"  Even  as  Tully  parted  the  briers  and  brambles
when  he  hunted  for  the  sphere-containing  cyl-
inder that  marked  the  grave  of  Archimedes,
so  did  I  comb  the  grass  with  my  fingers  for
my  monumental  memorial  flower.  Nature  had
stored  my  keepsake  tenderly  in  her  bosom.  The
glossy,  faintly -streaked  blades  were  there ;  they
are  there  still,  though  they  never  flower,  dark-
ened as  they  are  by  the  shade  of  the  elms
and  rooted  in  the  matted  turf.
"Our  hearts  are  held  down  to  our  homes  by
innumerable  fibres,  trivial  as  that  I  have  just
recalled ;  but  Gulliver  was  fixed  to  the  soil,


ABROAD.  57

you  remember,  by  pinning  his  head  a  hair  at
a  time.  Even  a  stone,  with  a  whitish  bana
crossing  it,  belonging  to  the  pavement  of  the
back  yard,  insisted  on  becoming  one  of  the
talismans  of  memory.
"This  intersusception  of  the  ideas  of  inani-
mate objects,  and  their  faithful  storing  away
among  the  sentiments,  are  curiously  prefigured
in  the  material  structure  of  the  thinking  centre
itself.  In  the  very  core  of  the  brain,  in  the
part  where  Des  Cartes  placed  the  soul,  is  a
small  mineral  deposit  of  grape-like  masses  of
crystalline  matter.
"  But  the  plants  that  come  up  every  year
in  the  same  place,  like  the  Stars  of  Bethle-
hem, of  all  the  lesser  objects,  give  me  the
liveliest  home-feeling."

To  return  to  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  poem,
modestly  termed  by  the  author  "A  Metrical
Essay,"  it  is  interesting  to  note  Lowell's  hearty
appreciation  of  it  in  his  Fable  for  Critics:

There's    Holmes,    who    is    matchless   among   you   for   wit,
A    Leyden   jar   always   full-charged,   from   which  flit
The   electrical   tingles   of     hit   after   hit.
