I
have given no idea of the high reasoning of vital things which I must
often have heard at that table, and that I have forgotten it is no proof
that I did not hear it. The memory will not be ruled as to what it shall
bind and what it shall loose, and I should entreat mine in vain for
record of those meetings other than what I have given. Perhaps it would
be well, in the interest of some popular conceptions of what the social
intercourse of great wits must be, for me to invent some ennobling and
elevating passages of conversation at Longfellow's; perhaps I ought to do
it for the sake of my own repute as a serious and adequate witness. But
I am rather helpless in the matter; I must set down what I remember, and
surely if I can remember no phrase from Holmes that a reader could live
or die by, it is something to recall how, when a certain potent cheese
was passing, he leaned over to gaze at it, and asked: "Does it kick? Does
it kick?" No strain of high poetic thinking remains to me from Lowell,
but he made me laugh unforgettably with his passive adventure one night
going home late, when a man suddenly leaped from the top of a high fence
upon the sidewalk at his feet, and after giving him the worst fright of
his life, disappeared peaceably into the darkness. To be sure, there was
one most memorable supper, when he read the "Bigelow Paper" he had
finished that day, and enriched the meaning of his verse with the beauty
of his voice.
Pages:
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29