Page:The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858) Holmes.djvu/16

vi idle enough to read them at the time of their publication. The man is father to the boy that was, and I am my own son, as it seems to me, in those papers of the New England Magazine. If I find it hard to pardon the boy's faults, others would find it harder. They will not, therefore, be reprinted here, nor as I hope, anywhere.

But a sentence or two from them will perhaps bear reproducing, and with these I trust the gentle reader, if that kind being still breathes, will be contented.

—"It is a capital plan to carry a tablet with you, and, when you find yourself felicitous, take notes of your own conversation."

—"When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my Dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively, but their hape and lutre have been given by the attrition of ages. Bring me the finet imile from the whole range of imaginative writing, and I will how you a ingle word which conveys a more profound, a more accurate, and a more eloquent analogy."—

—"Once on a time, a notion was tarted, that if all the people in the world would hout at once, it might be heard in the moon. So the projectors agreed it hould be done in jut ten years. Some thousand hip-loads of chronometers were ditributed to the selectmen and other great folks of all the different nations. For a year beforehand, nothing else was talked about but the