SEARCH
0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Prev | Current Page 174 | Next

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

"The Professor at the Breakfast-Table"


And now, my young friend, let-us shake hands and stop our discussion,
which we will not make a quarrel. I trust you know, or will learn, a
great many things in your profession which we common scholars do not
know; but mark this: when the common people of New England stop talking
politics and theology, it will be because they have got an Emperor to
teach them the one, and a Pope to teach them the other!
That was the end of my long conference with the divinity-student. The
next morning we got talking a little on the same subject, very
good-naturedly, as people return to a matter they have talked out.
You must look to yourself,--said the divinity-student,--if your
democratic notions get into print. You will be fired into from all
quarters.
If it were only a bullet, with the marksman's name on it!--I said.--I
can't stop to pick out the peep-shot of the anonymous scribblers.
Right, Sir! right!--said the Little Gentleman. The scamps! I know the
fellows. They can't give fifty cents to one of the Antipodes, but they
must have it jingled along through everybody's palms all the way, till it
reaches him,--and forty cents of it gets spilt, like the water out of the
fire-buckets passed along a "lane" at a fire;--but when it comes to
anonymous defamation, putting lies into people's mouths, and then
advertising those people through the country as the authors of them,--oh,
then it is that they let not their left hand know what their right hand
doeth!
I don't like Ehud's style of doing business, Sir.


Pages:
162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186