Nothing would satisfy him but to go to the attic, which he declared,
if it were his, he should make his study.
Shortly after, the doctor took possession of his new house, but
characteristically made no picturesque study in which to live. He
passed many long days and evenings, even in summer, in a lower room
opening on the street, which wore the air of a physician's office, and
solaced his love for the picturesque by an occasional afternoon at his
early home in Cambridge. Of a visit to this latter house I find the
following description in my note-book: "Drove out in the afternoon and
overtook Professor Holmes" (he liked to be called "Professor" then),
"with his wife and son, who were all on their way to his old homestead
in Cambridge. They asked us to go there with them, as it was only a
few steps from where we were. The professor went to the small side
door, and knocked with a fine brass knocker which had just been
presented to him from the old Hancock House. It was delightful to see
his pleasure in everything about the old house. There hung a portrait
of his father, Abiel Holmes, at the age of thirty-one,--a beautiful
face it was; there also a picture of the reverend doctor's first wife,
fair, and perhaps a trifle coquettish, or what the professor called 'a
little romantic;' the old chairs from France were still there; but no
modern knickknacks interfered with the old-fashioned, quiet effect of
the whole.
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