ways he showed himself remarkably
active. In fact, he had not become feeble in mind or body when death
quietly came to him, October 7th, 1894.

Though the brightness of his wit makes Holmes one of the most
entertaining of writers it is his deep kindness that gives to what he
has written an even greater power and attractiveness. More than all
else, he tried both in his writings and in his everyday living to drive
away the shadows of all kinds of suffering, and to share with others the
cheerfulness of his own genial nature.

"Long be it ere the table shall be set
For the last breakfast of the Autocrat,
And love repeat with smiles and tears thereat
His own sweet songs that time shall not forget."[405-1]

FOOTNOTES:

[405-1] Whittier's ode on the eightieth birthday of Holmes.

THE CUBES OF TRUTH

_By_ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Listen, Benjamin Franklin.[406-1] This is for you, and such others of
tender age as you may tell it to.

When we are as yet small children, long before the time when those two
grown ladies offer us the choice of Hercules,[406-2] there comes up to
us a youthful angel, holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and in
his left spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless ivory, and on
each is written in letters of gold--TRUTH. The spheres are veined and
streaked and spotted beneath, with a dark crimson flush above where the
light falls on them and in a certain aspect you can make out upon every
one of them the three letters, L, I, E.

The child to whom they are offered very probably clutches at both. The
spheres are the most convenient things in the world; they roll with the
least possible impulse just where the child would have them. The cubes
will not roll at all; they have a great talent for standing still, and
always keep right side up. But very soon the young philosopher finds
that things which roll so easily are very apt to roll into the wrong
corner, and to get out of his way when he most wants them, while he
always knows where to find the others, which stay where they are left.

Thus he learns--thus we learn--to drop the streaked and speckled globes
of falsehood, and to hold fast the white angular blocks of truth. But
then comes Timidity, and after her Good-nature, and last of all
Polite-behaviour, all insisting that truth must _roll_, or nobody can do
anything with it; and so the first with her coarse rasp, and the second
with her broad file, and the thi