Over the Teacups

Oliver Wendell Holmes invites readers to pull up a chair at his metaphorical tea table in this collection of essays written with the warmth of an old friend and the wit of a 19th-century polymath. Begun in 1888 and completed when Holmes was in his eighties, these conversations unfold with the easy intimacy of friends lingering over cups, where ideas flow as freely as the tea itself. Holmes reflects on aging, memory, and the passage of time with a philosopher's mind and a poet's ear, while introducing a cast of characters whose relationships develop organically through the book. The conversational format masks considerable depth. Holmes discusses everything from the superiority of tea over coffee (tea encourages reflection; coffee demands action) to the nature of memory and the bittersweet awareness of one's own mortality. This is civilized conversation preserved in amber, a remnant of a more leisurely age when people had time to think aloud together.