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Updated: June 13, 2025
Sometimes, as in one of those poems recently published, the reader will easily guess which, the youthful spirit has come over me with such a rush that it made me feel just as I did when I wrote the history of the "One-hoss Shay" thirty years ago.
While one of us rushed off with the mail, others at home would address the local list of papers and put them in the mail boxes by the time the return mail came in for distribution. Our U. S. mail transport was our old topless One-Hoss Shay repaired and repainted for the purpose with the brown team hitched to it.
I believe that even cultivated readers have found more real satisfaction in the "One-Hoss Shay" than in many a more celebrated lyric. Doctor Holmes lived amid a comparatively narrow circle of friends and acquaintances. He attended the Saturday Club, but Lowell appears to have been the only member of it with whom he was on confidential terms. He was rarely seen or heard of in Longfellow's house.
Bright, of course, was received with immense enthusiasm. I had every reason to be gratified with my own reception. The only "chaffing" I heard was the question from one of the galleries, "Did he come in the One-Hoss Shay?" at which there was a hearty laugh, joined in as heartily by myself.
But Mysie, following her guide to the house, felt quite sure of their conveyance; and, in fact, barely sufficient time elapsed for the hostess to possess herself of the leading facts in her guests' history, before the carriage was announced, and our travellers hastened down the lane, and found there awaiting them the evident model of the Autocrat's "One-Hoss Shay," in its last five years of senility; to this was attached a quadruped who immediately reminded Mysie of a long-forgotten conundrum.
The Pony Rider Boys showed the Rangers that they were used to quick work. Twenty minutes later the boys were ready. The Rangers had watched their preparations with interest. "Good work," said Captain McKay approvingly. "Anybody'd think you had traveled with a one-hoss circus," grinned Dippy. "We've got some of the animals left yet," laughed Tad.
Thoreau had discovered the Merrimac and explored Walden Woods; little Doctor Holmes was peregrinating in his One-Hoss Shay, vouchsafing the confidences of his boarding-house; Lowell was beginning to violate the rules of rhetoric; Whittier was making his plea for the runaway slave; and throughout New England the Lecture Lyceum was feeling its way.
And in a like mood Nature made New England and endowed her with purpose, with mortuary frivolities, with long views, with energetic provincialism. If we remember best The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay, we do so in spite of the religious and pathetic motive of the greater part of Dr. Holmes's work, and of his fancy, which should be at least as conspicuous as his humour.
"What is the history of 'The Chambered Nautilus'?" Edward asked. "It has none," came the reply, "it wrote itself. So, too, did 'The One-Hoss Shay. That was one of those random conceptions that gallop through the brain, and that you catch by the bridle. I caught it and reined it. That is all."
None of these partial explanations contain more than an element of truth, and a more comprehensive view is suggested by the likeness of Germany to the "one-hoss shay" of Oliver Wendell Holmes' ballad, a vehicle so skilfully compacted of durable materials that each part lasted exactly as long as every other, and that the whole eventually crumbled into a heap of dust in a single moment.
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