Of his descriptive writing there need be no fear of speaking
with extravagance; he had made himself, especially in his
later work, through long practice and his inborn instinct for
the significant and the fresh aspect, quite the best of all
contemporary correspondents and reporters; and his rivals in
the past could be easily numbered.
BY AUGUSTUS THOMAS
One spring afternoon in 1889 a member brought into the Lambs
Club house--then on Twenty-sixth Street--as a guest Mr.
Richard Harding Davis. I had not clearly caught the careless
introduction, and, answering my question, Mr. Davis repeated
the surname. He did not pronounce it as would a Middle
Westerner like myself, but more as a citizen of London might.
To spell his pronunciation Dyvis is to burlesque it slightly,
but that is as near as it can be given phonetically. Several
other words containing _a_ long a were sounded by him in the
same way, and to my ear the rest of his speech had a related
eccentricity. I am told that other men educated in certain
Philadelphia schools have a similar diction, but at that time
many of Mr. Davis's new acquaintances thought the manner was
an affectation. I mention the peculiarity, which after years
convinced me was as native to him as was the color of his
eyes, because I am sure that it was a barrier between him and
some persons who met him only casually.
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