CHAPTER I

THE TRUE HUMORIST

Oliver Wendell Holmes was the humorist among American poets, always with a smile around his mouth and a twinkle in his eye, and a kindly little half-hidden joke in everything he had to say. He was a humorist of the genuine good-humored sort, the “genial Autocrat,” the kindly and obliging friend (for did he not write a poem on every possible occasion at the request of all sorts of people?) How kind, how pathetic, yet how amusing, are the sweet, quaint lines of “The Last Leaf”:

My grandmamma has said— Poor old lady, she is dead Long ago— That he had a Roman nose, And his cheek was like a rose In the snow;

But now his nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff; And a crook is in his back, And a melancholy crack In his laugh.

I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer!

And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling.

Dear Doctor Holmes! He did indeed live to be the last leaf upon the tree; but to the very end he went scattering his humorous and good-humored words among his friends wherever he was, making people happier as well as wiser, more light-hearted as well as more thoughtful, until they turned from crying to laughing. “The Last Leaf” is a little sad, notwithstanding its lightness and fun. But there is no sadness in this, the funniest poem that Holmes ever wrote:

THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS

I wrote some lines once on a time In wondrous merry mood, And thought, as usual, men would say They were exceeding good.

They were so queer, so very queer, I laughed as I would die; Albeit in the general way, A sober man am I.

I called my servant, and he came; How kind, it was of him To mind a slender man like me, He of the mighty limb!

“These to the printer,” I exclaimed, And, in my humorous way, I added (as a trifling jest), “There’ll be the devil to pay.”

He took the paper, and I watched, And saw him peep within; At the first line he read, his face Was all upon the grin.

He read the next, the grin grew broad, And shot from ear to ear; He read the third, a chuckling noise I now began to hear.

The fourth, he broke into a roar; The fifth, his waistband split; The sixth, he burst five buttons off, And tumbled in a fit.

Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye, I watched that wretched man; And since, I never dare to write As funny as I can.