" His
trenchant attack on _Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions_ (1842)
makes us wonder what would have been his attitude toward some of the
beliefs of our own day; Christian Science, for example. He might have
"exposed" it under some such title as _The Religio-Medical
Masquerade_, or brought the batteries of his humor to bear on it in
the manner of Robert Louis Stevenson's fable, _Something In It_:
"Perhaps there is not much in it, as I supposed; but there is
something in it after all. Let me be thankful for that." In Holmes'
long works of fiction, Elsie Venner (1861), _The Guardian Angel_
(1867) and _A Mortal Antipathy_ (1885), the method is still somewhat
that of the essayist. I have found a short piece of fiction by him in
the March, 1832, number of _The New England Magazine_, called _The
Debut_, signed O.W.H. _The Story of Iris_ in _The Professor at the
Breakfast Table_, which ran in _The Atlantic_ throughout 1859, and _A
Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters_ (January, 1861,
_Atlantic_) are his only other brief fictions of which I am aware. The
last named has been given place in the present selection because it is
characteristic of a certain type and period of American humor,
although its short story qualities are not particularly strong.
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