Dr Holmes's Boston Author:Oliver Wendell Holmes Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III BOSTON IN WAR TIMESWe sing "Our Country's " song to-night With saddened voice and eye; Her banner droops in clouded light Beneath the wintry s... more »ky. We'll pledge her once in golden wine Before her stars have set: Though dim one reddening orb may shine, We have a Country yet. CHAPTER III BOSTON IN WAR TIMES ["WAR Times" found Dr. Holmes an intense Unionist and patriot; he could not be induced to join working organizations, but he plied his pen ardently for his country's cause; he produced vivid prose, and stirring war lyrics; and his eldest son was among the first to enlist. In 1861 he wrote Motley of conditions then prevailing in Boston:] I Am thankful for your sake that you are out of this wretched country. There was never anything in our experience that gave any idea of it before. Not that we have any material suffering as yet. Our factories have been at work, and our dividends have been paid. Society—in Boston, at least —has been nearly as gay as usual. I had a few thousand dollars to raise to pay for my house in Charles Street, and sold my stocks for more than they cost me. We have had predictions, to be sure, that New England was to be left out in the cold if a new confederacy was formed, and that the grass was to grow in the streets of Boston. But prophetsare at a terrible discount in these times, and in spite of their predictions Merrimac sells at $125. It is the terrible uncertainty of everything — most of all, the uncertainty of the opinion of men, I had almost said of principles. From the impracticable Abolitionist, as bent on total separation from the South as Carolina is on secession from the North, to a Hunker, or Submissionist, or whatever you choose to call the wretch who would sacrifice everything and beg the South's pardon fo...« less