Allison has a very happy faculty of hitting upon titles for essays and addresses that stir the imagination and whet the appetite. Probably the best example is “The Delicious Vice” to which reference has just been made. This title was more or less an evolution from an address delivered before the Western Writers Association “On the Vice of Novel Reading” that started a discussion lasting through one whole day. Allison is a warm champion of The Novel as an institution, and as well an avowed and confirmed reader of novels, which he declares are poetry in essence, lacking only the form and rhyme but having measure, the accent and the figures of the whole range of poetry. He says that in all literature—
The great muse of History ranks first in dignity, power and usefulness; but who will say that at her court the Prime Minister is not the Novel which by its lightness, grace and address has popularized history all over the world?
At that time the word “microbe” and the theory of its significance was in the full swell of popular use. Allison took it to illustrate the essence of spiritual intellectuality struggling against the swarming bacteria of animalism that made up the rest of the human body controlled by the brain. He pointed out that the difference between types of brains was two ounces of grayish pulp, almost wholly absent in the unthinking herd of men. But it enlarged in gradually lessening groups of men to the intellectual few that dominate thought, thus:
The microbe that might have become glorious ounces of brain has been content at first to become merely a little wart of pulp, which finds expression in skill and quickness and more of coveted leisure. There is the next higher terrace and another and another, until finally it becomes a pyramid, ever more fragile and symmetrical, the apex of which is a delicate spire, where the purest intellects are elevated to an ever increasing height in ever decreasing numbers, until in the dizzy altitude above the groveling base below they are wrapped little by little in the cold solitude of incarnate genius burning like suns with their own essence. It is so far up that the eyes deceive and men dispute who it is that stands at the top, but, whoever he may be, he has carried by the force of strength, determination and patient will, the whole swarm of his evil bacteria with him. They swarm through every terrace below, increasing in force as the pyramid enlarges downward. It is the pyramidal bulk of human nature with its finest brain, true to anatomic principles, at the top. That radiance at the summit is the delight and the aspiration of all below.
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The Infallible—Type of Handy Man formerly in every Newspaper Office. Century, 1889
As an active, enthusiastic and successful newspaper man, every time Allison read a novel depicting the reporter as a sharp-featured and half-disreputable young man running about with pencil and note-book in hand and making himself personally and professionally obnoxious, it produced apoplectic tendencies that permanently threatened health and peace of mind. Hence with the characteristic energy devoted to writing, he proceeded to get it out of his system and produced “The Longworth Mystery,” published in Century,† † Century, October, 1889. (which it is interesting to note was illustrated by Charles Dana Gibson who then signed himself “C. D. Gibson”), and “The Passing of Major Kilgore,” appearing in Lippincott’s,† † Lippincott’s January, 1892. both depicting newspaper life. When this latter novelette was printed it soothed me so that I had the paper covers protected with more permanent boards and sent it on many pilgrimages from which it safely returned enriched with further messages of thanks to the creator for his good job. Having browsed deeply behind the bindings of many books I have yet to find others written in the first person, where the pronoun “I” is used by the relator so seldom as in either “The Longworth Mystery” or “The Passing of Major Kilgore,” the intimacy of the relation the while being maintained very adroitly by the observations of the “City Editor” who tells both stories. Major Kilgore in the latter tale, is financial man on the Banner. He is an old school gentleman and profound student of finances who finally goes mad over the study of the market and while dreaming himself possessed of vast wealth, is seeking to further the happiness of others where riches will assist. Of course the denouement shattered many sumptuous air castles but it left the profession the richer by a faithful portrayal. It is in the development of this tale that Allison, ever seeking an opportunity to draw amusement from his friends, created a fine occasion through a reminiscent conversation between Major Kilgore and Colonel Hamilton to inject a famous Southern quartette, Clarence Knowles, Col. John D. Young, James A. Thomas and Col. W. C. Nelson, then in their prime, but who have since passed on to swell the silent throng. Colonel Hamilton is trying to divert Major Kilgore, already showing signs of mental unbalance:
“Some of the fellows we knew in the C. S. A. have had queer luck in the shuffle, Kilgore. You remember Knowles of Georgia? I found him keeping bar in Sacramento. Young of North Carolina, who led that charge at Fredericksburg, is running a restaurant in Colorado; and Thomas, of Tennessee—by the Lord Harry, he killed himself with drink working in a mine in Arizona—had the jim-jams seven times they say and thought his head was a rabbit’s nest. Last time I saw you riled, Kilgore, was that night in the trenches at Fredericksburg when Nelson hid your tobacco bag. You wanted to fight him, by the Lord Harry, there and then, but he wouldn’t do it—because he said he would rather kill Yankees than gentlemen. And you both agreed to take your chances next day on a fool trial which would fight the Yankees best!”