The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-06-20
By DOLLY DALRYMpIr

i iHHTON SSINNING 954, please, Central
 and when you get the number 1 won't you kindly call Apart ment 531?"
 My nice little telephone girl at the Vanderbilt replied sweetly: Certainly, Mrs. Shipman." CYou see she didn't know me as one of the Dolly Sisters. , "Ossinning 954,'' may say, en passant, l is the phone number of Mr Irwin s. Cobb's home up on the Hudson, whither the noted author, traveller, humorist and war correspondent had repaired at once after his arrival in New York just two days before, after a lengthy stay lover There at the front of the front"
 Everybody who knows me knows that Irwin s. Cobb is one of my hobbies" | adore him; yes, it's perfectly all right to say so in print, because I told his wife the same thing over the phone and she was pleased to death, and knowing MT. Cobb had returned with interesting data about his wonderful experiences over There," felt impelled to have a story to bring home with me to his hundreds and hundreds of friends and
 
 I do.
 T am going to Philadelphia tomorrow morning at 9:30," MT. Cobb said over the wire when I chatted with him a few minutes later. If you'll meet me at the Pennsylvania station-at Doubleday Page and company's book shelf I'll have a chance to talk with you for a little while"
 And there was I the next morning when Mr. Cobb arrived-arrived, not as the gay, debonnair, laughing humorist I had known before, but with the burden of war and wars frightful havoc upon his countenance-his tall, obese, wide- shouldered figure his skin as disgrace fully dark and florid as an Indians, and his brown eyes with flecks of hazel in them arresting the dominance of sym pathy, pity and compassion for what he had seen and experienced in the land where blood now flows crimson red and hearts grow white with the frghtful scourge of grim-visaged war run riot!
 But don't think for moment, please that this is to be story written in the key of B minor con malinconia, for it isn't; rising above and beyond all else was a superb note of hope, a splendid spirit of optimism and an undaunted con- fdence in MT. Cobbs voice and heart as in the gray, dim morning he talked of the tragedy lover There" the gloom of which hangs like opaque, cimmerain, mucilaginous fumes of sulphur and bro- mine OCT all the world tSday.
 The man whose wit and humor dazzled in "The Battle Hen of the Republic" the clever, epigrammatist who coined such aphorsms as "Semper Edam-Once a cheese always a cheese" was now seri- ous yet triumphant, as he stood with the dust of battle-scarred Picardy still faintly visible on his khaki uniform and the little Identification bracelet dangling, from his wrist with the tiny Joan of Arc medallion suspended therefrom, while he briefly catalogued for me some of the chief impressions he had of our boys lover There" giving me all the while to understand that these were only mere fractions of what he had gone into and seen and heard. As fragment then I offer you-those who love Irwin s. Cobb and his masterful mind and gentle heart as I do-just a few terse sentences for which do not even promise strict chro- nology, for that early morning hour was not conducive to considerable cerebral auietude on my part, as my brain hardly ever wakes up before-well-I was about to say II a. m., but someone might cor rect me and observe that it has never yet walked up at all.
 "Tell my friends in the south," MT. Cobb said tell those anxious mothers