October 24, 1862.
MY DEAR JAMES, — I received your circular for a meeting of the
“Protective War-Claim Association” last week, and now I have a new one, which I
feel bound to answer.
I go very little to Society and Club meetings. Some feel
more of a call that way, others less; I among the least.
I hate the calling of meetings to order. I hate the
nomination of officers, always fearing lest I should be appointed Secretary. I
hate being placed on committees. They are always having meetings at which half
are absent and the rest late. I hate being officially and necessarily in the
presence of men most of whom, either from excessive zeal in the good cause or
from constitutional obtuseness, are incapable of being bored, which state is to
me the most exhausting of all conditions, absorbing more of my life than any
kind of active exertion I am capable of performing.
I am slow in apprehending parliamentary rules and usages,
averse to the business details many persons revel in; and I am not in love with
most of the actively stirring people whom one is apt to meet in all
associations for doing good.
Some trees grow very tall and straight and large in the
forest close to each other, but some must stand by themselves or they won’t
grow at all. Ever since I used to go to the “Institute of 1770” and hear Bob
Rantoul call members to order, and to the “Euphradian,” where our poor Loring
used to be eloquent about Effie Deans, I have recognized an inaptitude, not to
say ineptitude, belonging to me in connection with all such proceedings.
“What if everybody talked in this way?” The Lord arranges
his averages in such a way that to every one person like myself there are two
or three organizing, contriving, socializing intelligences, and three or four
self-sacrificing people, who have forgotten what they like and what they hate
by nature, and about a dozen good indifferent folks that will take part in anything
they are asked to.
Now look at it, dear James, Father Confessor, Good Shepherd.
I have just sent off a long article for the December Atlantic, and that puts
off my introductory lecture — (which I promised to write for H. J . Bigelow,
who was sick) — and on that lecture I want to be at work at 10.30 to-morrow,
when your meeting is. I like to stir up my doctors with wholesome fresh
thought; and to arrange that takes time, and as I have but a little over a week
for it I don’t want to go and sweat a forenoon away in doing what some of your
committee will find a pleasant excitement, but what will vex and fret and drain
my nerves more than to write an anniversary poem —which is itself a short
fever.
This note is personal to you because I had a mind to tell
you how alien associated action is to my tastes and habits, and because I knew
you would take the trouble to read and understand it.
SOURCE: John T. Morse Jr., Life and letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Volume 1, p. 305-7
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