Chapter I: The True Humorist

Oliver Wendell Holmes was the humorist among American poets, always with a smile around his mouth and a twinkle in his eye, and a kindly little half-hidden joke in everything he had to say. He was a humorist of the genuine good-humored sort, the “genial Autocrat,” the kindly and obliging friend (for did he not write a poem on every possible occasion at the request of all sorts of people?) How kind, how pathetic, yet how amusing, are the sweet, quaint lines of “The Last Leaf”:

My grandmamma has said—
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago—
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow;

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff;
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.

I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.

Dear Doctor Holmes! He did indeed live to be the last leaf upon the tree; but to the very end he went scattering his humorous and good-humored words among his friends wherever he was, making people happier as well as wiser, more light-hearted as well as more thoughtful, until they turned from crying to laughing. “The Last Leaf” is a little sad, notwithstanding its lightness and fun. But there is no sadness in this, the funniest poem that Holmes ever wrote:

THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS

I wrote some lines once on a time
In wondrous merry mood,
And thought, as usual, men would say
They were exceeding good.

They were so queer, so very queer,
I laughed as I would die;
Albeit in the general way,
A sober man am I.

I called my servant, and he came;
How kind, it was of him
To mind a slender man like me,
He of the mighty limb!

“These to the printer,” I exclaimed,
And, in my humorous way,
I added (as a trifling jest),
“There’ll be the devil to pay.”

He took the paper, and I watched,
And saw him peep within;
At the first line he read, his face
Was all upon the grin.

He read the next, the grin grew broad,
And shot from ear to ear;
He read the third, a chuckling noise
I now began to hear.

The fourth, he broke into a roar;
The fifth, his waistband split;
The sixth, he burst five buttons off,
And tumbled in a fit.

Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye,
I watched that wretched man;
And since, I never dare to write
As funny as I can.