1 About the time when these papers [The Autocrat] were published, the Saturday Club was founded, or, rather, found itself in existence, without any organization, almost without parentage. It was natural enough that such men as Emerson, Longfellow, Agassiz, Peirce, with Hawthorne, Motley, Sumner, when within reach, and others who would be good company for them, should meet and dine together once in a while, as they did, in point of fact, every month, and as some who are still living, with other and newer members, still meet and dine. If some of them had not admired each other they would have been exceptions in the world of letters and science. [Holmes here alludes to the fact that the profane sometimes called this club The Mutual Admiration Society.' It is related that when a book by one of its members was reviewed by another member in the North American Review,' some outsider wrote below the heading of the article, 'Insured in the Mutual.'] The club deserves being remembered for having no constitution or by-laws, for making no speeches, reading no papers, observing no ceremonies, coming and going at will without remark, and acting out, though it did not proclaim the motto, Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?' (HOLMES.) Outside the sacred penetralia which were shut within his own front door, nothing else in Dr. Holmes's life gave him so much pleasure as did this Club. He loved it; he hugged the thought of it. When he was writing to Lowell and Motley in Europe, he seemed to think that merely to name The Club' was enough to give a genial flavor to his page. He would tell who were present at the latest meeting, and where they sat. He would recur to those who used to come, and mention their habitual seats, matters which his correspondents already knew perfectly well. But the names were sweet things in his mouth; and, in fact, he was doing one of the deepest acts of intimacy in thus touching the chord of the dearest reminiscence which their memories held in common. By this he seemed sure that he would make his letter welcome, however little else of news or interest it might convey. In the later days there came to be something pathetic about his attachment to that which still had existence and yet for him was almost all a memory. In 1883 he wrote to Lowell: 'I go to the Saturday Club quite regularly, but the company is more of ghosts than of flesh and blood for me. carry a stranger there now and then, introduce him to the members who happen to be there, and then say: There at that end used to sit Agassiz; here at this end Longfellow; Emerson used to be there, and Lowell often next him; on such an occasion Hawthorne was with us, at another time Motley, and Sumner, and smaller constellations, nebulæ if you will, but luminous more or less in the provincial firmament.' (Morse's Life of Holmes, vol. i, pp. 243, 244.) I Cf. Lowell's Agassiz,' and Holmes's Life of Emerson. 90 That lusty laugh the Puritan forgot, What ear has heard it and remembers not? How often, halting at some wide crevasse Amid the windings of his Alpine pass, High up the cliffs, the climbing mountaineer, Listening the far-off avalanche to hear, Silent, and leaning on his steel-shod staff, Has heard that cheery voice, that ringing laugh, From the rude cabin whose nomadic walls Creep with the moving glacier as it crawls! How does vast Nature lead her living train In ordered sequence through that spacious brain, 100 List for he speaks! As when a king would choose The jewels for his bride, he might refuse This diamond for its flaw, find that less bright Than those, its fellows, and a pearl less white Than fits her snowy neck, and yet at last, 141 air is song, Does he, the Buddha of the West, belong? He seems a winged Franklin, sweetly wise, Born to unlock the secrets of the skies; And which the nobler calling, - if 't is fair Terrestrial with celestial to compare, To guide the storm-cloud's elemental flame, Or walk the chambers whence the lightning came, Amidst the sources of its subtile fire, And steal their effluence for his lips and lyre? 150 If lost at times in vague aerial flights, None treads with firmer footstep when he lights; A soaring nature, ballasted with sense, |