The Dead Mens Song | Page 3

in those days I
thought his lack of complete hearing an infirmity calling for a sort of
sympathy on my part. Anyway it was three o'clock in the morning,
and...!
"Well," he replied, after a little pause, "I can't say that I do. You see, if
anyone ever says anything worth repeating, he always tells me about it
anyway." Such is the philosophical trend that makes Allison an original
with a peculiar gift of expression both in the spoken and written word.
He is literary to his finger tips, in the finest sense of the word, for pure
love, his own enjoyment and the pleasure of his friends. There is an
ambition for you! With all his genuine modesty (and he is painfully
modest) by which the light of his genius is 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