The Dead Mens Song | Page 4

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," he is
flinty obsidian when it comes to his convictions. Shams and hypocrites
and parading egotists are his particular and especial abomination and
when he gets on the editorial trail of one of that ilk, he turns him inside
out and displays the very secrets of what should be his immortal soul.
He is always poking fun at friends and they laugh with him at what he
writes about them, which recalls one of his earliest and best bits of
advice--"never to write about a man so that others will laugh _at_ him,
unless your intention is deliberately to hurt his feelings. Write so that
he will laugh _with_ you."
If I could have one grand wish it would be that everybody could know
him as I do: the man; the book-worm; the toastmaster; the public
speaker; the writer; the sentimentalist; the friend. Absolutely natural

and approachable at all times with never the remotest hint of
theatricalism, (unless the careless tossing over his shoulder of one flap
of the cape of a cherished brown overcoat might be called theatrical),
he is yet so many sided and complex that, without this self-same
naturalness, often would be misunderstood. That he never cultivated an
exclusiveness or built about himself barriers of idiosyncrasy is a
distinct credit to his common sense. He's chock-full of that!
Let us see just how versatile Young Allison is. Years ago--twenty-six
to be exact--he took the dry old subject of insurance and week in and
out made it sparkle with such wit and brilliancy that every-day
editorials became literary gems which laymen read with keenest
enjoyment. Insurance writing might be said to be his vocation--a sort of
daily-bread affair, well executed, because one should not quarrel with
his sustenance--with librettos for operas, and poems and essays as an
avocation. Fate must have doomed his operas in the very beginning, for
despite some delicious productions, captivating in words and spirit, and
set to slashing music, they go unsung because a a malign Jinx pursued.
While Allison is an omnivorous reader of novels and every other form
of book, which he carries to and from his home in a favorite
brown-leather handbag of diminutive size, he never had an ambition to
create novels, though to his everlasting credit wrote two for a particular
purpose which he accomplished by injecting the right tone or "color"
into tales depicting the inner life on daily newspapers. We of the old
Press Club used to grow choleric as we would read stories about
alleged newspaper men, but a serene satisfaction fell upon us when
Allison's reflections appeared. They were "right!" And while "resting"
(definition from the private dictionary of Cornelius McAuliff) from the
more or less arduous and routine and yet interest-holding duties of
newspaper-man, Allison's relaxation and refreshment come in studies
of human nature in all its mystifying aspects, whether in war or in
peace; or in the sports--prize-fighting and baseball; or in the sciences;
in politics; in the streets or in the home. Or they come from pleasure in
the creation of essays on books--novels; of lectures; of formal and
serious addresses; of tactful and witty toasts.

From my viewpoint Allison appears in public speaking to best
advantage at banquets, either when responding to some toast, or as
toastmaster. On such occasions he very quickly finds the temper of his
listeners and without haste or oratorical effect, for he never orates, and
almost without gesture, he "gets 'em" and "keeps 'em." Knowing how
little he hears at public functions his performances at the head of the
table, when acting as toastmaster, to me are only a shade removed from
the marvelous. Either he has an uncanny second-sight, or that vaunted
deafness is all a big pretense, for I have heard him "pull stuff" on a
preceding speaker so pat that no one else could be made to believe what
I knew was the truth:
that--he--had--not--heard--a--single--word--uttered!
[Illustration: _A Check in a Frame Returned without Inelegant
Marks of "Paid"_]
Perchance