Volume 1

Life and letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes / by John T. Morse, Jr.

  • Morse, John T., Jr. (John Torrey), 1840-1937.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Life and letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes / by John T. Morse, Jr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    relative, that she wrote to the author, telling him that neither she nor her cousin Edward could make out his meaning.” His reply was: — Boston, March 4, 1861. My dear Miss Lavinia, — The twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet is pronounced by applying the lips of the person speaking it to the cheek of a friend, and puckering and parting the same with a peculiar explosive sound. “Cousin Edward” will show you how to speak this labial consonant, no doubt, and allow you to show your proficiency by practising it with your lips against his cheek. For further infor- mation you had better consult your gra’mma. A Scotch gentleman who sent him a book called Burns and the Kirk had from him a note of thanks in which he said: “I find it full of interest, for it treats a question which has long puzzled me: how strait-laced Scotland could clasp her national poet to her bosom without breaking her stays.” A gentleman of the Jewish faith one day sent to the Doctor some wine from Jerusalem. The note of thanks was: “Wine received. Strong as Samson. Sweet as Delilah.” Once, when a man of no great note died, his friends tried to get Dr. Holmes to “say a few kind words about the deceased which might be published.” But he declined. “Do you see?” he said. “They want to engage me in the embalming business! But I can- not help to preserve this fly in amber.” In a letter he spoke of a learned gentleman as “not so much stamped with learning, as stained with it.” A newspaper preserves this story, which I believe
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