DR. HOLLAND was born in 1819, and died in New York, October 12, 1881.
His family was of the oldest Puritan stock; the original ancestors, John and Judith Holland, appear to have been members of that church which was organized before sailing from Plymouth, in England, and which emigrated, bodily and ecclesiastically, into the wilderness at Dorchester.
During a considerable part of his childhood the family, pursued by misfortune, led a sort of roving life. For some years they lived in Health; then they returned to Belchertown; then we find them migrating to South Hadley, to Granby, and elsewhere, as the unprosperous father was able to find work. The promising son, Josiah, had little chance for learning, getting but a few months in the public schools in winter.
While the family lived at Northampton Josiah entered the North-ampton High School, where he pursued his studies with great eagerness and ability. The older inhabitants of a certain little mountain village in Vermont will tell you to-day of a tall young man who, more than forty-five years ago, taught penmanship from town to town, and who used to recite his own poems to his intimate friends. He tried daguerreotypy and district school teaching.
Finding it impossible to obtain such an education as he desired, he decided to study medicine. In 1844 he was graduated at the Berkshire Medical College with honor. In 1845 Doctor Holland formed a partnership with his classmate, Doctor Bailey, and commenced his medical practice at Springfield, Massachusetts. In the same year he married Miss Elizabeth Chapin, of Springfield. His married life was one of unusual happiness.
The practice of medicine was distasteful, hence the time that ought to have been given to his professional study was given to correspondence for the old "Knickerbocker Magazine" and other periodicals. Attracted to journalism, he started the "Bay State Weekly Courier" at Springfield. The paper was started as "A New Family Newspaper," but it survived only for six months. Not finding success in his profession, and failing in journalism, he became a teacher in Richmond, Virginia.
In 1849 Holland returned to Springfield, where he became assistant editor of the "Republican." With tireless energy and unlimited researches, he gathered local and general matter for his paper. Proceeding upon the theory that people are interested in themselves and in their own locality, he published a
"History of Western Massachusetts." In 1857,
"Bay Path," a novel, came from his study of local history. Nine years after he entered the office of this paper he began the publication of the
"Letters to Young People, Married and Single," in the columns of the "Republican." The playful signature of "Timothy Titcomb," and all the circumstances of their production, go to show that the author had no thought of winning his first decisive battle with these general epistles. But they were popular from the start, and Holland found out then what all the world knows now, that he was a great preacher.
The poem of "Bittersweet" appeared in the same year, 1858, and was yet more successful. Its sale has run up to seventy-five thousand copies, beside its circulation in the collected poems.
"Gold Foil," which appeared nerially as
"Preachings from Popular Proverbs," was put in covers in 1859;
"Miss Gilbert's Career," a novel, was issued in the following year;
"Lessons in Life" in 1861, and the "Letters to the
Joneses" in 1863; a volume of lectures was published in 1865, and in the same year appeared Doctor Holland's
"Life of Abraham Lincoln," which was sold by subscription, and brought him more money than he probably ever dreamed of possessing in his early life. The climax of his fame and popular success as an author of books was attained in 1868, when the poem
"Katrina" appeared. It has outstripped all its fellows in popular favor, and outsold all other American poems except Longfellow's
"Hiawatha." The sales now aggregate over ninety-nine thousand.
"The Marble Prophecy," a poem founded on the Laocoon, was issued in 1872, and then appeared in succession, in the pages of "Scribner's Monthly" first, and afterward in book form, the later group of novels,
"Arthur Bonnicastle," "Sevenoaks," and
"Nicholas Minturn." "The Mistress of the
Manse" appeared in 1875.
In addition to his other literary labors he was one of the most popular of American lecturers. In 1868 he went to Europe, where he remained two years. It was a very important epoch in his life, and an important point in the history of American literature and art, for it was, as he has related, on a bridge in Geneva that he proposed to his friend, Mr. Roswell Smith, the founding of "Scribner's Monthly." This institution is of itself enough to make American literature forever Dr. Holland's debtor.
He had his home in New York and his beautiful country place in the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence, and he was able to pass the closing hours of life's day-time in thorough enjoyment of the world.
Dr. Holland died suddenly of heart disease. Without failure of faculty, in the midst of his daily work, with no pain of prolonged suffering, in his own chamber, amid tender and sacred affection, his eyes closed.
He had written no word that he would blot, but a thousand words that have been a cheer and an impulse to thousands of his fellow-men.
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