The Dead Mens Song | Page 3

hid under even less than the Scriptural bushel, he has a deep and healthy and honorable respect for fame--not of the cheap and tawdry, lionizing kind, but fame in an everlasting appreciation of those who think with their own minds. Almost any pen portraiture could but skim the surface of a nature so gifted and with which daily association is so delightful--an association which is a constant fillip to the mind in fascinating witticisms, in deft characterizations of men and things, and in deep drafts on memory's storehouse for odd incidents and unexpected illuminations. A long silence from "Allison's corner" may precede a gleeful chortle, as he throws on my desk some delicious satirical skit with a "Well, I've got that out of my system, anyway!"
Allison has a method of prose writing all his own. If you could see him day in and out, you would soon recognize the symptoms. An idea strikes him; he becomes abstracted, reads a great deal, pull down books, fills pages of particularly ruled copy paper with figures from a big, round, black pencil until you might think he was calculating the expenditures of a Billion Dollar Congress. He is not a mathematician but, like Balzac, simply dotes on figures. Then comes the analytical stage and that he performs on foot, walking, head bent forward, upstairs, downstairs, outdoors, around the block, in again, through the clattering press room and up and down the hall. When the stride quickens and he strikes a straight line for his desk, his orderly mind has arranged and classified his subject down to the illuminating adjectives even and the whole is ready to be put on paper. Though his mind is orderly, his desk seldom is. He is the type of old-school editor who has everything handy in a profound confusion. He detests office system, just as he admires mental arrangement. I got a "rise" out of him only once when making a pretence of describing his very complex method of preserving correspondence, and then he flared: "It saved us a lot of trouble, didn't it?" The fact was patent, but the story is apropos. Allison was complaining to a friend of office routine.
"Hitch has no heart," he said. "He comes over here, takes letters off my desk and puts 'em into an old file somewhere so no one can find them. That's no way to do. When a letter comes to me I clip open the end with my shears, like a gentleman, read it, and put it back in the envelope. When in the humor I answer it. Of course there is no use keeping a copy of what I write; I know well enough what _I_ say. All I want to keep is what the other fellow said to me. When it is time to clean the desk, I call a boy, have him box all the letters and take them over to the warehouse. Then whenever I want a letter I know damned well where it is--it's in the warehouse." It really happened that certain important and badly needed letters were "in the warehouse" and so Allison's system was vindicated.
Just the mere mention of his system brings up the delightful recollections of his desk-cleaning parties, Spring and Fall, events so momentous that they almost come under the classification of office holidays. The dust flies, torn papers fill the air and the waste-baskets, and odd memoranda come to light and must be discussed. While wielding the dust cloth Allison hums "Bing-Binger, the Baritone Singer," has the finest imaginable time and for several day wears an air of such conscious pride that every paper laid upon his desk is greeted with a terrible frown.
Musical? Of course. His is the poetic mind, the imaginative, with an intensely practical, analytical perception--uncanny at times. He is perfectly "crazy" about operas, reads everything that comes to his hand--particularly novels--and is an inveterate patron of picture shows. "Under no strain trying to hear 'em talk," he confidences. While such occasions really are very rare, once in an age he becomes depressed--a peculiar fact (their rarity) in one so temperamental. After the fifth call within a month to act as pall-bearer at a funeral, he was in the depths. A friend was trying to cheer him.
"Isn't it too bad, Mr. Allison," the friend suggested, "that we can't all be like the lilies in the field, neither toiling nor spinning, but shedding perfume everywhere?"
"That lily business is all right," was Allison's retort, "but if I were a flower it would be just my luck to be a tube-rose and be picked for a funeral!"
In all our years of association and friendship, I have never known him to do an unkind or dishonorable act. He is considerate of others, tender-hearted, sentimental. But, believe me, in "contrariwise,"