eir prime, but who have since passed on to swell the
silent throng. Colonel Hamilton is trying to divert Major Kilgore, already
showing signs of mental unbalance:

"Some of the fellows we knew in the C. S. A. have had queer luck in
the shuffle, Kilgore. You remember Knowles of Georgia? I found him
keeping bar in Sacramento. Young of North Carolina, who led that
charge at Fredericksburg, is running a restaurant in Colorado; and
Thomas, of Tennessee--by the Lord Harry, he killed himself with
drink working in a mine in Arizona--had the jim-jams seven times
they say and thought his head was a rabbit's nest. Last time I saw
you riled, Kilgore, was that night in the trenches at
Fredericksburg when Nelson hid your tobacco bag. You wanted to
fight him, by the Lord Harry, there and then, but he wouldn't do
it--because he said he would rather kill Yankees than gentlemen.
And you both agreed to take your chances next day on a fool trial
which would fight the Yankees best!"

[1] Century, October, 1889.

[2] Lippincott's January, 1892.

Only one who knows Allison intimately can measure the delight, expressed in
chuckles of joy, with which he marked this passage in _Lippincott's_ and
mailed copies to the friends he had whimsically pilloried.

* * * * *

When one browses around among Allison's productions he runs across many odd
conceits as in "The Ballad of Whiskey Straight" which he declares was
"prepared according to the provisions of the Pure Food Law, approved 1906."
Whatever quarrel one might have with the subject itself, or the sentiment,
he cannot fail to fall a victim to the soft cadences of the rippling rhyme.

THE BALLAD OF WHISKEY STRAIGHT.

I

Let dreamers whine
Of the pleasures of wine
For lovers of soft delight;
But this is the song
Of a tipple that's strong--
For men who must toil and fight.
Now the drink of luck
For the man full of pluck
Is easy to nominate:
It's the good old whiskey of old Kentuck,
And you always drink it straight.

II

A julep's tang
Will diminish the pang
Of an old man's dream of yore,
When meadows were green
And the brook flowed between
The hills he will climb no more;
But the drink of luck