Hot Springs weekly star. (Hot Springs, S.D.) 1892-1917, 1894-11-23
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
An Interesting sketch of this Brilliant
Author, by Mrs. Col. Kellar, Read
Before the Out yiye Club.
(Pnblishetl by request OF the Qui Nive Club.l

Nnblished by request of the Qui Vive Club.l
With brilliant mid. summer sun
flooding the whole earth, and it's heat
enervating our best efforts, the Qui
Vive Club disbanded to meet again
when skies should be softer.
We separated with the name of
Oliver Wendell Holmes close to each
heart. His natal day was at hand, and
according to our custom, we were to
make way in the regular work for its
celebration. Though he was in far
New England, his mental and spiritual
attributes reached even these distant
plains, and we claimed him as part of
our own heritage.
Since then, this poet, essayist, lee.
turer, the brilliant conversationalist,
the clever wit, has been summoned
from earth to u higher life. Amid the
changing pathetic beauties of autumn,
midst the melancholy music of October
winds, and the whisper of falling
forest leaves; beneath the dreamy soft
ness of October skies, our poet put on
the garment of Immortality. He is not
dead; that his earth form is laid away
in silence and darkness, we know, but
the subtitle essence, the great moving
principle that won all the world to
love him and made the man, is i'm
mortal. 1t is still ours. 1t still touch
es us to tender smiles over the STea
Cups" 1t stirs in us the olden ap-
probation of the ''One Horse Shay
Today we feel the awe and mystery
of Elsie Venner as wildly as twenty
years ago, when the romance was fresh
and it's author was in his prime That
the grave sod lies heavily on his breast,
that his earthly eyes are closed, makes
no change in him or in his adorers.
Oliver Wendell Holmes belonged to
that brilliant group of New England
writer's composed of Emerson, Lowell,
Hawthorne, Longfellow, Bryant and
Whittier. He outlived all the friends
of his youth. He was the last of the
Atlantic group of poets and authors.
He was born in Il wonderful year; the
year that gave to mankind Abraham
Lincoln, Charles Darwin, Tennyson,
Dorothea Dix. Yet to none of these
great souls, neither to the group di-
rectly about him was there any resem-
blance. But rather was his mind i'll
sympathy with the famous satirist
across the sea. The satire of Holmes,
though far gentler and softer than that
of Thackery, was nevertheless SATIRE
In giving dagger thrusts at the fads
and follies of the day, Thackery
frowned, while Holmes laughed. But
the keen. true, merciless thrust was
the same i'll each. In this character
istic. Holmes even more closely re-
sembled Addison. of whom Thackery
himself wrote, .He came. the gentle
castigated only in smiling Aptwords
for our Holmes. no less than for the
great English author. Both were
satirical without malice, combining
ridicule with compassion for human
frailties. and an earnest reverence for
the sublime.
DIR. Holmes exposed every theory to
his all pervading sunlight, and thus
escaped those impracticable ventures of
Brook Farm memory.
1t is readily seen how nature like
his would keep aloof from that atmos-
phere. How his clear critical brain
disceIned the pitfalls in the way to
that Utopian enterprise. His healthy
nature recognized no need for the iso-
lation of Il few men and women. To
him the entire universe was open for
happiness and for work, and there was
no room or time for Utopian dreams.
He believed in light. and life and action.
He said II never deemed it sin to
gladden. this vale of sorrow with II
wholesome laugh" Laughter brought
him the glad gift of his eighty four
years.
The brilliancy of the Atlantic Club
dinners resembled the gatherings in
old England, when the wits composed
of johnson, Goldsmith, Swift, Addison
and Steele met and measured intellec
tual lances. On the evenings when
Emerson, Whittier, Lowell, Longfellow,
Holmes and others met together for
the exchange of thought American
literature was making it's classics. Ac.
cording to tradition, Holmes was the
most brilliant conversationalist of the
group. But the reader knows him
only by the printed page, and how rich
his personality in this, how lavishly he
wrought, is evidenced in the wide diff
ference of his works. It is as though
different brains guided the same pen.
The pictures of Corot in their wonder
full atmospheric effects, and those of
Bougereau, are not more dissimilar
than the "Autocrat Of the Breakfast
Table" and Elsie Venner. The merry,
the grave, the analytical, came in
marvellous wealth from his fertile brain.