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The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table-Part4_Oliver Wendell Holmes(1809-1894)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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forget. It shapes our thoughts for us; - the waves of conversation



roll them as the surf rolls the pebbles on the shore. Let me

modify the image a little. I rough out my thoughts in talk as an



artist models in clay. Spoken language is so plastic, - you can

pat and coax, and spread and shave, and rub out, and fill up, and



stick on so easily when you work that soft material, that there is

nothing like it for modelling. Out of it come the shapes which you



turn into marble or bronze in your immortal books, if you happen to

write such. Or, to use another illustration, writing or printing



is like shooting with a rifle; you may hit your reader's mind, or

miss it; - but talking is like playing at a mark with the pipe of



an engine; if it is within reach, and you have time enough, you

can't help hitting it."



The company agreed that this last illustration was of superior

excellence, or, in the phrase used by them, "Fust-rate." I



acknowledged the compliment, but gently rebuked the expression.

"Fust-rate," "prime," "a prime article," "a superior piece of



goods," "a handsome garment," "a gent in a flowered vest," - all

such expressions are final. They blast the lineage of him or her



who utters them, for generations up and down. There is one other

phrase which will soon come to be decisive of a man's social



STATUS, if it is not already: "That tells the whole story." It

is an expression which vulgar and conceited people particularly



affect, and which well-meaning ones, who know better, catch from

them. It is intended to stop all debate, like the previous



question in the General Court. Only it doesn't; simply because

"that" does not usually tell the whole, nor one half of the whole



story.

- It is an odd idea, that almost all our people have had a



professional education. To become a doctor a man must study some

three years and hear a thousand lectures, more or less. Just how



much study it takes to make a lawyer I cannot say, but probably not

more than this. Now most decent people hear one hundred lectures



or sermons (discourses) on theology every year, - and this, twenty,

thirty, fifty years together. They read a great many religious



books besides. The clergy, however, rarely hear any sermons except

what they preach themselves. A dull preacher might be conceived,



therefore, to lapse into a state of QUASI heathenism, simply for

want of religious instruction. And on the other hand, an attentive



and intelligenthearer, listening to a succession of wise teachers,

might become actually better educated in theology than any one of



them. We are all theological students, and more of us qualified as

doctors of divinity than have received degrees at any of the



universities.

It is not strange, therefore, that very good people should often



find it difficult, if not impossible, to keep their attention fixed

upon a sermon treating feebly a subject which they have thought



vigorously about for years, and heard able men discuss scores of

times. I have often noticed, however, that a hopelessly dull



discourse acts INDUCTIVELY, as electricians would say, in

developing strong mental currents. I am ashamed to think with what



accompaniments and variations and FIORITURE I have sometimes

followed the droning of a heavy speaker, - not willingly, - for my



habit is reverential, - but as a necessary result of a slight

continuous impression on the senses and the mind, which kept both



in action without furnishing the food they required to work upon.

If you ever saw a crow with a king-bird after him, you will get an



image of a dull speaker and a livelylistener. The bird in sable

plumage flaps heavily along his straight-forward course, while the



other sails round him, over him, under him, leaves him, comes back

again, tweaks out a black feather, shoots away once more, never



losing sight of him, and finally reaches the crow's perch at the

same time the crow does, having cut a perfect labyrinth of loops



and knots and spirals while the slow fowl was painfully working

from one end of his straight line to the other.



[I think these remarks were received rather coolly. A temporary

boarder from the country, consisting of a somewhat more than



middle-aged female, with a parchmentforehead and a dry little




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