Oliver Wendell Holmes, essayist, poet, scientist, and one of the most lovable men who have adorned the literature of the English tongue, was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, Aug. 29, 1809, of a New England family with a record in which he took great pride.  After studying medicine at Harvard, he went to Europe on a prolonged tour, and, returning, took his M.D., and became a popular professor of anatomy.  He had some repute as a graceful poet in his student days.  “Elsie Venner,” at first called “The Professor’s Story,” was published in 1861, and was the first sustained work of fiction that came from the pen of Oliver Wendell Holmes.  Illumined by admirable pictures of life and character in a typical New England town, the book itself is a remarkable study of heredity—­a study only relieved by the author’s kindly humour.  The unfortunate child, doomed before her birth to suffer from the fatal bite of a rattlesnake—­an incident unduly extravagant in some critics’ opinions—­and only throwing off the evil influence on her death-bed, is one of the most pathetic figures in all American literature.  It was not until seven years later that “Elsie Venner” was followed by another novel, “The Guardian Angel,” a story which is worked out on the same lines of thought as the former.  Holmes died on October 7, 1894.

I.—­The Eyes of Elsie Venner

Mr. Bernard Langdon, duly certificated, had accepted the invitation from the Board of Trustees of the Apollinean Female Institute, a school for the education of young ladies, situated in the nourishing town of Rockland.

Rockland is at the foot of a mountain, and a horrible feature of this mountain was the region known as Rattlesnake Ledge, which was still tenanted by those horrible reptiles in spite of many a foray by the townspeople.

That the brood was not extirpated there was a melancholy proof in the year 184—­, when a young married woman, detained at home by the state of her health, was bitten in the entry of her own house by a rattlesnake which had found its way down from the mountain.  Owing to the almost instant employment of powerful remedies, the bite did not prove immediately fatal, but she died within a few months of the time when she was bitten.

It was on a fine morning that Mr. Langdon made his appearance, as master for the English branches, in the great school-room of the Apollinean Institute.  The principal, Mr. Silas Peckham, carried him to the desk of the young lady assistant, Miss Darley by name, and introduced him to her.  The young lady assistant had to point out to the new master the whole routine of the classes, and Mr. Langdon had a great many questions to ask relating to his new duties.  The truth is, the general effect of the school-room, with its scores of young girls, was enough to confuse a young man like Mr. Langdon, and he may be pardoned for asking Miss Darley questions about his scholars as well as about their lessons.