Daily American telegraph., 1852-01-28
AMERICAN TELEGRAPH.
From the National Era.
Oliver Wendell Holmes.


| oliver Wendell Holmes.
| DEAR DR. BAILEY: Did you ever sit under
the scmtillations of that comet of your frater-
nifty DR.. 0. w. Holmes One can scarcely
write the prefix, Dr. without q smile, so impos-
sible seems it to picture him feeling the pulse,
OF administering an emetic with true profess
sional gravity.
| wonder whether his studies were not pur-
sued under Momus, rather than Esculapius;
and whether, having discovered the sovereign
virtue OF laughter as a remedy for all @the ills
that flesh is heir to,V he does not prescribe for
his private patients as he does for the public in
| general--a dose of the same by no means ho-
meopathic2 Indeed, he himself has more than
| once limited at such q course of procedure, and
has found, also, that the s'potion" too strongly
mixed may prove powerful poison, if we may
credit his report of the cease" since whose sad
conclusion he "has never dared to write as
funny as he can!" Con you give us uninitiated
ones glimpse behind the curtain Of the esma-
terra medical" and tell us whether this remedy
would be equally potent with mesmerisn or
electricity or whether the three are in some
mysterious manner blended? a0u a-.
Be this as it may, he has lately been admin
istering the panacea to eager crowds, with the
most happy effect. One could not sit an hour
Il
without gathering some spangles for memory
to bear away. am going to send you few
of these chance crystals, though they will be
sure to lose hrilliancy under any handling but
the orators own. t."
| If you have ever heard him lecture, YOU
know very well how he enters a Lyceum Hall :
as no lecturer but himself would--tripping
with boyish agility through the living sea, and
up the steps of the stage, and tossing comic
look Of good-humored understanding to the au-
dience, as much as to say in school-boy Ian
gpage, @We will have rare fun to-night!u
That we will; for thousand risibles begin to
vibrate already, in sympathy with the twinkle
of his eye! His discourse here was on the
"Love of Nature" 1t was prefaced by an
apology for not throwing down the gauntlet in
behalf of any of the "reforms" of the day.
"The milk of human kindness, on his authori-
ty "will not bear too much shaking;;n and as
it had turned to bitterness under SO many
tongues, he thought "a man might be consid-
cred as eminently praiseworthy for even the
humblest attempt to write upon the loUe of
anything" .t
i He began by giving us few "tableaux Vi
wants" from city life, before leading us into
"green pastures" What leisure had the mer-
chant "hurrying along the pavements, intent
upon the rise or fall of quarter of cent in
cotton or wheatn for quiet gossip with Dame
Nature? "Then there is the clerk, haunted
by swarms of figures as thick as mosquitoes in
August, or flies in October which it is his
business to brush away with feather welded
by his right hand, or, at blissful intervals,
tucked over his right ear" The lawyer, whose
brain is to be kept in constant readiness, to
prove, at moments warning, that anybody
has been guilty of murder, arson, treason, or
/ any other peccadillo; unless indeed, he has
been thus guilty-in which case he is to be
equally ready to prove that the man never did
it, never would, nor could have done tiff in
| deed it had been done at all besides which,
somebody else did it! "Tbe physician here
he strained himself in professional conscious
ness-"that martyr to mysterious rappings
who sits down to his Thanksgiving turkey, and
at the twang of the door-bell is forced to start
up leaving his fork, as Cincinnatus his plough
sticking in the furrow!n with other serio-
comic touches from the roll of his own expert
ence. "The clergyman, indeed, has a short
summer vacation, from which he returns with
an effective new sermon on Niagara or
| Ocean, and enough of the odor of clover and
chickaberry about him to last until Christmas y
These preceding personages are hidden from
Nature, behind thick veil OF brick, mortar,
and smoke. Proceeding into the country, eve
might expect, on the strength of the syllogism,
| who drives fat oxen must himself be fat, that
who live in green fields must themselves be
green, that is, fresh, unseared in heart alive
and awake to the beauties around them"
| We might expect this; but he gave US the
ludicrous contrast to this which country life
too often exhibits Follow the loafer about
the stage tavern to his home, and "you will find
Il . - iptp tha Irof &c
as though there were simoom over the grassy
fields, and the inmates, like camels, must thrust
their noses into the sand, to breathe with i'm
punityn
He proposes hospital for the cure of this
blindness of sensibility, on the plan of the Mas
sachusetts Asylum for Idiots, to be established
on the slope of Mt. Holyoke where the eyes
of sturdy farmers and utlitarian matrons
should be opened to the beauty on which they
had looked all their lives in vain. In a sup
posed report of one of these ceases" hope
| full patient was described as shedding tears
at the sight OF two cows in pasture, because
he had learned that it takes three to COWS form
perfect landscape!"
| But this, he granted was chimerical. How,
then, should the world be drawn to its uni
versal mother ~ The Architect ranks first,
as teacher of taste; he is the man who illus
trates practically his ideas; and next to him is
the man who talks about him"
| At first sight, Nature would seem to have
been less lavish of beauty to our New World
than to her sister, the Old "Our dandelion,
white-weed, and buttercup, are indeed poor
substitutes for the primrose, the cowslip, and
the daisy, of English fields and English poets,
whose very names arc redolent of sweet fancies.
But have we not the laurel on the hillside, and
the orchis in the wood, and by the brook the
| repal cardinal Ao,var y with n host haside 4