NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
47 
An Appreciation of Oliver Wendell Holmes for 
the Ceutenary Exercises Geld at the Beverly 
Harms Church Last Sumner 
BY COL. THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
[Norr.—Col. Higginson was well 
known to a large number of our 
Shore residents, and therefore the 
following appreciation of another 
celebrity of our Shore—Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes—will be read with re- 
newed interest at this time. With the 
death of the soldier-author, ‘Thomas 
Wentworth Higginson, the literary 
world has lost another of that school 
which will make the last generation 
- famous in the annals of our history. 
—EDIvror. | 
At the meeting held in Cambridge 
last night, we had most interesting 
recollections of him from Dr. Chee- 
ver, who says of him that ‘he was 
really too sympathetic to practice 
medicine, and when he thought it 
necessary to use a freshly killed rab- 
bit for demonstration he always left 
his assistant to chloroform it and be- 
sought him not to let it squeak.” 
Yet he gave away his medical books 
in middle life to the Boston Medical 
Library and after this, he prized 
science as the poet loves it for the 
images and analogies which it affords, 
just as the poet Coleridge is said 
to have gone to lectures on chemistry 
to get him a new set of metaphors. 
Professor Dwight, his associate, once 
said of him, “None but Holmes could 
have compared the microscopical 
coiled tube of a sweat-gland to a 
fairy’s intestine” ! 
President Eliot pointed out that 
Holmes suggested, before Percival 
Lowell did, the snows on Mars, and 
he once described a plant considered 
as a companion for a sick room in the 
true Darwinian spirit as: “An inno- 
cent, delightfully idiotic being, that 
is not troubled with any of our poor 
human weaknesses and irritabilities.” 
It will seem incredible in future years 
that young people were sometimes 
forbidden to read the “Autocrat of 
the Breakfast Table” as being a work 
of irreligious tendency! Yet when 
he criticized the then severe faith of 
New England from the point of 
view of human sympathy and not of 
technical theology, it was because he 
did not wish in his own words, “to 
suggest perplexities in order to bother 
Bridget, the wild Irish girl, or Joyce 
Heth, the centenarian, or any other 
intellectual non-combatant, but sim- 
ply wished to base religion on justice 
and common humanity.’”’ As for the 
external side, he was all his life a 
regular church-goer, on the ground, 
as he said that there was in his heart 
‘a plant called Reverence, which 
needed to be watered about once a 
week.” | am sure that he must have 
made this phrase familiar to the 
Beverly Farms parish. 
It is to be remembered that his 
three novels, well characterized by an 
elderly lady as his “medicated nov- 
els,” all turned on abstract questions. 
The first of these, “Elsie Venner,” 
will probably hold its own well, both 
as a picture of New England life and 
as a scientific study. It will be re- 
membered that, as Dr. Cheever told 
us last night, Dr. Holmes hada 
rattle-snake in a glass jar beside him 
while he was writing it, so that he 
might do no injustice to the snake. 
It is known that one local book-seller 
in New England being asked if he 
had any of Dr. Holmes’ novels re- 
plied that he had never heard either 
of them or of him, but that Mrs. 
Mary Jane Holmes had written lovely 
books and he had some of them. Dr. 
Holmes, himself, would have enjoyed 
this joke, for he somewhere says 
with his usual cheerfulness, “The 
highways of literature are spread 
over with shells of dead novels, each 
of which the age has swallowed up at 
a mouthful and done with.” 
He certainly cannot be charged 
with neglecting among these abstract 
speculations the essential qualities of 
conscience or even religious faith. 
Few persons have stated this last 
more finely than when he says that 
there are two sides to every human 
being, as with a piece of money. 
“T’ve seen an old woman who 
wouldn’t fetch five cents if you put 
her up at auction and yet, come to 
read the other side of her, she had a 
trust in God Almighty that was like 
the bow anchor of a three decker.” 
He had, through his greater long- 
evity, the hardest trial of old age, the 
sense of finding himself alone 
through the departures of his con- 
temporaries. Few men have had in 
their later years such an intoxicating 
ovation as was awarded to him in 
England at the age of seventy-seven ; 
but he wrote, five years after, to 
Whittier: “We are lonely, very 
lonely, in these last years. ... We 
were on deck together as we began 
the voyage of life two generations 
ago. A whole generation passed, and 
the succeeding one found us in the 
cabin with a goodly number of ccevals. 
Then the craft which held us began 
going to pieces, until a few of us 
were left on the raft pieced together 
of its fragments. And now the raft 
has at last parted, .and you and I] 
are left clinging to the solitary spar, 
which is all that still remains afloat 
of the sunken vessel.” 
He died on October 7th, 1894, aged 
eighty-five. 
HS Saas einai 
GO CAT SEED GP PD Sp 
While our columns are always open for the 
discussion of any relevant subject, we do not 
necessarily indorse the opinions of con- 
tributors. 
Correspondents will please give their names 
—not necessarily for publication, but as a 
guarantee of good faith. 
To the Editor of the North Shore 
Breeze :— 
Upon applying for a locker in the 
new bathing pavilion in process of 
erection on West Beach, Beverly 
Farms, I was surprised to find there 
were none under ten dollars for the 
season. I believe one of the condi- 
tions stated in the original John West 
grant was that the land (West 
Beach) was to be held for the use of 
the people of Beverly Farms; and 
one of the arguments used in favor 
of the change from the old wooden 
buildings to the pavilion was, that 
every one would have equal facilities 
for bathing and recreation. 
Now, there are many people who 
will find it very hard, if not abso- 
lutely impossible, to have a place at 
this price. Of course, it is necessary 
to pay the expenses of the new build- 
ing in some way, and I suppose the 
majority expected some increase in 
price, but it is mainly of the children 
of whom | am thinking. From the 
plans I can not see that any pro- 
vision has been made for them. 
I remember when the State Bath- 
house at Lynn was building. I believe 
there were two summers when there 
was no provision made for bathers— 
the late Judge Berry fully exonerated 
several boys who were brought into 
court for undressing on the _ beach, 
giving as his verdict, that the city and 
state must expect it if no provision 
for the use of the beach and the salt 
water, which should be free for all, 
were not made. 
ONE INTERESTED. 
Beverly Farms, May I1, IgIt. 
Breeze Subscription $2.00 a year 
