The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-03-14
DR. HoLMEs oN DR. JoHMsoN.
IAtlautic..


 have just lost my dear and honored contemporary of the last century. A hundred years ago this day, December B, I784, died the admirable and ever-to- aforementioned Dr. Samnel Johnson The year I7oo was made ponderous and illustrious in English biography by his birth. My own humble advent to the world of p-otoplasm was in the year 1869 of the present century. Summer was just ending when those four letters "son b." were written under the date of my birth, August 2o.h. Autumn had just be- gun when my great precontemporary en- tered this unchristian universe, and was made member of .he christian church on the same day; for he was b5rn and baptized on the 18th of September.
 Thus there was established a close bond of relationship between the grea, English scholar and writer and myself Year by year, and almost month by month, my life has kept pace in this century with his life in the last century l had only to open my Boswell at any time, and knew just what Johnson at my age-twenty or fifty or seventy-was thinking or doing; what were his feelings about life; what changes the years had wrought in his body, his mind, hia feel ings, his companionships, his reputation. It was for me kind of unison between two instruments, both playing that old familiar air, " Life "-one a bassoon, if you will, and the other an oaten pipe, if you care to find an image for it, but still keeping pace with each other until the players both grew old and gray. At last the thinner thread of sound is heard by itself, and its deep accompaniment rolls out its thunder no more.
 feel lonely now that my great com panion and friend of SO many years has left me. feel more intimately acquainted with him than l do with many of my living friends. can hardly remember when do not know him. can see him in his great bushy wig, exactly like that of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper (who died in December, l783) as Copley painted him-he hangs there on my wall, over the revolving book case. His ample coat, too, with its broad flaps and many buttons and generous cuffs, and beneath it the long, still more conspicuously but toned waistcoat, arching in front of the fine crescentic, almost semi.iunar Fai- staffian prominence, involving no less than a dozen of the above mentioned buttons, and the strong legs with their sturdy calves fitting columns of support to the massive body and solid, capacious brain enthroned over it. lean hear him with his heavy tread as he comes into the club, and gap is widened to make room for his portly figure. "A fine day." says Sir Joshua. "Sr," he answers, "it seems propitious, but the atmosphere is humid and the skies nebulous," at which the great painter smiles, shifts his trum- pet and takes pinch of snuff.
 Dear old massive, deep-yoiced dog matist and hypochondriac of the eigh- teenth century, how one would like to sit at some ghostly club, between you and the bony, "mighty-mouthed," harsh toned termagant and dyspeptic of the nineteenth! The growl of the English mastiff and the snarl of the Scotch terrier would make duet which would enliven the shores of Lethe. wish could find our "spiritualist's" paper in the port folio, in which the two are brought to- gether, but hardly know what shall find when it is opened.
 Yes, my life is a little less precious to me since l have lost my dear old friend and wher the funeral train moves to Westminster Abbey next Sunday for feel as if this were I784 and not I884-I seem to feel myself following the hearse, one of the silent mourners.