

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pages From an Old Volume of Life
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

[The Physician and Poet, Not the Jurist, O. W. Holmes, Jr.]

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Title: Pages From an Old Volume of Life
A Collection Of Essays

Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Release Date: August 16, 2006 [EBook #2699]
Last Updated: October 28, 2012

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAGES FROM AN OLD VOLUME OF LIFE ***

Produced by David Widger

PAGES FROM AN OLD VOLUME OF LIFE

A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS

By Oliver Wendell Holmes

CONTENTS

BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER.

MY HUNT AFTER "THE CAPTAIN."

THE INEVITABLE TRIAL

CINDERS FROM THE ASHES.

THE PULPIT AND THE PEW.

BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER.

(September, 1861.)

This is the new version of the Panem et Circenses of the Roman populace. It is our ultimatum, as that was theirs. They must have something to eat, and the circus-shows to look at. We must have something to eat, and the papers to read.

Everything else we can give up. If we are rich, we can lay down our carriages, stay away from Newport or Saratoga, and adjourn the trip to Europe sine die. If we live in a small way, there are at least new dresses and bonnets and every-day luxuries which we can dispense with. If the young Zouave of the family looks smart in his new uniform, its respectable head is content, though he himself grow seedy as a caraway-umbel late in the season. He will cheerfully calm the perturbed nap of his old beaver by patient brushing in place of buying a new one, if only the Lieutenant's jaunty cap is what it should be. We all take a pride in sharing the epidemic economy of the time. Only bread and the newspaper we must have, whatever else we do without.

How this war is simplifying our mode of being! We live on our emotions, as the sick man is said in the common speech to be nourished by his fever. Our ordinary mental food has become distasteful, and what would have been intellectual luxuries at other times, are now absolutely repulsive.

All this change in our manner of existence implies that we have experienced some very profound impression, which will sooner or later betray itself in permanent effects on the minds and bodies of many among us. We cannot forget Corvisart's observation of the f