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Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

"The Professor at the Breakfast-Table"

I don't like it.
Iris has told me that the Scottish gift of second-sight runs in her
family, and that she is afraid she has it. Those who are so endowed look
upon a well man and see a shroud wrapt about him. According to the
degree to which it covers him, his death will be near or more remote. It
is an awful faculty; but science gives one too much like it. Luckily for
our friends, most of us who have the scientific second-sight school
ourselves not to betray our knowledge by word or look.
Day by day, as the Little Gentleman comes to the table, it seems to me
that the shadow of some approaching change falls darker and darker over
his countenance. Nature is struggling with something, and I am afraid
she is under in the wrestling-match. You do not care much, perhaps, for
my particular conjectures as to the nature of his difficulty. I should
say, however, from the sudden flushes to which he is subject, and certain
other marks which, as an expert, I know how to interpret, that his heart
was in trouble; but then he presses his hand to the right side, as if
there were the centre of his uneasiness.


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