In Victorian America the “separate sphere” of the Castle-Home was never as insular, fortified, static, or coherent as its occupants might have wished. Holmes' written conversations help us to regain a sense of the dynamism of mid-century domestic life as they bring out all that is at stake in table-talk and table manners, showing how even the most mundane moments of verbal intercourse in the parlor, the dining room, or the club can become charged encounters, sparked by ongoing alternations between polarized voices struggling for power: assertion continually meets counter-assertion, dominance meets resistance. Through his structured reenactments of parlor talk, Holmes points out that the champagne-pops of repartee within genteel salon walls can have far-reaching repercussions; the matchbox explosions that divide debaters at his boardinghouse can be seen as warning shots predicting the much larger explosions soon to erupt across the entire “House Divided” of America.

“THIS CARNIVAL-SHOWER OF QUESTIONS AND REPLIES AND COMMENTS”

Almost every reader of Holmes' works, in every era, thinks of some form of fireworks when trying to describe the “explosive” literary effects of his witty extended metaphors and juxtapositions and his unusually interruptive table-talk form.