whose whole vocabulary had deliquesced into some half dozen expressions. All things fell into one of two great categories-fast or slow. Man's chief end was to be a brick. When the great calamities of life overtook their friends, these last were 90 spoken of as being a good deal cut up. Nine-tenths of human existence were

summed up in the single word, bore. These expressions come to be the algebraic symbols of minds which have grown too weak or indolent to discriminate. They are the blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy-you may fill them up with what idea you like; it makes no difference, for there are no funds in the treasury upon which 10 they are drawn. Colleges and goodfor-nothing smoking-clubs are the places where these conversational fungi spring up most luxuriantly. Don't think I undervalue the proper use and application of a cant word or phrase. It adds piquancy to conversation, as a mushroom does to a sauce. But it

is no better than a toadstool, odious to the sense and poisonous to the 20 intellect, when it spawns itself all over the talk of men and youths capable of talking, as it sometimes does. As we hear flash phraseology, it is commonly the dishwater from the washings of English dandyism, school-boy or fullgrown, wrung out of a three-volume novel which had sopped it up; or decanted from the pictured urn of Mr. Verdant Green, and diluted to suit 30 the provincial climate.

-The young fellow called John spoke up sharply and said, it was "rum" to hear me "pitchin' into fellers" for "goin' it in the slang line," when I used all the flash words myself just when I pleased.

I replied with my usual forbearance. Certainly, to give up the algebraic symbol, because a or b is often a cover for ideal nihility, would 40 be unwise. I have heard a child laboring to express a certain condition, involving a hitherto undescribed sensation (as it supposed), all of which could have been sufficiently explained by the participle-bored. I have seen a country clergyman, with a onestory intellect and a one-horse vocabulary, who has consumed his valuable time (and mine) freely, in developing 50 an opinion of a brother-minister's discourse, which would have been abundantly characterized by a peach-downlipped sophomore in the one wordslow. Let us discriminate, and be shy of absolute proscription. I am omniverbivorous by nature and training. Passing by such words as are poisonous, I can swallow most others, and chew such as I cannot swallow. . .

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Poems. 1. Make a study of the humor of Holmes, using as sources these poems and the poems previously read. Compare Holmes as a humorist with Irving and Hawthorne.

2. Is there a suggestion of pathos mingled with the humor in "The Last Leaf"?

3. Holmes was a physician; which of these poems shows his interest in the human body?

Prose. 1. Find illustrations, in the selections from The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, of the conversational charm spoken about on page 515. What does the title of the book suggest?

2. What are the topics of conversation in the selections given here? Be prepared to discuss them in class. Do you imagine it would have been pleasant to sit at the breakfast-table when the Autocrat was discoursing? What other persons, besides the Autocrat, were present?

Theme Topic. Write an "Autocrat" paper on some fad or problem of the present day, being careful to preserve the genial attitude and conversational tone of Holmes.

Library Reading. Increase your knowledge of the work of Holmes by reading in the library the following poems, and selections from the prose writings indicated. Be prepared to make a report on the selection you liked best. Poems. "Aunt Tabitha," "Our Yankee Girls," "The Birthday of Daniel Webster," "The Boys," "Under the Violets," "All Here," "Bill and Joe," and "How the Old Horse Won the Bet." Holmes is almost equally well known for his prose, the following of which you will enjoy: Other selections from, or all of, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table; The Professor at the Breakfast Table; The Poet at the Breakfast Table.

The life of Lowell is a vivid illustration of the changes that had taken place in New England since the days of Cotton Mather. At that early time, you will remember, life was narrow, intense, concentrated on theology, politics, and getting a living. There were few amusements, few books except books of devotion, few impulses to breadth of mind and culture. Lowell represents wide culture, travel, unbounded zest for life, many-sided achievement. The moral earnestness of his Puritan ancestors was in his blood; there was also Yankee wit and shrewd commonsense, a vein of rich humor, an adaptability to a wide variety of interests. He excelled in many forms of writing: verse narrative, the ode, the lyric, the verse satire; in the familiar essay, in criticism of literature, and in essays interpreting the spirit of American democracy, he was also the most charming of writers. But this literary activity, immense as it was, did not suffice for the expression of his astonishing vitality. Great in extent as were his works, one needs to come into some sort of contact with the man himself in order to appreciate his gifts. It is also necessary to take into account his public services. He was for twenty years a distinguished professor at Harvard. For four years he

was editor of The Atlantic Monthly, our first important literary review, and for many years he was a contributor to it. For a long time he served as one of the editors of The North American Review, our first magazine for the free expression of opinion. He was a diplomat: for three years he served as minister to Spain, and afterwards he became one of the most distinguished of American ambassadors to England.

This extraordinary and many-sided man was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 22, 1819, of a family distinguished before and since his time for its contribution to New England. As a boy he became fond of Scott's tales and of Spenser's romantic poem, The Faerie Queene. This taste for reading never left him, and when a student at Harvard he spent more time in reading books that interested him than in the required studies.

After graduation he studied law, but he did not practice. He had some difficulty in choosing a career. His taste for literature was strong, but he did not have independent means, and writing was an uncertain calling. In 1840 he became engaged to Miss Maria White, who wrote poetry and took an interest in serious questions of the day. Under her influence Lowell himself became more serious; he published a

At the end of 1844 Lowell married Miss White and after a few months spent in Philadelphia moved to Elmwood, the beautiful family home at Cambridge. During the next six years he produced a great deal of the work on which his fame rests. A Fable for Critics (1848) is a rimed review of American literature. It is called a "fable" because in it Apollo, god of poetry, is supposed to express his opinions upon the writers and books then being talked about in America. The title-page and the preface are rimed, though printed in prose form, and a spirit of rollicking humor runs through the entire poem. Lowell's comments on the various authors are extremely interesting, for he was writing about his own contemporaries. He pokes fun at himself among the rest.

In 1848 the first series of The Biglow Papers appeared. These are his best examples of verse satire, and are among the best of the kind ever written. The general theme is American politics, particularly the questions arising out of the annexation of Texas. In the second series, 1862-1866, he dealt with the Civil War. There are a few non-political poems, such as "The Courtin'," the charming recital of a rustic wooer's exasperation at his demure sweetheart. Somewhat like Diedrich Knickerbocker is the Reverend Homer Wilbur, supposed to be the editor of the poems. He supplies a learned introduction and many notes. The poems themselves were supposedly written, in the Yankee dialect, by Hosea Biglow, an illiterate but very patriotic American. Birdofredum Sawin, an adventurer, enters Mexico with the army and writes home details of his career.

In these quaint poems Lowell experimented with dialect verse, exercised his great ability as a humorist, and found it possible to say, in this unusual manner, things that expressed his deepest convictions.

In 1848 also appeared Lowell's best known poem, "The Vision of Sir Launfal."

have appeared in some old romance of King Arthur and his knights: Launfal is a name well known in these old stories, and the theme of the poem is the quest for the Grail. But Lowell makes two changes in the accepted manner of writing romance: he supplies long introductions to each part, in which he introduces beautiful descriptions of the seasons, and he makes the whole thing a "vision," not the account of a real adventure. Besides the beauty of its verse, the poem illustrates Lowell's deep moral earnestness, and it has become a universal favorite.

This period of extraordinary literary activity-we have named only the principal poems written during these yearswas followed by the death of his wife, by his call to Harvard, and by his achievements as editor of The Atlantic Monthly and The North American Review. Though he continued to write poetry at intervals, these years were marked by his increasing power as a writer of prose. His essays on the early English dramatists and on such great poets as Dante, Chaucer, and Keats, together with the essays on political subjects and a series of charming prose pieces on such themes as "My Garden Acquaintance," "On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners," and "A Good Word for Winter," all give evidence of his wide reading, his fine sense of literary values, and his humor. The essays are often like conversations, filled with the charm of his personality. In 1870 a volume of his collected essays was published under the title of Among My Books, and this was followed a year later by My Study Windows.

Of Lowell's later life there is little to be said here. In 1872 he went abroad for two years, returning to take a more active interest in politics. His diplomatic career extended over eight years (18771885), the time being divided between Spain and England. During this period he wrote little, but he was in demand as a speaker, and won great distinction for himself and for the country he represented. After his return he published several collections of his literary and political essays and one volume of poetry. At his death