350 



HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL. 



of the United States, placed his name on their 

 list of honorary members. 



He married a daughter of the statesman 

 Robert von Mohl, who shared with him a pas- 

 sionate fondness for music, and at his receptions 

 in Berlin the most celebrated artists were always 

 glad to gratify his appreciation of music by a 

 display of their talents. With his wife he came 

 to this country in the summer of 1893, and vis- 

 ited the World's Fair in Chicago during the 

 time when the Electrical Congress was in ses- 

 sion, of which he was the honorary president. 

 Subsequently he spent a few weeks in New York, 

 and was entertained at numerous receptions, 

 notably those given at Columbia College and 

 the Century Club. He died from the effect of 

 a stroke of paralysis. He had the reputation of 

 being the most distinguished man of science in 

 the world. 



HOLLAND. (See NETHERLANDS.) 

 HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL, author, 

 born in Cambridge, Mass., Aug. 29, 1809 ; died 

 in Boston. Oct. 7, 1894. John Holmes settled in 

 Woodstock, Conn., in 1686. His grandson, 

 David, was a captain of British troops in the old 

 French war, and was afterward a surgeon in the 

 Revolutionary army. His son, Abiel, was grad- 

 uated at Yale College in 1783, and became tutor 

 there while studying for the ministry. In 1785 

 he accepted a pastorate in Medway, Ga., and six 

 years later, having resigned that charge, he was 

 called to Cambridge, Mass., and was settled over 

 the First Congregational Church. This rela- 

 tionship was continued until 1832. He was 

 twice married first to a daughter of Ezra Stiles, 

 President of Yale College, and next to Sarah 

 Wendell, daughter of Oliver Wendell, who in- 

 herited Norman, Saxon, and Dutch blood, a 

 composition clearly traceable in her distin- 

 guished son. That son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 

 was the third of 5 children born in the old 

 gambrel-roofed parsonage, which was torn down 

 in 1885. This house stood on the edge of the 

 grounds surrounding Harvard College, and the 

 commencement days of that noted seat of learn- 

 ing, where his ancestors had been educated, were 

 among the great times of his early youth. The 

 ceremonies were strangely different from those 

 of which the genial writer became later an inte- 

 gral and interesting part. He says in " The 

 Seasons," one of his reminiscent essays, that it 

 was " a holiday for Boston as well as for Cam- 

 bridge, and what we cared for was the glitter of 

 the cavalcade, the menagerie, and other shows, 

 and, above all, the great encampment which 

 overspread the common, where feasting and 

 dancing, much drinking, and some gambling 

 used to go on with the approving consent of the 

 selectmen. The time had nothing for us boys 

 like the glory of the 'tents.' Then and there' I 

 saw my first tiger ; also Joseph Ridley, the fat 

 boy. and a veritable Punch and Judy, whom I 

 would willingly have stayed to see repeating 

 their performances from morning till night." 

 In writing of these long-forgotten matters. 

 Holmes says : "Commencement was a great oc- 

 casion all through my boyhood. It has died 

 away into next to nothing, in virtue of the 

 growth of the republican principle. Its observ- 

 ances emanated from the higher authorities of 

 the college. ' Class day,' which has killed it, is 



a triumph of universal suffrage over divine 

 right." 



One of the boy's earliest recollections was of 

 giving three cheers for the ending of the War of 

 1812, little as he could understand the signifi- 

 cance of that struggle. He was an imaginative 

 boy, and made his life a daily romance by the 

 unconscious play of his fancy. He tells how he 

 stepped on or over the cracks in the country side- 

 walks, how he lived by omens, how he heard and 

 saw the unreal haunters of attics and shadowed 

 playground or orchard. Out of the booming 

 of the gun at the Charlestown Navy Yard he 

 made endless dreams. One he tells us, which is 

 typical of his fancy and of his feeling : 



The firing of the great guns at the Navy Yard is 

 easily heard at the place wnere I was born and lived. 

 " There is a ship or war come in," they used to say 

 when they heard them. Of course, I supposed that 

 such vessels came in unexpectedly, after indefinite 

 years of absence suddenly as fallen stones ami t hat 

 the great guns roared in their astonishment and de- 

 light at the sight of the old war ship splitting tin- 

 bay with her cutwater. Now the sloop of war the 

 " Wasp," Capt. Blakeley, after gloriously capturing 

 the "Reindeer" and the "Avon," had disappeared 

 from the face of the ocean, and was supposed to be 

 lost But there was no proof of it, and, of coui> 

 a time hopes were entertained that she might l>e 

 heard from. Long after the last chance had utterly 

 vanished I pleased myself with the fond illusion 

 that somewhere on the waste of waters she was still 

 floating, and there were years during which I never 

 heard the sound of the great guns booming inland 

 from the Navy Yard without saying to myself, " The 

 ' Wasp ' has come ! " and almost thinking 1 could 

 see her as she rolled in, crumpling the water before; 

 her, weather-beaten, barnacled, with shattered spars 

 and threadbare canvas, welcomed by the shouts and 

 tears of thousands. 



The boy went to a "dame school," and has 

 celebrated' that of Dame Prentiss, who first 

 taught his infant mind. At ten years of age he 

 walked a mile to the Cambridgeport school, 

 where he was the classmate of Richard Henry 

 Dana and Margaret Fuller. The latter made a 

 great impression on him. He describes her con- 

 versation if that be not too lofty a word to ap- 

 ply to a young schoolgirl's utterances as "af- 

 fluent, magisterial, dc haul en bas, some would 

 say euphuistic, but surpassing the talk of women 

 in breadth and audacity." He relates that when 

 he was allowed to glance at a composition of 

 hers written for a prize for which they were 

 both contending, he was crushed by the perusal 

 of the opening line, which read, "It is a trite 

 remark," as he did not know the meaning of 

 " trite." 



From Cambridgeport he went to Phillips 

 Academy at Andover. Of this move he writes : 

 " I do not believe that there was any thought of 

 getting a little respite of quiet by my temporary 

 absence, but I have wondered that there \\a- 

 not. Exceptional boys of fourteen or fifteen 

 make home a heaven, it is true ; but I have 

 suspected, late in life, that I was not one of the 

 exceptional kind. 1 had tendencies in the di- 

 rection of flageolets and octave flutes. 1 luid 

 a pistol and a gun, and popped at everything 

 that stirred, pretty nearly, except the house cat. 

 Worse than this, 1 would buy a cigar and smoke 

 it by installments, putting it meantime in 1 h- 

 barrel of my pistol by a stroke of ingenuity which 



