'" John sometimes puts his feelings into action, as when the Autocrat
gives a typical illustration of his mixture of reasoning and humor, in
explaining that there are always six persons present when two people are
talking:--
[Illustration: THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE ]
"Three Johns.
1. The real John; known only to his Maker.
2. John's ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike him.
3. Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, nor John's John, but often
very unlike either.
"Three Thomases.
1. The real Thomas.
2. Thomas's ideal Thomas.
3. John's ideal Thomas."
"A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to
boarding-houses, was on its way to me," says the Autocrat, "_via_ this
unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket,
remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his
practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the meantime he had
eaten the peaches." When John enters the debates with his crushing logic of
facts, he never fails to make a ten strike.
A few years after the _Autocrat_ series had been closed, Holmes wrote _The
Professor at the Breakfast Table_; many years later _The Poet at the
Breakfast Table_ appeared; and in the evening of life, he brought out _Over
the Teacups_, in which he discoursed at the tea table in a similar vein,
but not in quite the same fresh, buoyant, humorous way in which the
Autocrat talked over his morning coffee.
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