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Bar Patterns
sometime.
If
he didn ' t take a drink, he at least took a
peep at the "menagerie"; and if the attraction was sel–
dom lions, there were certain hours of the day when the
k d . h "b 11 " d "b
"
room was pac e wit
u s an
ears.
PRIVATr:
JoHN
To dismiss a recollection of a place where so much rude,
ungainly and uproarious story-telling was done, but
where, too, so much real humor came out under the
I
stimulative effect of generously drunk spirit, without
calling to mind one of its most decorative as well as
most intelligent wits, would almost mean leaving the
best egg out of this rum omelet. Up rises from a table
at the farther end of the room a tall, slender man
w~ose
gray mustache bears evidence that the lingering traces
of good liquor may be held too precious for desecration
by a pocket handkerchief.
"Private John Allen to the bar!"
And "Private" John Allen never said nay to -such an
invitation.
The way he used to tell it, Congressman Allen-of
Tupelo, Mississippi, suh!-had dubbed himself with the
title by which he was invariably known. After the Civil
War he found the South overrun with generals and
colonels and majors, so that at encampments of Con–
federate veterans, when it seemed that everybody he
met had commanded an army, a brigade, a regiment,
or at least a battalion, while he himself had never risen
above the ranks, he concluded he must be the only pri–
vate of the Confederate Army who had survived the
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