Part 2

Fifteen years or more ago, long before we dreamed of being associated in business, Allison wrote me with the frankness that has characterized our friendship from the first, just how he came to enter newspaper work. Where he was concerned I was always "wanting to know" and he seemed ever willing to tell--me. The letter was as usual written in lead pencil on soft, spongy, ruled copy paper and that portion having reference to the subject named is given verbatim:

You see I lost two years going to school--from seven to nine years old. I was put out of all the private schools for incorrigible "inattention"--then it was discovered that I had been partially deaf and not guilty--but my schooling ended there and I was turned loose on my father's library to get an education by main force--got it by reading everything--had read Rousseau's "Confessions" at 14--and books replaced folks as companions. Wanted to get nearer to books and so hired myself to the country printer and newspaper at 13--great disappointment to the family, my mother having dreams of my becoming a preacher--[hell of a preacher I would have made]. I had meantime begun and finished as much as a page apiece of many stories and books, several epic poems--but one day the Old Man went home to dinner and left me only a scrap of "reprint" to set during his hour and a half of absence. It was six or eight lines nonpareil about the Russian gentleman who started to drive from his country home to the city one evening in his sleigh with his 4 children. Wolves attacked them and one by one he threw the children to the pack, hoping each time thus to save the others. When he had thrown the last his sleigh came to the city gate with him sitting in it a raving maniac. That yarn had been going the rounds of print since 1746. The Old Man was an absent-minded old child, and I knew it, so I turned my fancy loose and enlarged the paragraph to a full galley of long primer, composing the awful details as I set the type and made it a thriller. The Old Man never "held copy" reading proof, so he passed it all right and I saw myself an author in print for the first time. The smell of printer's ink has never since been out of my hair.

Allison's newspaper years are rich with experience, for while he could never be classed as a Yellow Reformer, his caustic, or amusing, or pathetic pen, as the case demanded, has never been idle. Away back in the old days the gambling element in Louisville fairly "owned the town" and he attempted to curtail their power. They tried to cajole him and to bribe him and when both alike failed, intimidated the millionaire owner of the _Commercial_ out from under him! He either had to sacrifice Allison or his street railway interests, and chose Allison to throw to the lions. But he made Mr. Dupont go the whole length and "fire" him! He wouldn't resign when asked to do so. And of course while it all lasted Allison had his meed of personal amusement. For no editor ever took himself less seriously. Prominent citizens came with fair words and he listened to them and printed them; bribes were offered and accepted only for publication; while threats were received joyously and made the subject of half-whimsical comment.

As a newspaper man Allison prided himself on never having involved any of his papers in a libel suit, though he was usually the man who wrote the "danger-stuff." He had complaints, yes; libel suits, no. Dick Ryan, known in prehistoric newspaper circles in Louisville as "Cold Steel," because his mild blue eyes hardened and glinted when his copy was cut--the typical police court reporter who could be depended upon for a sobbing "blonde-girl story" when news was off--always said that when a party came in to complain of the hardship of an article, Allison talked to him so benevolently that the complainant always went away in tears, reflecting on how much worse it might have been if Allison hadn't softened the article that seemed so raw. "Damned if I don't believe he cries with 'em, too!" said Ryan. "If I had that sympathetic stop in my own voice I know I'd cry during ordinary conversations, just listening to myself."

But of course the libel suit had to come to spoil an otherwise perfect record. And of course it was political and sprang out of a red-hot state campaign, while he was editor-in-chief of the _Herald_, in which his pen went deep enough to enrage the adversary and force the libel case. Like all political cases of this kind it was not a suit for damages, but an indictment for criminal libel, found by a complaisant political grand jury at the other end of the state--intended to cause the greatest amount of annoyance and to die out slowly. By that means it costs the accused both time and money while the state pays all expenses for the prosecution.

Judge "Bill" Smith, one of the greatest of Kentucky lawyers on constitutional points, or rather Judge William Smith of the Jefferson Circuit Court--because he has passed over now, taking his kindly and childlike, yet keen and resourceful personality out of life's war for good and all--Judge Smith told me the story of that case one night after we had discussed down to the water-marks in the paper, his treasured copy of Burns. And at my very urgent solicitation he transcribed the salient features, not in all the intimate details of the spoken words, but with deep poetic feeling and rare conception of their human aspects. He wrote:

There are three poets in Burns. One is the poet you read; the second is the poet some mellow old Scot, with an edge on his tongue, recites to you; the third and most wonderful is the Burns that somebody with even a thin shred of a high voice sings to you. Burns is translated to the fourth power by singing him--without accompaniment--just the whinnying of a tenor or soprano voice, vibrant with feeling and pathos, at the right time of the evening, or in some penumbrous atmosphere of seclusion where memory can work its miracles.

I was defending Allison in that libel case and we started off on the 200-mile trip together. We had the smoker of the Pullman all to ourselves, and after I had recited some furlongs of Burns to him, he began to sing "Jockey's Ta'en the Parting Kiss" in a sort of thin and whimpering quaver of a tenor that cut through the noise of the train like a violin note through silence. I thought I knew the poem, but it seemed to me I had never dreamed what was in it, with the wail of a Highland woman pouring plaintive melody through the flood gates of her heart. And he knew every one of them and sang them all with the tailing of the bag-pipes in the sound.

I wasn't going down to practice law, but to practice patience and politics. I had been on that circuit for years and knew the court and the bar very well. So I said to Allison "Don't you sing one of those songs again until I give the sign." And the first thing I did was to bring him into touch with the circuit judge, who had the room adjoining mine at the hotel. He was a Burns lover, too; and besides as I had brought whiskey and as the town was prohibition, there was really nowhere else for the judge to spend his evenings. Soon we were capping back and forth, the judge and I, with Burns.

I don't remember now--nobody ever remembers, after a cold, snowy night outside, between Burns quotations, hot whiskies, and reminiscences, exactly how anything happens--but about 10 o'clock, maybe, Allison was somewhere between "Jockey's Ta'en the Parting Kiss," "Bonnie Doon," "Afton Water" and "Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast," and the judge and I were looking deep into the coals of the grate and crying softly and unconsciously together. You see it wasn't only the songs. Every damned one of us was Scotch-Irish and we just sat there and were transported back to the beginning of ourselves in the bare old primitive homes of us in farm and village, saw the log and coal fires of infancy blazing up again, and heard the voices of our mothers crooning and caressing those marvelous lines, and behind them _their_ mothers crooning and wailing the same back in the unbroken line to Ayrshire and the Pentland Hills. And all life was just a look into yesterday and the troubles and the struggles of manhood fell right off as garments and left us boys again. That's what's in Burns, the singing poet. That is, when anybody knows how to sing him--not concert singers with artfulness, but just a singer with the right quaver and the whine of catgut in the voice and the tailing of Scotch pipes for the swells. It was perhaps two o'clock of the morning when we stood up, said "Little Willie's Prayer" softly together, arms on shoulders, and the judge remarked:

"Allison, if you wrote like you sing Burns, maybe you wouldn't be here--but it's well worth the trouble!"

I knew then there was no more politics to practice--just law enough to be found to let the court stand firm when the time came.

The next night it was in the judge's room. Half a dozen old followers of the circuit were there on the judge's tip. "You bring your whiskey," he said to me, privately, "or there'll be none." And I brought it. And between Burns and the bottle and the long low silences of good country-bred men listening back through the soft cadences of memory, the case was won that night. I think it was Jock's song that did it. You never hear it sung by concert singers; because it has no theatricalism in it. It's just the wailing of the faith of the country lass in her lover:

'When the shades of evenin' creep O'er the day's fair, gladsome e'e Sound and safely may he sleep, Sweetly blithe his waukenin' be. He will think on her he loves, Fondly he'll repeat her name, For, where'er he distant roves, Jockey's heart is still at hame.'

If you listen right close you'll hear the hiss of the kettle behind it, and you can see the glow of the firelight and smell the sap of green wood in the smoke.

Well, there were continuances; of course. It is never constitutional to throw a case of politics out of court too soon. We made that four hundred-mile round trip four times and, every time, Burns sat at night where Blackstone ruled by day. Never one word of the case from judge to accused, just continuances. But on the last night--the case was to be pressed next day--the judge said to Allison at the door, as he went off to bed:

"I think you will be before me in a case tomorrow. If the worst comes and you demand your right to address the jury, the court will sustain you. And I advise you give 'em 'Jockey's Ta'en the Parting Kiss'--_and no more_. I know the jury."

But the case was dismissed; we were serenaded at the hotel and held a reception. Driving away in a buggy over the fourteen miles to the railway station, Allison said: "There never was a prettier summer-time jail anywhere in the world than this one. I've been down to see it. It has vines growing over the low, white-washed walls, there's apple trees in the yard and the jailer has a curly headed little girl of six who would bring 'em to you and could slip 'em through the barred window by standing on the split bottom chair where her father sleeps in the shade after dinner. It's a beautiful picture--but it hasn't got a single damned modern convenience for winter and a six months' term would have landed me there till January!"

I shall always believe this to be the most graceful, sympathetic and poetic relation involving a legal case I ever heard and never will cease to give thanks that my always strong and constantly growing admiration for Allison led me to insist upon its transcription.

As soon as the trial fizzled I called on Allison at the _Herald_ office, to extend congratulations and with eager requests for details.

"Well," Allison ruminated, with that ever present twinkle in his eye, "my experience was very interesting. I found I had friends; and discovered traces of a family unknown to history claiming direct kinship with President Thomas Jefferson!"

When the "sports" brought about Allison's discharge from the _Commercial_ to stop his articles on the gambling control of Louisville, unconsciously they added a forceful factor to insurance publishing and I might truthfully say to the insurance business itself. I cannot begin to tell how much has been encompassed in these twenty-six years, but our bound volumes are full of his editorials and articles--the serious, the analytical, the constructive, the caustic, the witty and the amusing. He created _The Piney Woods Clarion_ and in quotations from that mythical publication put a new light on the business. "Insurance Arabian Nights" which he declared were "translated from the Persian," contained more of the odd conceits that fairly flowed from his pen and these two series, with a marine policy-form insuring the "contents" of Noah's Ark, concocted in collaboration with good old Col. "Tige" Nelson (gone long ago, but not forgotten) are the classics of the business.

During his insurance newspaper work Allison was once called upon to give a public endorsement to a friend and very kindly expressed conviction that had his management continued "all the interest of the company would have been secured." When later on he was forced to criticise extraordinary acts of this whilom friend, the endorsement was called up against him in a broadside affidavit, which he promptly reviewed in the most deliciously sarcastic editorial concluding:

And we do not hesitate to declare anew that "we believe if he had been continued as president, all the interests of the company would have been secured." It was certainly not his fault that he did not secure more. Everything cannot be done in eleven months. But in the language of the far-Western tombstone it can be justly said, "He done what he could."

JUST BROWSING AROUND

One who has never read around the clock in a virtual debauch of novel reading cannot appreciate Allison's "Delicious Vice;" no more can he Field's "Dibdin's Ghost" who has not smuggled home under his coat some cherished volume at the expense of his belly--and possibly someone else's too! "The Delicious Vice!" What a tart morsel to roll on one's tongue in anticipation and to speculate over before scanning the pages to discover that the vice is not "hitting the pipe" or "snuffing happy dust" but is as Allison paints it with whimsical but affectionate words, "pipe dreams and fond adventures of an habitual novel-reader among some great books and their people." These are the all too skimpy pages through which its author rhapsodizes on the noble profession, makes a keen distinction between novel readers and "women, nibblers and amateurs," brings up reminiscences of "early crimes and joys" and discourses learnedly, discerningly and entertainingly upon "good honest scoundrelism and villains." Every page is the best and when the last has passed under your eye, you again begin square at the beginning and read it all over. You are here only to have the appetite spiced by one single gem quoted from the first novel for the boy to read which of course is "Robinson Crusoe:"

... There are other symptoms of the born novel-reader to be observed in him. If he reads at night he is careful so to place his chair that the light will fall on the page from a direction that will ultimately ruin the eyes--but it does not interfere with the light. He humps himself over the open volume and begins to display that unerring curvilinearity of the spine that compels his mother to study braces and to fear that he will develop consumption. Yet you can study the world's health records and never find a line to prove that any man with "occupation or profession--novel-reading" is recorded as dying of consumption. The humped-over attitude promotes compression of the lungs, telescoping of the diaphragm, atrophy of the abdominal abracadabra and other things (see Physiological Slush, p. 179, et seq.); but--it--never--hurts--the--boy!

To a novel-reading boy the position is one of instinct like that of a bicycle racer. His eyes are strained, his nerves and muscles at tension--everything ready for excitement--and the book, lying open, leaves his hands perfectly free to drum on the sides of the chair, slap his legs and knees, fumble in his pockets or even scratch his head, as emotion and interest demand. Does anybody deny that the highest proof of special genius is the possession of the instinct to adapt itself to the matter in hand? Nothing more need be said.

Now, if you will observe carefully such a boy when he comes to a certain point in "Robinson Crusoe" you may recognize the stroke of fate in his destiny. If he's the right sort, he will read gayly along; he drums, he slaps himself, he beats his breast, he scratches his head. Suddenly there will come the shock. He is reading rapidly and gloriously. He finds his knife in his pocket, as usual, and puts it back; the top-string is there; he drums the devil's tattoo, he wets his finger and smears the margin of the page as he whirls it over and then--he finds--

"The--Print--of--a--Man's--Naked--Foot--on--the--Shore!!!"

Oh, Crackey! At this tremendous moment the novel-reader, who has genius, drums no more. His hands have seized the upper edges of the muslin lids, he presses the lower edges against his stomach, his back takes an added intensity of hump, his eyes bulge, his heart thumps--he is landed--landed!

Terror, surprise, sympathy, hope, skepticism, doubt--come all ye trooping emotions to threaten and console; but an end has come to fairy stories and wonder tales--Master Studious is in the awful presence of Human Nature.

For many years I have believed that that Print--of--a--Man's--Naked--Foot was set in Italic type in all editions of "Robinson Crusoe." But a patient search of many editions has convinced me that I must have been mistaken.

The passage comes sneaking along in the midst of a paragraph in common Roman letters and by the living jingo, you discover it just as Mr. Crusoe discovered the footprint itself!

I wish I might tell the reason why no scoundrel was ever a novel reader; that I might browse for the benefit of those who have never been translated into ecstacies over "good old honest scoundrelism and villains" or describe my friend's first blinding and unselfish tears that watered the grave of Helen Mar, but these are among the delicious experiences of the "Vice" itself, so sacred that other hands, no matter how loving, may not be laid upon them.

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Allison has a very happy faculty of hitting upon titles for essays and addresses that stir the imagination and whet the appetite. Probably the best example is "The Delicious Vice" to which reference has just been made. This title was more or less an evolution from an address delivered before the Western Writers Association "On the Vice of Novel Reading" that started a discussion lasting through one whole day. Allison is a warm champion of The Novel as an institution, and as well an avowed and confirmed reader of novels, which he declares are poetry in essence, lacking only the form and rhyme but having measure, the accent and the figures of the whole range of poetry. He says that in all literature--

The great muse of History ranks first in dignity, power and usefulness; but who will say that at her court the Prime Minister is not the Novel which by its lightness, grace and address has popularized history all over the world?

At that time the word "microbe" and the theory of its significance was in the full swell of popular use. Allison took it to illustrate the essence of spiritual intellectuality struggling against the swarming bacteria of animalism that made up the rest of the human body controlled by the brain. He pointed out that the difference between types of brains was two ounces of grayish pulp, almost wholly absent in the unthinking herd of men. But it enlarged in gradually lessening groups of men to the intellectual few that dominate thought, thus:

The microbe that might have become glorious ounces of brain has been content at first to become merely a little wart of pulp, which finds expression in skill and quickness and more of coveted leisure. There is the next higher terrace and another and another, until finally it becomes a pyramid, ever more fragile and symmetrical, the apex of which is a delicate spire, where the purest intellects are elevated to an ever increasing height in ever decreasing numbers, until in the dizzy altitude above the groveling base below they are wrapped little by little in the cold solitude of incarnate genius burning like suns with their own essence. It is so far up that the eyes deceive and men dispute who it is that stands at the top, but, whoever he may be, he has carried by the force of strength, determination and patient will, the whole swarm of his evil bacteria with him. They swarm through every terrace below, increasing in force as the pyramid enlarges downward. It is the pyramidal bulk of human nature with its finest brain, true to anatomic principles, at the top. That radiance at the summit is the delight and the aspiration of all below.

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