, whom I have
not seen for these twenty-five years, generously counted, was a
self-willed youth, always too ready to utter his unchastised
fancies. He, like too many American young people, got the spur
when he should have had the rein. He therefore helped to fill the
market with that unripe fruit which his father says in one of these
papers abounds in the marts of his native country. All these
by-gone shortcomings he would hope are forgiven, did he not feel sure
that very few of his readers know anything about them. In taking
the old name for the new papers, he felt bound to say that he had
uttered unwise things under that title, and if it shall appear that
his unwisdom has not diminished by at least half while his years
have doubled, he promises not to repeat the experiment if he should
live to double them again and become his own grandfather.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
BOSTON. Nov. 1st 1858.

CHAPTER I

I was just going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the
many ways of classifying minds is under the heads of arithmetical
and algebraical intellects. All economical and practical wisdom is
an extension or variation of the following arithmetical formula:
2+2=4. Every philosophical proposition has the more general
character of the expression a+b=c. We are mere operatives,
empirics, and egotists, until we learn to think in letters instead
of figures.

They all stared. There is a divinity student lately come among us
to whom I commonly address remarks like the above, allowing him to
take a certain share in the conversation, so far as assent or
pertinent questions are involved. He abused his liberty on this
occasion by presuming to say that Leibnitz had the same
observation.--No, sir, I replied, he has not. But he said a mighty
good thing about mathematics, that sounds something like it, and
you found it, NOT IN THE ORIGINAL, but quoted by Dr. Thomas Reid.
I will tell the company what he did say, one of these days.

--If I belong to a Society of Mutual Admiration?--I blush to say
that I do not at this present moment. I once did, however. It was
the first association to which I ever heard the term applied; a
body of scientific young men in a great foreign city who admired
their teacher, and to some extent each other. Many of them
deserved it; they have become famous since. It amuses me to hear
the talk of one of those beings described by Thackeray--

"Letters four do form his name"--