THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE
by Oliver Wendell Holmes


PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION.

The reader of to-day will not forget, I trust, that it is nearly a
quarter of a century since these papers were written. Statements which
were true then are not necessarily true now. Thus, the speed of the
trotting horse has been so much developed that the record of the year
when the fastest time to that date was given must be very considerably
altered, as may be seen by referring to a note on page 49 of the
"Autocrat." No doubt many other statements and opinions might be more or
less modified if I were writing today instead of having written before
the war, when the world and I were both more than a score of years
younger.

These papers followed close upon the track of the "Autocrat." They had
to endure the trial to which all second comers are subjected, which is a
formidable ordeal for the least as well as the greatest. Paradise
Regained and the Second Part of Faust are examples which are enough to
warn every one who has made a jingle fair hit with his arrow of the
danger of missing when he looses "his fellow of the selfsame flight."

There is good reason why it should be so. The first juice that runs of
itself from the grapes comes from the heart of the fruit, and tastes of
the pulp only; when the grapes are squeezed in the press the flow betrays
the flavor of the skin. If there is any freshness in the original idea
of the work, if there is any individuality in the method or style of a
new author, or of an old author on a new track, it will have lost much of