Year: 1879

Society.


At a meeting of the society to encourage
studies at home held recently in Boston, Dr..
Holmes made some remarks "On Reading"
speaking as follows:


Life for man is serious sentence of cap
ital punishment, with a respite of few
scores of years. For a woman it is the same.
with imprisonment during a large part of
the period of respite. As daughter. sister,
wife, mother, aunt, grandmother, her work is
In most cases, to great extent, indoor work
There are no bars or bolts to her prison, but
she can not escape from it, as the inmates of
our Concord State prison do when tired of
the place.


All prisoners find something to do or they
will feed upon their own souls and bodies.
You may remember the story of the black
pin which the lady wore as brooch-but it
will bear repeating. Her husband had been
confined in prison for some political offense.
He was left alone with his thoughts to tor
ture him. No voice, no book no implement
silence, darkness, misery, sleepless self
torment; and soon it must be madness. All


at once he thought of something to occupy
these terrible unsleeping faculties. He took
| pin from his neckcloth and threw it upon
the floor. Then he groped for it. 1t was a
| little object, and the search was a long and
laborious one. The eye of the Almighty,
| says the Eastern story-teller, can see the
| smallest emnlet in the darkest night, on the


blacklist stone. But the prisoner had not
| the eye of the Omniscient, and it took him a
great while to find the little object he was in
search of. At last he found it. and felt
certain sense of satisfaction in difficulty over
come. But he mad found great deal


more than the pin-he had found
| an occupation, and every day he


would fling it from him and lose
| it, and hunt for it and at last find it, and SO


he saved himself from going mad; and you


will not wonder that when he was set free
| and gave the little object to
| which he owed his reason, and,
perhaps his life, to his wife, she had
| it set round with pearls, and wore it next her
heart


l was never in Jail as a prisoner myself,
| but 1 have been quite as badly off as if had
been shut up on a short sentence-confined
| in quarantine at Marseilles. What can be
worse than that-shut up as an infected per-
son, supposed to carry about with him, not
the comparatively harmless implements of
| robber or a burglar, not the jimmy and re-
volver, but the seeds of pestience which
will decimate cities and devastate whole
| countries. which makes one the enemy of his
| race, who may be shot but must not be
touched, whom one must get the windward
of before speaking to him, and from whom
a beggar would not take dollar unless it
had been fumigated. Well. found myself
| imprisoned with four bare walls.


/ had one book with me; you know what
| that book ought to have been, but it was not
| that. 1t was an old Latin book-villaino
Latin it was written ina history of some
two or three hundred rare medical cases. by


Nicholas Tulpius, whose portrait some of you
| have seen in famous picture of Rembrandt,
! or well-known engraving from it. How
did read that one bookl 1 was in my TWEEN
| ties then, but / remember many of those
cases as do not any others that / read at


that period of my life. / doubt if any liv-
| ing man knows them as well as / do So


much for being shut up and having but one
book to read.


A woman in captivity to her duties is not
reduced to such extremities as those of the
unfortunates / have mentioned. Her house
hold labors whether of work or of superin-
| tendence, are varied in most cases to avoid
| uncomfortable monotony.


Every woman has her needle, at any rate
or had, for I have been told, but hope it is
| not true, that some young women OF the
present day are entirely unschooled in its
use. For the lesser troubles of life, when a


man takes to his pipe or cigar, if not to some
| more potent and dangerous anesthetic, a
| woman takes to her sewing or knitting. The
| needle points are to her nervous irritability
| what the lightning-rod is to the electricity of
| the storm cloud.


But the work of hemming handkerchief
and towels, of knitting mittens and even
| afghans-this and those other household la


bors from which few are wholly exempted,


are not enough to take up all the mental en-
ergy of the busiest young woman. What did
| they do before the days of printed books?
| they carried the songs of their tribe, OF their
nation-the songs which were the best part
of their literature-in their memory. Now
the rivulet which the press poured out four
| centuries ago has widened with every sue
| ceeding generation, till it is no longer a
stream within its banks but an inundation.
come in upon us like a flood, and the land
marks of our old literature are lost sight of


ifthey are not swept away. There never
was a time when young readers were in
such need of guidance.


Let me touch very slightly three questions
| suggested by this state of things.


| /. Shall we read-that is, shall we make
| q serious business of reading7 This seems
| strange question to ask, but let me give some
| meaning to it. 1t was at the hospitable
board of this very house that / heard the
late Mr.. Edward Everett tell story of
| Lord Palmerston, which / have never for
| gotten and often repeated. Some one asked


him, ..Have you read certain book?' nam
ing it. 81 never read printed books" was
Lord Palmerston's answer. Mr.. Everett


did not explain or account for this answer,


SO far as 1 remember, but l suppose he


meant that he had enough to do with reading


written documents, newspapers, the faces and


characters of men, and listening to their
conversation to find out what they meant
perhaps quite as often what they did not
mean.


Some persons need reading much more


than others. One of the best preachers I