Only native modesty could explain the absence of the
usual author pride and sensitiveness. The play was
immediately successful. It would have been a dull hack,
indeed, who could have spoiled such excellent stage material
as the novel furnished, but his generosity saw genius in the
dramatic extension of the types he had furnished and in the
welding of additions. Even after enthusiasm had had time
enough to cool, he sent me a first copy of the Playgoers'
edition of the novel, printed in 1902, with the inscription:
TO AUGUSTUS THOMAS:
Gratefully, Admiringly, Sincerely.
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS.
And then, as if feeling the formality of the names, he wrote below:
DEAR GUS,
If you liked this book only one-fifth as much as I like your play,
I would be content to rest on that and spare the public any others.
So for the sake of the public try to like it.
DICK.
In 1914 a motion-picture company arranged to make a feature
film of the, play, and Dick and I went with their outfit to
Santiago de Cuba, where, twenty years earlier, he had found
the inspiration for his story and out of which city and its
environs he had fashioned his supposititious republic of
Olancho. On that trip he was the idol of the company. With
the men in the smoking-room of the steamer there were the
numberless playful stories, in the rough, of the experiences
on all five continents and seven seas that were the
backgrounds of his published tales.
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