THE INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY

OF

FAMOUS LITERATURE.

FROM "THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST

TABLE."

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

[OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES: An American humorist and poet; born in Cambridge, Mass., August 29, 1809; died in Boston, October 7, 1894. He graduated at Harvard in 1829; became professor of anatomy and physiology at Dartmouth; then at Harvard 1847-1882, when he retired as professor emeritus. His first work to attract general attention was "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," in the Atlantic Monthly (1857–1858), followed by "The Professor at the Breakfast Table" and "The Poet at the Breakfast Table." His other prose

works include the novels " Elsie Venner," "The Guardian Angel," and "A Mortal Antipathy"; memoirs of Motley and Emerson; "One Hundred Days in Europe"; "Over the Teacups." His poems have been collected in "Songs in Many Keys," "Songs of Many Seasons," "Humorous Poems," "Before the Curfew," etc.

I.

I WAS just going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the many ways of classifying minds is under the heads of arithmetical and algebraical intellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an extension or variation of the following arithmetical formula: 2+2=4. Every philosophical proposition has the more general character of the expression a+b=c. We are mere operatives, empirics, and egotists, until we learn to think in letters instead of figures.

They all stared. There is a divinity student lately come among us to whom I commonly address remarks like the above, allowing him to take a certain share in the conversation, so far as assent or pertinent questions are involved. He abused his liberty on this occasion by presuming to say that Leibnitz had made the same observation. —No, sir, I replied, he has not. But he said a mighty good thing about mathematics, that

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