Works - 1896 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 LETTERS TO PHINEA8 BARNES 1828-1831 January 31, 1828. Dear Barnes, -- I know very well that I am a lazy fellow and a procrastinato... more »r, -- I am in a terrible fright lest the letter you spoke of should arrive before I have got this fairly dispatched. Your letter came just at the beginning of a term, when I had so many things to think of that I could hardly remember to get my lessons. At last, though, I have sprung into a chair, slapped down a sheet of paper, grasped my trustworthy silver pen, and will soon have a good sheet of my ideas ready for you. I would have you remember, if you happen to find an ill-chosen word or a badly constructed sentence or a few ungraceful sweeps of the pen, that I have not time now to attend to the graces of style or the elegance of chirography, because in truth I have snatched a hasty moment from the time when I expected to be skating, and, urged by the motive I have before mentioned, I am determined to do as much as possible in a certain given time. I am glad you liked the catalogue of the Medical Faculty; its aim is not so much, however, to caricature absurdities as to produce amusement by its mock solemnity, and the contrast between its pompous titles and its real nature. I shall send you something else in the humorous line, but you must not conclude yourself. nor let others conclude, that there is any bad spirit existing between the students and the officers who were the objects of its satire, -- a mock theatre bill, which was got up some time ago under the auspices of our old friend F. W. Crocker of blessed memory. There were two published before this, quite equal to it in wit, though not in execution. Of course you cannot understand all the allusions, like us who are naturalized to Harvard. Mr. Sykes is the old an...« less