ts into the swift and gurgling waters
beneath?--that they take counsel of the grim friend who has
but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable and the
restless machine is shivered as a vase that is dashed upon a
marble floor? Under that building which we pass every day
there are strong dungeons, where neither hook, nor bar, nor
bed-cord, nor drinking vessel from which a sharp fragment
may be shattered, shall by any chance be seen. There is
nothing for it, when the brain is on fire with the whirling
of its wheels, but to spring against the stone wall and
silence them with one crash. Ah, they remembered that,--the
kind city fathers,--and the walls are nicely padded, so that
one can take such exercise as he likes without damaging
himself on the very plain and serviceable upholstery. If
anybody would only contrive some kind of a lever that one
could thrust in among the works of this horrid automaton and
check them, or alter their rate of going, what would the
world give for the discovery?"

"The Autocrat" was followed by "The Professor at the Breakfast
Table,"--a book in every way equal to the first one, though, to be
sure, there are critics who pretend to see diminished power in the
author's pen. It is, however, full of the same gentle humor and keen
analyses of the follies and foibles of human kind. It is a trifle
graver, though some of the characters belonging to "The Autocrat" come
to the front again. It is in this book that we find that lovely story
of Iris,--a masterpiece in itself and one of the sweetest things that
has come to us for a hundred years, rivalling to a degree the
delicious manner and style of Goldsmith and Lamb. In 1873 the last of
the series appeared, and "The Poet" came upon the scene to gladden the
breakfasters. Every chapter sparkles with originality. "I have," says
Dr. Holmes, "unburdened myself in this book, and in some other pages,
of what I was born to say. Many things that I have said in my riper
days have been aching in my soul since I was a mere child. I say
aching, because they conflicted with many of my inherited beliefs, or
rather traditions. I did not know then that two strains of blood were
striving in me for the mastery--two! twenty, perhaps, twenty thousand,
for aught I know--but represented to me by two--paternal and maternal.
But I do know this: I have struck a good many chords, first and last,
in