The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
by Oliver Wendell Holmes (#1 in our series by Oliver Wendell Holmes)
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Title: The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes
Release Date: December, 1996 [EBook #751] [This file was first posted on December 11,
1996] [Most recently updated: September 8, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, AUTOCRAT OF THE
BREAKFAST TABLE ***

Transcribed from the 1873 James R. Osgood and Company edition by David Price, email
[email protected]

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE

THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The interruption referred to in the first sentence of the first of these papers was just a
quarter of a century in duration.
Two articles entitled "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" will be found in the "New
England Magazine," formerly published in Boston by J. T. and E. Buckingham. The date
of the first of these articles is November 1831, and that of the second February 1832.
When "The Atlantic Monthly" was begun, twenty-five years afterwards, and the author
was asked to write for it, the recollection of these crude products of his uncombed literary
boyhood suggested the thought that it would be a curious experiment to shake the same
bough again, and see if the ripe fruit were better or worse than the early windfalls.
So began this series of papers, which naturally brings those earlier attempts to my own
notice and that of some few friends who were idle enough to read them at the time of
their publication. The man is father to the boy that was, and I am my own son, as it seems
to me, in those papers of the New England Magazine. If I find it hard to pardon the boy's
faults, others would find it harder. They will not, therefore, be reprinted here, nor as I
hope, anywhere.
But a sentence or two from them will perhaps bear reproducing, and with these I trust the
gentle reader, if that kind being still breathes, will be contented.
- "It is a capital plan to carry a tablet with you, and, when you find yourself felicitous,
take notes of your own conversation." -
- "When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my Dictionary. The poetry of words is
quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively, but
their fhape and luftre have been given by the attrition of ages. Bring me the fineft fimile
from the whole range of imaginative writing, and I will fhow you a fingle word which
conveys a more profound, a more accurate, and a more eloquent analogy." -
- "Once on a time, a notion was ftarted, that if all the people in the world would fhout at
once, it might be heard in the moon. So the projectors agreed it fhould be done in juft ten
years. Some thousand fhip-loads of chronometers were diftributed to the selectmen and
other great folks of all the different nations. For a year beforehand, nothing else was
talked about but the awful noise that was to be made on the great occafion. When the
time came, everybody had their ears so wide open, to hear the universal ejaculation of
BOO,--the word agreed upon,--that nobody spoke except a deaf man in one of the Fejee
Islands, and a woman in Pekin, so that the world was never so ftill fince the creation." -
There was nothing better than these things and there was not a little that was much worse.
A young fellow of two or three and twenty has as good a right to spoil a magazine-full of
essays in learning how to write, as an oculist like Wenzel had to spoil his hat-full of eyes
in learning how to operate for cataract, or an ELEGANT like Brummel to point to an