The star-independent. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1904-1917, 1915-01-21
This WILL INTRODUCE
MR.. cobb. OF PADUCAH
BY Ellis Parker Putler

Up and down Main street, New
York, and around the corner where the
boys get together for lunch once a
week and all through the chain of clubs
where the fellows think more of good
joke than of the club constitution, they
have called this dahk-hai 'ed gemman
from Paducah, (Kentueky), cold Irv
Cobb" so long and affectionately that
a lot of folks think he was christened
that way I had notion myself that
the "Old' was a sort of atfectionate
diminutive for Bourbon Bottledat-
the-Still. Come to find out, his name
is regular three -jointed-aff Irwin
Shrewsbury Cobb-and he had the
label pasted on him along in the sew
entities. He came along as a sort of
Centennial souvenir, with the miniature
liberty bells that the Paducahns keep
on their what-nots.
But there is nothing miniature about
Old Irv. He's the only real four-dimen-
stoned humorist now in captivity, and
any way you look at him you can OBJ
serve that he has length, breadth,
thickness and joviality. He is great,
big Southerner, with chuclSle, and an
appetite. He has written more good,
plain, wholesome food, and more rich,
gravied, hard-to-digest food than any
man living-and has eaten more. just
when our humor was getting thin and
anemic, and heartless and sophisticated,
Old Irv slid up from Paducah and
brought along his appetite and his heart
and things looked more cheerful.
The general run of us are ''In New
York. but Cobb is always "From
Paducah. - He knows every corner of
New York, but sees it with the fresh
ness of vision of a cub reporter of the
Paducah "Daily News" After hearing
some five hundred of his seven thousand
or more happy stories you get an idea
that Paducah is place where people
go around with their human nature
peeled, and where any one could pick
up chunks of humor and wads of char
acter without trouble. The fact is that
Cobb has the smest insight and the
quickest perception of salient charac-
teristies of any man since Mark Twain.
If other people did not enjoy Cobb s
stories more than he enjoys them it
would be safe to say that Cobb enjoys
them more than other people do. He
has chuckle at them before he passes
them on.
Old Irv started in short handling and
working the comic papers when he gave
up the nursing bottle and took to real
food, or along about then, and he was
editing a paper, a daily paper, when
he was nineteen, and editing daily in
Paducah means that you have to get
around among the folks. You have to
learn the subscribers idiosyncracies,
and learn them well, in order to avoid
stepping on them
Cobb did not tell me this; know
1T. The New York "Sun' is we'll
enough as a path to literary fame
Cobb footed it, by the way but it is
pounding small local daily into shape
that takes man right down to foun-
datlons of human nature and rubs. his
nose in it There is only one thing that
beats it-being managing editor. Cobb
had three years at that, there in Pad
ucah, and between whiles he ran a
special column in the Louisville Gwen
ing Pos" under the refined but pleas.
ing title of "Sour Mash"
| There is no use trying to hide the
fact that Cobb is not a parlor poet.
| | doubt if he ever wore a pair of
lavender gloves in his life, and if he
did he probably wore them to funeral,
in consort with pink shirt with de-
tachable cuffs, and then rode home
with the driver of the hearse. If he
did ride home with the driver he got
a good story out of him between the
cemetery and the livery stable.
! Cobb is man s man. He. has a sub
foundation of the old style Southern
not New York Main Street Southern
-chivalry, and knows how to be a
gentleman in his shirtsleeves: but, as a
metaphor, he likes to shuck off his col.
! lar and tie and have real good time.
/ After while The Saturday Even.
ing Post" grabbed Cobb and Groom
ed'' him, as he would say. Since then
ne hasn't done anything but write a
lot of the best stories ever written.
Cobb, himself, dosen t know how good
they are.
The big, noisy, good-natured Pad.
ueah genius | dropped into the Dutch
Treat Club last Tuesday, whore some
fifty or more magazinists were at lunch
at the long table that seats them once
week. Another member came in and
took his seat alongside of me.
What IS the matter - he asked
"Nobody's laughing. Ism t Cobb here
to-day?"
Cobb is coming to Harrisburg on
January %. Then you'll know him
| better.-Adv.*