as a measure of space is still in good standing. The
reporter presents himself at the city desk, tells what he has got, and is
told by the city editor, "Write a stickful." Or, "Write two sticks." And
so on.

_Stickfuls_ is not so much the story of Cobb's life as the story of people
he has met and places he has been, told in a series of extremely
interesting chapters--told in a leisurely and delightful fashion of
reminiscence by a natural association of one incident with another and one
person with someone else. For example, Cobb as a newspaper man, covered a
great many trials in court; and one of the chapters of _Stickfuls_ tells
of famous trials he has attended.

=ii=

Now about this novel of Cobb's: Jeff Poindexter will be remembered by all
the readers of Mr. Cobb's short stories as the negro body servant of old
Judge Priest. In _J. Poindexter, Colored_, we have Jeff coming to New
York. Of course, New York seen through the eyes of a genuine Southern
darkey is a New York most of us have never seen. There's nothing like
sampling, so I will let you begin the book:

"My name is J. Poindexter. But the full name is Jefferson Exodus
Poindexter, Colored. But most always in general I has been known as Jeff
for short. The Jefferson part is for a white family which my folks worked
for them one time before I was born, and the Exodus is because my mammy
craved I should be named after somebody out of the Bible. How I comes to
write this is this way:

"It seems like my experiences here in New York is liable to be such that
one of my white gentleman friends he says to me I should take pen in hand
and write them out just the way they happen and at the time they is
happening, or right soon afterwards, whilst the memory of them is clear in
my brain; and then he's see if he can't get them printed somewheres, which
on the top of the other things which I now is, will make me an author with
money coming in steady. He says to me he will fix up the spelling wherever
needed and attend to the punctuating; but all the rest of it will be my
own just like I puts it down. I reads and writes very well but someway I
never learned to puncture. So the places where it is necessary to be
punctual in order to make good sense and keep everything regulation and
make the talk sound natural is his doings and also some of the spelling.
But everything else is mine and I asks credit.

"My coming to New York, in the first place, is sort of a sudden thing