That
was the only habit he had. He was a slave to it.
Once I saw R. H. D. greet his old mother after an absence.
They threw their arms about each other and rocked to and fro
for a long time. And it hadn't been a long absence at that.
No ocean had been between them; her heart had not been in her
mouth with the thought that he was under fire, or about to
become a victim of jungle fever. He had only been away upon a
little expedition, a mere matter of digging for buried
treasure. We had found the treasure, part of it a chipmunk's
skull and a broken arrowhead, and R. H. D. had been absent
from his mother for nearly two hours and a half.
I set about this article with the knowledge that I must fail
to give more than a few hints of what he was like. There
isn't much more space at my command, and there were so many
sides to him that to touch upon them all would fill a volume.
There were the patriotism and the Americanism, as much a part
of him as the marrow of his bones, and from which sprang all
those brilliant headlong letters to the newspapers: those
trenchant assaults upon evil-doers in public office, those
quixotic efforts to redress wrongs, and those simple and
dexterous exposures of this and that, from an absolutely
unexpected point of view.
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