The Dead Men's Song Part 2

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 antic.i.p.ation 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sed under your eye, you again begin square at the beginning and read it all over. You are here only to have the appet.i.te 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 att.i.tude 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--Sh.o.r.e!!!"

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 pa.s.sage 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.

Allison has a very happy faculty of hitting upon t.i.tles for essays and addresses that stir the imagination and whet the appet.i.te. Probably the best example is "The Delicious Vice" to which reference has just been made.

This t.i.tle was more or less an evolution from an address delivered before the Western Writers a.s.sociation "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 inst.i.tution, 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 alt.i.tude 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Infallible--Type of Handy Man formerly in every Newspaper Office. Century, 1889_]

As an active, enthusiastic and successful newspaper man, every time Allison read a novel depicting the reporter as a sharp-featured and half-disreputable young man running about with pencil and note-book in hand and making himself personally and professionally obnoxious, it produced apoplectic tendencies that permanently threatened health and peace of mind.

Hence with the characteristic energy devoted to writing, he proceeded to get it out of his system and produced "The Longworth Mystery," published in _Century_,[1] (which it is interesting to note was ill.u.s.trated by Charles Dana Gibson who then signed himself "C. D. Gibson"), and "The Pa.s.sing of Major Kilgore," appearing in _Lippincott's_,[2] both depicting newspaper life. When this latter novelette was printed it soothed me so that I had the paper covers protected with more permanent boards and sent it on many pilgrimages from which it safely returned enriched with further messages of thanks to the creator for his good job. Having browsed deeply behind the bindings of many books I have yet to find others written in the first person, where the p.r.o.noun "I" is used by the relator so seldom as in either "The Longworth Mystery" or "The Pa.s.sing of Major Kilgore," the intimacy of the relation the while being maintained very adroitly by the observations of the "City Editor" who tells both stories. Major Kilgore in the latter tale, is financial man on the _Banner_. He is an old school gentleman and profound student of finances who finally goes mad over the study of the market and while dreaming himself possessed of vast wealth, is seeking to further the happiness of others where riches will a.s.sist. Of course the denouement shattered many sumptuous air castles but it left the profession the richer by a faithful portrayal. It is in the development of this tale that Allison, ever seeking an opportunity to draw amus.e.m.e.nt from his friends, created a fine occasion through a reminiscent conversation between Major Kilgore and Colonel Hamilton to inject a famous Southern quartette, Clarence Knowles, Col. John D. Young, James A. Thomas and Col. W. C.

Nelson, then in their prime, but who have since pa.s.sed on to swell the silent throng. Colonel Hamilton is trying to divert Major Kilgore, already showing signs of mental unbalance:

"Some of the fellows we knew in the C. S. A. have had queer luck in the shuffle, Kilgore. You remember Knowles of Georgia? I found him keeping bar in Sacramento. Young of North Carolina, who led that charge at Fredericksburg, is running a restaurant in Colorado; and Thomas, of Tennessee--by the Lord Harry, he killed himself with drink working in a mine in Arizona--had the jim-jams seven times they say and thought his head was a rabbit's nest. Last time I saw you riled, Kilgore, was that night in the trenches at Fredericksburg when Nelson hid your tobacco bag. You wanted to fight him, by the Lord Harry, there and then, but he wouldn't do it--because he said he would rather kill Yankees than gentlemen.

And you both agreed to take your chances next day on a fool trial which would fight the Yankees best!"

[1] Century, October, 1889.

[2] Lippincott's January, 1892.

Only one who knows Allison intimately can measure the delight, expressed in chuckles of joy, with which he marked this pa.s.sage in _Lippincott's_ and mailed copies to the friends he had whimsically pilloried.

When one browses around among Allison's productions he runs across many odd conceits as in "The Ballad of Whiskey Straight" which he declares was "prepared according to the provisions of the Pure Food Law, approved 1906."

Whatever quarrel one might have with the subject itself, or the sentiment, he cannot fail to fall a victim to the soft cadences of the rippling rhyme.

THE BALLAD OF WHISKEY STRAIGHT.

I

Let dreamers whine Of the pleasures of wine For lovers of soft delight; But this is the song Of a tipple that's strong-- For men who must toil and fight.

Now the drink of luck For the man full of pluck Is easy to nominate: It's the good old whiskey of old Kentuck, And you always drink it straight.

II

A julep's tang Will diminish the pang Of an old man's dream of yore, When meadows were green And the brook flowed between The hills he will climb no more; But the drink of luck For the youth of good pluck, Who can stare in the eye of fate, Is the good old whiskey of old Kentuck And invariably straight.

III

So here's to the corn That is growing this morn All ta.s.selled and gold and gay!

And the old copper still In the sour mash mill By the spring on the turnpike gray!

May the fount of luck For the man full of pluck Flow ever without abate With the good old whiskey of old Kentuck, And strong and pure and straight.

ENVOY

Old straight whiskey! That is the drink of life-- Consolation, family, friends and wife!

So make your gla.s.ses ready, Pour fingers three, then--steady!

"Here's good luck to Kentucky and whiskey straight!"

No one, like Allison, who has made the newspaper profession a life work, has failed to study its weak spots and to note its imperfections; or on the other hand, to grasp its marvelous opportunities for studying the wonderful mystery of the variations of human nature. In the very essence of things therefore, he recognizes the human elements in his own profession and does not hold that the newspaper man is perfect or that it does not harbor types of black sheep the likes of which may not be found in other flocks. At the same time nothing raises his gorge quicker than to hear the uninformed or unthinking deliver themselves, parrot-like, of the formula "that's only a newspaper lie" or to see some man climb high by the aid of the newspaper and then kick down the ladder by which he rose. Allison once discussed this subject skillfully in an address on "Newspaper Men and Other Liars" which is worth a half-hour of any man's time. The only difficulty would be experienced in finding a copy, for so far as known, I have the only one extant. Allison believes and says that by the very nature of his occupation and training the newspaper man is the least of liars among men and proves to his own complete satisfaction that the reporter gets his undeserved reputation for lying from his very impersonality--an impersonality that may be condemned with perfect safety. Fact, he declares, is a block of granite that the whole world may see without wrangling over, but once inject the human interest, with its divided opinions, into the occult mystery of the printed type and you have the newspaper "lie" in so many of its aspects, an a.n.a.lysis that leads him to arrive at this rather remarkable deduction:

I might almost define a lie as being the narrative of a human event that had been printed.

And what about a comparison of those "other" liars with the newspaper man?

Allison makes it very adroitly this way:

Suppose every word that every member of this intelligent and most respectable audience has said today:--the merchant to his customers and creditors; the man of leisure to his cronies and companions, the professional man to his clients; even the ladies to their bosom friends at tea or euchre--suppose, I say, that every word you had uttered had been taken down by some marvelous mechanical contrivance, and should be published verbatim tomorrow morning with your names attached showing just what each of you had said. What do you think would happen? I can tell you from observation. You would likely spend next year explaining, denying, apologizing and repenting. Suits for slander would appear on the courthouse shelves as thick as blackberries in August. There would be friendships shattered, confidences dissipated, feuds established, social anarchy enthroned and perhaps this admirable club could never hold another meeting for lack of a quorum of members willing to meet each other in one room.

Well, browsing time is up! I wish I might open the pages of other gems and quote from their wit, their satire and their sentiment, but any reference to Allison's productions must of very necessity touch only the high spots and besides that--

This volume wouldn't be big enough!