You see I lost two years going to school--from seven to nine years old. I was put out of all the private schools for incorrigible "inattention"--then it was discovered that I had been partially deaf and not guilty--but my schooling ended there and I was turned loose on my father's library to get an education by main force--got it by reading everything--had read Rousseau's "Confessions" at 14--and books replaced folks as companions. Wanted to get nearer to books and so hired myself to the country printer and newspaper at 13--great disappointment to the family, my mother having dreams of my becoming a preacher--[hell of a preacher I would have made]. I had meantime begun and finished as much as a page apiece of many stories and books, several epic poems--but one day the Old Man went home to dinner and left me only a scrap of "reprint" to set during his hour and a half of absence. It was six or eight lines nonpareil about the Russian gentleman who started to drive from his country home to the city one evening in his sleigh with his 4 children. Wolves attacked them and one by one he threw the children to the pack, hoping each time thus to save the others. When he had thrown the last his sleigh came to the city gate with him sitting in it a raving maniac. That yarn had been going the rounds of print since 1746. The Old Man was an absent-minded old child, and I knew it, so I turned my fancy loose and enlarged the paragraph to a full galley of long primer, composing the awful details as I set the type and made it a thriller. The Old Man never "held copy" reading proof, so he passed it all right and I saw myself an author in print for the first time. The smell of printer's ink has never since been out of my hair. Allison's newspaper years are rich with experience, for while he could never be classed as a Yellow Reformer, his caustic, or amusing, or pathetic pen, as the case demanded, has never been idle. Away back in the old days the gambling element in Louisville fairly "owned the town" and he attempted to curtail their power. They tried to cajole him and to bribe him and when both alike failed, intimidated the millionaire owner of the _Commercial_ out from under him! He either had to sacrifice Allison or his street railway interests, and chose Allison to throw to the lions. But he made Mr. Dupont go the whole length and "fire" him! He wouldn't resign when asked to do so. And of course while it all lasted Allison had his meed of personal amusement. For no editor ever took himself less seriously. Prominent citizens came with fair words and he listened to them and printed them; bribes were offered and accepted only for publication; while threats were received joyously and made the subject of half-whimsical comment.