e, 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 as a character note, should be added here a line or two about a
work undertaken in behalf of a friend on a few hours notice for which he
received a reward only in thanks. This friend had contracted to write
certain memoirs but was incapacitated by illness and hung out the distress
signal. Allison responded, shut himself up for a month, and produced a
smooth and well balanced work of five hundred and fifty pages. Once I sent
him a check to cover the cost of one of his books but he declared the check
a "tempting bauble" and returned it framed. But I got a copy just the same
inscribed "With the compliments of the Author" which I prized just as much
as if I had paid for it with a clearing house certificate.

Physically he is of medium height, rather slight in form and, when walking,
stoops a bit with head forward and a trifle to one side. In conversing he
has a captivating trick of looking up while his head is bent and keeping
his blue eyes nailed to yours pretty much all the time. Around eyes and
mouth is ever lurking a wrinkling smile and its break--the laugh--is hearty
and contagious with a timbre of peculiar huskiness. His face is a trifle
thin through the cheeks, which accentuates a breadth of head, now crowning
with silvery--and let me whisper this--slowly thinning hair. Stubby white
mustaches for facial adornment, and cloth of varying brown shades to
encompass the physical man, complete the picture.

Such is Young Ewing Allison as I see him.

MAN _and_ NEWSPAPER MAN

Young Allison is a Kentuckian (Henderson, December 23, 1853) and proud of
it with a pride that does not restrain him from seeing the peculiarities
and frailties as well as the admirable traits of his fellow natives and
skillfully putting them on paper to his own vast delight--and theirs too.
What he gives, he is willing to take with Cromwell-like philosophy: "Paint
me warts and all!" To speak of Allison in any sense whatever must be in the
character of newspaper man, since to this