My laughing and winking young friend undertook to procure and arrange the flowers for the table, and did it with immense zeal.  I never saw him look happier than when he came in, his hat saucily on one side, and a cheroot in his mouth, with a huge bunch of tea-roses, which he said were for “Madam.”

One of the last things that came was an old square box, smelling of camphor, tied and sealed.  It bore, in faded ink, the marks, “Calcutta, 1805.”  On opening it, we found a white Cashmere shawl with a very brief note from the dear old gentleman opposite, saying that he had kept this some years, thinking he might want it, and many more, not knowing what to do with it,—­that he had never seen it unfolded since he was a young supercargo,—­and now, if she would spread it on her shoulders, it would make him feel young to look at it.

Poor Bridget, or Biddy, our red-armed maid of all work!  What must she do but buy a small copper breast-pin and put it under “Schoolma’am’s” plate that morning, at breakfast?  And Schoolma’am would wear it,—­though I made her cover it, as well as I could, with a tea-rose.

It was my last breakfast as a boarder, and I could not leave them in utter silence.

Good-by,—­I said,—­my dear friends, one and all of you!  I have been long with you, and I find it hard parting.  I have to thank you for a thousand courtesies, and above all for the patience and indulgence with which you have listened to me when I have tried to instruct or amuse you.  My friend the Professor (who, as well as my friend the Poet, is unavoidably absent on this interesting occasion) has given me reason to suppose that he would occupy my empty chair about the first of January next.  If he comes among you, be kind to him, as you have been to me.  May the Lord bless you all!—­And we shook hands all round the table.

Half an hour afterwards the breakfast things and the cloth were gone.  I looked up and down the length of the bare boards over which I had so often uttered my sentiments and experiences—­and —­Yes, I am a man, like another.

All sadness vanished, as, in the midst of these old friends of mine, whom you know, and others a little more up in the world, perhaps, to whom I have not introduced you, I took the schoolmistress before the altar from the hands of the old gentleman who used to sit opposite, and who would insist on giving her away.

And now we two are walking the long path in peace together.  The “schoolmistress” finds her skill in teaching called for again, without going abroad to seek little scholars.  Those visions of mine have all come true.

I hope you all love me none the less for anything I have told you.  Farewell!

THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE

by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION.