l 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 endorsement was called up against him in a
broadside affidavit, which he promptly reviewed in the most deliciously
sarcastic editorial concluding:

And we do not hesitate to declare anew that "we believe if he had
been continued as president, all the interests of the company would
have been secured." It was certainly not his fault that he did not
secure more. Everything cannot be done in eleven months. But in the
language of the far-Western tombstone it can be justly said, "He
done what he could."

JUST BROWSING AROUND

One who has never read around the clock in a virtual debauch of novel
reading cannot a