ion with the greatest
success. He was given the fifth hour in the day as his lecture period
because he was the only one able to hold the attention of students who
had already been listening to four long and difficult lectures. He
enlivened the dry subject with funny stories, droll comparisons and
interesting descriptions, teaching while he entertained.

In 1840 the young doctor had married Amelia Lee Jackson, daughter of a
highly respected Boston family. His wife was of so gentle and tactful a
nature that their home was always a well-ordered and pleasant place of
rest for the busy doctor, where unwelcome visitors and other annoyances
were not allowed to take his time. Yet he was never too much occupied to
find pleasure in what interested his wife and his three children.

During all these years when the profession of medicine had been of chief
concern to him, and even before he had begun his medical studies, he had
occasionally written poems that won a good deal of praise from friends,
but brought no widespread notice. From his very earliest years he could
feel very keenly and remember the melody of verse. "The low, soft chirp
of the little bird heard in the nest, while his mother is brooding over
him," he has written, "lives in his memory, I doubt not, through all the
noisy carols of the singing season; so I remember the little songs my
mother sang to me when I was old enough to run about, and had not
outgrown the rhymes of the nursery." He enjoyed writing poems for the
yearly meetings held by his college class long after their graduation,
and he made several contributions to the Harvard _Collegian_. Just once
in these early years had his fame traveled far, and that was the
occasion when he wrote _Old Ironsides_. The frigate _Constitution_ that
had served the country so well was to be done away with as a useless
vessel. Learning of this, Holmes penned in haste the stanzas that
stirred the nation's feelings and saved the old boat from destruction.

It came, then, as a surprise to the American people, when upon the
founding of the _Atlantic Monthly_ in 1857, the name of Holmes was
signed to the articles that probably were most popular of all published
in that magazine, to which the greatest literary men in the country were
contributing. _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_, was the title of
the delightful series of humorous essays in which the author seemed
really to be talking to his readers. A sort of story bound the