While it may be said that others might have done it as well, it is
doubtful if he could have been excelled in his own specialty. His ready
fund of wit often served to revive the drooping spirits of his audience,
and many of his jests have become a kind of legendary lore at the
Medical-School. Most of them, however, were of a too anatomical character
to be reproduced in print.
So the years rolled over Doctor Holmes's head; living quietly, working
steadily, and accumulating a store of proverbial wisdom by the way. In
June, 1840, he married Amelia Lee Jackson, of Boston, an alliance which
brought him into relationship with half the families on Beacon Street,
and which may have exercised a determining influence on the future course
of his life. Doctor Holmes was always liberally inclined, and ready to
welcome such social and political improvements as time might bring; but
he never joined any of the liberal or reformatory movements of his time.
Certain old friends of Emerson affirmed, when Holmes published his
biography of the Concord sage in 1885, that no one else was so much given
to jesting as Emerson in his younger days. This may have been true; but
it is also undeniable that Emerson himself had changed much during that
time, and that the socialistic Emerson of 1840 was largely a different
person from the author of "Society and Solitude.
Pages:
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140