Holmes was one of the founders of the Atlantic Monthly, which quickly achieved a large readership, helped by a pithy serial that appeared in 1857–58. This was Holmes’s The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. It involved an erudite man and others at a Boston boardinghouse, who expressed opinions on many subjects. The series proved so popular that he came forth with a sequel in 1859. He called it The Professor at the Breakfast-Table. Holmes used the Professor in the latter to pillory phrenology. He repeatedly referred to it as “pseudo-science,” explaining that it was based on only accepting positive cases and ignoring all exceptions. Using a two-column format and a lot of humor, his Professor contrasted what a phrenologist might tell a client and what he might reveal to his pupil. And he emphasized that phrenologists were not really reading heads, attending instead to other cues, such as how a client dressed and answered questions. The remainder of this chapter shows how others lampooned the head readers before Holmes, and presents his 1861 Harvard lecture, which has the same take-home message. Notably, he praises phrenologists in this lecture for helping to draw attention to human differences, inborn tendencies, and the brain.

The extent to which Holmes opened Clemens’s eyes about the head readers as frauds, served as his leading guide into the pseudo-science of phrenology, and provided a template for him to lampoon the head readers is addressed in this chapter. Three questions are asked. First, was Clemens familiar with Holmess writings? Second, did he meet Holmes? And third, is there evidence to suggest that Clemens “borrowed” some of Holmess ideas and humorous ways of presenting his thoughts about the head readers and their so-called science? Each of these questions is answered in the affirmative using the letters they exchanged, showing when they met, and by examining their writings. Most notable is how Mark Twain used the same two-column structure that Holmes had used in 1859 to present what the head reader was telling a client but really thinking. This chapter is particularly important because Holmes has not been recognized for having such an influence on Clemens/Twain. Nor had it been shown how Mark Twain borrowed rather freely from Holmes. Then again, scant little has been published on Clemens’s/Mark Twain’s forays into phrenology and there is nothing on Holmes and the head readers.