You can hear the black cat's purr

You can hear the black cat's purr
You can hear the black cat's purr

You can hear the black cat's purr

Date1905
Artist (American illustrator, 1853–1911)
Illustration CitationThe One Hoss Shay with its Companion Poems, How the Old Horse Won the Bet & The Broomstick Train, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, with illustrations by Howard Pyle (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1892).
MediumInk and watercolor on paper
Dimensionssheet: 7 3/16 × 6 3/16 in. (18.3 × 15.7 cm)
Credit LineGift of Willard S. Morse, 1923
Object number1923-220
On View
Not on view
ClassificationsDRAWING
Label TextOliver Wendell Holmes was well known not just as a professor of anatomy at Harvard but also as an author of light verse. The One Hoss Shay tells of a one hundred year old horse-drawn carriage that finally, and suddenly, breaks down. In How the Old Horse Won the Bet, a "poor forlorn old beast" amazes everyone with his speed in winning a race. The Broomstick Train attributes the flashing sparks of new electric trains to witches riding alongside them.
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