or
and homely good sense at a meeting of the Democratic State Editorial
Association. Pettit, having once sat beside Henry Watterson at a public
dinner in Louisville, had thereafter encouraged as modestly as possible
a superstition that he and Mr. Watterson were the last survivors of the
"old school" of American editors. One of his favorite jokes was the use
of the editorial "we" in familiar conversation; he said "our wife" and
"our sanctum," and he amused himself by introducing into the "Democrat"
trifling incidents of his domestic life, beginning these items with such
phrases as, "While we were weeding our asparagus bed in the cool of
Tuesday morning, our wife--noble woman that she is--" etc., etc. His
squibs of this character, quoted sometimes in metropolitan newspapers,
afforded him the greatest glee. He appeared occasionally as a lecturer,
his favorite subject being American humor; and he was able to prove by
his scrap-book that he had penetrated as far east as Xenia, Ohio, and as
far west as Decatur, Illinois. Once, so ran Fraserville tradition, he
had been engaged for the lyceum course at Springfield, Missouri, but his
contract had been canceled when it was found that his discourse was
unillumined by the stereopticon, that vivifying accessory being just
then in high favor in that community.

Out of his own reading and reflections Allen had reached the conclusion
that Franklin, Emerson, and Lincoln were the greatest Americans. He
talked a great deal of Lincoln and of the Civil War, and the soldiers'
monument, in its circular plaza in the heart of the city, symbolized for
him all heroic things. He would sit on the steps in the gray shadow at
night, waiting for Dan to finish some task at his office, and Harwood
would find him absorbed, dreaming by the singing, foaming fountains.

Allen spoke with a kind of passionate eloquence of This Stupendous
Experiment, or This Beautiful Experiment, as he liked to call America.
Dan put Walt Whitman into his hands and afterwards regretted it, for
Allen developed an attack of acute Whitmania that tried Dan's patience
severely. Dan had passed through Whitman at college and emerged safely
on the other side. He begged Allen not to call him "camerado" or lift so
often the perpendicular hand. He suggested to him that while it might be
fine and patriotic to declaim

"When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,"

from the steps of the monument at midnight, the police might take
ano