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Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

"The Professor at the Breakfast-Table"

The excitement of pleading his cause before his
self-elected spiritual adviser,--the emotion which overcame him, when the
young girl obeyed the sudden impulse of her feelings and pressed her lips
to his cheek,--the thoughts that mastered him while the divinity-student
poured out his soul for him in prayer, might well hurry on the inevitable
moment. When the divinity-student had uttered his last petition,
commending him to the Father through his Son's intercession, he turned to
look upon him before leaving his chamber. His face was changed.--There
is a language of the human countenance which we all understand without an
interpreter, though the lineaments belong to the rudest savage that ever
stammered in an unknown barbaric dialect. By the stillness of the
sharpened features, by the blankness of the tearless eyes, by the
fixedness of the smileless mouth, by the deadening tints, by the
contracted brow, by the dilating nostril, we know that the soul is soon
to leave its mortal tenement, and is already closing up its windows and
putting out its fires.


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