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HISTORICAL
to
subject his art gallery to a process of weeding.
To dismiss a recollection of a place where much rude,
ungainly and uproarious story-telling was done, but where,
too, so much real humor came out under the stimulative
effect of generously drunk spirit, without calling to mind
one of its most decorative as well as most intelljgent 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 whose gray mustache bears evi–
dence 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 colo–
nels and majors, so that at encampments of Confederate
veterans, when it seemed that everyhody he met had com–
manded an army, a brigade, a regiment, or at least a bat–
talion, while he himself had never risen above the ranks,
he concluded he must be the only private of the Confed–
erate Army who had survived the conflict. So he chose for
himself the title of "Private," and thereafter gave it dis–
tinction.
Private Allen showed up at least once a year at the
Waldorf, and his visits seldom continued less than three
weeks. One afternoon, his friend, Colonel E.T. Brown of
Atlanta, arrived at the hotel and, suspecting the whereabouts
of his intimate, sought the door of the Bar. And, sure
enough, at his favorite table, the center of a group of atten-