BETWEEN the writing of Elsie Venner and The Guardian Angel, Doctor Holmes wrote a number of essays for the Atlantic Monthly, some of which were afterwards collected in the volume entitled Soundings from the Atlantic.

Currents and Counter-currents was published in 1861, and Border-lines of Knowledge in 1862. The two latter books deal with scientific subjects, but are written in such an attractive style that they have been extremely popular not only with students but with the whole reading public. Songs in many Keys, a volume of poems dedicated to his mother, was published by Doctor Holmes in 1862. Mechanism in Thoughts and Morals appeared in 1871, the same year that The Poet at the Breakfast-Table was running as a serial in the Atlantic Monthly, and numerous stray poems were also written in this prolific decade. In 1872 the poet's breakfast talk was published in book form. It is interesting to compare these three volumes—The Autocrat, the Professor, and the Poet. As a series they are as necessary to one another as the three strands of a cable, and yet each volume is, in a certain way, completed in itself. Where in the whole range of the English language, or indeed, of any language, will you find such an overflow of spontaneous wit and humor? While in no sense a story or even a narrative, the breakfast talk is enlivened by wonderfully life-like characters. We can easily imagine ourselves sitting beside them at the social table, and just as it is in real life, these chance acquaintances touch us at different points, awaken various degrees of interest, and are at all times quite distinct from the observer's own individuality.

There is not a page without its sparkle of humor, and nugget of sound philosophy beneath, which the reader appropriates to himself in a delightfully unconscious manner—for the time being, it is he who is the Autocrat, the Professor, the Poet! As some one has truly said, "It is our thoughts which Doctor Holmes speaks; it is our humor to which he gives expression; it is the pictures of our own fancy that he clothes in words, and shows us what we ourselves thought, and only lacked the means of expressing. We never realized until he taught us by his magic power over us, how much each of us had of genius and invention and expression."

Each book has its little romance, and the "Poet" introduces a poor gentlewoman whose story interests us quite as much as does that of the two lovers.

"In a little chamber," he says, "into which a small thread of sunshine finds its way for half an hour or so every day during a month or six weeks of the spring or autumn, at all other times obliged to content itself with ungilded daylight, lives this boarder, whom, without wronging any others of our company, I may call, as she is very generally called in the household, the Lady....

"From an aspect of dignified but undisguised economy which showed itself in her dress as well as in her limited quarters, I suspected a story of shipwrecked fortune, and determined to question our Landlady. That worthy woman was delighted to tell the history of her most distinguished boarder. She was, as I had supposed, a gentlewoman whom a change of circumstances had brought down from her high estate.—Did I know the Goldenrod family?—Of course I did.—Well, the lady was first cousin to Mrs. Midas Goldenrod. She had been here in her carriage to call upon her—not very often.—Were her rich relations kind and helpful to her?—Well, yes; at least they made her presents now and then. Three or four years ago they sent her a silver waiter, and every Christmas they sent her a bouquet—it must cost as much as five dollars, the Landlady thought.

"And how did the Lady receive these valuable and useful things?

"Every Christmas she got out the silver waiter and borrowed a glass tumbler and filled it with water, and put the bouquet in it and set it on the waiter. It smelt sweet enough and looked pretty for a day or two, but the Landlady thought it wouldn't have hurt 'em if they'd sent a piece of goods for a dress, or at least a pocket handkercher or two, or something or other that she could 'a' made use of....

"What did she do?—Why, she read, and she drew pictures, and she did needlework patterns, and played on an old harp she had; the gilt was mostly off, but it sounded very sweet, and she sung to it, sometimes, those old songs that used to be in fashion twenty or thirty years ago, with words to 'em that folks could understand....

"Poor Lady! She seems to me like a picture that has fallen face downward on the dusty floor. The picture never was as needful as a window or a door, but it was pleasant to see it in its place, and it would be pleasant to see it there again, and I for one, should be thankful to have the Lady restored by some turn of fortune to the position from which she has been so cruelly cast down."

Before the Poet closes his breakfast talk, the poor Lady has, through the efforts of another boarder, the Register of Deeds, recovered her property. Mrs. Midas Goldenrod makes frequent and longer calls—"the very moment her relative, the Lady of our breakfast table, began to find herself in a streak of sunshine she came forward with a lighted candle to show her which way her path lay before her.

"The Lady saw all this, how plainly, how painfully! yet she exercised a true charity for the weakness of her relative. Sensible people have as much consideration for the frailties of the rich as for those of the poor.

"The Lady that's been so long with me is going to a house of her own," said the Landlady, "one she has bought back again, for it used to belong to her folks. It's a beautiful house, and the sun shines in at the front windows all day long. She's going to be wealthy again, but it doesn't make any difference in her ways. I've had boarders complain when I was doing as well as I knowed how for them, but I never heerd a word from her that wasn't as pleasant as if she'd been talking to the Governor's lady."

The strange little man, denominated "Scarabee," who had grown to look so much like the beetles he studied; the "Member of the House" with his Down East phrases; the little "Scheherazade" who furnishes a new story each week for the newspapers;—the good looking, rosy-cheeked salesman "of very polite manners, only a little more brisk than the approved style of carriage permits, as one in the habit of springing with a certain alacrity at the call of a customer;" the good old Master of Arts who makes so many sage remarks;—the young Astronomer with his heart confessions in the Wind-clouds and Star-drifts—all these are new acquaintances whom we are loth to part with, when the Landlady announces her intention of giving up the famous boarding-house, and the Poet drops the curtain. Would that the Old Master could yet be induced to give to the public those "notes and reflections and new suggestions" of his marvellous "interleaved volume!"