Seated one day in the Senate restaurant, I observed Mr. Allen standing at the entrance. Upon my invitation, he took a seat at my table. "What will you have, John?" said I. With an abstracted air, and the appearance of being extremely embarrassed by his surroundings, he replied, "It makes mighty little difference about me anyway," and turning to a waiter he slowly drawled out, "Bring me some terrapin and champagne." Then, in an apologetic tone he quietly observed, "I got used to that durin' the Wah."
After a moment's pause, he continued, "By the way, did you ever hear the expression 'before the Wah'?" I intimated that the expression had not wholly escaped me.
"I heard it once under rather peculiar circumstances," said John. "Down in the outskirts of my deestrict, there is an old-time religious sect known as the 'hard-shell' or 'iron-jacket' Baptists; mighty good, honest people, of course, but old-fashioned in their ways and everlastingly opposed to all new-fangled notions, such as having Temperance societies, Missionary societies, and Sunday schools. They would, however, die in their tracks before they would ever let up on the good old church doctrines, especially predestination. Oh, I tell you they were predestinarians from away back. John Calvin with his vapory views upon that question would not have been admitted even on probation. Sometimes the preacher during his sermon, turning to the Amen corner would inquire: 'When were you, my brother, predestinated to eternal salvation, or eternal damnation?'
"Well, the answer that had come down from the ages always was,
'From the foundation of the world.'
"When I was making my first race for Congress, I spoke in that neighborhood one Saturday, and stayed all night with one of the elders, and on Sunday of course I went to church. During the sermon, the preacher while holding forth as usual on his favorite doctrine, suddenly turning to a stranger who had somehow got crowded into the Amen corner, said: 'My brother, when were you predestinated to eternal salvation or eternal damnation?' To which startling inquiry the stranger, terribly embarrassed, hesitatingly answered: 'I don't adzactly remember, Parson, but I think it was befo' the Wah.'"
A comrade of John in Company G was a tow-headed, lantern-jawed fellow who never failed somehow to get to the rear and to a place of comparative safety at the first intimation of approaching battle. He was proof alike against the gibes of his comrades and the threats of his officers. Upon one occasion the approach of the enemy was heralded by a few shells bursting suggestively near the spot where Company G was stationed. The tow-headed veteran immediately began preparations to retire. With threatening mien, levelled revolver, and oaths that would have done no discredit to "our army in Flanders," the Captain ordered the skulker back into line, upon pain of instant death. Leaning upon his musket, and with familiar gaze upon his irate superior, the culprit slowly drawled: "I don't mine bein' muddered by a high-tone Southern gentleman like you, Cappen, but dam if I'm gwyen to eternally disgrace my family by lettin' one of them low-down Yankees shoot me!"
Allen was no exception to the rule that men gifted like himself are subject to occasional seasons of gloom, but his greeting usually came as a benediction. At the banquet table, when dull care was laid aside and he was surrounded by genial companions,—"for 'tis meet that noble minds keep ever with their likes"—his star was at its zenith. Then indeed, all rules were suspended; no point of order suggested—"The man and the hour had met." His marvellous narratives of quaint incidents and startling experiences, his brilliant repartee, sallies of wit, banter, and badinage have rarely been heard since the days of the Round Table or the passing of "the Star and Garter."
Once, however, John Allen confessedly met his match in the person of the Hon. John R. Fellows, who had been Colonel of an Arkansas regiment in the Confederate service; later a prominent leader of Tammany Hall, and was at the time mentioned, a Representative in Congress from New York. He was the "Prince Rupert of Debate," and was gifted with eloquence rarely equalled. At a banquet given in his honor upon his retirement from Congress, a hundred or more of his associates were guests, including, of course, the subject of this sketch. Men high in councils of State, leaders of both parties, and of both Houses, had gathered around the board, and good-fellowship and mirth reached the high-water mark. By common consent Fellows and Allen were in undisputed possession of the floor. Such passages-at-arms no pen can describe. Even "John Chamberlain's" in its palmiest days has never known the like.
Near the close Allen said:
"There is one thing I would like to have Colonel Fellows explain. He was captured the first year of the war, and never exchanged, but held as a prisoner by the Federals until the war was over. I was taken prisoner five times, and always promptly exchanged. I would like Colonel Fellows to explain how it was that he was kept in a place of safety, while I was always at the front?"