Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor, Volume II Read online

  OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

  DISLIKES

  I want it to be understood that I consider that a certain number ofpersons are at liberty to dislike me peremptorily, without showingcause, and that they give no offense whatever in so doing.

  If I did not cheerfully acquiesce in this sentiment toward myselfon the part of others, I should not feel at liberty to indulge myown aversions. I try to cultivate a Christian feeling to all myfellow-creatures, but inasmuch as I must also respect truth andhonesty, I confess to myself a certain number of inalienable dislikesand prejudices, some of which may possibly be shared by others. Someof these are purely instinctive; for others I can assign a reason. Ourlikes and dislikes play so important a part in the order of things thatit is well to see on what they are founded.

  There are persons I meet occasionally who are too intelligent by halffor my liking. They know my thoughts beforehand, and tell me what Iwas going to say. Of course they are masters of all my knowledge, anda good deal besides; have read all the books I have read, and in latereditions; have had all the experiences I have been through,--and more,too. In my private opinion, every mother's son of them will lie at anytime rather than confess ignorance.

  I have a kind of dread, rather than hatred, of persons with a largeexcess of vitality--great feeders, great laughers, great story-tellers,who come sweeping over their company with a huge tidal wave of animalspirits and boisterous merriment. I have pretty good spirits myself,and enjoy a little mild pleasantry, but I am oppressed and extinguishedby these great lusty, noisy creatures, and feel as if I were a mute ata funeral when they get into full blast.

  I cannot get along much better with those drooping, languid people,whose vitality falls short as much as that of the others is in excess.I have not life enough for two; I wish I had. It is not very enliveningto meet a fellow-creature whose expression and accents say, "You arethe hair that breaks the camel's back of my endurance; you are the lastdrop that makes my cup of woe run over"; persons whose heads drop onone side like those of toothless infants; whose voices recall the tonesin which our old snuffling choir used to wail out the verse of

  "Life is the time to serve the Lord."

  There is another style which does not captivate me. I recognize anattempt at the _grand manner_ now and then, in persons who are wellenough in their way, but of no particular importance, socially orotherwise. Some family tradition of wealth or distinction is apt to beat the bottom of it, and it survives all the advantages that used toset it off: I like family pride as well as my neighbors, and respectthe high-born fellow-citizen whose progenitors have not worked intheir shirt-sleeves for the last two generations full as much as Iought to. But _grandpere oblige_; a person with a known grandfather istoo distinguished to find it necessary to put on airs. The few RoyalPrinces I have happened to know were very easy people to get alongwith, and had not half the social knee-action I have often seen in thecollapsed dowagers who lifted their eyebrows at me in my earlier years.

  My heart does not warm as it should do toward the persons, notintimates, who are always _too_ glad to see me when we meet byaccident, and discover all at once that they have a vast deal tounbosom themselves to me.

  There is one blameless person whom I cannot love and have no excusefor hating. It is the innocent fellow-creature, otherwise inoffensiveto me, whom I find I have involuntarily joined on turning a corner.I suppose the Mississippi, which was flowing quietly along, mindingits own business, hates the Missouri for coming into it all at oncewith its muddy stream. I suppose the Missouri in like manner hates theMississippi for diluting with its limpid but insipid current the richreminiscences of the varied soils through which its own stream haswandered. I will not compare myself to the clear or the turbid current,but I will own that my heart sinks when I find all of a sudden I am infor a corner confluence, and I cease loving my neighbor as myself untilI can get away from him.--_The Poet at the Breakfast Table._

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  An Illinois boy was asked to write an essay on Masonry, and here iswhat he wrote: "King Solomon was a man who lived so many years in thecountry that he was the whole push. He was an awfully wise man, andone day two women came to him, each holding to the leg of a baby andnearly pulling it in two and each claiming it. And King Solomon wasn'tfeeling right good and he said: "Why couldn't the brat have been twinsand stopped this bother?" And then he called for his machete and wasgoing to Weylerize the poor innocent little baby, and give each womana piece of it, when the real mother of the baby said: 'Stop, Solomon;stay thy hand. Let the old hag have it. If I can't have a whole baby Iwon't have any.' Then Solomon told her to take the baby and go home andwash its face, for he knew it was hers. He told the other woman to gochase herself. King Solomon built Solomon's Temple and was the fatherof Masons. He had seven hundred wives and three hundred lady friends,and that's why there are so many Masons in the world. My papa says KingSolomon was a warm member and I think he was hot stuff myself. That isall I know about King Solomon."