One could not imagine a more charming and delightful companion
than Davis during these days. While he always asserted that
he could not make a speech, and was terrified at the thought
of standing up at a banquet-table, yet, sitting at a dinner-
table with a few friends who were only too eager to listen
rather than to talk, his stories, covering personal
experiences in all parts of the world, were intensely vivid,
with that remarkable "holding" quality of description which
characterizes his writings.
He brought his own bread--a coarse, brown sort, which he
preferred to the better white bread--and with it he ate great
quantities of butter. As we sat down at the table his first
demand was for "Mastika," a peculiar Greek drink distilled
from mastic gum, and his second demand invariably was "Du
beurre!" with the "r's" as silent as the stars; and if it
failed to come at once the waiter was made to feel the
enormity of his tardiness.
The reminiscences ranged from his early newspaper days in
Philadelphia, and skipping from Manchuria to Cuba and Central
America, to his early Sun days under Arthur Brisbane; they
ranged through an endless variety of personal experiences
which very nearly covered the whole course of American history
in the past twenty years.
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