d set the
country at war; and it was only a prophet-poet who saw that there was
a chance that men might forge their ploughshares into swords again.
But you see from the poem that Holmes was such a prophet-poet, and
now, forty-four years after, it was a pleasure to hear him read these
lines.

[Illustration: DOROTHY Q. FROM THE PORTRAIT IN DOCTOR HOLMES'S STUDY.]

I asked him of his reminiscences of Emerson's famous Phi Beta Kappa
oration at Cambridge, which he has described, as so many others have,
as the era of independence in American literature. We both talked of
the day, which we remembered, and of the Phi Beta dinner which
followed it, when Mr. Everett presided, and bore touching tribute to
Charles Emerson, who had just died. Holmes said: "You cannot make the
people of this generation understand the effect of Everett's oratory.
I have never felt the fascination of speech as I did in hearing him.
Did it ever occur to you,--did I say to you the other day,--that when
a man has such a voice as he had, our slight nasal resonance is an
advantage and not a disadvantage?"

I was fresher than he from his own book on Emerson, and remembered
that he had said there somewhat the same thing. His words are: "It is
with delight that one who remembers Everett in his robes of rhetorical
splendor; who recalls his full-blown, high-colored, double-flowered
periods; the rich, resonant, grave, far-reaching music of his speech,
with just enough of nasal vibration to give the vocal sounding-board
its proper value in the harmonies of utterance,--it is with delight
that such a one recalls the glowing words of Emerson whenever he
refers to Edward Everett. It is enough if he himself caught enthusiasm
from those eloquent lips. But many a listener has had his youthful
enthusiasm fired by that great master of academic oratory." I knew,
when I read this, that Holmes referred to himself as the "youthful
listener," and was glad that within twenty-four hours he should say so
to me.

[Illustration: DOROTHY Q'S HOUSE IN QUINCY, MASS.[1]]

So we fell to talking of his own Phi Beta poem. A good Phi Beta poem
is an impossibility; but it is the business of genius to work the
miracles, and Holmes's is one of the few successful Phi Beta poems in
the dreary catalogue of more than a century. The custom of having
"_the_ poem," as people used to say, as if it were always the same, is
now almost abandoned.

[Illustration: DOCTOR O. W. HOLMES DELIVERING HIS