Books: The Postman Rings Twice

(3 of 3)

The greatness of letters is in the mind they reveal. Pollock's mind was keen, erudite, somewhat suspicious, drily humorous, shyly human. Holmes's mind had a larger quality. There is nothing like battle to mature the mind it does not destroy. The bullet that passed through Holmes's neck at Antietam lodged in his brain. He lived the rest of his life as if the words with which he closed his 90th birthday address were momently true: "Death plucks my ear and says Live—I am coming." He lived with the wise irreverence of a soldier who has seen the end of the story too often and knows that its only novelty is in its surprise. This vast tolerance was really neither liberal nor conservative. The natural perch of his mind was that high narrow ledge where there is room only for those who know that without the courage to change perpetually there is no growth, and without reverence for tradition there is human and social disaster. "If a man is great," he said, "he makes others believe in greatness."