ome with the oar in the open. He was an excellent professor of
anatomy, renowned for his insight and readiness in adapting means to
ends in the difficult science where his main work lay. Literature
was merely his hobby, and he was wit, critic, philosopher, historian,
poet, good in all. Many a brilliant man has come to wreck through
being too versatile. "_Ne sutor ultra crepidam_" is undoubtedly
a good motto for the ordinary man, but sticking to his last was
something to which Dr. Holmes could never bring himself, and in a
marvellous way his abounding genius proved masterful in a score of
varying fields. But I have no purpose here to discuss or account
for Dr. Holmes. He was a delightful phenomenon in the life of the
nineteenth century, with whom I chanced to be somewhat in touch,
and it is for me only to note a bit of the scintillation which I saw
brilliantly diffused. He was frequently under my gaze, a low-statured,
nimble figure, a vivacious, always cheerful face with a pronounced
chin, seemingly ever on the brink of some outburst of merriment. I
have heard him described as an "incarnate pun," but that hardly did
him justice; punster he was, but he had a wit of a far higher kind
and moods of grave dignity. His literary fame in those years was
only incipient, his better work was just then beginning. The world
appreciated him as a humourist of the lighter kind and capable, too,
of spirited verse like _Old Ironsides_; it was not understood
that he possessed profounder powers and could stir men to the depths.
I have a vivid image of him at a banquet of the Harvard Alumni
Association of which he was Second Vice-President, clothed in white
summer garb, standing in a chair that his little figure might be
in evidence in the crowd, merrily rattling off a string of amusing
verses.

"I thank you, Mr. President,
You kindly broke the ice,
Virtue should always go before,
I'm only _second vice_."

These were the opening lines and the audience responded with roars to
the inimitable fun-maker. In later years we learned to accord him a
higher appreciation. The _Autocrat_ and the _Professor at the
Breakfast Table_ have deep and acute thought as well as wit, and
what one of our poets has produced a grander or more solemn lyric than
the _Chambered Nautilus_? I dwell with emotion upon the funeral
of Lowell, in itself a touching occasion, because it so happened that
I saw on that day three great men for the last time, Justin Win