The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pages From an Old Volume of Life
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

[The Physician and Poet, Not the Jurist, O. W. Holmes, Jr.]

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Title: Pages From an Old Volume of Life
A Collection Of Essays

Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Release Date: August 16, 2006 [EBook #2699]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAGES FROM AN OLD VOLUME OF LIFE ***

Produced by David Widger

PAGES FROM AN OLD VOLUME OF LIFE

A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS

By Oliver Wendell Holmes

CONTENTS:

BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER
MY HUNT AFTER "THE CAPTAIN"
THE INEVITABLE TRIAL
CINDERS FROM ASHES
THE PULPIT AND THE PEW

BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER.

(September, 1861.)

This is the new version of the Panem et Circenses of the Roman populace.
It is our ultimatum, as that was theirs. They must have something to
eat, and the circus-shows to look at. We must have something to eat, and
the papers to read.

Everything else we can give up. If we are rich, we can lay down our
carriages, stay away from Newport or Saratoga, and adjourn the trip
to Europe sine die. If we live in a small way, there are at least new
dresses and bonnets and every-day luxuries which we can dispense with.
If the young Zouave of the family looks smart in his new uniform,
its respectable head is content, though he himself grow seedy as a
caraway-umbel late in the season. He will cheerfully calm the perturbed
nap of his old beaver by patient brushing in place of buying a new one,
if only the Lieutenant's jaunty cap is what it should be. We all take
a pride in sharing the epidemic economy of the time. Only bread and the
newspaper we must have, whatever else we do without.

How this war is simplifying our mode of being! We live on our emotions,
as the sick man is said in the common speech to be nourished by his
fever. Our ordinary mental food has become distasteful, and what would
have been intellectual luxuries at other times, are now absolutely
repulsive.

All this change in our manner of existence implies that we have
experienced some very profound impression, which will sooner or later
betray