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The poet at the breakfast-table

  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

5.00

1 ratings

In this, the third series of Breakfast-Table conversations, a slight dramatic background shows off a few talkers and writers, aided by certain silent supernumeraries. The machinery is much like that of the two preceding series. Some of the characters must seem like old acquaintances to those who have read the former papers. As I read these over for the first time for a number of years, I notice one character; presenting a class of beings who have greatly multiplied during the interval which separates the earlier and later Breakfast-Table papers,--I mean the scientific specialists. The entomologist, who confines himself rigidly to the study of the coleoptera, is intended to typify this class. The subdivision of labor, which, as we used to be told, required fourteen different workmen to make a single pin, has reached all branches of knowledge. We find new terms in all the Professions, implying that special provinces have been marked off, each having its own school of students. In theology we have many curious subdivisions; among the rest eschatology, that is to say, the geography, geology, etc., of the "undiscovered country;" in medicine, if the surgeon who deals with dislocations of the right shoulder declines to meddle with a displacement on the other side, we are not surprised, but ring the bell of the practitioner who devotes himself to injuries of the left shoulder.

Genres

  • Medicine in literature
  • Poetry
  • American wit and humor
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About the author

  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

    1809 - 1894

    4.08

    12 ratings ยท 383 works

Editions

  • Edition cover

    James R. Osgood & co.

    1875

  • Edition cover

    Houghton Mifflin, Riverside Press

    1883

  • Edition cover

    James R. Osgood

    1877

  • Edition cover

    James R. Osgood & co.

    1875

Edition cover

22 ed.

Houghton, Mifflin and Company

1886

  • Edition cover

    James R. Osgood

    1872

  • Edition cover

    Kessinger Publishing

    July 25, 2007

  • Edition cover

    Kessinger Publishing

    April 1, 2005

  • Edition cover

    Buccaneer Books

    January 1986

  • Edition cover

    Adamant Media Corporation

    June 7, 2000

  • Edition cover

    Hard Press

    November 3, 2006

  • Edition cover

    IndyPublish.com

    September 2002

  • Edition cover

    James R. Osgood and Company

    1872

  • Edition cover

    Houghton, Mifflin and company

    1884

  • Edition cover

    21st ed.

    Houghton, Mifflin and company

    1885

  • Edition cover

    Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Riverside Press

    1900

  • Edition cover

    24th ed.

    Houghton, Mifflin and Company

    1887

  • Edition cover

    James R. Osgood and Company

    1872

  • Edition cover

    J.M. Dent

    1905

  • Edition cover

    [2d ed.]

    J.M. Dent

    1906

  • Edition cover

    Standard library ed.

    Houghton, Mifflin, Riverside Press

    1892

  • Edition cover

    George Routledge & Sons

    1872

  • Edition cover

    The Brock ed.

    Houghton Mifflin Co.

    1916

  • Edition cover

    W. Scott

    1900

  • Edition cover

    James R. Osgood and Company

    1875

  • Edition cover

    Houghton, Mifflin

    1899

  • Edition cover

    W. Scott

    1885

  • Edition cover

    H. Frowde, Oxford University Press

    1906

  • Edition cover

    Fictionwise, Inc.

    2004

  • Edition cover

    Reprint Services Corp

    January 1872

  • Edition cover

    Norwood Editions

    June 1995

  • Edition cover

    IndyPublish.com

    September 2002

  • Edition cover

    Scholarly Press

    June 1968

  • Edition cover

    J. M. Dent

    1902

  • Edition cover

    Sampson Low, Maston, Searle and Rivington

    1891

  • Edition cover

    James R. Osgood and Company

    1872

  • Edition cover

    William Paterson

  • Edition cover

    5th. ed.

    Dent

    1920

  • Edition cover

    Collins

    1890

  • Edition cover

    Walter Scott

    1900

  • Edition cover

    Houghton, Mifflin and Co.

    1893

  • Edition cover

    Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Riverside Press

    1891

  • Edition cover

    Scholarly Press

    1968