The Dead Mens Song | Page 8

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