Soldier Holmes

Judge Miller B. Zobel’s thoughtful analysis of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s character (June/July) was presaged by H. L. Mencken in a 1930 issue of The American Mercury : “Let us think of him as something that he undoubtedly was in his Pleistocene youth and probably remained ever after, to wit, a soldier. … On at least three days out of four, during his long years on the bench, the learned justice remained the soldier.…”