The Dead Men's Song: Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its Author Young Ewing AllisonHitchcock, Champion Ingraham
General
The Dead Men's Song: Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its Author Young Ewing Allison
Hitchcock, Champion Ingraham
Allison, Young Ewing, 1853-1932; Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894. Treasure Island; Treasure Island (Imaginary place)
Physically he is of medium height, rather slight in form and, when walking,
stoops a bit with head forward and a trifle to one side. In conversing he
has a captivating trick of looking up while his head is bent and keeping
his blue eyes nailed to yours pretty much all the time. Around eyes and
mouth is ever lurking a wrinkling smile and its break--the laugh--is hearty
and contagious with a timbre of peculiar huskiness. His face is a trifle
thin through the cheeks, which accentuates a breadth of head, now crowning
with silvery--and let me whisper this--slowly thinning hair. Stubby white
mustaches for facial adornment, and cloth of varying brown shades to
encompass the physical man, complete the picture.
Such is Young Ewing Allison as I see him.
MAN _and_ NEWSPAPER MAN
Young Allison is a Kentuckian (Henderson, December 23, 1853) and proud of
it with a pride that does not restrain him from seeing the peculiarities
and frailties as well as the admirable traits of his fellow natives and
skillfully putting them on paper to his own vast delight--and theirs too.
What he gives, he is willing to take with Cromwell-like philosophy: "Paint
me warts and all!" To speak of Allison in any sense whatever must be in the
character of newspaper man, since to this work his whole life has been
devoted. And if I may speak with well intentioned frankness: He's a damn
good editor, too! However little our lay friends may understand this
message, aside from its emphasis, I rest secure in the thought that to the
brotherhood it opens a wide vista of qualifications to which reams might be
devoted without doing full justice to the subject. Today he might not be
the ideal city editor, or night editor, or managing editor of our great
modern miracle-machines called newspapers, but I have yet to meet the man
who can more quickly absorb, analyze, sum-up and deliver an editorial
opinion, so deliciously phrased and so nicely gauged. He who can do this is
the embodiment of all staff editors!
If I may be pardoned for a moment, I will get myself associated with
Allison and proceed with this relation. In 1888 he left daily newspaper
work to found _The Insurance Herald_, though he continued old associations
by occasional contributions, and in 1899 sold that publication and
established _The Insurance Field_. In the fall of 1902 when presented with
the opportunity of becoming editor-in-chief of _The Daily Herald_ in
Louisville, he gave up temporarily an active connection with _The Insurance
Field_ and in January, 1903, chose me to carry on this latter work, from
which I am thankful to say he was absent only three years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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