[The Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.]@TWC D-Link book
The Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
60/419

Foreigners, who have talked a strange tongue half their lives, return to the language of their childhood in their dying hours.
Gentlemen in fine linen, and scholars in large libraries, taken by surprise, or in a careless moment, will sometimes let slip a word they knew as boys in homespun and have not spoken since that time,--but it lay there under all their culture.

That is one way you may know the country-boys after they have grown rich or celebrated; another is by the odd old family names, particularly those of the Hebrew prophets, which the good old people have saddled them with.
-- Boston has enough of England about it to make a good English dictionary,--said that fresh-looking youth whom I have mentioned as sitting at the right upper corner of the table.
I turned and looked him full in the face,--for the pure, manly intonations arrested me.

The voice was youthful, but full of character .-- I suppose some persons have a peculiar susceptibility in the matter of voice .-- Hear this.
Not long after the American Revolution, a young lady was sitting in her father's chaise in a street of this town of Boston.

She overheard a little girl talking or singing, and was mightily taken with the tones of her voice.

Nothing would satisfy her but she must have that little girl come and live in her father's house.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books