And soon that toil shall end;
Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

_By_ GRACE E. SELLON

Besides giving to the United States her great president, Abraham
Lincoln, the year 1809 also bestowed upon us one of the most gifted and
warmly esteemed of American authors, Oliver Wendell Holmes. It was in a
pleasant home in Cambridge, not far from the great university in which
he was to serve ably for so many years, that Holmes was born. His mother
was a bright and sociable little woman, well liked for her lively ways
and quick sympathy, and his father, though a grave and scholarly man,
was of a kindly nature. Both parents were descended from families that
were looked upon as among the best in New England, and this became a
matter of no little pride to their son.

The old colonial house where his boyhood and youth were spent contained
a well-chosen library. Here, he has written, "he bumped about among
books from the time when he was hardly taller than one of his father's
or grandfather's folios." Yet he did not read many of these volumes
thoroughly. He liked to "read _in_ books rather than _through_ them" and
would hunt out a paragraph here and there that especially pleased and
satisfied him. The collections of sermons were always passed by, the
lives of pious children met with the same neglect, and even _The
Pilgrim's Progress_ seemed to picture the world as such a cruel,
gloomy place that this great book too was shunned.

[Illustration: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
1809-1894]

The truth was that, being a lively and cheerful boy, he rebelled against
the dark and fear-awakening religion preached by his father, a
Congregational minister, discussed by visiting pastors and taught in
many of the books that he avoided in the library. He seemed to know by
instinct which of the clergymen who called at his father's home were
kindly and friendly, and which of them looked on children as "a set of
little fallen wretches," and for the forlorn looks and solemn way