We gave him the same medal worn by
our own members.
He was as good an American as ever lived and his heart flamed
against cruelty and injustice. His writings form a text-book
of Americanism which all our people would do well to read at
the present time.
BY IRVIN S. COBB
Almost the first letter I received after I undertook to make a
living by writing for magazines was signed with the name of
Richard Harding Davis. I barely knew him; practically we were
strangers; but if he had been my own brother he could not have
written more generously or more kindly than he did write in
that letter. He, a famous writer, had gone out of his way to
speak words of encouragement to me, an unknown writer; had
taken the time and the pains out of a busy life to cheer a
beginner in the field where he had had so great a measure of
success.
When I came to know him better, I found out that such acts as
these were characteristic of Richard Harding Davis. The world
knew him as one of the most vivid and versatile and
picturesque writers that our country has produced in the last
half-century, but his friends knew him as one of the kindest
and gentlest and most honest and most unselfish of men--a real
human being, firm in his convictions, steadfast in his
affections, loyal to the ideals by which he held, but tolerant
always in his estimates of others.
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