Look out! A hot lecture-
room, a cold ride, the best-chamber sheets like slices of cucumber,
and one gives one's friends the trouble of writing an obituary, when
he might just as well have lived and written theirs. We had a grand
club last Saturday. Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, Adams, Tom Appleton
(just home a few weeks ago), and Norton (who has been sick a good
while) were there, and lots of others, and Lord Hought on as a guest.
You ought to have been there; it was the best club for a long time."
The following note, written in 1873, shows how closely Dr. Holmes kept
the growth of the club in mind, and his eagerness to bring into it the
distinguished intellectual life of Boston.
296 BEACON STREET, February 21, 1873.
My dear Mr. Fields,--I doubt whether I shall feel well enough to go to
the club to-morrow, as I am somewhat feverish and sore-throaty to-day,
though I must crawl out to my lecture. Mr. Parkman and Professor
Wolcott Gibbs are to be voted for, you know.
President Eliot, who nominated Professor Gibbs, will, I suppose, urge
his claims if he thinks it necessary, or see that some one does it.
As for Mr. Francis Parkman, proposed by myself, I suppose his
reputation is too solidly fixed as a scholar and a writer to need any
words from me or others of his friends who may be present.
He has been a great sufferer from infirmities which do not prevent him
from being very good company, and which I have thought the good
company he would find at the Saturday Club would perhaps enable him to
forget for a while more readily.
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