OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Reading edition
Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1809. He studied at Phillips Academy, Andover, and later at Harvard College, where he graduated in the famous class of 1829. He tried law for a year, but gave this up for medicine. In 1833 he went abroad, returning in 1835 for a medical degree at Harvard. He at once began the active practice of his profession, but accepted a professorship at Dartmouth in 1838. He remained there only a short time, coming back again to Boston, where he married and resumed his work as a physician. In 1847 he became Parkman Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Harvard, and held this position until 1882. In 1857, through the influence of James Russell Lowell, he began to contribute regularly to the Atlantic Monthly. After 1882 he devoted himself almost exclusively to writing and lecturing. He died in 1894 in Boston.
While Holmes is best known as the author of The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table and other prose works, he published numerous poems, most of them humorous in tone. Many of them were written for specific occasions, and as such are distinguished for their wit and cleverness rather than for strong emotion or profound thought.
Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle (Page 230)
First published in 1875 at the time of the centennial of the battle of Bunker Hill.
The so-called battle of Bunker Hill was the first important engagement of the Revolutionary War. On June 17, 1775, five thousand British soldiers under Howe, Clinton, and Pigott attacked a smaller number of Americans then stationed on Breed's Hill near Boston, under Colonel William Prescott. They were twice beaten back, but captured the hill on their third charge. The British loss was about twelve hundred men, while the Americans lost only four hundred, among them, however, being the patriot, Dr. Joseph Warren.
"Here lies buried in a Stone Grave 10 feet deep Capt. Daniel Malcolm Mercht Who departed this Life October 23, 1769, Aged 44 years, A true son of Liberty, A Friend to the Publick, An Enemy to oppression, And one of the foremost In opposing the Revenue Acts On America."