ng all his own. If you could see him day
in and out, you would soon recognize the symptoms. An idea strikes him; he
becomes abstracted, reads a great deal, pull down books, fills pages of
particularly ruled copy paper with figures from a big, round, black pencil
until you might think he was calculating the expenditures of a Billion
Dollar Congress. He is not a mathematician but, like Balzac, simply dotes
on figures. Then comes the analytical stage and that he performs on foot,
walking, head bent forward, upstairs, downstairs, outdoors, around the
block, in again, through the clattering press room and up and down the
hall. When the stride quickens and he strikes a straight line for his desk,
his orderly mind has arranged and classified his subject down to the
illuminating adjectives even and the whole is ready to be put on paper.
Though his mind is orderly, his desk seldom is. He is the type of
old-school editor who has everything handy in a profound confusion. He
detests office system, just as he admires mental arrangement. I got a
"rise" out of him only once when making a pretence of describing his very
complex method of preserving correspondence, and then he flared: "It saved
us a lot of trouble, didn't it?" The fact was patent, but the story is
apropos. Allison was complaining to a friend of office routine.

"Hitch has no heart," he said. "He comes over here, takes letters off my
desk and puts 'em into an old file somewhere so no one can find them.
That's no way to do. When a letter comes to me I clip open the end with my
shears, like a gentleman, read it, and put it back in the envelope. When in
the humor I answer it. Of course there is no use keeping a copy of what I
write; I know well enough what _I_ say. All I want to keep is what the
other fellow said to me. When it is time to clean the desk, I call a boy,
have him box all the letters and take them over to the warehouse. Then
whenever I want a letter I know damned well where it is--it's in the
warehouse." It really happened that certain important and badly needed
letters were "in the warehouse" and so Allison's system was vindicated.

Just the mere mention of his system brings up the delightful recollections
of his desk-cleaning parties, Spring and Fall, events so momentous that
they almost come under the classification of office holidays. The dust
flies, torn papers fill the air and the waste-baskets, and odd memoranda
come to light and must be discussed. While