Out of any incident or situation he could pick the most
details that would interest the most people and put them in a
way that was pleasing to the most people; and always, it
seemed, he had the extraordinary good judgment or the
extraordinary good luck to be just where the most interesting
thing was taking place. Gouverneur Morris has written the
last word about Richard Harding Davis, and he, as every one
must, laid final stress on the clean body, clean heart, and
clean mind of the man. R. H. D. never wrote a line that
cannot be given to his little daughter when she is old enough
to read, and I never heard a word pass his lips that his own
mother could not hear. There are many women in the world like
the women in his books. There are a few men like the men, and
of these Dick himself was one.
BY FINLEY PETER DUNNE
In the articles about Mr. Davis that have appeared since his
death, the personality of the man seems to overshadow the
merit of the author. In dealing with the individual the
writers overlook the fact that we have lost one of the best of
our story-tellers. This is but natural. He was a very vivid
kind of person. He had thousands of friends in all parts of
the world, and a properly proportionate number of enemies, and
those who knew him were less interested in the books than in
the man himself--the generous, romantic, sensitive individual
whose character and characteristics made him a conspicuous
figure everywhere he went--and he went everywhere.
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