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Know old Cambridge? Hope you do. Born there? Don't say so! I was, too. (Born in a house with a gambrel-roof, Standing still, if you must have proof. 'Gambrel? - Gambrel ?'. Let me beg You'll look at a horse's hinder leg, First great angle above the hoof, That's the gambrel hence gambrelroof.)

:

Nicest place that ever was seen,—
Colleges red and Common green,
Sidewalks brownish with trees between. 20
Sweetest spot beneath the skies
When the canker-worms don't rise,
When the dust, that sometimes flies
Into your mouth and ears and eyes,
In a quiet slumber lies,

Not in the shape of unbaked pies
Such as barefoot children prize.

A kind of harbor it seems to be,
Facing the flow of a boundless sea.
Rows of gray old Tutors stand
Ranged like rocks above the sand;
Rolling beneath them, soft and green,
Breaks the tide of bright sixteen,

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With heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red

stone.

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And so the sum kept gathering still Till after the battle of Bunker's Hill.

When paper money became so cheap,
Folks would n't count it, but said 'a heap,'
A certain RICHARDS, the books de-
clare

(A. M. in '90? I've looked with care
Through the Triennial, name not there),
This person, Richards, was offered then
Eightscore pounds, but would have ten; 100
Nine, I think, was the sum he took,
Not quite certain, but see the book.
By and by the wars were still,

But nothing had altered the Parson's will.
The old arm-chair was solid yet,

But saddled with such a monstrous debt!

Things grew quite too bad to bear,
Paying such sums to get rid of the chair!
But dead men's fingers hold awful tight,
And there was the will in black and white,
Plain enough for a child to spell.
What should be done no man could tell,
For the chair was a kind of nightmare

curse,

And every season but made it worse.

111

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About those conditions?' Well, now you

go

140

And do as I tell you, and then you'll know.
Once a year, on Commencement day,
If you 'll only take the pains to stay,
You'll see the President in the CHAIR,
Likewise the Governor sitting there.
The President rises; both old and young
May hear his speech in a foreign tongue,
The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear,
Is this: Can I keep this old arm-chair ?
And then his Excellency bows,

As much as to say that he allows.
The Vice-Gub. next is called by name;
He bows like t'other, which means the

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1 For nearly forty years, from 1851 to 1889, Holmes never failed to bring a poem to the annual reunion of his college class. These poems, merely occasional," and local as they were in origin, form a section in his collected works which is perhaps the most important, and, except for his best humorous narratives and his two finest lyrics, the most likely to survive; for, with all Holmes's characteristic wit and humor, they cele brate feelings that are broadly and typically American -class loyalty and college loyalty, and growing out of these, the loyalty of man's enduring friendship, and loyalty to country.

The famous class of '29' counted among its members a chief-justice of Massachusetts, George T. Bigelow (the Judge' of this poem); a justice of the United

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That boy with the grave mathematical look Made believe he had written a wonderful book,

And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was true!

So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too!

States Supreme Court, B. R. Curtis (the boy with the three-decker brain'); the great preacher, James Freeman Clarke; Professor Benjamin Peirce ('that boy with the grave mathematical look'); and the author of America,' S. F. Smith. For a full list of members of the class, see the Cambridge Edition of Holmes's Poetical Works, p. 340.

1 Hon. Francis B. Crowninshield, Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

2 G. W. Richardson, of Worcester, Massachusetts. Hon. George L. Davis.

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- why, yes! God bless me !

and was it so long ago?

I fear I'm growing forgetful, as old folks do, you know;

Holmes's fiftieth birthday.

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He said, 'Well now, old fellow, I'm thinking that you and I,

If we act like other people, shall be older by and by;

What though the bright blue ocean is smooth as a pond can be,

At fifty a man is wrinkled, and may be bald or gray;

I call men old at fifty, in spite of all they say.

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And when on the western summits the fading light appears,

There is always a line of breakers to fringe It touches with rosy fingers the last of my

the broadest sea.

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fifty years.

There have been both men and women whose hearts were firm and bold, But there never was one of fifty that loved to say 'I'm old;'

So any elderly person that strives to shirk his years,

Make him stand up at a table and try him by his peers.

'I know it,' I said, 'old fellow; you speak Now here I stand at fifty, my jury gathered

the solemn truth;

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round; Sprinkled with dust of silver, but not yet silver-crowned,

Ready to meet your verdict, waiting to hear it told;

Guilty of fifty summers; speak! Is the verdict old?

No

40

say that his hearing fails him; say that his sight grows dim;

Say that he's getting wrinkled and weak in back and limb,

Losing his wits and temper, but pleading, to make amends,

The youth of his fifty summers he finds in his twenty friends.

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Yon stream, whose sources run
Turned by a pebble's edge,

1 This and the three following poems are from the Professor at the Breakfast Table. included in that volume.

The Boys' also is

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