1931 Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Stevens Crockett

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