The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I eBook

William James Stillman
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 349 pages of information about The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I.

The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I eBook

William James Stillman
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 349 pages of information about The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I.
sublimation of Yankee wit as Lowell was of Yankee humor and human nature, and he made of witticism a study; polished, refined, and prepared his “bons mots”, and, at the best moment, led the conversation round to the point at which it was opportune to fire them off.  He had a large medical knowledge of human nature and intellectual pathology, but I could never realize that he was a physician; I should not have trusted myself to his doctoring.  As with Longfellow, his family affections were absorbing, and his love for his son, the present Mr. Justice Holmes, and his pride in him, were very pleasant to see, and they ran on the surface of his nature like his love for Boston; but I could never feel that his feeling for his outside friends was more than a mild, sunny glow of kindliness and vivid intellectual sympathy.  Of course I judge him from a difficult standard, that of the Cambridge circle, in which the personal relations were very warm, and especially comparing him with Lowell and the Nortons, with whom friendship was a religion.

Holmes and Lowell were the antitheses of the New England intellect, and this more in their personality than in their writing.  If Lowell could have acquired Holmes’s respect for his work, he would have left a larger image in the American Walhalla; but he never gave care to the perfection of what he wrote, for his mind so teemed with material that the time to polish and review never came.  Holmes, like a true artist, loved the limae labor.  He was satisfied, it seemed to me, to do the work of one lifetime and then rest, while Lowell looked forward to a succession of lifetimes all full of work, and one can hardly conceive him as ever resting or caring to stop work.  Lowell’s was a generous, widely sympathizing nature, from which radiated love for humanity, and the broadest and most catholic helpfulness for every one who asked for his help, with a special fund for his friends.  Holmes drew a line around him, within which he shone like a winter sun, and outside of which his care did not extend.  The one was best in what he did, the other in what he was.  Holmes always seemed to me cynical to the general world; Lowell to have embodied the antique sentiment, “I am a man, and hold nothing human as indifferent to me.”  Both were adored by those around them, and the adoration kindled Holmes to a warmer reflection to the adorers; Lowell felt it as the earth feels sunshine, which sinks into the fertile soil and bears its fruit in a richer harvest.

Excepting Holmes, Norton, and Longfellow, our company included most of what was most distinct in the world in which we lived, with some who were eminent only in their social relations, and who neither cared to be nor ever became of interest to the general world.  The care of arranging the details of the excursion was left to me, and I had, therefore, to precede the company to the Wilderness, and so missed what must have been to the others a very amusing experience. 

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The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.