Abiel had gone to the ceremony in spite of himself lie must confess the man had something about him that inspired respect. The University had given him a degree over the protest of half the Corporation. It was a pity Oliver had missed Jackson’s visit to Cambridge in June of ‘3d. Bowen her study of that splendid man and servant of his country. And the Atlantic and its readers are privileged to share with Mrs. 41 think it is required of a man that he should share the action and passion of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.’ ” Certainly Holmes shared the action and passion of his country on the soldier’s field as well as on the judge’s bench.
4 Life is action and passion,* Justice Holmes said. I wanted to throw myself into the long study of just such a man.
OLYMPUS MY PRIVATE SECRETARY 3D PROFESSIONAL
She says, “ Why did I, being neither lawyer nor professional philosopher, undertake to write a hook about Justice Holmes? I think because these are times when it is good to know about Americans who believed in their country, who worked for their country with all their might, and who had a good time doing it. For more than three years she has been at work on her biography of Justice Holmes. Power was dangerous there was rumor he might accept a third term and the Whigs were busy organizing for the 183G election.ĬATHERINE DRINKER BOWEN, essayist and the biographer of Tchaikovsky and the Rubinsteins, grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Jackson had been too long in llic White House. But the country at large seemed in the grip of a feverish excitement it was like a body that had grown too fast for its heart. His own church, Abiel said, was prospering. But it was the icebox and bathtub they really talked about. Everyone in town went calling on the Eliots, pretending they came to see the fine English furniture and European paintings. The house had a bathtub too, with running water. Sam Eliot’s new house on Beacon Street actually had a box constructed to hold ice it kept the meat in warm weather. Tee! Loaded from the Long Wharf in the heat of August, Abiel said wonderingiy. One of the strangest things of all had been the sending of a shipload of ice to Calcutta. Had Oliver heard of McCormick’s new machine, drawn by horses, which reaped a field in a third the time it used to take? The screw propeller and iron were now used in ships. Extraordinary mechanical inventions were appearing in factories and on farms news of them tempted men into wild financial speculation. 9Ī BIEL the annalist was eager with his news. To know Judge Holmes at eighty - courtly, witty, scholarly, kind - it is well to have acquaintance with hi.’ Calvinist grandfather, Abiel Holmes, with his handsome, worldly great-grandfather, Judge Wendell, with his mother from whom he inherited, he said, “a trace of melancholy.’ Above all, it is well to know his fat tier, the sturdv \ankee who wrote had verse and good books - professor of anatomy, talkative five-foot-three Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table who lived on applause ami said so with engaging frankness. His roots reached deep into American earth it was the strength of these roots that permitted so splendid a flowering. This was a man whose presence carried tradition over his shoulder one catches sight of his ancestors. The narrative cannot begin with the flat date of his birth -1841. The story of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is the story of his country.
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