He may or may not have been a born writer; sometimes I doubt
whether there is such a thing as a born writer. But this much
I do know--he was a born gentleman if ever there was one.
As a writer his place is assured. But always I shall think of
him as he was in his private life--a typical American, a
lovable companion, and a man to the tips of his fingers.
BY JOHN FOX, JR.
During the twenty years that I knew him Richard Harding Davis
was always going to some far-off land. He was just back from
a trip somewhere when I first saw him in his rooms in New
York, rifle in hand, in his sock feet and with his traps in
confusion about him. He was youth incarnate--ruddy, joyous,
vigorous, adventurous, self-confident youth--and, in all the
years since, that first picture of him has suffered no change
with me. He was so intensely alive that I cannot think of him
as dead--and I do not. He is just away on another of those
trips and it really seems queer that I shall not hear him tell
about it.
We were together as correspondents in the Spanish War and in
the Russo-Japanese War we were together again; and so there is
hardly any angle from which I have not had the chance to know
him. No man was ever more misunderstood by those who did not
know him or better understood by those who knew him well, for
he carried nothing in the back of his head--no card that was
not face up on the table.
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