AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE; WITH THE STORY OF IRIS. BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. What he said, what he heard, and what he saw. I. I INTENDED to have signalized my first appearance by a certain large statement, which I flatter myself is the nearest approach to a universal formula of life yet promulgated at this breakfast-table. It would have had a grand effect. For this purpose I fixed my eyes on a certain divinity-student, with the intention of exchanging a few phrases, and then forcing my court-card, namely, The great end of being.-I will thank you for the sugar,-I said. Man is a dependent creature. It is a small favor to ask, said the divinitystudent, and passed the sugar to me. said. Life is a great bundle of little things, — I The divinity-student smiled, as if that was the concluding epigram of the sugar question. You smile, I said. Perhaps life seems to you a little bundle of great things? The divinity-student started a laugh, but sud denly reined it back with a pull, as one throws a horse on his haunches. Life is a great bundle of great things. he said. is (Now, then!) The great end of being, after all, Hold on! said my neighbor, a young fellow whose name seems to be John, and nothing else, -for that is what they all call him, - hold on! the Sculpin is go'n' to say somethin'. Now the Sculpin (Cottus Virginianus) is a little water-beast which pretends to consider itself a fish, and, under that pretext, hangs about the piles upon which West-Boston Bridge is built, swallowing the bait and hook intended for flounders. On being drawn from the water, it exposes an immense head, a diminutive bony carcass, and a surface so full of spines, ridges, ruffles, and frills, that the naturalists have not been able to count them without quarrelling about the number, and that the colored youth, whose sport they spoil, do not like to touch them, and especially to tread on them, unless they happen to have shoes on, to cover the thick white soles of their broad black feet. When, therefore, I heard the young fellow's exclamation, I looked round the table with curiosity to see what it meant. At the further end of it I saw a head, and a small portion of a little deformed body, mounted on a high chair, which brought the occupant up to a fair level enough for him to get at his food. His whole appearance was so grotesque, I felt for a minute as if there was a showman behind him who would pull him down presently and put up Judy, or the hangnan, or the Devil, or some other wooden personage of the fan.ous spectacle. I contrived to lose the first part of his sentence, but what I heard began so: by the Frog-Pond, when there were frogs in it, and the folks used to come down from the tents on 'Lection and Independence days with their pails to get water to make egg-pop with. Born in Boston; went to school in Boston as long as the boys would let me. The little man groaned, turned, as if to look round, and went on. Ran away from school one day to see Phillips hung for killing Denegri with a loggerhead. That was in flip days, when there were always two or three loggerheads in the fire. I'm a Boston boy, I tell you, born at North End, and mean to be buried on Copps' Hill, with the good old underground people, the Worthylakes, and the rest of 'em. Yes, Sir,-up on the old hill, where they buried. Captain Daniel Malcolm in a stone grave, ten feet deep, to keep him safe from the red-coats, in those old times when the world was frozen up tight and there wasn't but one spot open, and that was right over Faneuil Hall, and black |
