2
THE BATTALION
Olsen had not been long- in Hammersville, and did not
know all the lawyers of our bar. The gentleman of whom he
spoke was Gen. Mortlake, an old Confederate fighter, who
had risen to the rank of colonel oefore the war closed, and
had 5 , by the climatic potency of popular favor, bloomed into
a general since. He had all his life, except for the years
taken up by the war, been a practicing lawyer of marked
skill in the conduct of cases; and his face looked business on
all occasions. I could not believe Olsen to be serious in
what he said, yet with all his sterling qualities, he had little
sense of humor.
That night I had the opportunity of testing the truth of
his statement. I was taking oysters at a restaurant with the
General’s partner, young Lagarde, with whom I was inti
mate. In the midst of our talk, I asked him suddenly:
“Does General Mortlake ever make puns?”
He flashed upon me a quick glance of surprise. “I
should have thought,” said he, “that I was the only man
who knew him to be guilty of anything so strikingly out of
keeping with his habitual gravity. But, when he is carrying
on some unusually tense train of thought, he does pun with
amazing recklessness. He blurts out pun after pun, quite at
random, and not at all as if he expected a single one of them
to be noticed. The trick of making them seems to come as
the half unconscious play of the mind, by way of relief from
the strain his mental faculties are undergoing. It is a sort of
foam on the top of the current. How you happen to know it.