ramatic and city editor of _The Louisville Courier-Journal_; managing
editor of _The Louisville Commercial_, and after a lapse of years as
previously told, editor-in-chief of _The Daily Herald_.

Fifteen years or more ago, long before we dreamed of being associated in
business, Allison wrote me with the frankness that has characterized our
friendship from the first, just how he came to enter newspaper work. Where
he was concerned I was always "wanting to know" and he seemed ever willing
to tell--me. The letter was as usual written in lead pencil on soft,
spongy, ruled copy paper and that portion having reference to the subject
named is given verbatim:

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