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The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table-Part9_Oliver Wendell Holmes(1809-1894)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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reporter from its key-hole, calls upon Truth, majestic virgin! to

get off from her pedestal and drop her academic poses, and take a



festive garland and the vacant place on the MEDIUS LECTUS, - that

carnival-shower of questions and replies and comments, large axioms



bowled over the mahogany like bomb-shells from professional

mortars, and explosive wit dropping its trains of many-colored



fire, and the mischief-making rain of BON-BONS pelting everybody

that shows himself, - the picture of a truly intellectual banquet



is one which the old Divinities might well have attempted to

reproduce in their -



- "Oh, oh, oh!" cried the young fellow whom they call John, - "that

is from one of your lectures!"



I know it, I replied, - I concede it, I confess it, I proclaim it.

"The trail of the serpent is over them all!"



All lecturers, all professors, all schoolmasters, have ruts and

grooves in their minds into which their conversation is perpetually



sliding. Did you never, in riding through the woods of a still

June evening, suddenly feel that you had passed into a warm stratum



of air, and in a minute or two strike the chill layer of atmosphere

beyond? Did you never, in cleaving the green waters of the Back



Bay, - where the Provincial blue-noses are in the habit of beating

the "Metropolitan" boat-clubs, - find yourself in a tepid streak, a



narrow, local gulf-stream, a gratuitous warm-bath a little

underdone, through which your glistening shoulders soon flashed, to



bring you back to the cold realities of full-sea temperature? Just

so, in talking with any of the characters above referred to, one



not unfrequently finds a sudden change in the style of the

conversation. The lack-lustre eye rayless as a Beacon-Street door-



plate in August, all at once fills with light; the face flings

itself wide open like the church-portals when the bride and



bridegroom enter; the little man grows in stature before your eyes,

like the small prisoner with hair on end, beloved yet dreaded of



early childhood; you were talking with a dwarf and an imbecile, -

you have a giant and a trumpet-tongued angel before you! - Nothing



but a streak out of a fifty-dollar lecture. - As when, at some

unlooked-for moment, the mighty fountain-column springs into the



air before the astonished passer-by, - silver-footed, diamond-

crowned, rainbow-scarfed, - from the bosom of that fair sheet,



sacred to the hymns of quiet batrachians at home, and the epigrams

of a less amiable and less elevated order of REPTILIA in other



latitudes.

- Who was that person that was so abused some time since for saying



that in the conflict of two races our sympathies naturally go with

the higher? No matter who he was. Now look at what is going on in



India, - a white, superior "Caucasian" race, against a dark-

skinned, inferior, but still "Caucasian" race, - and where are



English and American sympathies? We can't stop to settle all the

doubtful questions; all we know is, that the brute nature is sure



to come out most strongly in the lower race, and it is the general

law that the human side of humanity should treat the brutal side as



it does the same nature in the inferior animals, - tame it or crush

it. The India mail brings stories of women and children outraged



and murdered; the royal stronghold is in the hands of the babe-

killers. England takes down the Map of the World, which she has



girdled with empire, and makes a correction thus: [DELPHI] DELE.

The civilized world says, Amen.



- Do not think, because I talk to you of many subjects briefly,

that I should not find it much lazier work to take each one of them



and dilute it down to an essay. Borrow some of my old college

themes and water my remarks to suit yourselves, as the Homeric



heroes did with their MELAS OINOS, - that black sweet, syrupy wine

(?) which they used to alloy with three parts or more of the



flowing stream. [Could it have been MELASSES, as Webster and his

provincials spell it, - or MOLOSSA'S, as dear old smattering,



chattering, would-be-College-President, Cotton Mather, has it in

the "Magnalia"? Ponder thereon, ye small antiquaries who make






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