Autograph Quotation Signed of Oliver Wendell Holmes, From “The School-boy” 

One of the great poets and literary figures of 19th century America was Oliver Wendell Holmes. Holmes considered himself first a physician and then an educator, but he really became known for his humorous and thoughtful journalistic writings that began in the first issue of “The Atlantic Monthly” in 1857. His all-star fellow contributors to the publication included his friends Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Harriet Beecher Stowe, the latter writing from Phillips Academy at Andover as a faculty wife. His column was called “The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table”, and his editor said the readers all turned to his piece first. At the end of the first year’s issues, “The Autocrat” was published and became an instant best-seller across the nation.

Holmes was a member of the Phillips Academy at Andover’s class of 1825, and his friend Rev. Samuel H. Stearns was a few years ahead of him there. Stearns’ was much respected, and his career was just taking off (he had been newly called to the pulpit of the historic Old South Church in Boston) when he died in 1837 at age 36. In 1878 Holmes was asked to recite at the Centennial Celebration of the foundation of his old Academy, and he agreed. He wrote and read a poem titled “The School-boy”, celebrating his time there. The poem is also a celebration of Stearns.

Autograph Quotation Signed, Boston, May 22, 1884, being a portion of that poem.

“His few brief years in holiest labors spent,
Earth lost too soon the treasure heaven had lent.”

Holmes writes below, From ‘The School boy.’ The reference is to the late Rev. Samuel H. Stearns.”