The poet at the breakfast-table

Description

In this, the third series of Breakfast-Table conversations, a slight dramatic background shows off a few talkers and writers, aided by certain silent supernumeraries. The machinery is much like that of the two preceding series. Some of the characters must seem like old acquaintances to those who have read the former papers. As I read these over for the first time for a number of years, I notice one character; presenting a class of beings who have greatly multiplied during the interval which separates the earlier and later Breakfast-Table papers,--I mean the scientific specialists. The entomologist, who confines himself rigidly to the study of the coleoptera, is intended to typify this class. The subdivision of labor, which, as we used to be told, required fourteen different workmen to make a single pin, has reached all branches of knowledge. We find new terms in all the Professions, implying that special provinces have been marked off, each having its own school of students. In theology we have many curious subdivisions; among the rest eschatology, that is to say, the geography, geology, etc., of the "undiscovered country;" in medicine, if the surgeon who deals with dislocations of the right shoulder declines to meddle with a displacement on the other side, we are not surprised, but ring the bell of the practitioner who devotes himself to injuries of the left shoulder.

Subjects

Other Editions

• The poet at the breakfast-table: he talks with his fellow-boarders and the readerHoughton, Mifflin and Company1886-01-01
• The poet at the breakfast-tableElectronic resourceJames R. Osgood and Company1872-01-01
• The poet at the breakfast-tableGeorge Routledge & Sons1872-01-01
• The poet at the breakfast-tableJames R. Osgood1872-01-01
• The poet at the breakfast-tableJames R. Osgood and Company1872-01-01
• The poet at the breakfast-tableJames R. Osgood and Company1872-01-01