Produced by David Widger and Several Other Project Gutenberg Volunteers
By Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table
The Professor at the Breakfast-table
The Poet at the Breakfast Table
Over the Teacups
Elsie Venner
The Guardian Angel
A Mortal Antipathy
Pages from an Old Volume of Life
Bread and the Newspaper
My Hunt after "The Captain"
The Inevitable Trial
Cinders from Ashes
The Pulpit and the Pew
Medical Essays
Homeopathy and its Kindred Delusions
The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever
Currents and Counter-currents in Medical Science
Border Lines of Knowledge in Some Provinces of Medical Science
Scholastic and Bedside Teaching
The Medical Profession in Massachusetts
The Young Practitioner
Medical Libraries
Some of My Early Teachers
A Memoir of John Lothrop Motley
A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our Hundred Days in Europe
The interruption referred to in the first sentence of the first ofthese papers was just a quarter of a century in duration.
Two articles entitled "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" will befound in the "New England Magazine," formerly published in Bostonby J. T. and E. Buckingham. The date of the first of thesearticles is November 1831, and that of the second February 1832.When "The Atlantic Monthly" was begun, twenty-five yearsafterwards, and the author was asked to write for it, therecollection of these crude products of his uncombed literaryboyhood suggested the thought that it would be a curious experimentto shake the same bough again, and see if the ripe fruit werebetter or worse than the early windfalls.
So began this series of papers, which naturally brings thoseearlier attempts to my own notice and that of some few friends whowere idle enough to read them at the time of their publication.The man is father to the boy that was, and I am my own son, as itseems to me, in those papers of the New England Magazine. If Ifind it hard to pardon the boy's faults, others would find itharder. They will not, therefore, be reprinted here, nor as Ihope, anywhere.
But a sentence or two from them will perhaps bear reproducing, andwith these I trust the gentle reader, if that kind being stillbreathes, will be contented.
—"It is a capital plan to carry a tablet with you, and, when youfind yourself felicitous, take notes of your own conversation."—
—"When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my Dictionary.The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences.The author may arrange the gems effectively, but their fhape andluftre have been given by the attrition of ages. Bring me thefineft fimile from the whole range of imaginative writing, and Iwill fhow you a fingle word which conveys a more profound, a moreaccurate, and a more eloquent analogy."—
—"Once on a time, a notion was ftarted, that if all the people inthe world would fhout at once, it might be heard in the moon. Sothe projectors agreed it fhould be done in juft ten years. Somethousand fhip-loads of chronometers were diftributed to theselectmen and other great folks of all the different nations. Fora year beforehand,