y every-day noises; but in the
case of Dr. Holmes, as with most people with healthy nerves, these
things only give a whimsical annoyance. The battles of Mrs. Carlyle with
Chanticleer, as she depicts them, have all the interest of a new Iliad,
and the days before Troy have not been studied with more breathless
interest than some of her encounters with the makers of the many noises
with which London is filled. Dr. Holmes, too, has had his battle with
the music-grinders, as who has not? Do we not all know "these crusaders
sent from some infernal clime"? and have we not all felt with him the
relief when "silence like a poultice comes to heal the blows of sound"?
Do we not all know the "Treadmill Song," also, in practical life? and
are we not intensely weary of it sometimes? Not many of us can say with
him, at the close of one of our "treadmill" days,--

"It's pretty sport; suppose we take
A round or two for fun."

or add,--

"If ever they should turn me out
When I have better grown,
Now hang me but I mean to have
A treadmill of my own."

But this has been the good Doctor's spirit through life. He has taken
his troubles lightly, and his labors have sat easily upon him. He has
laughed where many would have wept, and he has joked where some would
have been serious, if not savage. But that he has done serious work, and
that it has been work which has borne fruit, who can doubt? His
professional labors are perhaps least known of any of his various
activities, but they were many and varied, and not barren of good
results. As a single illustration, take his treatise upon "The
Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever," concerning which he has said:--

"When, by permission of Providence, I held up to the professional
public the damnable facts connected with the conveyance of poison
from one young mother's chamber to another's,--for doing which
humble office I desire to be thankful that I have lived, though
nothing else good should ever come of my life,--I had to bear the
sneers of those whose position I had assailed, and, as I believe,
have at last demolished, so that nothing but the ghosts of dead
women stir among the ruins."

He fought Homoeopathy in the liveliest manner for many years, and
latterly threw some hot shot into the ranks of the Allopathists
themselves, in an attack upon the excessive use of drugs in medical
practice. The Medical Society were considerabl