eadily but surely into the Gulf of Mexico.'

"As is his habit, Cobb tugged at his lower lip.

"'What are you going to call this novel?'

"'I don't know. What do you think?'

"'Why not "The River"?'

"'Very well, I'll call it "The River."'

"He scrambled from his seat. 'I'm docking at Twenty-seventh Street.
Good-bye. Keep your hat out of the water.'

"Laboriously he made his way down the winding staircase from the upper
deck, dropped flat-footed on the asphalt pavement, turned his collar up,
leaned into the gust of wind from the South, and swung into the
cross-current of another stream.

"I doubt if he has any intention of calling his story 'The River.' But I
am sure the last chapter will contain something about an unhappy wretch
who wore a derby hat at the moment he walked hand in hand with his
miserable Past into the Father of Waters.

"For those who wish to know something of his personal side, I can do no
better than to record his remarks to a stranger, who, in my presence,
asked Irvin Cobb, without knowing to whom he was speaking, what kind of a
person Cobb was.

"'Well, to be perfectly frank with you,' replied the Paducah prodigy,
'Cobb is related to my wife by marriage, and if you don't object to a
brief sketch, with all the technicalities eliminated, I should say in
appearance he is rather bulky, standing six feet high, not especially
beautiful, a light roan in colour, with a black mane. His figure is
undecided, but might be called bunchy in places. He belongs to several
clubs, including The Yonkers Pressing Club and The Park Hill Democratic
Marching Club, and has always, like his father, who was a Confederate
soldier, voted the Democratic ticket. He has had one wife and one child
and still has them. In religion he is an Innocent Bystander.'

"Could anything be fuller than this?"

=iv=

It was Mr. Davis, also, who in the New York Herald of April 23, 1922, made
public the evidence for the following box score:

1st 2nd

Best Writer of Humour Cobb ----
Best All-Round Reporter Cobb ----
Best Local Colourist Cobb ----
Best in Tales of Horror Cobb ----
Best Writer of Negro Stories ---- Cobb
Best Writer of Light Tarkington Cobb and
Humorous Fiction Harry Leon Wilson
Best Teller of Anecdotes Cobb Cobb

"Not long ago a group of ten literary men--editors,