and will, if he is spared, write better novels about the
people of today than Bret Harte, with all his genius and imagination,
wrote around the Pioneers. I know of no single instance where one man has
shown such fecundity and quality as Irvin Cobb has so far evinced, and it
is my opinion that his complete works at fifty will contain more good
humour, more good short stories, and at least one bigger novel than the
works of any other single contemporaneous figure.

"He was born in Paducah, Kentucky, in June, '76. I have taken occasion to
look into the matter and find that his existence was peculiarly varied. He
belonged to one of those old Southern families-there being no new Southern
families--and passed through the public schools sans incident. At the age
of sixteen he went into the office of The Paducah Daily News as a
reportorial cub.

"He was first drawn to daily journalism because he yearned to be an
illustrator. Indeed, he went so far as to write local humorous stories,
illustrating them himself. The pictures must have been pretty bad,
although they served to keep people from saying that his literature was
the worst thing in the paper.

"Resisting all efforts of the editor, the stockholders and the subscribers
of The Paducah Daily News, he remained barricaded behind his desk until
his nineteenth year, when he was crowned with a two-dollar raise and a
secondary caption under his picture which read 'The Youngest Managing
Editor of a Daily Paper in the United States.'

"If Cobb was consulted in the matter of this review, he would like to have
these preliminaries expunged from his biography. But the public is
entitled to the details.

"It is also true that he stacked up more libel suits than a newspaper of
limited capital with a staff of local attorneys could handle before he
moved to Louisville, where, for three years, he was staff correspondent of
The Evening Post. It was here that Cobb discovered how far a humorist
could go without being invited to step out at 6 a.m. and rehearse 'The
Rivals' with real horse-pistols.

"The first sobering episode in his life occurred when the Goebel murder
echoed out of Louisville. He reported this historic assassination and
covered the subsequent trials in the Georgetown court house. Doubtless the
seeds of tragedy, which mark some of his present work, were sown here.
Those who are familiar with his writings know that occasionally he sets
his cap and bells aside and dips his p