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Old Waldorf Bar Days
conflict. So he chose for himself the title of "Private,"
and thereafter gave it distinction.
A man of great charm and an excellent story-teller,
his friends used to say that had Allen taken up the pen,
he must have proved no mean rival to Mark Twain.
Once while engaged in a daily search for humor for the
old New York Sun, I spent three enchanted hours lis–
tening to Private John and Harris Dickson swap yarns
in the Bar. Dickson was a fellow-Mississippian, and no
bad second to the other. Unlike him, however, Dickson
put a good deal of his stuff into stories for the magazines.
Almost every member of Congress was Private Allen's
friend. One proof is that when he got up in Congress
and demanded that his home town of Tupelo, Miss.,
be made the site of a government fish-hatchery, they
just handed him his wish on a platter.
Private John was a poker-player of considerable
prowess, even if luck usually ran against him. Shortly
before a session of Congress, his close friend, Colonel
E.
T. Brown, of Atlanta, would invariably receive a
telygram that he was
01;1
his way to Washington, via
Atlanta. Whereupon Colonel Brown would notify an–
other resident of that city, and one of South Carolina.
Upon Private John's· arrival at Atlanta the four would
go into a long session at one of the local clubs, whence
frequently the Mississippian would continue his journey
to Washington considerably lighter in pocket.
OLD GREEN
R1vAH
Private Allefi showed up at least once a year at the
Waldorf, and his visits seldom continued less than three