Produced by hekula03, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) IRVIN COBB HIS BOOK [Illustration: BY CHARLES DANA GIBSON] IRVIN COBB HIS BOOK FRIENDLY TRIBUTES UPON THE OCCASION OF A DINNER TENDERED TO IRVIN SHREWSBURY COBB AT THE WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL, NEW YORK APRIL TWENTY-FIFTH, MCMXV * * * * * [Illustration: Old Irv Cobb’s back home! J.M.F. BY JAMES MONTGOMERY FLAGG] * * * * * IRVIN COBB--THE MAN WHO STAYED DISCOVERED: Being Some Extracts from an Appreciation by Robert H. Davis in the New York _Sun_, October 19, 1912. It is not for me to indicate when the big events in his life will occur or to lay the milestones of the route along which he will travel. I know only that they are in the future, and that, regardless of any of his achievements in the past, Irvin Cobb has not yet come into his own. * * * * * 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 at fifty his complete works will contain more good humor, more good short stories, and at least one bigger novel than the works of any other single contemporaneous writer. * * * * * One is impressed not only with the beauty and simplicity of his prose, but with the tremendous power of his tragic conceptions and his art in dealing with terror. There appears to be no phase of human emotion beyond his pen. Without an effort he rises from the level of actualities to the high peaks of boundless imagination, invoking laughter or tears at will. * * * * * He writes in octaves, striking instinctively all the chords of humor, tragedy, pathos, and romance with either hand. Observe this man, in his thirty-seventh year, possessing gifts the limitations of which even he himself has not yet recognized. * * * * * There seem to be no pinnacles along the horizon of the literary future that are beyond him. If he uses his pen for an Alpine stock, the Matterhorn is his. Some critics and reviewers do not entirely agree with me concerning Cobb; _but they will_. * * * * * [Illustration: EUROPE REVISED BY OLD IRV COBB BY ORSON LOWELL] * * * * * C--O--B--B _By Sinclair Lewis_