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Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis

by Richard Harding Davis · English · Gutenberg #405 · 680,137 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis

Author: Richard Harding Davis

Editor: Charles Belmont Davis


        
Release date: January 1, 1996 [eBook #405]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/405


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVENTURES AND LETTERS OF RICHARD HARDING DAVIS ***









ADVENTURES AND LETTERS

OF

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS



EDITED BY

CHARLES BELMONT DAVIS




CONTENTS

CHAPTER

     I.  THE EARLY DAYS
    II.  COLLEGE DAYS
   III.  FIRST NEWSPAPER EXPERIENCES
    IV.  NEW YORK
     V.  FIRST TRAVEL ARTICLES
    VI.  THE MEDITERRANEAN AND PARIS
   VII.  FIRST PLAYS
  VIII.  CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA
    IX.  MOSCOW, BUDAPEST, LONDON
     X.  CAMPAIGNING IN CUBA, AND GREECE
    XI.  THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR
   XII.  THE BOER WAR
  XIII.  THE SPANISH AND ENGLISH CORONATIONS
   XIV.  THE JAPANESE-RUSSIAN WAR
    XV.  MOUNT KISCO
   XVI.  THE CONGO
  XVII.  A LONDON WINTER
 XVIII.  MILITARY MANOEUVRES
   XIX.  VERA CRUZ AND THE GREAT WAR
    XX.  THE LAST DAYS




CHAPTER I

THE EARLY DAYS

Richard Harding Davis was born in Philadelphia on April 18, 1864, but,
so far as memory serves me, his life and mine began together several
years later in the three-story brick house on South Twenty-first
Street, to which we had just moved.  For more than forty years this was
our home in all that the word implies, and I do not believe that there
was ever a moment when it was not the predominating influence in
Richard's life and in his work.  As I learned in later years, the house
had come into the possession of my father and mother after a period on
their part of hard endeavor and unusual sacrifice.  It was their
ambition to add to this home not only the comforts and the beautiful
inanimate things of life, but to create an atmosphere which would prove
a constant help to those who lived under its roof--an inspiration to
their children that should endure so long as they lived.  At the time
of my brother's death the fact was frequently commented upon that,
unlike most literary folk, he had never known what it was to be poor
and to suffer the pangs of hunger and failure.  That he never suffered
from the lack of a home was certainly as true as that in his work he
knew but little of failure, for the first stories he wrote for the
magazines brought him into a prominence and popularity that lasted
until the end.  But if Richard gained his success early in life and was
blessed with a very lovely home to which he could always return, he was
not brought up in a manner which in any way could be called lavish.
Lavish he may have been in later years, but if he was it was with the
money for which those who knew him best knew how very hard he had
worked.

In a general way, I cannot remember that our life as boys differed in
any essential from that of other boys.  My brother went to the
Episcopal Academy and his weekly report never failed to fill the whole
house with an impenetrable gloom and ever-increasing fears as to the
possibilities of his future.  At school and at college Richard was, to
say the least, an indifferent student.  And what made this undeniable
fact so annoying, particularly to his teachers, was that morally he
stood so very high.  To "crib," to lie, or in any way to cheat or to do
any unworthy act was, I believe, quite beyond his understanding.
Therefore, while his constant lack of interest in his studies goaded
his teachers to despair, when it came to a question of stamping out
wrongdoing on the part of the student body he was invariably found
aligned on the side of the faculty.  Not that Richard in any way
resembled a prig or was even, so far as I know, ever so considered by
the most reprehensible of his fellow students.  He was altogether too
red-blooded for that, and I believe the students whom he antagonized
rather admired his chivalric point of honor even if they failed to
imitate it.  As a schoolboy he was aggressive, radical, outspoken,
fearless, usually of the opposition and, indeed, often the sole member
of his own party.  Among the students at the several schools he
attended he had but few intimate friends; but of the various little
groups of which he happened to be a member his aggressiveness and his
imagination usually made him the leader.  As far back as I can
remember, Richard was always starting something--usually a new club or
a violent reform movement.  And in school or college, as in all the
other walks of life, the reformer must, of necessity, lead a somewhat
tempestuous, if happy, existence.  The following letter, written to his
father when Richard was a student at Swarthmore, and about fifteen,
will give an idea of his conception of the ethics in the case:


SWARTHMORE--1880.

DEAR PAPA:

I am quite on the Potomac.  I with all the boys at our table were
called up, there is seven of us, before Prex. for stealing sugar-bowls
and things off the table.  All the youths said, "O President, I didn't
do it."  When it came my turn I merely smiled gravely, and he passed on
to the last.  Then he said, "The only boy that doesn't deny it is
Davis.  Davis, you are excused.  I wish to talk to the rest of them."
That all goes to show he can be a gentleman if he would only try.  I am
a natural born philosopher so I thought this idea is too idiotic for me
to converse about so I recommend silence and I also argued that to deny
you must necessarily be accused and to be accused of stealing would of
course cause me to bid Prex. good-by, so the only way was, taking these
two considerations with each other, to deny nothing but let the
good-natured old duffer see how silly it was by retaining a placid
silence and so crushing his base but thoughtless behavior and
machinations.

DICK.


In the early days at home--that is, when the sun shone--we played
cricket and baseball and football in our very spacious back yard, and
the programme of our sports was always subject to Richard's change
without notice.  When it rained we adjourned to the third-story front,
where we played melodrama of simple plot but many thrills, and it was
always Richard who wrote the plays, produced them, and played the
principal part.  As I recall these dramas of my early youth, the action
was almost endless and, although the company comprised two charming
misses (at least I know that they eventually grew into two very lovely
women), there was no time wasted over anything so sentimental or futile
as love-scenes.  But whatever else the play contained in the way of
great scenes, there was always a mountain pass--the mountains being
composed of a chair and two tables--and Richard was forever leading his
little band over the pass while the band, wholly indifferent as to
whether the road led to honor, glory, or total annihilation, meekly
followed its leader.  For some reason, probably on account of my early
admiration for Richard and being only too willing to obey his command,
I was invariably cast for the villain in these early dramas, and the
end of the play always ended in a hand-to-hand conflict between the
hero and myself.  As Richard, naturally, was the hero and incidentally
the stronger of the two, it can readily be imagined that the fight
always ended in my complete undoing.  Strangulation was the method
usually employed to finish me, and, whatever else Richard was at that
tender age, I can testify to his extraordinary ability as a choker.

But these early days in the city were not at all the happiest days of
that period in Richard's life.  He took but little interest even in the
social or the athletic side of his school life, and his failures in his
studies troubled him sorely, only I fear, however, because it troubled
his mother and father.  The great day of the year to us was the day our
schools closed and we started for our summer vacation.  When Richard
was less than a year old my mother and father, who at the time was
convalescing from a long illness, had left Philadelphia on a search for
a complete rest in the country.  Their travels, which it seems were
undertaken in the spirit of a voyage of discovery and adventure,
finally led them to the old Curtis House at Point Pleasant on the New
Jersey coast.  But the Point Pleasant of that time had very little in
common with the present well-known summer resort.  In those days the
place was reached after a long journey by rail followed by a three
hours' drive in a rickety stagecoach over deep sandy roads, albeit the
roads did lead through silent, sweet-smelling pine forests.  Point
Pleasant itself was then a collection of half a dozen big farms which
stretched from the Manasquan River to the ocean half a mile distant.
Nothing could have been more primitive or as I remember it in its
pastoral loveliness much more beautiful.  Just beyond our cottage the
river ran its silent, lazy course to the sea.  With the exception of
several farmhouses, its banks were then unsullied by human habitation
of any sort, and on either side beyond the low green banks lay fields
of wheat and corn, and dense groves of pine and oak and chestnut trees.
Between us and the ocean were more waving fields of corn, broken by
little clumps of trees, and beyond these damp Nile-green pasture
meadows, and then salty marshes that led to the glistening, white
sand-dunes, and the great silver semi-circle of foaming breakers, and
the broad, blue sea.  On all the land that lay between us and the
ocean, where the town of Point Pleasant now stands, I think there were
but four farmhouses, and these in no way interfered with the landscape
or the life of the primitive world in which we played.

Whatever the mental stimulus my brother derived from his home in
Philadelphia, the foundation of the physical strength that stood him in
such good stead in the campaigns of his later years he derived from
those early days at Point Pleasant.  The cottage we lived in was an old
two-story frame building, to which my father had added two small
sleeping-rooms.  Outside there was a vine-covered porch and within a
great stone fireplace flanked by cupboards, from which during those
happy days I know Richard and I, openly and covertly, must have
extracted tons of hardtack and cake.  The little house was called
"Vagabond's Rest," and a haven of rest and peace and content it
certainly proved for many years to the Davis family.  From here it was
that my father started forth in the early mornings on his all-day
fishing excursions, while my mother sat on the sunlit porch and wrote
novels and mended the badly rent garments of her very active sons.
After a seven-o'clock breakfast at the Curtis House our energies never
ceased until night closed in on us and from sheer exhaustion we dropped
unconscious into our patch-quilted cots.  All day long we swam or
rowed, or sailed, or played ball, or camped out, or ate enormous
meals--anything so long as our activities were ceaseless and our
breathing apparatus given no rest.  About a mile up the river there was
an island--it's a very small, prettily wooded, sandy-beached little
place, but it seemed big enough in those days.  Robert Louis Stevenson
made it famous by rechristening it Treasure Island, and writing the new
name and his own on a bulkhead that had been built to shore up one of
its fast disappearing sandy banks.  But that is very modern history and
to us it has always been "The Island."  In our day, long before
Stevenson had ever heard of the Manasquan, Richard and I had discovered
this tight little piece of land, found great treasures there, and, hand
in hand, had slept in a six-by-six tent while the lions and tigers
growled at us from the surrounding forests.

As I recall these days of my boyhood I find the recollections of our
life at Point Pleasant much more distinct than those we spent in
Philadelphia.  For Richard these days were especially welcome.  They
meant a respite from the studies which were a constant menace to
himself and his parents; and the freedom of the open country, the
ocean, the many sports on land and on the river gave his body the
constant exercise his constitution seemed to demand, and a broad field
for an imagination which was even then very keen, certainly keen enough
to make the rest of us his followers.

In an extremely sympathetic appreciation which Irvin S. Cobb wrote
about my brother at the time of his death, he says that he doubts if
there is such a thing as a born author.  Personally it so happened that
I never grew up with any one, except my brother, who ever became an
author, certainly an author of fiction, and so I cannot speak on the
subject with authority.  But in the case of Richard, if he was not born
an author, certainly no other career was ever considered.  So far as I
know he never even wanted to go to sea or to be a bareback rider in a
circus.  A boy, if he loves his father, usually wants to follow in his
professional footsteps, and in the case of Richard, he had the double
inspiration of following both in the footsteps of his father and in
those of his mother.  For years before Richard's birth his father had
been a newspaper editor and a well-known writer of stories and his
mother a novelist and short-story writer of great distinction.  Of
those times at Point Pleasant I fear I can remember but a few of our
elders.  There were George Lambdin, Margaret Ruff, and Milne Ramsay,
all painters of some note; a strange couple, Colonel Olcott and the
afterward famous Madam Blavatsky, trying to start a Buddhist cult in
this country; Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett, with her foot on the first
rung of the ladder of fame, who at the time loved much millinery
finery.  One day my father took her out sailing and, much to the lady's
discomfiture and greatly to Richard's and my delight, upset the famous
authoress.  At a later period the Joseph Jeffersons used to visit us;
Horace Howard Furness, one of my father's oldest friends, built a
summer home very near us on the river, and Mrs. John Drew and her
daughter Georgie Barrymore spent their summers in a near-by hostelry.
I can remember Mrs. Barrymore at that time very well---wonderfully
handsome and a marvellously cheery manner.  Richard and I both loved
her greatly, even though it were in secret.  Her daughter Ethel I
remember best as she appeared on the beach, a sweet, long-legged child
in a scarlet bathing-suit running toward the breakers and then dashing
madly back to her mother's open arms.  A pretty figure of a child, but
much too young for Richard to notice at that time.  In after-years the
child in the scarlet bathing-suit and he became great pals.  Indeed,
during the latter half of his life, through the good days and the bad,
there were very few friends who held so close a place in his sympathy
and his affections as Ethel Barrymore.

Until the summer of 1880 my brother continued on at the Episcopal
Academy.  For some reason I was sent to a different school, but outside
of our supposed hours of learning we were never apart.  With less than
two years' difference in our ages our interests were much the same, and
I fear our interests of those days were largely limited to out-of-door
sports and the theatre.  We must have been very young indeed when my
father first led us by the hand to see our first play.  On Saturday
afternoons Richard and I, unattended but not wholly unalarmed, would
set forth from our home on this thrilling weekly adventure.  Having
joined our father at his office, he would invariably take us to a
chop-house situated at the end of a blind alley which lay concealed
somewhere in the neighborhood of Walnut and Third Streets, and where we
ate a most wonderful luncheon of English chops and apple pie.  As the
luncheon drew to its close I remember how Richard and I used to fret
and fume while my father in a most leisurely manner used to finish off
his mug of musty ale.  But at last the three of us, hand in hand, my
father between us, were walking briskly toward our happy destination.
At that time there were only a few first-class theatres in
Philadelphia--the Arch Street Theatre, owned by Mrs. John Drew; the
Chestnut Street, and the Walnut Street--all of which had stock
companies, but which on the occasion of a visiting star acted as the
supporting company.  These were the days of Booth, Jefferson, Adelaide
Neilson, Charles Fletcher, Lotta, John McCullough, John Sleeper Clark,
and the elder Sothern.  And how Richard and I worshipped them all--not
only these but every small-bit actor in every stock company in town.
Indeed, so many favorites of the stage did my brother and I admire that
ordinary frames would not begin to hold them all, and to overcome this
defect we had our bedroom entirely redecorated.  The new scheme called
for a gray wallpaper supported by a maroon dado.  At the top of the
latter ran two parallel black picture mouldings between which we could
easily insert cabinet photographs of the actors and actresses which for
the moment we thought most worthy of a place in our collection.  As the
room was fairly large and as the mouldings ran entirely around it, we
had plenty of space for even our very elastic love for the heroes and
heroines of the footlights.

Edwin Forrest ended his stage career just before our time, but I know
that Richard at least saw him and heard that wonderful voice of
thunder.  It seems that one day, while my mother and Richard were
returning home, they got on a street-car which already held the great
tragedian.  At the moment Forrest was suffering severely from gout and
had his bad leg stretched well out before him.  My brother, being very
young at the time and never very much of a respecter of persons,
promptly fell over the great man's gouty foot.  Whereat (according to
my mother, who was always a most truthful narrator) Forrest broke forth
in a volcano of oaths and for blocks continued to hurl thunderous
broadsides at Richard, which my mother insisted included the curse of
Rome and every other famous tirade in the tragedian's repertory which
in any way fitted the occasion.  Nearly forty years later my father
became the president of the Edwin Forrest Home, the greatest charity
ever founded by an actor for actors, and I am sure by his efforts of
years on behalf of the institution did much to atone for Richard's
early unhappy meeting with the greatest of all the famous
leather-lunged tragedians.

From his youth my father had always been a close student of the classic
and modern drama, and throughout his life numbered among his friends
many of the celebrated actors and actresses of his time.  In those
early days Booth used to come to rather formal luncheons, and at all
such functions Richard and I ate our luncheon in the pantry, and when
the great meal was nearly over in the dining-room we were allowed to
come in in time for the ice-cream and to sit, figuratively, at the feet
of the honored guest and generally, literally, on his or her knees.
Young as I was in those days I can readily recall one of those
lunch-parties when the contrast between Booth and Dion Boucicault
struck my youthful mind most forcibly.  Booth, with his deep-set, big
black eyes, shaggy hair, and lank figure, his wonderfully modulated
voice, rolled out his theories of acting, while the bald-headed, rotund
Boucicault, his twinkling eyes snapping like a fox-terrier's,
interrupted the sonorous speeches of the tragedian with crisp, witty
criticisms or "asides" that made the rest of the company laugh and even
brought a smile to the heavy, tragic features of Booth himself.  But
there was nothing formal about our relations with John Sleeper Clark
and the Jefferson family.  They were real "home folks" and often
occupied our spare room, and when they were with us Richard and I were
allowed to come to all the meals, and, even if unsolicited, freely
express our views on the modern drama.

In later years to our Philadelphia home came Henry Irving and his
fellow player Ellen Terry and Augustin Daly and that wonderful quartet,
Ada Rehan, Mrs. Gilbert, James Lewis, and our own John Drew.  Sir Henry
I always recall by the first picture I had of him in our dining-room,
sitting far away from the table, his long legs stretched before him,
peering curiously at Richard and myself over black-rimmed glasses and
then, with equal interest, turning back to the ash of a long cigar and
talking drama with the famous jerky, nasal voice but always with a
marvellous poise and convincing authority.  He took a great liking to
Richard in those days, sent him a church-warden's pipe that he had used
as Corporal Brewster, and made much of him later when my brother was in
London.  Miss Terry was a much less formal and forbidding guest,
rushing into the house like a whirlwind and filling the place with the
sunshine and happiness that seemed to fairly exude from her beautiful
magnetic presence.  Augustin Daly usually came with at least three of
the stars of his company which I have already mentioned, but even the
beautiful Rehan and the nice old Mrs. Gilbert seemed thoroughly awed in
the presence of "the Guv'nor."  He was a most crusty, dictatorial
party, as I remember him with his searching eyes and raven locks,
always dressed in black and always failing to find virtue in any actor
or actress not a member of his own company.  I remember one
particularly acrid discussion between him and my father in regard to
Julia Marlowe, who was then making her first bow to the public.  Daly
contended that in a few years the lady would be absolutely unheard of
and backed his opinion by betting a dinner for those present with my
father that his judgment would prove correct.  However, he was very
kind to Richard and myself and frequently allowed us to play about
behind the scenes, which was a privilege I imagine he granted to very
few of his friends' children.  One night, long after this, when Richard
was a reporter in New York, he and Miss Rehan were burlesquing a scene
from a play on which the last curtain had just fallen.  It was on the
stage of Daly's theatre at Thirtieth Street and Broadway, and from his
velvet box at the prompt-entrance Daly stood gloomily watching their
fooling.  When they had finished the mock scene Richard went over to
Daly and said, "How bad do you think I am as an actor, Mr. Daly?" and
greatly to my brother's delight the greatest manager of them all of
those days grumbled back at him:  "You're so bad, Richard, that I'll
give you a hundred dollars a week, and you can sign the contract
whenever you're ready."  Although that was much more than my brother
was making in his chosen profession at the time, and in spite of the
intense interest he had in the theatre, he never considered the offer
seriously.  As a matter of fact, Richard had many natural
qualifications that fitted him for the stage, and in after-years, when
he was rehearsing one of his own plays, he could and frequently would
go up on the stage and read almost any part better than the actor
employed to do it.  Of course, he lacked the ease of gesture and the
art of timing which can only be attained after sound experience, but
his reading of lines and his knowledge of characterization was quite
unusual.  In proof of this I know of at least two managers who, when
Richard wanted to sell them plays, refused to have him read them the
manuscript on the ground that his reading gave the dialogue a value it
did not really possess.

In the spring of 1880 Richard left the Episcopal Academy, and the
following September went to Swarthmore College, situated just outside
of Philadelphia.  I fear, however, the change was anything but a
success.  The life of the big coeducational school did not appeal to
him at all and, in spite of two or three friendships he made among the
girls and boys, he depended for amusement almost wholly on his own
resources.  In the afternoons and on holidays he took long walks over
the country roads and in search of adventure visited many farmhouses.
His excuse for these calls was that he was looking for old furniture
and china, and he frequently remained long enough to make sketches of
such objects as he pretended had struck his artistic fancy.  Of these
adventures he wrote at great length to his mother and father, and the
letters were usually profusely decorated with illustrations of the most
striking incidents of the various escapades.  Several of these
Swarthmore experiences he used afterward in short stories, and both the
letters and sketches he sent to his parents at the time he regarded in
the light of preparation for his future work.  In his studies he was
perhaps less successful than he had been at the Episcopal Academy, and
although he played football and took part in the track sports he was
really but little interested in either.  There were half-holidays on
Wednesdays and Saturdays, and when my brother did not come to town I
went to Swarthmore and we spent the afternoons in first cooking our
lunch in a hospitable woods and then playing some games in the open
that Richard had devised.  But as I recall these outings they were not
very joyous occasions, as Richard was extremely unhappy over his
failures at school and greatly depressed about the prospects for the
future.

He finished the college year at Swarthmore, but so unhappy had he been
there that there was no thought in his mind or in that of his parents
of his returning.  At that time my uncle, H.  Wilson Harding, was a
professor at Lehigh University, and it was arranged that Richard should
go to Bethlehem the following fall, live with his uncle, and continue
his studies at Ulrich's Preparatory School, which made a specialty of
preparing boys for Lehigh.  My uncle lived in a charming old house on
Market Street in Bethlehem, quite near the Moravian settlement and
across the river from the university and the iron mills.  He was a
bachelor, but of a most gregarious and hospitable disposition, and
Richard therefore found himself largely his own master, in a big, roomy
house which was almost constantly filled with the most charming and
cultivated people.  There my uncle and Richard, practically of about
the same age so far as their viewpoint of life was concerned, kept open
house, and if it had not been for the occasional qualms his innate
hatred of mathematics caused him, I think my brother would have been
completely happy.  Even studies no longer worried him particularly and
he at once started in to make friendships, many of which lasted
throughout his life.  As is usual with young men of seventeen, most of
these men and women friends were several times Richard's age, but at
the period Richard was a particularly precocious and amusing youth and
a difference of a few decades made but little difference--certainly not
to Richard.  Finley Peter Dunne once wrote of my brother that he
"probably knew more waiters, generals, actors, and princes than any man
who lived," and I think it was during the first year of his life at
Bethlehem that he began the foundation for the remarkable collection of
friends, both as to numbers and variety, of which he died possessed.
Although a "prep," he made many friends among the undergraduates of
Lehigh.  He made friends with the friends of his uncle and many friends
in both of the Bethlehems of which his uncle had probably never heard.
Even at that early age he counted among his intimates William W.
Thurston, who was president of the Bethlehem Iron Company, and J. Davis
Brodhead, one of Pennsylvania's most conspicuous Democratic congressmen
and attorneys.  Those who knew him at that time can easily understand
why Richard attracted men and women so much older than himself.  He was
brimming over with physical health and animal spirits and took the
keenest interest in every one he met and in everything that was going
on about him.  And in the broadest sense he saw to it then, as he did
throughout his life, that he always did his share.

During those early days at Bethlehem his letters to his family were
full of his social activities, with occasional references to his work
at school.  He was always going to dinners or dances, entertaining
members of visiting theatrical companies; and on Friday night my mother
usually received a telegram, saying that he would arrive the next day
with a party of friends whom he had inadvertently asked to lunch and a
matinee.  It was after one of these weekly visits that my mother wrote
Richard the following:


Monday Night.  MY DARLING Boy:


You went off in such a hurry that it took my breath at the last.  You
say coming down helps you.  It certainly does me.  It brings a real
sunshine to Papa and me.  He was saying that to-day.  I gave Nolly a
sort of holiday after her miseries last night.  We went down street and
got Papa a present for our wedding day, a picture, after all, and then
I took Miss Baker some tickets for a concert.  I saw her father who
said he "must speak about my noble looking boy."  I always thought him
a genius but now I think him a man of penetration as well.  Then Nolly
and I went over to see the Russians.  But they are closely boxed up and
not allowed to-day to see visitors.  So we came home cross and hungry.
All evening I have been writing business letters.

Papa has gone to a reception and Charley is hard at work at his desk.

I answered Mr. Allen's letter this morning, dear, and told him you
would talk to him.  When you do, dear, talk freely to him as to me.
You will not perhaps agree with all he says.  But your own thoughts
will be healthier for bringing them--as I might say, out of doors.  You
saw how it was by coming down here.  Love of Christ is not a melancholy
nor a morbid thing, dear love, but ought to make one more social and
cheerful and alive.

I wish you could come home oftener.  Try and get ahead with lessons so
that you can come oftener.  And when you feel as if prayer was a
burden, stop praying and go out and try to put your Christianity into
real action by doing some kindness--even speaking in a friendly way to
somebody.  Bring yourself into contact with new people--not John, Hugh,
Uncle and Grandma, and try to act to them as Christ would have you act,
and my word for it, you will go home with a new light on your own
relations to Him and a new meaning for your prayers.  You remember the
prayer "give me a great thought to refresh me." I think you will find
some great thoughts in human beings--they will help you to understand
yourself and God, when you try to help them God makes you happy my
darling.

MAMA.


It was in this year that Richard enjoyed the thrill of seeing in print
his first contribution to a periodical.  The date of this important
event, important, at least, to my brother, was February 1, the
fortunate publication was Judge, and the effusion was entitled "The Hat
and Its Inmate."  Its purport was an overheard conversation between two
young ladies at a matinee and the editors thought so well of it that
for the privilege of printing the article they gave Richard a year's
subscription to Judge.  His scrap-book of that time shows that in 1884
Life published a short burlesque on George W.  Cable's novel, "Dr.
Sevier," and in the same year The Evening Post paid him  $1.05 for an
article about "The New Year at Lehigh."  It was also in the spring of
1884 that Richard published his first book, "The Adventures of My
Freshman," a neat little paper-covered volume including half a dozen of
the short stories that had already appeared in The Lehigh Burr.  In
writing in a copy of this book in later years, Richard said:  "This is
a copy of the first book of mine published.  My family paid to have it
printed and finding no one else was buying it, bought up the entire
edition.  Finding the first edition had gone so quickly, I urged them
to finance a second one, and when they were unenthusiastic I was hurt.
Several years later when I found the entire edition in our attic, I
understood their reluctance.  The reason the book did not sell is, I
think, because some one must have read it."

In the summer of 1882 Richard went to Boston, and in the following
letter unhesitatingly expressed his opinion of that city and its people.


BOSTON, Wednesday.

July 1882.

DEAR FAMILY:--

I left Newport last night or rather this morning.  I stopped at Beverly
and called on Dr. Holmes.  He talked a great deal about mama and about
a great many other things equally lovely in a very easy, charming way.
All I had to do was to listen and I was only too willing to do that.
We got along splendidly.  He asked me to stay to dinner but I refused
with thanks, as I had only come to pay my respects and put off to Dr.
Bartol's.  Dr. Holmes accompanied me to the depot and saw me safely
off.  Of all the lovely men I ever saw Dr. Bartol is the one.  He lives
in a great, many roomed with as many gables, house.  Elizabethan, of
course, with immense fireplaces, brass and dark woods, etchings and
engravings, with the sea and rocks immediately under the window and the
ocean stretching out for miles, lighthouses and more Elizabethan houses
half hid on the bank, and ships and small boats pushing by within a
hundred rods of the windows.  I stayed to dinner there and we had a
very jolly time.  There were two other young men and another maiden
besides Miss Bartol.  They talked principally about the stage; that is,
the Boston Stock Company, which is their sole thought and knowledge of
the drama.  The Dr. would strike off now and then to philosophizing and
moralizing but his daughter would immediately sit upon him, much to my
disgust but to the evident relief of the rest.  His wife is as lovely
as he is but I can't give it to you all now.  Wait until I get home.

The young lady, the youths and myself came up to Boston together and
had as pleasant a ride, as the heat would allow.  I left them at the
depot and went up to the Parker House and then to the Art Museum.  The
statuary is plaster, the coins are copies, and by the way, I found one
exactly like mine, which, if it is genuine is worth, "well
considerable", as the personage in charge remarked.  The pictures were
simply vile, only two or three that I recognized and principally Millet
and some charcoal sketches of Hunt's, who is the Apostle of Art here.
The china was very fine but they had a collection of old furniture and
armor which was better than anything else.  Fresh from or rather musty
from these antiques, who should I meet but the cheerful Dixey and
Powers.  We had a very jolly talk and I enjoyed it immensely, not only
myself but all the surrounding populace, as Dixey would persist in
showing the youthful some new "gag," and would break into a clog or
dialect much to the delectation of the admiring Bostonians.  I am
stranded here for to night and will push on to Newport to-morrow.  I'll
go see the "babes" to night, as there is nothing else in the city that
is worth seeing that I haven't investigated.  I left the
Newburyportians in grief with regret.  I met lots of nice people and
every one was so very kind to me, from the authoresses to the serving
maids.  Good-bye.

DICK.




CHAPTER II

COLLEGE DAYS

In the fall of 1882 Richard entered Lehigh, but the first year of his
college life varied very little from the one he had spent in the
preparatory school.  During that year he had met most of the upper
classmen, and the only difference was that he could now take an active
instead of a friendly interest in the life and the sports of the
college.  Also he had formed certain theories which he promptly
proceeded to put into practical effect.  Perhaps the most conspicuous
of these was his belief that cane-rushes and hazing were wholly
unnecessary and barbarous customs, and should have no place in the
college of his day.  Against the former he spoke at college meetings,
and wrote long letters to the local papers decrying the custom.  His
stand against hazing was equally vehement, and he worked hand in hand
with the faculty to eradicate it entirely from the college life.  That
his stand was purely for a principle and not from any fear of personal
injury, I think the following letter to his father will show:


BETHLEHEM, February 1882.

DEAR DAD:

You may remember a conversation we had at Squan about hazing in which
you said it was a very black-guardly thing and a cowardly thing.  I
didn't agree with you, but when I saw how it really was and how silly
and undignified it was, besides being brutal, I thought it over and
changed my mind completely, agreeing with you in every respect.  A
large number of our class have been hazed, taking it as a good joke,
and have been laughed at by the whole college.  I talked to the boys
about it, and said what I would do and so on, without much effect.
Wednesday a junior came to me, and told me I was to be hazed as I left
the Opera House Friday night.  After that a great many came to me and
advised and warned me as to what I should do.  I decided to get about
fifty of our class outside and then fight it out; that was before I
changed my mind.  As soon as I did I regretted it very much, but, as it
turned out, the class didn't come, so I was alone, as I wished to be.
You see, I'd not a very good place here; the fellows looked on me as a
sort of special object of ridicule, on account of the hat and cane,
walk, and so on, though I thought I'd got over that by this time.  The
Opera House was partly filled with college men, a large number of
sophomores and a few upper class men.  It was pretty generally known I
was going to have a row, and that brought them as much as the show.
Poor Ruff was in agony all day.  He supposed I'd get into the fight,
and he knew he'd get in, too, sooner or later.  If he did he'd be held
and not be able to do anything, and then the next day be blamed by the
whole college for interfering in a class matter.  He hadn't any money
to get into the show, and so wandered around outside in the rain in a
great deal more excited state than I was.  Howe went all over town
after putting on his old clothes, in case of personal damage, in search
of freshmen who were at home out of the wet.  As I left the building a
man grabbed me by my arm, and the rest, with the seniors gathered
around; the only freshman present, who was half scared to death, clung
as near to me as possible.  I withdrew my arm and faced them.  "If this
means hazing," I said, "I'm not with you.  There's not enough men here
to haze me, but there's enough to thrash me, and I'd rather be thrashed
than hazed."  You see, I wanted them to understand exactly how I looked
at it, and they wouldn't think I was simply hotheaded and stubborn.  I
was very cool about it all.  They broke in with all sorts of
explanations; hazing was the last thing they had thought of.  No,
indeed, Davis, old fellow, you're mistaken.  I told them if that was
so, all right, I was going home.  I saw several of my friends in the
crowd waiting for me, but as I didn't want them to interfere, I said
nothing, and they did not recognize me.  When among the crowd of
sophomores, the poor freshman made a last effort, he pulled me by the
coat and begged me to come with him.  I said no, I was going home.
When I reached the next corner I stopped.  "I gave you fair warning,
keep off.  I tell you I'll strike the first man, the first one, that
touches me."  Then the four who had been appointed to seize me jumped
on me, and I only got one good blow in before they had me down in the
gutter and were beating me on the face and head.  I put my hands across
my face, and so did not get any hard blows directly in the face.  They
slipped back in a moment, and when I was ready I scrambled up pretty
wet and muddy, and with my face stinging where they had struck.  It had
all been done so quickly, and there was such a large crowd coming from
the theatre, that, of course, no one saw it.  When I got up there was a
circle all around me.  They hadn't intended to go so far.  The men,
except those four who had beaten me, were rather ashamed and wished
they were out of it.  I turned to Emmerich, a postgraduate, and told
him to give me room.  "Now," I said, "you're not able to haze me, and I
can't thrash twelve of you, but I'll fight any one man you bring out."
I asked for the man that struck me, and named another, but there was no
response.

The upper classmen, who had just arrived, called out that was fair, and
they'd see it fair.  Goodnough, Purnell and Douglas, who don't like me
much, either.  Ruff was beside me by this time.

He hadn't seen anything of it, and did not get there until he heard me
calling for a fair chance and challenging the class for a man.  I
called out again, the second time, and still no one came, so I took
occasion to let them know why I had done as I did in a short speech to
the crowd.  I said I was a peaceable fellow, thought hazing silly, and
as I never intended to haze myself, I didn't intend any one to haze me.
Then I said again, "This is the third time, will one of your men fight
this fair?  I can't fight twelve of you."  Just then two officers who
had called on some mill-hands, who are always dying for a fight, and a
citizen to help them, burst into the crowd of students, shouldering
them around like sheep until they got to me, when one of them put his
arm around me, and said, "I don't know anything about this crowd, but
I'll see you're protected, sir.  I'll give 'em fair play."  One officer
got hold of Ruff and pretty near shook him to pieces until I had to
interfere and explain.  They were for forming a body-guard, and were
loud in their denunciations of the college, and declaring they'd see me
through if I was a stranger to 'em.

Two or three of the sophomores, when they saw how things were going,
set up a yell, but Griffin struck out and sent one of them flying one
way and his hat another, so the yells ended.  Howe and Murray Stuart
took me up to their rooms, and Ruff went off for beefsteak for my eye,
and treated the crowd who had come to the rescue, at Dixon's, to beer.
The next day was Saturday, and as there was to be a meeting of the
Athletic Association, of course, I wanted to show up.  The fellows all
looked at my eye pretty hard and said nothing.  I felt pretty sure that
the sympathy was all with me.

Four men are elected from the college to be on the athletic committee.
They can be nominated by any one, though generally it is done by a man
in their own class.  We had agreed the day before to vote for Tolman
for our class, so when the president announced nominations were in
order for the freshmen class, Tolman was instantly nominated.  At the
same time one of the leading sophomores jumped up and nominated Mr.
Davis, and a number of men from the same class seconded it.  I knew
every one in the college knew of what had happened, and especially the
sophomores, so I was, of course, very much surprised.  I looked
unconscious, though, and waited.  One of the seniors asked that the
nominees should stand up, as they didn't know their names only their
faces.  As each man rose he was hissed and groaned down again.  When I
stood up the sophomores burst into a yell and clapped and stamped,
yelling, "Davis!  Davis!  vote for D!" until I sat down.  As I had
already decided to nominate Tolman, I withdrew my name from the
nominees, a movement which was received by loud cries of "No!  No!"
from the sophs.  So, you see, Dad, I did as you said, as I thought was
right, and came out well indeed.  You see, I am now the hero of the
hour, every one in town knows it, and every one congratulates me, and,
"Well done, me boy," as Morrow '83 said, seems to be the idea, one gets
taken care of in this world if you do what's the right thing, if it is
only a street fight.  In fact, as one of the seniors said, I've made
five friends where I had one before.  The sophs are ashamed and sorry,
as their conduct in chapel, which was more marked, than I made it,
shows.  I've nothing to show for it but a red mark under the eye, and
so it is the best thing that could possibly have happened.  Poor Ruff
hugged me all the way home, and I've started out well in a good way, I
think, though not a very logical one.

Uncle says to tell you that my conduct has his approval throughout.

DICK.


To which letter my father promptly replied:


PHILADELPHIA.  February 25th, 1882.

DEAR OLD BOY:

I'm glad the affair ended so well.  I don't want you to fight, but if
you have to fight a cuss like that do it with all your might, and don't
insist that either party shall too strictly observe the Markis O'
Queensbury rules.  Hit first and hardest so that thine adversary shall
beware of you.

DAD.


At that time the secret societies played a very important part in the
college life at Lehigh, and while I do not believe that Richard shared
the theory of some of the students that they were a serious menace to
the social fabric, he was quite firm in his belief that it was
inadvisable to be a member of any fraternity.  In a general way he did
not like the idea of secrecy even in its mildest form, and then, as
throughout his life, he refused to join any body that would in any way
limit his complete independence of word or action.  In connection with
this phase of his college life I quote from an appreciation which M. A.
De W. Howe, one of Richard's best friends both at college and in
after-life, wrote for The Lehigh Burr at the time of my brother's death:

"To the credit of the perceptive faculty of undergraduates, it ought to
be said that the classmates and contemporaries of Richard Harding Davis
knew perfectly well, while he and they were young together, that in him
Lehigh had a son so marked in his individuality, so endowed with
talents and character that he stood quite apart from the other
collegians of his day.  Prophets were as rare in the eighties as they
have always been, before and since, and nobody could have foreseen that
the name and work of Dick Davis would long before his untimely death,
indeed within a few years from leaving college, be better known
throughout the world than those of any other Lehigh man.  We who knew
him in his college days could not feel the smallest surprise that he
won himself quickly a brilliant name, and kept a firm hold upon it to
the last.

"What was it that made him so early a marked man?  I think it was the
spirit of confidence and enthusiasm which turned every enterprise he
undertook into an adventure,--the brave and humorous playing of the
game of life, the true heart, the wholesome body and soul of my friend
and classmate.  He did not excel in studies or greatly, in athletics.
But in his own field, that of writing, he was so much better than the
rest of us that no one of his fellow-editors of the Epitome or Burr
needed to be considered in comparison with him.  No less, in spite of
his voluntary nonmembership in the fraternities of his day, was he a
leader in the social activities of the University.  The 'Arcadian Club'
devoted in its beginnings to the 'pipes, books, beer and gingeralia' of
Davis's song about it and the 'Mustard and Cheese' were his creations.
In all his personal relationships he was the most amusing and
stimulating of companions.  With garb and ways of unique
picturesqueness, rarer even in college communities a generation ago
than at present, it was inevitable that he sometimes got himself
laughed at as well as with.  But what did it all matter, even then?
To-day it adds a glow of color to what would be in any case a vivid,
deeply valued memory.

"It is hard to foresee in youth what will come most sharply and
permanently in the long run.  After all these years it is good to find
that Davis and what his companionship gave one hold their place with
the strongest influences of Lehigh."

But Richard was naturally gregarious and at heart had a great fondness
for clubs and social gatherings.  Therefore, having refused the offer
of several fraternities that did him the honor to ask him to become a
member, it was necessary for him to form a few clubs that held
meetings, but no secrets.  Perhaps the most successful of these were
"The Mustard and Cheese," a dramatic club devoted to the presentation
of farces and musical comedies, and The Arcadia Club, to the
fortnightly meetings of which he devoted much time and thought.  The
following letter to his father will give some idea of the scope of the
club, which, as in the case of "The Mustard and Cheese," gained a
permanent and important place in the social life of Lehigh.


DEAR DAD:

We have started the best sort of a club up here which I am anxious to
tell you of.  It consists of a spread, net price of which will be about
30 cents each, every two or three weeks.  Only six fellows belong and
those the best of the College.  Purnell, Haines and myself founded it.
I chose Charley, Purnell, Reeves, Haines and Howe.  We will meet
Saturday nights at 9 so as not to interfere with our work, and sing,
read, eat and box until midnight.  It is called the "Pipe and Bowl,"
and is meant to take the place that The Hasty Pudding, Hammer and Tongs
and Mermaid do at other colleges.  Two of us are to invite two
outsiders in turn each meeting.  We will hope to have Dad a member,
honorary, of course, when we can persuade him to give us a night off
with his company.  We want to combine a literary feature and so will
have selected readings to provoke discussions after the pipes are lit.
The men are very enthusiastic about it and want to invite Mr. Allen and
you and every one that they can make an honorary member of immediately.


It was first as an associate editor and afterward as editor-in-chief of
the college paper, The Lehigh Burr, that Richard found his greatest
pleasure and interest during his three years at Lehigh.  In addition to
his editorial duties he wrote a very great part of every issue of the
paper, and his contributions included short stories, reports of news
events, editorials, and numerous poems.

As, after his life at college, Richard dropped verse as a mode of
expression, I reprint two of the poems which show him in the lighter
vein of those early days.

A COMMENCEMENT IDYL

     "I'm a Freshman who has ended his first year,
               But I'm new;
     And I do whate'er the Juniors, whom I fear,
               Bid me do.
          Under sudden showers I thrive;
          To be bad and bold I strive,
          But they ask--'Is it alive?'
          So they do.

     I'm a Sophomore who has passed off his exams,
               Let me loose!
     With a mark as high as any other man's,
               As obtuse
          I'm fraternal.  I am Jolly.
          I am seldom melancholy
          And to bone I think is folly,
               What's the use?


I'm a Junior whom exams. have left forlorn,
               Flunked me dead;
So I'll keep the town awake 'till early morn;
               Paint it red.
          At class-meetings I'm a kicker,
          Take no water with my liquor,
          And a dumb-bell's not thicker
               Than my head.

I'm a Senior whose diploma's within reach,
               Eighty-four.
On Commencement Day you'll hear my maiden-speech;
               I will soar!
          I got through without condition;
          I'm a mass of erudition;
          Do you know of a position!"



                         OUR STREET


          "Our street is still and silent,
               Grass grows from curb to curb,

       No baker's bells
          With jangling knells
               Our studious minds disturb.
          No organ grinders ever call,
               No hucksters mar our peace;
          For traffic shuns our neighborhood
               And leaves us to our ease.


          But now it lives and brightens,
                    Assumes a livelier hue;
               The pavements wide,
               On either side,
                    Would seem to feel it too.
               You might not note the difference,
                    The change from grave to gay,
               But I can tell, and know full well,
                    Priscilla walks our way."



Shortly after his return to college Richard celebrated his nineteenth
birthday, and received these letters from his father and mother:

April 17th, 1883.

MY DEAR BOY:

When I was thinking what I could give to you to-morrow, I remembered
the story of Herder, who when he was old and weak and they brought him
food and wine asked for "a great thought to quicken him."

So I have written some old sayings for you that have helped me.  Maybe,
this year, or some other year, when I am not with you, they may give
you, sometimes, comfort and strength.

God bless you my son--

YOUR OLD MOTHER

who loves you dearly--dearly.


THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
  PHILADELPHIA, April 17th, 1883.

MY DEAR BOY:

You are to be nineteen years old on Wednesday.  After two years more
you will be a man.  You are so manly and good a boy that I could not
wish you to change in any serious or great thing.  You have made us
very happy through being what you have been, what you are.  You fill us
with hope of your future virtue and usefulness.

To be good is the best thing of all; it counts for more than anything
else in the world.  We are very grateful that you have even in youth
been wise enough to choose the right road.  You will find it not easy
to keep upon it always, but remember if you do get off struggle back to
it.  I do not know but I think God loves the effort to do as well as
the act done.

I congratulate you my dear son, on your new birthday.  I wish you
health, happiness and God's loving care.  May he bless you my son
forever.  I enclose a trifle for your pleasure.  My love to you always,
but God bless you dear Dick.

DAD.


In the fall of 1885, Richard decided to leave Lehigh and go to John
Hopkins University, where he took a special course in such studies as
would best benefit him in the career which he had now carefully
planned.  During this year in Baltimore Richard's letters show that he
paid considerable attention to such important subjects as political
economy and our own labor problems, but they also show that he did not
neglect football or the lighter social diversions.  In a short space of
time he had made many friends, was very busy going to dinners and
dances, and had fallen in love with an entirely new set of maids and
matrons.  Richard had already begun to send contributions to the
magazines, and an occasional acceptance caused him the satisfaction
common to all beginners.  It was in regard to one of these early
contributions that my mother wrote Richard the following letter:


PHILADELPHIA

January 1887.

DEAR BOY:

What has become of The Current?  It has not come yet.  If it has
suspended publication be sure and get your article back.  You must not
destroy a single page you write.  You will find every idea of use to
you hereafter.

Sometimes I am afraid you think I don't take interest enough in your
immediate success now with the articles you send.  But I've had thirty
years experience and I know how much that sort of success depends on
the articles suiting the present needs of the magazine, and also on the
mood of the editor when he reads it.

Besides--except for your own disappointment--I know it would be better
if you would not publish under your own name for a little while.  Dr.
Holland--who had lots of literary shrewdness both as writer and
publisher--used to say for a young man or woman to rush into print was
sure ruin to their lasting fame.  They either compromised their
reputations by inferior work or they made a great hit and never played
up to it, afterwards, in public opinion.

Now my dear old man this sounds like awfully cold comfort.  But it is
the wisest idea your mother has got.  I confess I have GREAT faith in
you--and I try to judge you as if you were not my son.  I think you are
going to take a high place among American authors, but I do not think
you are going to do it by articles like that you sent to The Current.
The qualities which I think will bring it to you, you don't seem to
value at all.  They are your dramatic eye.  I mean your quick
perception of character and of the way character shows itself in looks,
tones, dress, etc., and in your keen sympathy--with all kinds of
people--Now, these are the requisites for a novelist.  Added to that
your humour.

You ought to make a novelist of the first class.  But you must not
expect to do it this week or next.  A lasting, real success takes time,
and patient, steady work.  Read Boz's first sketches of "London Life"
and compare them with "Sydney Carton" or "David Copperfield" and you
will see what time and hard work will do to develop genius.

I suppose you will wonder why I am moved to say all this?  It is, I
think, because of your saying "the article sent to St.  Nicholas was
the best you would be able to do for years to come" and I saw you were
going to make it a crucial test of your ability.  That is, forgive me,
nothing but nonsense.  Whatever the article may be, you may write one
infinitely superior to it next week or month.  Just in proportion as
you feel more deeply, or notice more keenly, and as you acquire the
faculty of expressing your feelings or observations more delicately and
powerfully which faculty must come into practice.  It is not
inspiration--it never was that--without practice, with any writer from
Shakespeare down.

me.  I don't say, like Papa, stop writing.  God forbid.  I would almost
as soon say stop breathing, for it is pretty much the same thing.  But
only to remember that you have not yet conquered your art.  You are a
journeyman not a master workman, so if you don't succeed, it does not
count.  The future is what I look to, for you.  I had to stop my work
to say all this, so good-bye dear old chum.

Yours,

MOTHER.


If anything worried Richard at all at this period, I think it was his
desire to get down to steady newspaper work, or indeed any kind of work
that would act as the first step of his career and by which he could
pay his own way in the world.  It was with this idea uppermost in his
mind in the late spring of 1886, and without any particular regret for
the ending of his college career, that he left Baltimore and, returning
to his home in Philadelphia, determined to accept the first position
that presented itself.  But instead of going to work at once, he once
more changed his plans and decided to sail for Santiago de Cuba with
his friend William W. Thurston, who as president of the Bethlehem Steel
Company, was deeply interested in the iron mines of that region.  Here
and then it was that Richard first fell in love with Cuba--a love which
in later years became almost an obsession with him.  Throughout his
life whenever it was possible, and sometimes when it seemed practically
impossible, my brother would listen to the call of his beloved tropics
and, casting aside all responsibilities, would set sail for Santiago.
After all it was quite natural that he should feel as he did about this
little Cuban coast town, for apart from its lazy life, spicy smells,
waving palms and Spanish cooking, it was here that he found the
material for his first novel and greatest monetary success, "Soldiers
of Fortune."  Apart from the many purely pleasure trips he made to
Santiago, twice he returned there to work--once as a correspondent
during the Spanish-American War, and again when he went with Augustus
Thomas to assist in the latter's film version of the play which years
before Thomas had made from the novel.




CHAPTER III

FIRST NEWSPAPER EXPERIENCES

In the late summer of 1886 Richard returned from Cuba and settled down
in Philadelphia to write an article about his experiences at Santiago
and to look for regular newspaper work.  Early in September he wrote
his mother:


September, 1886.

DEAR MOTHER:

I saw the Record people to-day.  They said there was not an opening but
could give me "chance" work, that is, I was to report each day at one
and get what was left over.  I said I would take it as I would have my
mornings free to write the article and what afternoons I did not have
newspaper work besides.  This is satisfactory.  They are either doing
all they can to oblige Dad or else giving me a trial trip before making
an opening.  The article is progressing but slowly.  To paraphrase
Talleyrand, what's done is but little and that little is not good.
However, since your last letter full of such excellent "tips" I have
rewritten it and think it is much improved.  I will write to Thurston
concerning the artist to-morrow.  He is away from B. at present.  On
the whole the article is not bad.


Your boy, DICK.


Richard's stay on The Record, however, was short-lived.  His excuse for
the brevity of the experience was given in an interview some years
later.  "My City Editor didn't like me because on cold days I wore
gloves.  But he was determined to make me work, and gave me about
eighteen assignments a day, and paid me $7. a week.  At the end of
three months he discharged me as incompetent."

From The Record Richard went to The Press, which was much more to his
liking, and, indeed it was here that he did his first real work and
showed his first promise.  For nearly three years he did general
reporting and during this time gained a great deal more personal
success than comes to most members of that usually anonymous
profession.  His big chance came with the Johnstown flood, and the news
stories he wired to his paper showed the first glimpse of his ability
as a correspondent.  Later on, disguised as a crook, he joined a gang
of yeggmen, lived with them in the worst dives of the city, and
eventually gained their good opinion to the extent of being allowed to
assist in planning a burglary.  But before the actual robbery took
place, Richard had obtained enough evidence against his crook
companions to turn them over to the police and eventually land them in
prison.  It was during these days that he wrote his first story for a
magazine, and the following letter shows that it was something of a
milestone in his career.

PHILADELPHIA.

August, 1888.

DEAR FAMILY:

The St. Nicholas people sent me a check for $50 for the "pirate" story.
It would be insupportable affectation to say that I was not delighted.
Jennings Crute and I were waiting for breakfast when I found the
letter.  I opened it very slowly, for I feared they would bluff me with
some letter about illustrations or revision, or offering me a reduced
subscription to the magazine.  There was a letter inside and a check.
I read the letter before I looked at the check, which I supposed would
be for $30, as the other story was valued at $20.  The note said that a
perfect gentleman named Chichester would be pleased if I would find
enclosed a check for $50.  I looked at Jenny helplessly, and said,
"It's for fifty, Jenny."  Crute had an insane look in his eyes as he
murmured "half a hundred dollars, and on your day off, too."  Then I
sat down suddenly and wondered what I would buy first, and Crute sat in
a dazed condition, and abstractedly took a handful of segars out of the
box dear old Dad gave me.  As I didn't say anything, he took another
handful, and then sat down and gazed at the check for five minutes in
awe.  After breakfast I calculated how much I would have after I paid
my debts.  I still owe say $23, and I have some shoes to pay for and my
hair to cut.  I had a wild idea of going over to New York and buying
some stocks, but I guess I'll go to Bond's and Baker's instead.

I'm going down street now to see if Drexel wants to borrow any ready
money-on the way down I will make purchases and pay bills so that my
march will be a triumphal procession.

I got a story on the front page this morning about an explosion at
Columbia Avenue Station--I went out on it with another man my senior in
years and experience, whom Watrous expected to write the story while I
hustled for facts.  When we got back I had all the facts, and what
little he had was incorrect--so I said I would dispense with his
services and write the story myself.  I did it very politely, but it
queered the man before the men, and Watrous grew very sarcastic at his
expense.  Next time Andy will know better and let me get my own stories
alone.

Your Millionaire Son,

DICK.

I'm still the "same old Dick"; not proud a bit.


This was my mother's reply:


Thursday.

August 1888.

DEAR DICK:

Your letter has just come and we are all delighted.  Well done for old
St. Nicholas!  I thought they meant to wait till the story was
published.  It took me back to the day when I got $50. for "Life in the
Iron Mills."  I carried the letter half a day before opening it, being
so sure that it was a refusal.

I had a great mind to read the letter to Davis and Cecile who were on
the porch but was afraid you would not like it.

I did read them an extremely impertinent enclosure which was so like
the letter I sent yesterday.  That I think you got it before writing
this.

. . .  Well I am glad about that cheque!  Have you done anything on
Gallagher?  That is by far the best work you've done--oh, by far--Send
that to Gilder.  In old times The Century would not print the word
"brandy."  But those days are over.

Two more days--dear boy--

MOTHER.


In addition to his work on The Press, Richard also found time to assist
his friend, Morton McMichael, 3d, in the editing of a weekly
publication called The Stage.  In fact with the exception of the
services of an office boy, McMichael and Richard were The Stage.
Between them they wrote the editorials, criticisms, the London and
Paris special correspondence, solicited the advertisements, and
frequently assisted in the wrapping and mailing of the copies sent to
their extremely limited list of subscribers.  During this time,
however, Richard was establishing himself as a star reporter on The
Press, and was already known as a clever news-gatherer and interviewer.
It was in reply to a letter that Richard wrote to Robert Louis
Stevenson enclosing an interview he had had with Walt Whitman, that
Stevenson wrote the following letter--which my brother always regarded
as one of his greatest treasures:


Why, thank you so much for your frank, agreeable and natural letter.
It is certainly very pleasant that all you young fellows should enjoy
my work and get some good out of it and it was very kind in you to
write and tell me so.  The tale of the suicide is excellently droll,
and your letter, you may be sure, will be preserved.  If you are to
escape unhurt out of your present business you must be very careful,
and you must find in your heart much constancy.  The swiftly done work
of the journalist and the cheap finish and ready made methods to which
it leads, you must try to counteract in private by writing with the
most considerate slowness and on the most ambitious models.  And when I
say "writing"--O, believe me, it is rewriting that I have chiefly in
mind.  If you will do this I hope to hear of you some day.

Please excuse this sermon from

Your obliged

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.


In the spring of 1889 Richard as the correspondent of the Philadelphia
Telegraph, accompanied a team of Philadelphia cricketers on a tour of
Ireland and England, but as it was necessary for him to spend most of
his time reporting the matches played in small university towns, he saw
only enough of London to give him a great longing to return as soon as
the chance offered.  Late that summer he resumed his work on The Press,
but Richard was not at all satisfied with his journalistic progress,
and for long his eyes had been turned toward New York.  There he knew
that there was not only a broader field for such talent as he might
possess, but that the chance for adventure was much greater, and it was
this hope and love of adventure that kept Richard moving on all of his
life.

On a morning late in September, 1889, he started for New York to look
for a position as reporter on one of the metropolitan newspapers.  I do
not know whether he carried with him any letters or that he had any
acquaintances in the journalistic world on whose influence he counted,
but, in any case, he visited a number of offices without any success
whatever.  Indeed, he had given up the day as wasted, and was on his
way to take the train back to Philadelphia.  Tired and discouraged, he
sat down on a bench in City Hall Park, and mentally shook his fist at
the newspaper offices on Park Row that had given him so cold a
reception.  At this all-important moment along came Arthur Brisbane,
whom Richard had met in London when the former was the English
correspondent of The Sun.  Brisbane had recently been appointed editor
of The Evening Sun, and had already met with a rather spectacular
success.  On hearing the object of Richard's visit to New York, he
promptly offered him a position on his staff and Richard as promptly
accepted.  I remember that the joyous telegram he sent to my mother,
telling of his success, and demanding that the fatted calf be killed
for dinner that night was not received with unalloyed happiness.  To my
mother and father it meant that their first-born was leaving home to
seek his fortune, and that without Richard's love and sympathy the home
could never be quite the same.  But the fatted calf was killed, every
one pretended to be just as elated as Richard was over his good
fortune, and in two days he left us for his first adventure.

The following note to his mother Richard scribbled off in pencil at the
railway-station on his way to New York:


I am not surprised that you were sad if you thought I was going away
for good.  I could not think of it myself.  I am only going to make a
little reputation and to learn enough of the business to enable me to
live at home in the centre of the universe with you.  That is truth.
God bless you.

DICK.




CHAPTER IV

NEW YORK

Of the many completely happy periods of Richard's life there were few
more joyous than the first years he spent as a reporter in New York.
For the first time he was completely his own master and paying his own
way--a condition which afforded him infinite satisfaction.  He was
greatly attached to Brisbane and as devoted to the interests of The
Evening Sun as if he had been the editor and publisher.  In return
Brisbane gave him a free rein and allowed him to write very much what
and as he chose.  The two men were constantly together, in and out of
office hours, and planned many of the leading features of the paper
which on account of the brilliancy of its news stories and special
articles was at that time attracting an extraordinary amount of
attention.  Richard divided his working hours between reporting
important news events, writing specials (principally about theatrical
people), and the Van Bibber stories, nearly all of which were published
for the first time in The Evening Sun.  These short tales of New York
life soon made a distinct hit, and, while they appeared anonymously, it
was generally known that Richard was their author.  In addition to his
newspaper work my brother was also working on short stories for the
magazines, and in 1890 scored his first real success in this field,
with "Gallegher," which appeared in Scribner's.  This was shortly
followed by "The Other Woman,"  "Miss Catherwaite's Understudy,"  "A
Walk up the Avenue,"  "My Disreputable Friend, Mr. Raegen,"  "An
Unfinished Story," and other stories that soon gave him an established
reputation as a writer of fiction.  But while Richard's success was
attained in a remarkably short space of time and at an extremely early
age, it was not accomplished without an enormous amount of hard work
and considerable privation.  When he first went to New York his salary
was but thirty dollars a week, and while he remained on The Evening Sun
never over fifty dollars, and the prices he received for his first
short stories were extremely meagre.  During the early days on The
Evening Sun he had a room in a little house at 108 Waverly Place, and
took his meals in the neighborhood where he happened to find himself
and where they were cheapest.  He usually spent his week-ends in
Philadelphia, but his greatest pleasure was when he could induce some
member of his family to visit him in New York.  I fear I was the one
who most often accepted his hospitality, and wonderful visits they
were, certainly to me, and I think to Richard as well.  The great event
was our Saturday-night dinner, when we always went to a little
restaurant on Sixth Avenue.  I do not imagine the fifty-cent table
d'hote (vin compris) the genial Mr. Jauss served us was any better than
most fifty-cent table-d'hote dinners, but the place was quaint and
redolent of strange smells of cooking as well as of a true bohemian
atmosphere.  Those were the days when the Broadway Theatre was given
over to the comic operas in which Francis Wilson and De Wolfe Hopper
were the stars, and as both of the comedians were firm friends of
Richard, we invariably ended our evening at the Broadway.  Sometimes we
occupied a box as the guests of the management, and at other times we
went behind the scenes and sat in the star's dressing-room.  I think I
liked it best when Hopper was playing, because during Wilson's regime
the big dressing-room was a rather solemn sort of place, but when
Hopper ruled, the room was filled with pretty girls and he treated us
to fine cigars and champagne.

Halcyon nights those, and then on Sunday morning we always breakfasted
at old Martin's on University Place eggs a la Martin and that wonderful
coffee and pain de menage.  And what a wrench it was when I tore myself
away from the delights of the great city and scurried back to my desk
in sleepy Philadelphia.  Had I been a prince royal Richard could not
have planned more carefully than he did for these visits, and to meet
the expense was no easy matter for him.  Indeed, I know that to pay for
all our gayeties he usually had to carry his guitar to a neighboring
pawn-broker where the instrument was always good for an eight-dollar
loan.  But from the time Richard first began to make his own living one
of the great pleasures of his life was to celebrate, or as he called
it, to "have a party."  Whenever he had finished a short story he had a
party, and when the story had been accepted there was another party,
and, of course, the real party was when he received the check.  And so
it was throughout his life, giving a party to some one whom a party
would help, buying a picture for which he had no use to help a
struggling artist, sending a few tons of coal to an old lady who was
not quite warm enough, always writing a letter or a check for some one
of his own craft who had been less fortunate than he--giving to every
beggar that he met, fearing that among all the thousand fakers he might
refuse one worthy case.  I think this habit of giving Richard must have
inherited from his father, who gave out of all proportion to his means,
and with never too close a scrutiny to the worthiness of the cause.
Both men were too intensely human to do that, but if this great desire
on the part of my father and brother to help others gave the recipients
pleasure I'm sure that it caused in the hearts of the givers an even
greater happiness.  The following letters were chosen from a great
number which Richard wrote to his family, telling of his first days on
The Evening Sun, and of his life in New York.


YORK Evening Sun--1890

DEAR MOTHER:

Today is as lovely and fresh as the morning, a real spring day, and I
feel good in consequence.  I have just come from a couple of raids,
where we had a very lively time, and some of them had to pull their
guns.  I found it necessary to punch a few sports myself.  The old
sergeant from headquarters treats me like a son and takes the greatest
pride in whatever I do or write.  He regularly assigns me now to
certain doors, and I always obey orders like the little gentleman that
I am.  Instead of making me unpopular, I find it helps me with the
sports, though it hurts my chances professionally, as so many of them
know me now that I am no use in some districts.  For instance, in Mott
and Pell streets, or in the Bowery, I am as safe as any precinct
detective.  I tell you this to keep you from worrying.  They won't
touch a man whom they think is an agent or an officer.  Only it spoils
my chances of doing reportorial-detective work.  For instance, the
captain of the Bowery district refused me a detective the other morning
to take the Shippens around the Chinese and the tougher quarters
because he said they were as safe with me as with any of the other men
whose faces are as well known.  To-night I am going to take a party to
the headquarters of the fire department, where I have a cinch on the
captain, a very nice fellow, who is unusually grateful for something I
wrote about him and his men.  They are going to do the Still Alarm act
for me.

These clippings all came out in to-day's paper.  The ladies in the
Tombs were the Shippens, of course; and Mamie Blake is a real girl, and
the story is true from start to finish.  I think it is a pathetic
little history.

Give my love to all.  I will bring on the story I have finished and get
you to make some suggestions.  It is quite short.  Since Scribner's
have been so civil, I think I will give them a chance at the great
prize.  I am writing a comic guide book and a history of the Haymarket
for the paper; both are rich in opportunities.  This weather makes me
feel like another person.  I will be so glad to get home.  With lots of
love and kisses for you and Nora.

DICK-O.


NEW YORK--1890.

DEAR CHAS:

Brisbane has suggested to me that the Bradley story would lead anyone
to suppose that my evenings were spent in the boudoirs of the
horizontales of 34th Street and has scared me somewhat in consequence.
If it strikes you and Dad the same way don't show it to Mother.  Dad
made one mistake by thinking I wrote a gambling story which has made me
nervous.  It is hardly the fair thing to suppose that a man must have
an intimate acquaintance with whatever he writes of intimately.  A lot
of hunting people, for instance, would not believe that I had written
the "Traver's Only Ride" story because they knew I did not hunt.  Don't
either you or Dad make any mistake about this.

DICK.

As a matter of fact they would not let me in the room, and I don't know
whether it abounded in signed etchings or Bougereau's nymphs.


NEW YORK--1890.

DEAR FAMILY:

Today has been more or less feverish.  In the morning's mail I received
a letter from Berlin asking permission to translate "Gallegher" into
German, and a proof of a paragraph from The Critic on my burlesque of
Rudyard Kipling, which was meant to please but which bored me.  Then
the "Raegen" story came in, making nine pages of the Scribner's, which
at ten dollars a page ought to be $90.  Pretty good pay for three
weeks' work, and it is a good story.  Then at twelve a young man came
bustling into the office, stuck his card down on the desk and said, "I
am S. S. McClure.  I have sent my London representative to Berlin and
my New York man to London.  Will you take charge of my New York end?"

If he thought to rattle me he was very much out of it, for I said in
his same tone and manner, "Bring your New York representative back and
send me to London, and I'll consider it.  As long as I am in New York I
will not leave The Evening Sun."

"Edmund Gosse is my London representative," he said; "you can have the
same work here.  Come out and take lunch." I said, "Thank you, I can't;
I'll see you on Tuesday."

"All right," he said.  "I'll come for you.  Think of what I say.  I'll
make your fortune.  Bradford Merrill told me to get you.  You won't
have anything to do but ask people to write novels and edit them.  I'll
send you abroad later if you don't like New York.  Can you write any
children's stories for me?"

"No," I said, "see you Tuesday."

This is a verbal report of all and everything that was said.  I
consider it a curious interview.  It will raise my salary here or I go.
What do YOU think?  DICK.



NEW YORK--1890.

DEAR FAMILY:

The more I thought of the McClure offer the less I thought of it.  So I
told him last night I was satisfied where I was, and that the $75 he
offered me was no inducement.  Brisbane says I will get $50 about the
first of October, which is plenty and enough for a young man who
intends to be good to his folks.  I cannot do better than stay where I
am, for it is understood between Brisbane and Laffan that in the event
of the former's going into politics I shall take his place, which will
suit very well until something better turns up.  Then there is the
chance of White's coming back and my going to Lunnon, which would
please me now more for what I think I could make of it than what I
think others have made of it.  If I had gone to McClure I would have
been shelved and side-tracked, and I am still in the running, and
learning every day.  Brisbane and I have had our first serious
difficulty over Mrs. R----, who is staying with Mrs. "Bill."  There is
at present the most desperate rivalry, and we discuss each other's
chances with great anger.  He counts on his transcontinental knowledge,
but my short stories hit very hard, and he is not in it when I sing
"Thy Face Will Lead Me On" and "When Kerrigan Struck High C."  She has
a fatal fondness for Sullivan, which is most unfortunate, as Brisbane
can and does tell her about him by the half hour.  Yesterday we both
tried to impress her by riding down in front of the porch and showing
off the horses and ourselves.  Brisbane came off best, though I came
off quickest, for my horse put his foot in a hole and went down on his
knees, while I went over his head like the White Knight in "Alice."  I
would think nothing of sliding off a roof now.  But I made up for this
mishap by coming back in my grey suit and having it compared with the
picture in The Century.  It is a very close fight, and, while Brisbane
is chasing over town for photographs of Sullivan, I am buying books of
verses of which she seems to be fond.  As soon as she gets her divorce
one of us is going to marry her.  We don't know which.  She is about as
beautiful a woman as I ever saw, and very witty and well-informed, but
it would cost a good deal to keep her in diamonds.  She wears some the
Queen gave her, but she wants more.

DICK.


NEW YORK--1890.

DEAR MOTHER (LATE MA):

I am well and with lots to do.  I went up to see Hopper the other
night, which was the first time in three months that I have been back
of a theater, and it was like going home.  There is a smell about the
painty and gassy and dusty place that I love as much as fresh earth and
newly cut hay, and the girls look so pretty and bold lying around on
the sets, and the men so out of focus and with such startling cheeks
and lips.  They were very glad to see me and made a great fuss.  Then
I've been to see Carmencita dance, which I enjoyed remarkably, and I
have been reading Rudyard Kipling's short stories, and I think it is
disgusting that a boy like that should write such stories.  He hasn't
left himself anything to do when he gets old.  He reminds me of Bret
Harte and not a bit of Stevenson, to whom some of them compare him.

I am very glad you liked the lady in mid-air story so much, but it
wasn't a bit necessary to add the MORAL from a MOTHER.  I saw it coming
up before I had read two lines; and a very good moral it is, too, with
which I agree heartily.  But, of course, you know it is not a new idea
to me.  Anything as good and true as that moral cannot be new at this
late date.  I went to the Brooklyn Handicap race yesterday.  It is one
of the three biggest races of the year, and a man stood in front of me
in the paddock in a white hat.  Another man asked him what he was
"playing."

"Well," he said, "I fancy Fides myself."

"Fides!" said his friend, "why, she ain't in it.  She won't see home.
Raceland's the horse for your money; she's favorite, and there isn't
any second choice.  But Fides!  Why, she's simply impossible.  Raceland
beat HER last Suburban."

"Yes, I remember," said the man in the white hat, "but I fancy Fides."

Then another chap said to him, "Fides is all good enough on a dust
track on a sunny, pleasant day, but she can't ran in the mud.  She
hasn't got the staying powers.  She's a pretty one to look at, but
she's just a 'grandstand' ladies' choice.  She ain't in it with
Raceland or Erica.  The horse YOU want is not a pretty, dainty flyer,
but a stayer, that is sure and that brings in good money, not big odds,
but good money.  Why, I can name you a dozen better'n Fides."

"Still, somehow, I like Fides best," said the obstinate man in the
white hat.

"But Fides will take the bit in her mouth and run away, or throw the
jock or break into the fence.  She isn't steady.  She's all right to
have a little bet on, just enough for a flyer, but she's not the horse
to plunge on.  If you're a millionaire with money to throw away, why,
you might put some of it up on her, but, as it is, you want to put your
money where it will be sure of a 'place,' anyway.  Now, let me mark
your card for you?"

"No," said the man, "what you all say is reasonable, I see that; but,
somehow, I rather fancy Fides best."

I've forgotten now whether Fides won or not, and whether she landed the
man who just fancied her without knowing why a winner or sent him home
broke.  But, in any event, that is quite immaterial, the story simply
shows how obstinate some men are as regards horses and--other uncertain
critters.  I have no doubt but that the Methodist minister's daughter
would have made Hiram happy if he had loved her, but he didn't.  No
doubt Anne ----, Nan ----, Katy ---- and Maude ---- would have made me
happy if they would have consented to have me and I had happened to
love them, but I fancied Fides.

But now since I have scared you sufficiently, let me add for your peace
of mind that I've not enough money to back any horses just at present,
and before I put any money up on any one of them for the Matrimonial
stakes, I will ask you first to look over the card and give me a few
pointers.  I mayn't follow them, you know, but I'll give you a fair
warning, at any rate.

"You're my sweetheart, I'm your beau."

DICK.


NEW YORK, May 29, 1890.

This is just a little good night note to say how I wish I was with you
down at that dear old place and how much I love you and Nora who is
getting lovelier and sweeter and prettier everyday and I know a pretty
girl when I see 'em, Fides, for instance.  But I won't tease you about
that any more.

I finished a short silly story to night which I am in doubt whether to
send off or not.  I think I will keep it until I read it to you and
learn what you think.

Mr. Gilder has asked me to stay with them at Marion, and to go to
Cambridge with Mrs. Gilder and dear Mrs. Cleveland and Grover
Cleveland, when he reads the poem before D. K. E.

I have bought a book on decorations, colored, and I am choosing what I
want, like a boy with a new pair of boots.

Good-night, my dearest Mama.

DICK.


In addition to his regular work on The Evening Sun, my brother, as I
have already said, was devoting a great part, of his leisure moments to
the writing of short stories, and had made a tentative agreement with a
well-known magazine to do a series of short sketches of New York types.
Evidently fearful that Richard was writing too much and with a view to
pecuniary gain, my mother wrote the following note of warning:


PHILADELPHIA, 1890.

DEAR DICK:

I wouldn't undertake the "types."  For one thing, you will lose
prestige writing for ----'s paper.  For another, I dread beyond
everything your beginning to do hack work for money.  It is the
beginning of decadence both in work and reputation for you.  I know by
my own and a thousand other people.  Begin to write because it "is a
lot of money" and you stop doing your best work.  You make your work
common and your prices will soon go down.  George Lewes managed George
Eliot wisely.

He stopped her hack work.  Kept her at writing novels and soon one each
year brought her $40,000.  I am taking a purely mercenary view of the
thing.  There is another which you understand better than I-- Mind your
Mother's advice to you--now and all the time is "do only your best
work--even if you starve doing it."  But you won't starve.  You'll get
your dinner at Martin's instead of Delmonico's, which won't hurt you in
the long run.  Anyhow, $1000. for 12,500 words is not a great price.

That was a fine tea you gave.  I should like to have heard the good
talk.  It was like the regiment of brigadier generals with no privates.

Your

MOTHER.


This is a letter written by my father after the publication of
Richard's story "A Walk up the Avenue."  Richard frequently spoke of
his father as his "kindest and severest critic."


PHILADELPHIA, July 22nd, 1890.

10.30 P. M.

MY DEAR Boy:

You can do it; you have done it; it is all right.  I have read A Walk
up the Avenue.  It is far and away the best thing you have ever
done--Full of fine subtle thought, of rare, manly feeling.

I am not afraid of Dick the author.  He's all right.  I shall only be
afraid--when I am afraid--that Dick the man will not live up to the
other fellow, that he may forget how much the good Lord has given him,
and how responsible to the good Lord and to himself he is and will be
for it.  A man entrusted with such talent should carry himself
straighter than others to whom it is denied.  He has great duties to
do; he owes tribute to the giver.

Don't let the world's temptations in any of its forms come between you
and your work.  Make your life worthy of your talent, and humbly by day
and by night ask God to help you to do it.

I am very proud of this work.  It is good work, with brain, bone,
nerve, muscle in it.  It is human, with healthy pulse and heartsome
glow in it.  Remember, hereafter, you have by it put on the bars
against yourself preventing you doing any work less good.  You have
yourself made your record, you can't lower it.  You can only beat it.

Lovingly, DAD.


In the latter part of December, 1890, Richard left The Evening Sun to
become the managing editor of Harper's Weekly.  George William Curtis
was then its editor, and at this time no periodical had a broader or
greater influence for the welfare of the country.  As Richard was then
but twenty-six, his appointment to his new editorial duties came as a
distinct honor.  The two years that Richard had spent on The Evening
Sun had been probably the happiest he had ever known.  He really loved
New York, and at this time Paris and London held no such place in his
affections as they did in later years.  And indeed there was small
reason why these should not have been happy years for any young man.
At twenty-six Richard had already accomplished much, and his name had
become a familiar one not only to New Yorkers but throughout the
country.  Youth and health he had, and many friends, and a talent that
promised to carry him far in the profession he loved.  His new position
paid him a salary considerably larger than he had received heretofore,
and he now demanded and received much higher terms for his stories.
All of which was well for Richard because as his income grew so grew
his tastes.  I have known few men who cared less for money than did my
brother, and I have known few who cared more for what it could buy for
his friends and for himself.  Money to him, and, during his life he
made very large sums of it, he always chose to regard as income but
never capital.  A bond or a share of stock meant to him what it would
bring that day on the Stock Exchange.  The rainy day which is the
bugaboo for the most of us, never seemed to show on his horizon.  For a
man whose livelihood depended on the lasting quality of his creative
faculties he had an infinite faith in the future, and indeed his own
experience seemed to show that he was justified in this belief.  It
could not have been very long after his start as a fiction writer that
he received as high a price for his work as any of his contemporaries;
and just previous to his death, more than twenty years later, he signed
a contract to write six stories at a figure which, so far as I know,
was the highest ever offered an American author.  In any case, money or
the lack of it certainly never caused Richard any worriment during the
early days of which I write.  For what he made he worked extremely
hard, but the reputation and the spending of the money that this same
hard work brought him caused him infinite happiness.  He enjoyed the
reputation he had won and the friends that such a reputation helped him
to make; he enjoyed entertaining and being entertained, and he enjoyed
pretty much all of the good things of life.  And all of this he enjoyed
with the naive, almost boyish enthusiasm that only one could to whom it
had all been made possible at twenty-six.  Of these happy days Booth
Tarkington wrote at the time of my brother's death:

"To the college boy of the early nineties Richard Harding Davis was the
'beau ideal of jeunesse doree,' a sophisticated heart of gold.  He was
of that college boy's own age, but already an editor--already
publishing books!  His stalwart good looks were as familiar to us as
were those of our own football captain; we knew his face as we knew the
face of the President of the United States, but we infinitely preferred
Davis's.  When the Waldorf was wondrously completed, and we cut an
exam. in Cuneiform Inscriptions for an excursion to see the world at
lunch in its new magnificence, and Richard Harding Davis came into the
Palm Room--then, oh, then, our day was radiant!  That was the top of
our fortune; we could never have hoped for so much.  Of all the great
people of every continent, this was the one we most desired to see."

Richard's intimate friends of these days were Charles Dana Gibson, who
illustrated a number of my brother's stories, Robert Howard Russell,
Albert La Montagne, Helen Benedict, now Mrs. Thomas Hastings, Ethel
Barrymore, Maude Adams, E. H.  Sothern, his brother,  Sam, and Arthur
Brisbane.  None of this little circle was married at the time, its
various members were seldom apart, and they extracted an enormous
amount of fun out of life.  I had recently settled in New York, and we
had rooms at 10 East Twenty-eighth Street, where we lived very
comfortably for many years.  Indeed Richard did not leave them until
his marriage in the summer of 1899.  They were very pleasant, sunny
rooms, and in the sitting-room, which Richard had made quite
attractive, we gave many teas and supper-parties.  But of all the happy
incidents I can recall at the Twenty-eighth Street house, the one I
remember most distinctly took place in the hallway the night that
Richard received the first statement and check for his first book of
short stories, and before the money had begun to come in as fast as it
did afterward.  We were on our way to dinner at some modest resort when
we saw and at once recognized the long envelope on the mantel.  Richard
guessed it would be for one hundred and ninety dollars, but with a
rather doubting heart I raised my guess to three hundred.  And when,
with trembling fingers, Richard had finally torn open the envelope and
found a check for nine hundred and odd dollars, what a wild dance we
did about the hall-table, and what a dinner we had that night!  Not at
the modest restaurant as originally intended, but at Delmonico's! It
was during these days that Seymour Hicks and his lovely wife Ellaline
Terriss first visited America, and they and Richard formed a mutual
attachment that lasted until his death.

Richard had always taken an intense interest in the drama, and at the
time he was managing editor of Harper's Weekly had made his first
efforts as a playwright.  Robert Hilliard did a one-act version of
Richard's short story, "Her First Appearance," which under the title of
"The Littlest Girl" he played in vaudeville for many years.  E. H.
Sothern and Richard had many schemes for writing a play together, but
the only actual result they ever attained was a one-act version Sothern
did at the old Lyceum of my brother's story, "The Disreputable Mr.
Raegen."  It was an extremely tense and absorbing drama, and Sothern
was very fine in the part of Raegen, but for the forty-five minutes the
playlet lasted Sothern had to hold the stage continuously alone, and as
it preceded a play of the regulation length, the effort proved too much
for the actor's strength, and after a few performances it was taken
off.  Although it was several years after this that my brother's first
long play was produced he never lost interest in the craft of
playwriting, and only waited for the time and means to really devote
himself to it.



BOSTON, January 22nd, 1891.

DEAR FAMILY:--

This is just to say that I am alive and sleepy, and that my head is
still its normal size, although I have at last found one man in Boston
who has read one of my stories, and that was Barrymore from New York.
The Fairchilds' dinner was a tremendous affair, and I was conquered
absolutely by Mr. Howells, who went far, far out of his way to be as
kind and charming as an old man could be.  Yesterday Mrs. Whitman gave
a tea in her studio.  I thought she meant to have a half dozen young
people to drink a cup with her, and I sauntered in in the most
nonchalant manner to find that about everybody had been asked to meet
me.  And everybody came, principally owing to the "Harding Davis" part
of the name for they all spoke of mother and so very dearly that it
made me pretty near weep.  Everybody came from old Dr. Holmes who never
goes any place, to Mrs. "Jack" Gardner and all the debutantes.  "I was
on in that scene."  In the evening I went with the Fairchilds to Mrs.
Julia Ward Howe's to meet the S----s but made a point not to as he was
talking like a cad when I heard him and Mrs. Fairchild and I agreed to
be the only people in Boston who had not clasped his hand.  There were
only a few people present and Mrs. Howe recited the Battle Hymn of the
Republic, which I thought very characteristic of the city.  To-day I
posed again and Cumnock took me over Cambridge and into all of the
Clubs where I met some very nice boys and felt very old.  Then we went
to a tea Cushing gave in his rooms and to night I go to Mrs. Deland's.
But the mornings with the Fairchilds are the best.  DICK.


In the spring of 1891 my mother and sister, Nora, went abroad for the
summer, and the following note was written to Richard just before my
mother sailed:

DEAR DICK:

This is just to give my dearest love to you my darling.  Some day at
sea when I cannot hear you nor see you, whenever it is that you get
it--night or morning---you may be sure that we are all loving and
thinking of you.

Keep close to the Lord.  Your Lord who never has refused to hear a
prayer of yours.

Just think that I have kissed you a thousand times.

MOTHER.



FRANKLIN SQUARE, NEW YORK.

June, 1891.

DEAR MOTHER:

Your letters are a great delight to me but I think you are going
entirely too quickly.  You do not feel it now but you are simply
hurrying through the courses of your long dinner so rapidly that when
dessert comes you will not be up to it.  A day or two's rest and less
greed to see many things would be much more fun I should think, and you
will enjoy those days more to look back to when you wandered around
some little town by yourselves and made discoveries than those you
spent doing what you feel you ought to do.  Excuse this lecture but I
know that when I got to Paris I wanted to do nothing but sit still and
read and let "sights" go-- You will soon learn not to duplicate and
that one cathedral will answer for a dozen.  And I am disappointed in
your mad desire to get to Edinboro to get letters from home, as though
you couldn't get letters from me every day of your life and as if there
were not enough of you together to keep from getting homesick.  I am
ashamed of you.  But that is all the scolding I have to do for I do not
know what has given me more pleasure than your letters and Nora's
especially.  They tell me the best news in the world and that is, that
you are all getting as much happiness out of it as I have prayed you
would.  I may go over in September myself.  But I would only go to
London.  Now, then for Home news.  I have sold the "Reporter Who Made
Himself King" to McClure's for $300. to be published in the syndicate
in August.  I have finished "Her First Appearance" and Gibson is doing
the illustrations, three.  I got $175. for it.

I am now at work on a story about Arthur Cumnock, Harvard's football
captain who was the hero of Class Day.  It will come out this week and
will match Lieut. Grant's chance.  In July I begin a story called the
"Traveller's Tale" which will be used in the November Harper.  That is
all _I_ am doing.

So far the notices of "Gallegher" have been very good, I mean the
English ones.

I went up to Class Day on Friday and spent the day with Miss Fairchild
and Miss Howells and with Mr. H. for chaperone.  He is getting old and
says he never deserved the fuss they made over him.  We had a pretty
perfect day although it threatened rain most of the time.  We wandered
around from one spread to another meeting beautifully dressed girls
everywhere and "lions" and celebrities.  Then the fight for the roses
around the tree was very interesting and picturesque and arena like and
the best of all was sitting in the broad window seats of the
dormitories with a Girl or two, generally "a" girl and listening to the
glee club sing and watching the lanterns and the crowds of people as
beautiful as Redfern could make them.

Half of Seabright was burnt down last week but not my half, although
the fire destroyed all the stores and fishermen's houses and stopped
only one house away from Pannachi's, where I will put up.  I am very
well and content and look forward to much pleasure this summer at
Seabright and much work.  I find I have seldom been so happy as when
working hard and fast as I have been forced to do these last two weeks
and so I will keep it up.  Not in such a way as to hurt me but just
enough to keep me happy.  DICK.


NEW YORK, August 1891.  From The Pall Mall Budget Gazette.

"The Americans are saying, by the way, that they have discovered a
Rudyard Kipling of their own.  This is Mr. Richard Harding Davis, a
volume of whose stories has been published this week by Mr. Osgood.
Mr. Davis is only twenty-six, was for sometime on the staff of the New
York Evening Sun.  He is now the editor of Harper's Weekly."

That is me.  I have also a mother and sister who once went to London
and what do you think they first went to see, in London, mind you.
They got into a four wheeler and they said "cabby drive as fast as you
can," not knowing that four wheelers never go faster than a dead
march--" to-- "where do you think? St. Paul's, the Temple, the Abbey,
their lodgings, the Houses of Parliament--the Pavilion Music Hall--the
Tower--no to none of these--"To the Post Office."  That is what my
mother and sister did!  After this when they hint that they would like
to go again and say "these muffins are not English muffins" and "do you
remember the little Inn at Chester, ah, those were happy days," I will
say, "And do you remember the Post Office in Edinburgh and London.  We
have none such in America."  And as they only go abroad to get letters
they will hereafter go to Rittenhouse Square and I will write letters
to them from London.  All this shows that a simple hurriedly written
letter from Richard Harding Davis is of more value than all the show
places of London.  It makes me quite PROUD.  And so does this:

"'Gallegher' is as good as anything of Bret Harte's, although it is in
Mr. Davis's own vein, not in the borrowed vein of Bret Harte or anybody
else.  'The Cynical Miss Catherwaight' is very good, too, and 'Mr.
Raegen' is still better."

But on the other hand, it makes me tired, and so does this:

"'The Other Woman' is a story which offends good taste in more than one
way.  It is a blunder to have written it, a greater blunder to have
published it, and a greater blunder STILL to have republished it."

I suppose now that Dad has crossed with Prince George and Nora has seen
the Emperor, that you will be proud too.  But you will be prouder of
your darling boy Charles, even though he does get wiped out at
Seabright next week and you will be even prouder when he writes great
stories for The Evening Sun.

RICHARD.


The Players,

16 Gramercy Park.

24th, 1891.

DEAR FAMILY:

I had a great day at the game and going there and coming back.  I met a
great many old football men and almost all of them spoke of the "Out of
the Game" story.  Cumnock, Camp, Poe, Terry and lots more whose names
mean nothing to you, so ignorant are you, were there and we had long
talks.  I went to see Cleveland yesterday about a thing of which I have
thought much and talked less and that was going into politics in this
country.  To say he discouraged me in so doing would be saying the rain
is wet.  He seemed to think breaking stones as a means of getting fame
and fortune was quicker and more genteel.  I also saw her and the BABY.
She explained why she had not written you and also incidentally why she
HAD written Childs.  I do not know as what Cleveland said made much
impression upon me--although I found out what I could expect from
him--that is nothing here but apparently a place abroad if I wanted it.
But he thought Congress was perfectly feasible but the greatest folly
to go there.

DICK.




CHAPTER V

FIRST TRAVEL ARTICLES

For Richard these first years in New York were filled to overflowing
with many varied interests, quite enough to satisfy most young men of
twenty-seven.  He had come and seen and to a degree, so far as the
limitation of his work would permit, had conquered New York, but
Richard thoroughly realized that New York was not only a very small
part of the world but of his own country, and that to write about his
own people and his own country and other people and other lands he must
start his travels at an early age, and go on travelling until the end.
And for the twenty-five years that followed that was what Richard did.
Even when he was not on his travels but working on a novel or a play at
Marion or later on at Mount Kisco, so far as it was possible he kept in
touch with events that were happening and the friends that he had made
all over the globe.  He subscribed to most of the English and French
illustrated periodicals and to one London daily newspaper which every
day he read with the same interest that he read half a dozen New York
newspapers and the interest was always that of the trained editor at
work.  Richard was not only physically restless but his mind
practically never relaxed.  When others, tired after a hard day's work
or play, would devote the evening to cards or billiards or chatter,
Richard would write letters or pore over some strange foreign magazine,
consult maps, make notes, or read the stories of his contemporaries.
He practically read every American magazine from cover to
cover--advertisements were a delight to him, and the finding of a new
writer gave him as much pleasure as if he had been the fiction editor
who had accepted the first story by the embryo genius.  The official
organs of our army and navy he found of particular interest.  Not only
did he thus follow the movements of his friends in these branches of
the service but if he read of a case wherein he thought a sailor or a
soldier had been done an injustice he would promptly take the matter up
with the authorities at Washington, and the results he obtained were
often not only extremely gratifying to the wronged party but caused
Richard no end of pleasure.

According to my brother's arrangement with the Harpers, he was to
devote a certain number of months of every year to the editing of The
Weekly, and the remainder to travel and the writing of his experiences
for Harper's Monthly.  He started on the first of these trips in
January, 1892, and the result was a series of articles which afterward
appeared under the title of "The West from a Car Window."



January, 1892.  (Some place in Texas)

I left St. Louis last night, Wednesday, and went to bed and slept for
twelve hours.  To-day has been most trying and I shall be very glad to
get on dry land again.  The snow has ceased although the papers say
this is the coldest snap they have had in San Antonio in ten years.  It
might have waited a month for me I think.  It has been a most dreary
trip from a car window point of view.  Now that the snow has gone,
there is mud and ice and pine trees and colored people, but no cowboys
as yet.  They talk nothing but Chili and war and they make such funny
mistakes.  We have a G. A. R. excursion on the train, consisting of one
fat and prosperous G. A. R., the rest of the excursion having backed
out on account of Garza who the salient warriors imagine as a roaring
lion seeking whom he may devour.  One old chap with white hair came on
board at a desolate station and asked for "the boys in blue" and was
very much disgusted when he found that "that grasshopper Garza" had
scared them away-- He had tramped five miles through the mud to greet a
possible comrade and was much chagrined.  The excursion shook hands
with him and they took a drink together.  The excursion tells me he is
a glass manufacturer, an owner of a slate quarry and the best embalmer
of bodies in the country.  He says he can keep them four years and does
so "for specimens" those that are left on his hands and others he
purchases from the morgue.  He has a son who is an actor and he fills
me full of the most harrowing tales of Indian warfare and the details
of the undertaking business.  He is SO funny about the latter that I
weep with laughter and he cannot see why-- Joe Jefferson and I went to
a matinee on Wednesday and saw Robson in "She stoops to Conquer."  The
house was absolutely packed and when Joe came in the box they yelled
and applauded and he nodded to them in the most fatherly, friendly way
as though to say "How are you, I don't just remember your name but I'm
glad to see you--" It was so much sweeter than if he had got up and
bowed as I would have done.


SAN ANTONIO

I knew more about Texas than the Texans and when they told me I would
find summer here I smiled knowingly-- That is all the smiling I have
done---Did you ever see a stage set for a garden or wood scene by
daylight or Coney Island in March--that is what the glorious, beautiful
baking city of San Antonio is like.  There is mud and mud and mud--in
cans, in the gardens of the Mexicans and snow around the palms and
palmettos-- Does the sun shine anywhere?  Are people ever warm-- It is
raw, ugly and muddy, the Mexicans are merely dirty and not picturesque.
I am greatly disappointed.  But I have set my teeth hard and I will go
on and see it through to the bitter end-- But I will not write anything
for publication until I can take a more cheerful view of it.  I already
have reached the stage where I admit the laugh is on me-- But there is
still London to look forward to and this may get better when the sun
comes out---I went to the fort to-day and was most courteously
received.  But they told me I should go on to Laredo, if I expected to
see any campaigning-- There is no fighting nor is any expected but they
say they will give me a horse and I can ride around the chaparral as
long as I want.  I will write you from Laredo, where I go to-morrow,
Saturday--

DICK.


At Laredo Richard left the beaten track of the traveller, and with
Trooper Tyler, who acted as his guide, joined Captain Hardie in his
search for Garza.  The famous revolutionist was supposed to be in
hiding this side of the border, and the Mexican Government had asked
the United States to find him and return him to the officials of his
own country.


In Camp, February 2nd.

DEAR MOTHER:--

We have stopped by the side of a trail for a while and I will take the
chance it gives me to tell you what I have been doing.  After Tyler and
I returned to camp, we had a day of rest before Captain Hardie arrived.
He is a young, red-moustached, pointed-bearded chap with light blue
eyes, rough with living in the West but most kind hearted and
enthusiastic.  He treats me as though I were his son which is rather
absurd as he is only up to my shoulder.  It is so hot I cannot make the
words go straight and you must not mind if I wander.  We are hugging a
fence for all the shade there is and the horses and men have all
crawled to the dark side of it and are sleeping or swearing at the sun.
It is about two o'clock and we have been riding since half-past seven.
I have had a first rate time but I do not see that there has been much
in it to interest any one but myself and where Harper Brothers or the
"gentle reader" comes in, I am afraid I cannot see, and if I cannot see
it I fear he will be in a bad way.  It has pleased and interested me to
see how I could get along under difficult circumstances and with so
much discomfort but as I say I was not sent out here to improve my
temper or my health or to make me more content with my good things in
the East.  If we could have a fight or something that would excuse and
make a climax for all this marching and reconnoitering and discomfort
the story would have a suitable finale and a raison d'etre.  However, I
may get something out of it if only to abuse the Government for their
stupidity in chasing a jack rabbit with a brass band or by praising the
men for doing their duty when they know there is no duty to be done.
This country is more like the ocean than anything else and drives one
crazy with its monotony and desolation.  And to think we went to war
with Mexico for it-- To-day is my tenth day with the troops in the camp
and in the field and I will leave them as soon as this scout is over
which will be in three days at the most.  Then I will go to Corpus
Christi and from there to the ranches but I will wait until I get
baths, hair cuts and a dinner and cool things to drink-- One thing has
pleased me very much and that is that I, with Tyler and the Mexican
Scout made the second best riding record of the troop since they have
been in the field this winter.  The others rode 115 miles in 32 hours,
four of them under the first Sergeant, after revolutionists, and we
made 110 miles in 33 hours.  The rest of the detachment made 90 miles
and our having the extra thirty to our credit was an accident.  On the
31st Hardie sent out the scout and two troopers, of which Tyler was
one, to get a trail and as I had been resting and loafing for three
days, I went out with them.  We left at eight after breakfast and
returned at seven, having made thirty miles.  When we got in we found
that a detachment was going out on information sent in while we were
out.  Tyler was in it and so we got fresh horses and put out at nine
o'clock by moonlight.  That was to keep the people in the ranch from
knowing we were going out.  We rode until half-past three in the
morning and then camped at the side of the road until half--past six,
when we rode on until five in the afternoon.  The men who were watching
to see me give up grew more and more interested as the miles rolled out
and the First Sergeant was very fearful for his record for which he has
been recommended for the certificate of merit.  The Captain was very
much pleased and all the men came and spoke to me.  It must have been a
good ride for Tyler who is a fifth year man was so tired that he paid a
man to do his sentry duty.  We slept at Captain Hunter's camp that last
night and we both came on this morning, riding thirty miles up to two
o'clock to-day.  From here we go on into the brush again.  I am very
proud of that riding record and of my beard which is fine.  I will
finish this when we get near a post-office.

DICK.


February 4th-- We rode forty miles through the brush but saw nothing of
Garza, who was supposed to be in it.  But we captured 3 revolutionists,
one of whom ran away but the scout got him.  Hardie, Tyler, who is his
orderly, and the scout and I took them in because the rest of the
column was lagging in the rear and the Lieutenant got bally hooly for
it.  Tyler disarmed one and I took away the other chaps things.  Then
we took a fourth in and let them all go for want of evidence and after
some of the ranch men had identified them.


CORPUS CHRISTI, February 6.

We ended our scout yesterday, and camped at Captain Hunter's last
night-- Mother can now rest her soul in peace as I have done with
scoutings and have replaced the free and easy belt and revolver for the
black silk suspenders and the fire badge of civilization.  I am still
covered with 11 days dirt but will get lots of good things to eat and
drink and smoke at Corpus Christi to night, where I will stay for two
days.  I am writing this on the car and a ranger is shooting splinters
out of the telegraph poles from the window in front and has a New York
drummer in a state of absolute nervous prostration.  I met the Rangers
last night as we came into camp and find them quite the most
interesting things yet.  They are just what I expected to find here and
have not disappointed me.  Everything else is either what we know it to
be and know all about or else is disappointingly commonplace.  I mean
we know certain things are picturesque and I find them so but they have
been "done" to death and new material seems so scarce.  I am sometimes
very fearful of the success of the letters-- However, the Rangers I
simply loved.  They were gentle voiced and did not swear as the
soldiers do and some of them were as handsome men as I ever saw and SO
BIG.  And such children.  They showed me all their tricks at the
request of the Adjutant General, who looks upon them as his special
property.  They shot four shots into a tree with a revolver, going at
full gallop, hit a mark with both hands at once, shot with the pistol
upside down and the Captain put eight shots into a board with a
Winchester, while I was putting two into the field around it.  We got
along very well indeed and they were quite keen for me to go back and
chase Garza.  They are sure they have him now.  I gave the Captain
permission to put four shots into my white helmet.  He only put two and
the rest of the company thinking their reputations were at stake
whipped out their guns and snatched up their rifles and blazed away
until they danced the hat all over the ranch.  Then remorse overcame
them and they proposed taking up a collection to get me a sombrero,
which I stopped.  So Nora's hat is gone but I am going to get another
and save myself from sunstroke again.  The last part of the ride was
enlivened by the presence of three Mexican murderers handcuffed and
chained with iron bands around the neck, that is Texas civilization
isn't it--

I have had my dinner and a fine dinner it was with fresh fish and duck
and oysters and segars which I have not had for a week.  I am finishing
this at Constantine's and will be here for two days to write things and
will then go on to King's ranch and from there to San Antonio, where I
will also rest a week.  I will just about get through my schedule in
the ten weeks at this rate.  I had a good time in the bush and am
enjoying it very much though it is lonely now and then-- Still, it is
very interesting and if the stories amount to anything I will be
pleased but I am constantly wondering how on earth Chas stood it as he
did.  He is a hero to me for I have some hope of getting back and he
had not-- He is a sport-- How I will sleep to night--a real bed and
sheets and pajamas, after the ground and the same clothes for eleven
days.

of love.

DICK.


While Richard was travelling in the West, his second volume of short
stories, "Van Bibber and Others," was published.  The volume was
dedicated to my father, who wrote Richard the following letter:


PHILADELPHIA, February 15, 1892.

MY DEAR OWN DICK:

I have not been the complete letter writer I should have been, as I
told you on Saturday, but I know you will  understand.  Your two good
letters came this evening, one to Mamma and one to Nora.  They were a
good deal to us all, most, of course, to your dear mother and sister,
who have a fond, foolish fancy or love for you--strange--isn't it?
Yes, dear boy, I liked the new story very, very much.  It was in your
best book and in fine spirit, and I liked, too, the dedication of the
book--its meaning and its manner.  I am glad to be associated with my
dear boy and with his work even in that brief way.  You may not yet
thought about it after this fashion, but I have thought a good deal
about it.  Reports come to me of you from many sources, and they are
all good, and they all reflect honor upon me-- Upon me as I'm getting
ready to salute the world, as our French friends say.  It is very
pleasant to me as I think it over to feel and to know that my boy has
honored my name, that he has done something good and useful in the
world and for the world.  I have something more than pride in you.  I
am grateful to you.  If this is a little prosie, dear old fellow,
forgive it.  It is late at night and I am a little tired, and being
tired stupid.  You saw The Atlantic notice of your work.  I wish you
could have heard Nora on the author of it, who would not have been
happy in his mind if he had unhappily heard her.  She went for that
Heathen Chinee like a wild cat.  No disrespect to her, but, all the
same, like a wild cat.  To me it was interesting.  I did not agree with
it, but here and there I saw the flash of truth even in the adverse
praise.  I should have had more respect for the author's opinion if he
had liked that vital speck, Raegen.  If he could not see the divine,
human spark in that--a flash from Calvary, what is the use of
considering him?  My greatest pride in you, that which has added some
sweetness and joy to my life, has been the recognition that something
of the divine element was given you, and that your voice rang out sweet
and pure at a time when other voices were sounding the fascinations of
impurity.  That, like Christ, you taught humanity.  Don't be afraid of
being thought "fresh," fear to be thought "knowing."  Life isn't much
worth at best,--it is worth nothing at all unless some good be done in
it---the more, the better.  Don't make it too serious either.  Enjoy it
as you go, but after a fashion that will bring no reproach to your
manhood.  Don't be afraid to preach the truth and above all the
religion of humanity.  Good night, dear boy.  I'm a little tired to
night.  With great love,

DAD.


ANADARKO--February 26th, 1892.

DEAR FAMILY:--

I could not write you before as I have been traveling from pillars to
posts, (a joke), in a stage, night and day.  I went to Fort Reno from
Oklahoma City where they drove me crazy almost with town lots and lot
sites and homestead holdings.  It was all raw and mean, and greedy for
money and a man is much better off in every way in a tenement on Second
Avenue than the "owner of his own home" in one of these mushroom
cities-- So I think.  I went to Fort Reno by stage and it seemed to me
that I was really in the West for the first time-- The rest has been as
much like the oil towns around Pittsburgh as anything else.  But here
there are rolling prairie lands with millions of prairie dogs and deep
canons and bluffs of red clay that stand out as clear as a razor
hollowed and carved away by the water long ago.  And the grass is as
high as a stirrup and the trees very plentiful after the plains of
Texas.  The men at Fort Reno were the best I have met, indeed I am just
a little tired of trying to talk of things of interest to the Second
Lieutenant's intellect.  But I had to leave there because I had missed
the beef issue and had to see it and as it was due here I pushed on.
This post is very beautiful but the men are very young and civil
appointments mainly, which means that they have not been to West Point
but had fathers and have friends with influence and they are fresh.
But the scenery around the post is delightfully wild and big and there
is an Indian camp at the foot of the hill on which the fort is stuck.
Mother, instead of going to Europe, should come here and see her
Indians.  Only if she did she would bring a dozen or more of the
children back with her.  They are the brightest spot in my trip and I
spend the mornings and afternoons trying to get them to play with me.
They are very shy and pretty and beautifully barbaric and wear the most
gorgeous trappings.  The women, the older ones, are the ugliest women I
ever saw.  But the men are fine.  I never saw such color as they give
to the landscape and one always thinks they have dressed up just to
please you.  I have spent most of my time and money in buying things
from them but they are very dear because the Indians take long to make
them and do not like to part with them.  I have had rough times lately
but I think I would be content to remain in the west six months if I
could.  It is the necessity of leaving places I like and pushing on to
places I don't, I dislike.  Reno was fine with a band and lots of fine
fellows.  This post is not so queer but they are so young-- It makes a
great bit of color though with the yellow capes of the cavalry and the
soldiers wig--waging red and white flags at other soldiers eight miles
away on other mountains and the Indians in yellow buckskin and blankets
and their faces painted too.  I went to the beef issue to-day--it was
not a pretty sight and most barbarous and cruel.  I also went to a
council at which the chiefs were protesting against the cutting down of
their rations which is Commissioner Morgan's doing and which it is
expected will lead to war-- We went in out of curiosity and without
knowing it was a Council and were very much ashamed when one of the
Chiefs rose and said he was glad to see the officers present as they
were the best friends the Indians had and the only men they could
respect in times of peace as a friend, or in times of war as an enemy.
At which we took off our hats and sat it through.  Mother's blood would
rise if she could hear the stories they tell, and they are so dignified
and polite.  They have an Indian troop here, like the one described in
The Weekly, which you should read and the Captain told them I was a
great Chief from the East, whereat all the soldiers who were of noble
lineage claimed their privilege of shaking hands with me, which had a
demoralizing effect upon the formation and the white privates were
either convulsed with mirth or red with indignation.  But you cannot
treat them like white men who do not know their ancestors-- Dad's
letter was the best I have ever got from him and he had always better
write when he is tired.  I will always keep it.

DICK.


DENVER--March 7, 1892.

DEAR FAMILY:

I arrived in Denver Friday night and realized that I was in a city
again where the more you order people about the more they do for you,
being civilized and so understanding that you mean to tip them.  I
found my first letter on the newsstand and was very much pleased with
it, and with the way they put it out.  The proof was perfect and if
there had been more pictures I would have been entirely satisfied, as
it was I was very much pleased.  My baggage had not come, so covered
with mud and dust and straw from the stages and generally disreputable
I went to see a burlesque, and said "Front row, end seat," just as
naturally as though I was in evening dress and high hat--and then I
sank into a beautiful deep velvet chair and saw Amazon marches and
ladies in tights and heard the old old jokes and the old old songs we
know so well and sing so badly.  The next morning I went for my mail
and the entire post office came out to see me get it.  It took me until
seven in the evening to finish it, and I do not know that it will ever
be answered.  The best of it was that you were all pleased with my
letters.  That put my mind at rest.  Then there was news of deaths and
marriages and engagements and the same people doing the same things
they did when I went away.  I did not intend to present any letters as
I was going away that night to Creede, but I found I could not get any
money unless some one identified me so I presented one to a Mr. Jerome
who all the bankers said they would be only too happy to oblige.  After
one has been variously taken for a drummer, photographer and has been
offered so much a line to "write up" booming towns, it is a relief to
get back to a place where people know you.--I told Mr. Jerome I had a
letter of introduction and that I was Mr. Davis and he shook hands and
then looked at the letter and said "Good Heavens are you that Mr.
Davis" and then rushed off and brought back the entire establishment
brokers, bankers and mine owners and they all sat around and told me
funny stories and planned more things for me to do and eat than I could
dispose of in a month.

I am now en route to Creede.  Creede when you first see it in print
looks like creede but after you have been in Denver or Colorado even
for one day it reads like C R E E D E.  All the men on this car think
they are going to make their fortunes, and toward that end they have on
new boots and flannel shirts, and some of them seeing my beautiful
clothing and careful array came over and confided to me that they were
really not so tough as they looked and had never worn a flannel shirt
before.  This car is typical of what they told me I would find at
Creede.  There are rich mine owners who are pointed out by the
conductor as the fifth part owner of the "Pot Luck" mine, and dudes in
astrakan fur coats over top boots and new flannel shirts, and hardened
old timers with their bedding and tin pans, who have prospected all
over the state and women who are smoking and drinking.

I feel awfully selfish whenever I look out of the car window.
Switzerland which I have never seen is a spot on the map compared to
this.  The mountains go up with snow on one side and black rows of
trees and rocks on the other, and the clouds seem packed down between
them.  The sun on the snow and the peaks peering above the clouds is
all new to me and so very beautiful that I would like to buy a mountain
and call it after my best girl.  I will finish this when I get to
Creede.  I expect to make my fortune there.  DICK.


CREEDE, March 7.

A young man in a sweater and top boots met me at the depot and said
that I was Mr. Davis and that he was a young man whose life I had
written in "There was 90 and 9."  He was from Buffalo and was editing a
paper in Creede.  He said I was to stop with him-- Creede is built of
new pine boards and lies between two immense mountains covered with
pines and snow.  The town is built in the gulley and when the spring
freshets come will be a second Johnstown.  Faber, the young man, took
me to the Grub State Cabin where I found two most amusing dudes and
thoroughbred sports from Boston, Harvard men living in a cabin ten by
eight with four bunks and a stove, two banjos and H O P E.  They own
numerous silver mines, lots, and shares, but I do not believe they have
five dollars in cash amongst them.  They have a large picture of myself
for one of the ORNAMENTS and are great good fellows.  We sat up in our
bunks until two this morning talking and are planning to go to Africa
and Mexico and Asia Minor together.--Lots of love.

DICK.


Very happy indeed to be back in his beloved town, Richard returned to
New York late in March, 1892, and resumed his editorial duties.  But on
this occasion his stay was of particularly short duration, and in May,
he started for his long-wished-for visit to London.  The season there
was not yet in full swing, and after spending a few days in town,
journeyed to Oxford, where he settled down to amuse himself and collect
material for his first articles on English life as he found it.  In
writing of this visit to Oxford, H. J.  Whigham, one of Richard's
oldest friends, and who afterward served with him in several campaigns,
said:

"When we first met Richard Harding Davis he was living, to all
practical purposes, the life of an undergraduate at Balliol College,
Oxford.  Anyone at all conversant with the customs of universities,
especially with the idiosyncrasies of Oxford, knows that for a person
who is not an undergraduate to share the life of undergraduates on
equal terms, to take part in their adventures, to be admitted to their
confidence is more difficult than it is for the camel to pass through
the eye of a needle or for the rich man to enter heaven.  It was
characteristic of Davis that although he was a few years older than the
average university "man" and came from a strange country and, moreover,
had no official reason for being at Oxford at all, he was accepted as
one of themselves by the Balliol undergraduates, in fact, lived in
Balliol for at least a college term, and happening to fall in with a
somewhat enterprising generation of Balliol men he took the lead in
several escapades which have been written into Oxford history.  There
is in the makeup of the best type of college undergraduate a wonderful
spirit of adventure, an unprejudiced view of life, an almost Quixotic
feeling for romance, a disdain of sordid or materialistic motives,
which together make the years spent at a great university the most
golden of the average man's career.  These characteristics Davis was
fortunate enough to retain through all the years of his life.  The same
spirit that took him out with a band of Oxford youths to break down an
iron barrier set by an insolent landowner across the navigable waters
of Shakespeare's Avon carried him, in after years, to the battlefields
where Greece fought against the yoke of Turkey, to the insurrecto camps
of Cuba, to the dark horrors of the Congo, to Manchuria, where gallant
Japan beat back the overwhelming power of Russia, to Belgium, where he
saw the legions of Germany trampling over the prostrate bodies of a
small people.  Romance was never dead while Davis was alive."

That Richard lost no time in making friends at Oxford as, indeed, he
never failed to do wherever he went, the following letters to his
mother would seem to show:


OXFORD--May, 1892.

DEAR FAMILY:

I came down here on Saturday morning with the Peels, who gave an
enormous boating party and luncheon on a tiny little island.  The day
was beautiful with a warm brilliant sun, and the river was just as
narrow and pretty as the head of the Squan river, and with old walls
and college buildings added.  We had the prettiest Mrs. Peel in our
boat and Mrs. Joseph Chamberlain, who was Miss Endicott and who is very
sweet and pretty.  We raced the other punts and rowboats and soon,
after much splashing and exertion, reached the head of the river.  Then
we went to, tea in New College and to see the sights of the different
colleges now on the Thames.  The barges of the colleges, painted
different colors and gilded like circus band-wagons and decorated with
coats of arms and flying great flags, lined the one shore for a quarter
of a mile and were covered by girls in pretty frocks and under-grads in
blazers.  Then the boats came into sight one after another with the men
running alongside on the towpath.  This was one of the most remarkable
sights of the country so far.  There were over six hundred men coming
six abreast, falling and stumbling and pushing, shouting and firing
pistols.  It sounded like a cavalry charge and the line seemed endless.
The whole thing was most theatrical and effective.  Then we went to the
annual dinner of the Palmerston Club, where I made a speech which was,
as there is no one else to tell you, well received, "being frequently
interrupted with applause," from both the diners and the ladies in the
gallery.  It was about Free Trade and the way America was
misrepresented in the English papers, and composed of funny stories
which had nothing to do with the speech.  I did not know I was going to
speak until I got there, and considering the fact, as Wilson says, that
your uncle was playing on a strange table with a crooked cue he did
very well.  The next morning we breakfasted with the Bursar of Trinity
and had luncheon with the Viscount St. Cyres to meet Lord and Lady
Coleridge.  St. Cyres is very shy and well-bred, and we would have had
a good time had not the M. P.'s present been filled with awe of the
Lord Chief Justice and failed to draw him out.  As it was he told some
very funny stories; then we went to tea with Hubert Howard, in whose
rooms I live and am now writing, and met some stupid English women and
shy girls.  Then we dined with the dons at New College, so--called
because it is eight hundred years old.  We sat at a high table in a big
hall hung with pictures and lit by candles.  The under-grads sat
beneath in gowns and rattled pewter mugs.  We all wore evening dress
and those that had them red and white fur collars.  After dinner we
left the room according to some process of selection, carrying our
napkins with us.  We entered a room called the Commons, where we drank
wines and ate nuts and raisins.  It was all very solemn and dull and
very dignified.  Outside it was quite light although nine o'clock.
Then we marched to another room where there were cigars and brandy and
soda, but Arthur Pollen and I had to go and take coffee with the Master
of Balliol, the only individual of whom Pollen stands in the least awe.
He was a dear old man who said, "O yes, you're from India," and on my
saying "No, from America"; he said, "O yes, it's the other one."  I
found the other one was an Indian princess in a cashmere cloak and
diamonds, who looked so proud and lovely and beautiful that I wanted to
take her out to one of the seats in the quadrangle and let her weep on
my shoulder.  How she lives among these cold people I cannot
understand.  We were all to go to a concert in the chapel, and half of
the party started off, but the Master's wife said, "Oh, I am sure the
Master expects them to wait for him in the hall.  It is always done."
At which all the women made fluttering remarks of sympathy and the men
raced off to bring the others back.  Only the Indian girl and I
remained undisturbed and puzzled.  The party came back, but the Master
saw them and said, "Well, it does not matter, but it is generally
done."  At which we all felt guilty.  When we got to the chapel
everybody stood up until the Master's party sat down, but as it was
broken in the middle of the procession, they sat down, and then, seeing
we had not all passed, got up again, so that I felt like saying, "As
you were, men," as they do out West in the barracks.  Then Lord
Coleridge in taking off his overcoat took off his undercoat, too, and
stood unconscious of the fact before the whole of Oxford.  The faces of
the audience which packed the place were something wonderful to see;
their desire to laugh at a tall, red-faced man who looks like a bucolic
Bill Nye struggling into his coat, and then horror at seeing the Chief
Justice in his shirt-sleeves, was a terrible effort--and no one would
help him, on the principle, I suppose, that the Queen of Spain has no
legs.  He would have been struggling yet if I had not, after watching
him and Lady Coleridge struggling with him, for a full minute, taken
his coat and firmly pulled the old gentleman into it, at which he
turned his head and winked.

I will go back to town by the first to see the Derby and will get into
lodgings there.  I AM HAVING A VERY GOOD TIME AND AM VERY WELL.  The
place is as beautiful as one expects and yet all the time startling one
with its beauty.

DICK.


When the season at Oxford was over Richard returned to London and took
a big sunny suite of rooms in the Albany.  Here he settled down to
learn all he could of London, its ways and its people.  In New York he
had already met a number of English men and women distinguished in
various walks of life, and with these as a nucleus he soon extended his
circle of friends until it became as large as it was varied.  In his
youth, and indeed throughout his life, Richard had the greatest
affection for England and the English.  No truer American ever lived,
but he thought the United States and Great Britain were bound by ties
that must endure always.  He admired British habits, their
cosmopolitanism and the very simplicity of their mode of living.  He
loved their country life, and the swirl of London never failed to
thrill him.  During the last half of his life Richard had perhaps as
many intimate friends in London as in New York.  His fresh point of
view, his very eagerness to understand theirs, made them welcome him
more as one of their own people than as a stranger.


LONDON, June 3, 1892.

DEAR FAMILY:

I went out to the Derby on Wednesday and think it is the most
interesting thing I ever saw over here.  It is SO like these people
never to have seen it.  It seems to be chiefly composed of
costermongers and Americans.  I got a box-seat on a public coach and
went out at ten.  We rode for three hours in a procession of donkey
shays, omnibuses, coaches, carriages, vans, advertising wagons; every
sort of conveyance stretching for sixteen miles, and with people lining
the sides to look on.  I spent my time when I got there wandering
around over the grounds, which were like Barnum's circus multiplied by
thousands.  It was a beautiful day and quite the most remarkable sight
of my life.  Much more wonderful than Johnstown, so you see it must
have impressed me.  We were five hours getting back, the people singing
all the way and pelting one another and saying funny impudent things.

My rooms are something gorgeous.  They are on the first floor, looking
into Piccadilly from a court, and they are filled with Hogarth's
prints, old silver, blue and white china, Zulu weapons and fur rugs,
and easy chairs of India silk.  You never saw such rooms!  And a very
good servant, who cooks and valets me and runs errands and takes such
good care of me that last night Cust and Balfour called at one to get
some supper and he would not let them in.  Think of having the Leader
of the House of Commons come to ask you for food and having him sent
away.  Burdett-Coutts heard of my being here in the papers and wrote me
to dine with him tonight.  I lunched with the Tennants today; no
relation to Mrs. Stanley, and it was informal and funny rather.  The
Earl of Spender was there and Lord Pembroke and a lot of women.  They
got up and walked about and changed places and seemed to know one
another better than we do at home.  I think I will go down to Oxford
for Whitsuntide, which is a heathen institution here which sends
everyone away just as I want to meet them.

I haven't written anything yet.  I find it hard to do so.  I think I
would rather wait until I get home for the most of it.  Chas. will be
here in less than a week now and we will have a good time.  I have
planned it out for days.  He must go to Oxford and meet those boys, and
then, if he wishes, on to Eastnor, which I learn since my return is one
of the show places of England.  I am enjoying myself, it is needless to
say, very much, and am well and happy.

DICK.


During these first days in England Richard spent much of his time at
Eastnor, Lady Brownlow's place in Lincolnshire, and one of the most
beautiful estates in England.  Harry Cust, to whom my brother
frequently refers in his letters, was the nephew of Lady Brownlow, and
a great friend of Richard's.  At that time Cust was the Conservative
nominee for Parliament from Lincolnshire, and Richard took a most
active part in the campaign.  Happily, we were both at Lady Brownlow's
during its last few tense days, as well as on the day the votes were
counted, and Cust was elected by a narrow margin.  Of our thrilling
adventures Richard afterward wrote at great length in "Our English
Cousins."


LONDON, July 6, 1892.

DEAR MOTHER:

On the Fourth of July, Lady Brownlow sent into town and had a big
American flag brought out and placed over the house, which was a great
compliment, as it was seen and commented on for miles around.  Cushing
of Boston, a very nice chap and awfully handsome, is there, too.  The
same morning I went out to photograph the soldiers, and Lord William
Frederick, who is their colonel, charged them after me whenever I
appeared.  It seems he has a sense of humor and liked the idea of
making an American run on the Fourth of July from Red-coats.  I doubt
if the five hundred men who were not on horseback thought it as funny.
They chased me till I thought I would die.  The Conservative member for
the county got in last night and we rejoiced greatly, as the moral
effect will help Harry Cust greatly.  His election takes place next
Monday.  The men went in to hear the vote declared after dinner, and so
did two of the girls, who got Lady Brownlow's consent at dinner, and
then dashed off to change their gowns before she could change her mind.
As we were intent on seeing the fun and didn't want them, we took them
just where we would have gone anyway, which was where the fighting was.
And they showed real sporting blood and saw the other real sort.  There
were three of us to each girl, and it was most exciting, with stones
flying and windows crashing and cheers and groans.  A political meeting
or election at home is an afternoon tea to the English ones.  When we
came back the soldiers were leaving the Park to stop the row, and as we
flew past, the tenants ran to the gate and cheered for the Tory victory
in "good old lopes."  When we got to the house the servants ran
cheering all over the shop and rang the alarm bell and built fires, and
we had a supper at one-fifteen.  What they will do on the night of
Cust's election, I cannot imagine-- burn the house down probably.
Cushing and I enjoy it immensely.  We know them well enough now to be
as funny as we like without having them stare.  They are nice when you
know them, but you've GOT to know them first.  I had a great dinner at
Farrar's.  All the ecclesiastical lights of England in knee-breeches
were there, and the American Minister and Phillips Brooks.  It was
quite novel and fun.  Lots of love.  I have all the money I want.

DICK.


With Cust properly elected, Richard and I returned to the Albany and
settled down to enjoy London from many angles.  Although my brother had
been there but a few weeks, his acquaintances among the statesmen,
artists, social celebrities, and the prominent actors of the day was
quite as extraordinary as his geographical and historical knowledge of
the city.  We gave many jolly parties, and on account of Richard's
quickly acquired popularity were constantly being invited to dinners,
dances, and less formal but most amusing Bohemian supper-parties.
During these days there was little opportunity for my brother to do
much writing, but he was very busy making mental notes not only for his
coming book on the English people, but for a number of short stories
which he wrote afterward in less strenuous times.  We returned to New
York in August, and Richard went to Marion to rest from his social
activities, and to work on his English articles.




CHAPTER VI

THE MEDITERRANEAN AND PARIS

It was, I think, the year previous to this that my mother and father
had deserted Point Pleasant as a place to spend their summer vacations
in favor of Marion, on Cape Cod, and Richard and I, as a matter of
course, followed them there.  At that time Marion was a simple little
fishing village where a few very charming people came every summer and
where the fishing was of the best.  In all ways the life was most
primitive, and happily continued so for many years.  In, these early
days Grover Cleveland and his bride had a cottage there, and he and
Joseph Jefferson, who lived at Buzzard's Bay, and my father went on
daily fishing excursions.  Richard Watson Gilder was one of the
earliest settlers of the summer colony, and many distinguished members
of the literary and kindred professions came there to visit him.  It
was a rather drowsy life for those who didn't fish--a great deal of
sitting about on one's neighbor's porch and discussion of the latest
novel or the newest art, or of one's soul, and speculating as to what
would probably become of it.  From the first Richard formed a great
affection for the place, and after his marriage adopted it as his
winter as well as his summer home.  As a workshop he had two rooms in
one of the natives' cottages, and two more charming rooms it would be
hard to imagine.  The little shingled cottage was literally covered
with honeysuckle, and inside there were the old wall-papers, the open
hearths, the mahogany furniture, and the many charming things that had
been there for generations, and all of which helped to contribute to
the quaint peaceful atmosphere of the place.  Dana Gibson had a cottage
just across the road, and around the corner Gouverneur Morris lived
with his family.  At this time neither of these friends of Richard, nor
Richard himself, allied themselves very closely to the literary colony
and its high thoughts, but devoted most of their time to sailing about
Sippican Harbor, playing tennis and contributing an occasional short
story or an illustration to a popular magazine.  But after the colony
had taken flight, Richard often remained long into the fall, doing
really serious work and a great deal of it.  At such times he had to
depend on a few friends who came to visit him, but principally on the
natives to many of whom he was greatly attached.  It was during these
days that he first met his future wife, Cecil Clark, whose father, John
M. Clark of Chicago, was one of the earliest of the summer colonists to
build his own home at Marion.  A most charming and hospitable home it
was, and it was in this same house where we had all spent so many happy
hours that Richard was married and spent his honeymoon, and for several
years made his permanent home.  Of the life of Marion during this later
period, he became an integral part, and performed his duties as one of
its leading citizens with much credit to the town and its people.  For
Marion Richard always retained a great affection, for there he had
played and worked many of his best years.  He had learned to love
everything of which the quaint old town was possessed, animate and
inanimate, and had I needed any further proof of how deeply the good
people of Marion loved Richard, the letters I received from many of
them at the time of his death would show.

In the early fall of 1892 Richard returned to his editorial work on
Harper's Weekly, and one of the first assignments he gave was to
despatch himself to Chicago to report the Dedication Exercises of the
World's Fair.  That the trip at least started out little to my
brother's liking the following seems to show.  However, Richard's moods
frequently changed with the hour, and it is more than possible that
before the letter was sent he was enjoying himself hugely and regarding
Chicago with his usual kindly eyes.


Chicago Club,

October 2, 1892.

DEAR FAMILY:

Though lost to sight I am still thinking of you sadly.  It seems that I
took a coupe after leaving you and after living in it for a few years I
grew tired and got out on the prairie and walked along drinking in the
pure air from the lakes and reading Liebig's and Cooper's advs.  After
a brisk ten mile walk I reentered my coupe and we in time drew up
before a large hotel inhabited by a clerk and a regular boarder.  I am
on the seventh floor without a bathroom or electric button--I merely
made remarks and then returned to town in a railroad train which runs
conveniently near.  After gaining civilization I made my way through
several parades or it may have been the same one to the reviewing
stand.  My progress was marked by mocking remarks by the police who
asked of each other to get on to my coat and on several occasions I was
mistaken by a crowd of some thousand people for the P----e of W----s,
and tumultuously cheered.  At last I found an inspector of police on
horseback, who agreed to get me to the stand if it took a leg.  He
accordingly charged about 300 women and clubbed eight men--I counted
them--and finally got me in.  He was very drunk but he was very good to
me.



Once back from Chicago Richard divided his time between his desk at
Franklin Square, his rooms on Twenty-eighth Street, and in quickly
picking up the friendships and the social activities his trip to
England had temporarily broken off.  Much as he now loved London, he
was still an enthusiastic New Yorker, and the amount of work and play
he accomplished was quite extraordinary.  Indeed it is difficult to
understand where he found the time to do so much.  In addition to his
work on Harper's he wrote many short stories and special articles, not
only because he loved the mere writing of them, but because he had come
to so greatly enjoy the things he could buy with the money his labors
now brought him.  His pleasures had increased as steadily as the prices
he could now command for his stories, and in looking back on those days
it is rather remarkable when one considers his age, the temptations
that surrounded him, and his extraordinary capacity for enjoyment, that
he never seems to have forgotten the balance between work and play, and
stuck to both with an unswerving and unceasing enthusiasm.  However,
after four months of New York, he decided it was high time for him to
be off again, and he arranged with the Harpers to spend the late winter
and the spring in collecting material for the two sets of articles
which afterward appeared in book form under the titles of "The Rulers
of the Mediterranean" and "About Paris." He set sail for Gibraltar the
early part of February, 1893, and the following letters describe his
leisurely progress about the Mediterranean ports.


NEW YORK, February 3, 1893.

DEAREST MOTHER:

This is a little present for you and a goodby.  Your packing-case is
what I need and what I shall want, and I love it because you made it.
But as YOU say, we understand and do not have to write love letters;
you have given me all that is worth while in me, and I love you so that
I look forward already over miles and miles and days and months, and
just see us sitting together at Marion and telling each other how good
it is to be together again and holding each other's hands.  I don't
believe you really know how HAPPY I am in loving you, dear, and in
having you say nice things about me.  God bless you, dearest, and may I
never do anything to make you feel less proud of your wicked son.

DICK.


Off Gibraltar,
  February 12, 1893.

DEAR MOTHER:

Today is Sunday.  We arrive at Gibraltar at five tomorrow morning and
the boat lies there until nine o'clock.  Unless war and pestilence have
broken out in other places, I shall go over to Tangiers in a day or
two, and from there continue on my journey as mapped out when I left.
I have had a most delightful trip and the most enjoyable I have ever
taken by sea.  These small boats are as different from the big
twin-screw steamers as a flat from a Broadway hotel.

Everyone gets to know everything about everyone else, and it has been
more like a yacht than a passenger steamer.  When I first came on board
I thought I would not find in any new old country I was about to visit
anything more foreign than the people, and I was right, but they are
most amusing and I have learned a great deal.  They are different from
any people I know, and are the Americans we were talking about.  The
ones of whom I used to read in The Atlantic and Blackwood's, as
traveling always and sinking out of sight whenever they reached home.
They, with the exception of a Boston couple, know none of my friends or
my haunts, and I have learned a great deal in meeting them.  It has
been most BROADENING and the change has been SUCH a rest.  I had no
idea of how tired I was of talking about the theater of Arts and
Letters and Miss Whitney's debut and my Soul.  These people are simple
and unimaginative and bourgeois to a degree and as kind-hearted and
apparent as animal alphabets.  I do not think I have had such a
complete change or rest in years, and I am sure I have not laughed so
much for as long.  Of course, the idea of a six months' holiday is
enough to make anyone laugh at anything, but I find that besides that I
was a good deal harassed and run down, and I am glad to cut off from
everything and start fresh.  I feel miserably selfish about it all the
time.

These Germans run everything as though you were the owner of the line.
The discipline is like that of the German Army or of a man-of-war,
everything moves by the stroke of a bell, and they have had dances and
speeches and concerts and religious services and lectures every other
minute.  Into all of these I have gone with much enthusiasm.  We have
at the captain's table Dr. Field, the editor of The Evangelist, John
Russell, a Boston Democrat, who was in Congress and who has been in
public life for over forty years.  A Tammany sachem, who looks like and
worships Tweed, and who says what I never heard an American off the
stage say:  "That's me.  That's what I do," he says.  "When I have
insomnia, I don't believe in your sleeping draughts.  I get up and go
round to Jake Stewart's on Fourteenth Street and eat a fry or a
porterhouse steak and then I sleep good---that's me."  There is also a
lively lady from Albany next to me and her husband, who tells anecdotes
of the war just as though it had happened yesterday.  Indeed, they are
all so much older than I that all their talk is about things I never
understood the truth about, and it is most interesting.  I really do
not know when I have enjoyed my meal time so much.  The food is very
good, although queer and German, and we generally take two hours to
each sitting.  Dr. Field is my especial prey and he makes me laugh
until I cry.  He is just like James Lewis in "A Night Off," and is
always rubbing his hands and smacking his lips over his own daring
exploits.  I twist everything he says into meaning something dreadful,
and he is instantly explaining he did not really see a bullfight, but
that he walked around the outside of the building.  I have promised to
show him life with a capital L, and he is afraid as death of me.  But
he got back at me grandly last night when he presented a testimonial to
the captain, and referred to the captain's wife and boy whom he is
going to see after a two years' absence, at which the captain wept and
everybody else wept.  And Field, seeing he had made a point, waved his
arms and cried, "I have never known a man who amounted to anything who
had not a good wife to care for--except YOU--" he shouted, pointing at
me, "and no woman will ever save YOU."  At which the passengers, who
fully appreciated how I had been worrying him, applauded loudly, and
the Doctor in his delight at having scored on me forgot to give the
captain his testimonial.

There are two nice girls on board from Chicago and a queer Southern
girl who paints pictures and sings and writes poetry, and who is
traveling with an odd married woman who is an invalid and who like
everyone else on board has apparently spent all her life away from
home.  I have spent my odd time in writing the story I told Dad the
night before I sailed and I think it in some ways the best, quite the
best, I have written.  I read it to the queer girl and her queer
chaperon and they weep whenever they speak of it, which they do every
half hour.  All the passengers apparently laid in a stock of
"Gallegher" and "The West" before starting, and young women in yachting
caps are constantly holding me up for autographs and favorite
quotations.  Yesterday we passed the Azores near enough to see the
windows in the houses, and we have seen other islands at different
times, which is quite refreshing.  Tomorrow I shall post this and the
trip will be over.  It has been a most happy start.  I am not going to
write letters often, but am going head over ears into this new life and
let the old one wait awhile.  You cannot handle Africa and keep up your
fences in New York at the same time.  I am now going out to talk to the
Boston couple, or to propose a lion hunt to Dr. Field.

Since I wrote that last I have seen Portugal.  It made me seem suddenly
very far away from New York. Portugal is a high hill with a white watch
tower on it flying signal flags.  It is apparently inhabited by one man
who lives in a long row of yellow houses with red roofs, and populated
by sheep who do grand acts of balancing on the side of the hill.  There
is also a Navy of a brown boat with a leg-of-mutton sail and a crew of
three men in the boat--not to speak of the dog.  It is a great thing to
have a traveled son.  None of you ever saw Portugal, yah!

I am now in Gibraltar.  It is a large place and there does not seem to
be room in this letter, in which to express my feelings about Moors in
bare legs and six thousand Red-coats and to hear Englishmen speak
again.  When I woke up Gibraltar was a black silhouette against the
sky, but toward the south there was a low line of mountains with a red
sky behind them, dim and mysterious and old, and that was Africa.  Then
Spain turned up all amethyst and green, and the Mediterranean as blue
as they tell you it is.  They wouldn't let me take my gun into
Gibraltar.  They know my reputation for war.

DICK.


GIBRALTAR.

February 14th, 1893.

DEAR MOTHER:

The luck of the British Army which I am modestly fond of comparing with
my own took a vacation yesterday as soon as I had set foot on land.  In
the first place Egypt had settled down to her sluggish Nile like calm
and cholera had quarantined the ship I wanted to take to Algiers,
shutting off Algiers and what was more important Tunis.  The Governor
was ill shutting off things I wanted and his adjutant was boorish and
proud and haughty.  Then I determined to go to Spain but found I had
arrived just one day too late for the last of the three days of the
Mardi Gras and too early for bull fights.  Had I taken Saavedra's
letters I should have gone to Madrid and met the Queen and other proud
folks.  So on the whole I was blue.  But I have now determined to take
a boat for Tangier at once where I have letters to the Duke de Tnas who
is the Master of the Hounds there and a great sport and they say it is
very amusing and exciting.  In a fortnight I shall go to Malta.  I
called on Harry Cust's brother and told him who I was and he took me in
and put me at the head of the table of young subalterns in grand
uniforms and we had marmalade and cold beef and beer and I was happy to
the verge of tears to hear English as she is spoke.  Then we went to a
picnic and took tea in a smuggler's cave and all the foxterriers ran
over the table cloth and the Captain spilt hot water over his white
flannels and jumped around on one leg.  After which we played a
handkerchief game sitting in a row and pelting the girls with a knotted
handkerchief and then fighting for it-- During one of these scrimmages
Mulvaney, two others and Learoyd came by and with eyes front and hands
at their caps marched on with stolid countenances, but their officers
were embarrassed.  It is hard to return a salute with your face in the
sand and a stout American sitting on your neck and pulling your first
lieutenant's leg.  I am now deeply engaged for dinners and dances and
teas and rides and am feeling very cheerful again.  I am also very well
thank you and have no illnesses of any sort.  You told me to be sure
and put that in-- As you see, I have cut out half of my trip to avoid
the cholera, so you need not worry about THAT.  To-day I am going over
the ramparts as much as they will allow and to-morrow I go to Tangier
where I expect to have some boar hunting.  I would suggest your getting
The Evangelist in a week or two as Dr. Field's letters cover all I have
seen.  I do not tell you anything about the place because you will read
that in the paper to the H. W. but I can assure you the girls are very
pretty and being garrison girls are not as shy as those at home in
England.  I am the first American they ever met they assure me every
hour and we get on very well notwithstanding.

You can imagine what it is like when Spaniards, Moors and English
Soldiers are all crowded into one long street with donkeys and geese
and priests and smugglers and men in polo clothes and soldiers in
football suits and sailors from the man-of-war.  Of course, the Rock is
the best story of it all.  It is a fair green smiling hill not a
fortress at all.  No more a fortress to look at than Fairmont Park
water works, but the joke of it is that under every bush there is a gun
and every gun is painted green and covered with hanging curtains of
moss and every promenade is undermined and the bleakest face of the
rock is tunnelled with rooms and halls.  Every night we are locked in
and the soldiers carry the big iron keys clanking through the streets.
It is going to make interesting reading.

DICK.


GIBRALTAR.

February 23rd, 1893.

DEAR MOTHER:

Aeneas who "ran the round of so many chances" in this neighborhood was
a stationary stay at home to what I have to do.  If I ever get away
from the Rock I shall be a traveller of the greatest possible
experience.

I came here intending to stay a week and to write my letter on Gib. and
on Tangier quietly and peacefully like a gentleman and then to go on to
Malta.  I love this place and there is something to do and see every
minute of the time but what happened was this:  All the boats that ever
left here stopped running, broke shafts, or went into quarantine or
just sailed by, and unless I want to spend two weeks on the sea in
order to have one at Malta, which is only a military station like this,
I must go off to-morrow with my articles unwritten, my photos
undeveloped and my dinner calls unpaid.  I am now waiting to hear if I
can get to Algiers by changing twice from one steamer to another along
the coast of Spain.  It will be a great nuisance but I shall be able to
see Algiers and Tunis and Malta in the three weeks which would have
otherwise been given to Malta alone.  And Tunis I am particularly keen
to see.  While waiting for a telegram from Spain about the boats, I
shall tell you what I have been doing.  Everybody was glad to see me
after my return from Tangier.  I dined with the Governor on Monday, in
a fine large room lined with portraits of all the old commanders and
their coats-of-arms like a little forest of flags and the Governor's
daughter danced a Spanish dance for us after it was over.  Miss Buckle,
Cust's fiancee, dances almost as well as Carmencita, all the girls here
learn it as other girls do the piano.  On Tuesday Cust and Miss B. and
another girl and I went over into Spain to see the meet and we had a
short run after a fox who went to earth, much to my relief, in about
three minutes and before I had been thrown off.  There are no fences
but the ground is one mass of rocks and cactus and ravines down which
these English go with an ease that makes me tremble  with admiration.
We had not come out to follow, so we, being quite soaked through and
very hungry, went to an inn and it was such an inn as Don Quixote used
to stop at, with the dining-room over the stable and a lot of drunken
muleteers in the court and beautiful young women to wait on us.  It is
a beautiful country Spain, with every sort of green you ever dreamed
of.  We had omelettes and native wine and black bread and got warm
again and then trotted home in the rain and got wet again, so we
stopped at the guard house on the outside of the rock and took tea with
the officer in charge and we all got down on our knees around his fire
and he hobbled around dropping his eyeglasses in his hot water and very
much honored and exceedingly embarrassed.  I amused myself by putting
on all the uniforms he did not happen to have on and the young ladies
drank tea and thawed.  This is the most various place I ever came
across.  You have mountains and seashore and allamandas like Monte
Carlo in their tropical beauty and soldiers day and night marching and
drilling and banging brass bands and tennis and guns firing so as to
rattle all the windows, and picnics and teas.  I am engaged way ahead
now but I must get off tomorrow.  On Washington's birthday I gave a
luncheon because it struck me as the most inappropriate place in which
one could celebrate the good man's memory and the Governor would not
think of coming at first, but I told him I was not a British subject
and that if I could go to his dinner he could come to my lunch, so
that, or the fact that the beautiful Miss Buckle was coming decided him
to waive etiquette and he came with his A. D. C. and his daughter and
officers and girls came and I had American flags and English flags and
a portrait of Washington and of the Queen and I ransacked the markets
for violets and banked them all up in the middle.  It was fine.  I
turned the hotel upside down and all the servants wore their best
livery and everybody stood up in a row and saluted His Excellency and I
made a speech and so did his Excellency and the chef did himself proud.
I got it up in one morning.  Helen Benedict could not have done it
better.

I had a funny adventure the morning I left Tangier-- There was a good
deal of talk about Field (confound him) and my getting into the prison
and The Herald and Times correspondents were rather blue about it and
some of the English residents said that I had not been shown the whole
of the prison, that the worst had been kept from us.  Field who only
got into the prison because I had worked at it two days, said there was
an additional ward I had not seen.  I went back into this while he and
the guard were getting the door open to go out and saw nothing, but to
make sure that the prison was as I believed an absolute square, I went
back on the morning of my departure and climbed a wall and crawled over
a house top and photographed the top of the prison.  Then a horrible
doubt came to me that this house upon which I was standing and which
adjoined the prison might be the addition of which the English
residents hinted.  There was an old woman in the garden below jumping
up and down and to whom I had been shying money to keep her quiet.  I
sent the guide around to ask her what was the nature of the building
upon which I had trespassed and which seemed to worry her so much-- He
came back to tell me that I was on the top of a harem and the old woman
thought I was getting up a flirtation with the gentleman's wives.  So I
dropped back again.

It will be a couple of months at least before my first story comes out
in The Weekly.  I cannot judge of them but I think they are up to the
average of the Western stories, the material is much richer I know, but
I am so much beset by the new sights that I have not the patience or
the leisure I had in the West-- Then there were days in which writing
was a relief, now there is so much to see that it seems almost a shame
to waste it.

By the grace of Providence I cannot leave here until the 28th, much to
my joy and I have found out that I can do better by going direct to
Malta and then to Tunis, leaving Algiers which I did not want to see
out of it-Hurrah.  I shall now return to the calm continuation of my
story and to writing notes which Chas will enjoy.

DICK.


GIBRALTAR--February 1893.

DEAR MOTHER:

Morocco as it is is a very fine place spoiled by civilization.  Not
nice civilization but the dregs of it, the broken down noblemen of
Spain and cashiered captains of England and the R---- L----'s of
America.  They hunt and play cricket and gamble and do nothing to
maintain what is best in the place or to help what is worst.  I love
the Moors and the way they hate the Christian and the scorn and pride
they show.  They seem to carry all the mystery and dignity of Africa
and of foreign conquests about them, and they are wonderfully well made
and fine looking and self-respecting.  The color is very beautiful, but
the foreign element spoils it at every turn.  One should really go
inland but I shall not because I mean to do that when I reach Cairo.
Everybody goes inland from here and Bonsal has covered it already.  He
is a great man here among all classes.

I have bought two long guns and three pistols three feet long and a
Moorish costume for afternoon teas.  I shall look fine.  My guide's
idea of pleasing me is to kick everybody out of the way which always
brings down curses on me so I have to go back and give them money and
am so gradually becoming popular and much sought after by blind
beggars.  You can get three pounds of copper for a franc and it lasts
all day throwing it right and left all the time.  I made a great tear
in Bonsal's record today by refusing to pay a snake charmer all he
wanted and then when he protested I took one of the snakes out of his
hands and swung it around my head to the delight of the people.  I
wanted to show him he was a fakir to want me to pay for what I would do
myself.  It was a large snake about four feet long.  Then my horse and
another horse got fighting in the principal street in the city standing
up on their hind legs and boxing like men and biting and squealing.  It
was awful and I got mine out of the way and was trod on and had my arm
nearly pulled off and the crowd applauded and asked my guide whether I
was American or English.  They do not like the English.  So with the
lower classes I may say that I am having a social success.

DICK.


Off Malta--March 1, 1893.

DEAR MOTHER:

I have been having a delightful voyage with moonlight all night and
sunlight all day.  Africa kept in sight most of the time and before
that we saw beautiful mountains in Spain covered with snow and red in
the sunset.  There were a lot of nice English people going out to India
to meet their husbands and we have "tiffin" and "choota" and "curry,"
so it really seemed oriental.  The third night out we saw Algiers
sparkling like Coney Island.  I play games with myself and pretend I am
at my rooms reading a story which is very hard to pretend as I never
read in my rooms and then I look up and exclaim "Hello, I'm not in New
York, that's Algiers."  The thing that has impressed me most is how
absolutely small the world is and how childishly easy it is to go
around it.  You and Nora MUST take this trip; as for me I think Willie
Chanler is the most sensible individual I have yet met.

All the fascination of King Solomon's Mines seems to be behind those
great mountains and this I may add is a bit of advance work for mother,
an entering wedge to my disappearing from sight for years and years in
the Congo.  Which, seriously, I will not do; only it is disappointing
to find the earth so small and so easily encompassed that you want to
go on where it is older, and new.  The worst of it is that it is hard
leaving all the nice people you meet and then must say good-bye to.
The young ladies and Capt. Buckle and Cust came down to see me off and
Buckle brought me a photo four feet long of Gib, an official one which
I had to smuggle out with a great show of secrecy and now I shall be
sorry to leave these people.  Just as I wrote that one of the officers
going out to join his regiment came to the door and blushing said the
passengers were getting up a round robin asking me to stop on and go to
Cairo.

Since writing the above lots of things have happened.  I bid farewell
to everyone at Malta and yet in four hours I was back again bag and
baggage and am now on my way to Cairo.  Tunis and the Bey are
impossible.  As soon as I landed at Malta I found that though I could
go to Tunis I could not go away without being quarantined for ten days
and if I remained in Malta I must stay a week.  On balancing a week of
Egypt against a week of Malta I could not do it so I put back to this
steamer again and here I am. Tomorrow we reach Brindisi and we have
already passed Sicily and had a glimpse of the toe of Italy and it is
the coldest sunny Italy that I ever imagined.  I am bitterly
disappointed about Tunis.  I have no letters to big people in Cairo
only subalterns but I shall probably get along.  I always manage
somehow with my "artful little Ikey ways."  It was most gratifying to
mark my return to this boat.  One young woman danced a Kangaroo dance
and the Captain wept and all the stewards stood in a line and grinned.
I sing Chevalier's songs and they all sit in the dining room below and
forget to lay out the plates and last night some of the Royal Berkshire
with whom I dined at Malta came on board and after hearing the Old Kent
Road were on the point of Mutiny and refused to return to barracks.
Great is the Power of Chevalier and great is his power for taking you
back to London with three opening bars.  Malta was the queerest place I
ever got into.  It was like a city, country and island made of cheese,
mouldy cheese, and fresh limburger cheese with holes in it.  You sailed
right up to the front door as it were and people were hanging out of
the windows smoking pipes and looking down on the deck as complacently
as though having an ocean steamer in the yard was as much a matter of
course as a perambulator.  There were also women with black hoods which
they wear as a penance because long ago the ladies of Malta got
themselves talked about.  I was on shore about five hours and saw some
interesting things and with that and Brindisi and the voyage I can make
a third letter but Tunis is writ on my heart like Calais.

Today Cleveland is inaugurated and I took all the passengers down at
the proper time and explained to them that at that moment a great man
was being made president and gave them each an American cocktail to
remember it by and in which to toast him I am getting to be a great
speech maker and if there are any more anniversaries in America I shall
be a second Depew.

It is late but it is still the season here and it will be gay, but what
I want to do now is to go off on a little trip inland although Cairo is
the worst of all for it is surrounded by deserts and nothing to shoot
but antelope and foxes and those I SCORN.  I want Zulus and lions.  I
shall be greatly disappointed if I do not have something to do outside
of Cairo for I have had no adventures at all.  It is just as civilized
as Camden only more exciting and beautiful although Camden is exciting
when you have to get there and back in time for the last edition.  From
what I have already seen I am ready to spend a month in Cairo and then
confess to knowing nothing of it.  But we shall see.  There may be a W
A R or a lion hunt or something yet if there is not I shall come back
here again.  I must fire that Winchester off at least once just for all
the trouble it has given me at custom houses.  Something exciting must
happen or I shall lose faith in the luck of the British army which
marches shoulder to shoulder with mine.  If I don't have any adventures
I shall write essays on art after this like Mrs. Van.  Love and lots of
it.

DICK.


CAIRO, March 11, 1893.

DEAR MOTHER:

In a famous book this line occurs, "He determined to go to that hotel
in Cairo where they were to have spent their honeymoon," or words like
that.  He is now at that hotel and you can buy the famous book across
the street.  It is called "Gallegher."  So--in this way everything
comes to him who waits and he comes to it.  "Gallegher" is not the only
thing you buy in Egypt.  You ride to the Pyramids on a brake with a man
in a white felt hat blowing a horn, and the bugler of the Army of
Occupation is as much in evidence as the priest who calls them to
prayer from the minaret.  I left the people I liked on the Sultey last
Thursday in the Suez Canal and came on here in a special train.  It is
very cold here, and it is not a place where the cold is in keeping with
the surroundings.  You see people in white helmets and astrakan
overcoats.  It is an immense city and intensely interesting, especially
the bazaars, but you feel so ignorant about it all that it rather
angers you.  I wish I was not such a very bad hand at languages.  That
is ONE THING I cannot do, that and ride.  I need it very much,
traveling so much, and I shall study very hard while I am in Paris.
Our consul-general here is a very young man, and he showed me a Kansas
paper when I called on him, which said that I was in the East and would
probably call on "Ed" L.  He is very civil to me and gives me his
carriages and outriders with gold clothes and swords whenever I will
take them.

It is so beastly cold here that it spoils a lot of things, and there
are a lot of Americans who say, "I had no idea you were so young a
man," and that, after being five years old for a month and playing
children's games with English people who didn't know or care anything
about you except that you made them laugh, is rather trying.  I am
disappointed so far in the trip because it has developed nothing new
beyond the fact that going around the world is of no more importance
than going to breakfast, and I am selfish in my sightseeing and want to
see things others do not.  And if you even do see more than those who
are not so fortunate and who have to remain at home, still you are so
ignorant in comparison with those who have lived here for years and to
whom the whole of Africa is a speculation in land or railroads, it
makes you feel like such a faker and as if it were better to turn
correspondent for the N. Y. Herald, Paris edition, and send back the
names of those who are staying at the hotels.  That is really all you
can speak with authority about.  When you have Gordon and Stanley
dishes on the bill-of-fare, you feel ashamed to say you've been in
Egypt.  Anyway, I am a faker and I don't care, and I proved it today by
being photographed on a camel in front of the Pyramids, and if that
wasn't impertinence I do not know its name.  I accordingly went and
bought a lot of gold dresses for Nora as a penance.

As a matter of fact, unless I get into the interior for a month and see
something new, I shall consider the trip a failure, except as a most
amusing holiday for one, and that was not exactly what I wanted or all
I wanted.  After this I shall go to big cities only and stay there.
Everybody travels and everybody sees as much as you do and says nothing
of it, certainly does not presume to write a book about it.  Anyway, it
has been great fun, so I shall put it down to that and do some serious
work to make up for it.  I'd rather have written a good story about the
Inauguration than about Cairo.

I am well, as usual, and having a fine loaf, only I don't think much of
what I have written--that's all.

DICK.


CAIRO, March 19th, 1893.

DEAR MOTHER:

I went up the Pyramids yesterday and I am very sore today.  It sounds
easy because so many people do it, but they do it because they don't
know.  I have been putting it off, and putting it off, until I felt
ashamed to such a degree that I had to go.  Little had never been
either, so we went out together and met Stanford White and the Emmetts
there, and we all went up.  I would rather go into Central Africa than
do it again.  I am getting fat and that's about it--and I had to half
pull a much fatter man than myself who pretended to help me.  I finally
told them I'd go alone unless the fat man went away, so the other two
drove him off.  Going down is worse.  It's like looking over a
precipice all the time.  I was so glad when I got down that I sang with
glee.  I hate work like that, and to make it worse I took everybody's
picture on top of the Pyramid, and forgot to have one of them take me,
so there is no way to prove I ever went up.  Little and I hired two
donkeys and called them "Gallegher" and "Van Bibber" and raced them.
My donkey was so little that they couldn't see him--only his ears.
Gallegher won.  The donkey-boys called it Von Bebey, so I don't think
it will help the sale of the book.

Today we went to call on the Khedive.  It was very informal and too
democratic to suit my tastes.  We went through a line of his bodyguard
in the hall, and the master of ceremonies took us up several low but
wide stairways to a hall.  In the hall was a little fat young man in a
frock coat and a fez, and he shook hands with us, and walked into
another room and we all sat down on chairs covered with white muslin.
I talked and Little talked about me and the Khedive pretended to be
very much honored, and said the American who had come over after our
rebellion had done more for the officers in his army than had anyone
else, meaning the English.  He did not say that because we were
Americans, but because he hates the English.  He struck me as being
stubborn, which is one side of stupidness and yet not stupid, and I
occasionally woke him to bursts of enthusiasm over the Soudanese.  His
bursts were chiefly "Ali."  Little seemed to amuse him very much, and
Little treated him exactly like a little boy who needed to be cheered
up.  I think in one way it was the most curious contrast I ever saw.
"Ed" Little of Abilene, Kansas, telling the ruler of Egypt not to
worry, that he had plenty of years in which to live and that he would
get ahead of them all yet.  Those were not his words, but that was the
tone, he was perfectly friendly and sincere about it.

This place appeals to me as about the best place with which to get
mixed up with that I know, and I've gone over a great many maps since I
left home and know just how small the world is.  So, I sent the Khedive
my books after having asked his permission, and received the most
abject thanks.  And as Cromer called on me, I am going to drop around
on him with a few of them.  Some day there will be fine things going on
here, and there is only one God, and Lord Cromer is his Prophet in this
country.  They think that Mohammed is but they are wrong.  He is a very
big man.  The day he sent his ultimatum to the Khedive telling him to
dismiss Facta Pasha and put back Riaz Pasha, he went out in full view
of the Gezerik drive and played lawn tennis.  Any man who can cable for
three thousand more troops to Malta and stop a transport full of two
thousand more at Aden with one hand, and bang tennis balls about with
the other, is going in the long run to get ahead of a stout little boy
in a red fez.  It is getting awfully hot here, almost hot enough for
me, and I can lay aside my overcoat by ten o'clock in the morning.
Everyone else has been in flannels and pith helmets, but as they had to
wear overcoats at night I could not see the advantage of the costume.

DICK.


I open this to say that ALL of your letters have just come, so I have
intoxicated myself with them for the last hour and can go over them
again tomorrow.  I cannot tell you, dearest, what a delight your
letters are and how I enjoy the clippings.  I think of you all the time
and how you would love this Bible land and seeing the places where
Pharaoh's daughter found Moses, and hearing people talk of St. Paul and
the plagues of Egypt and Joseph and Mary just as though they had lived
yesterday.  I have seen two St. Johns already, with long hair and
melancholy wild eyes and bare breasts and legs, with sheepskin
covering, eating figs and preaching their gospel.  Yesterday two men
came running into town and told one of the priests that they had seen
the new moon in a certain well, and the priest proclaimed a month of
fasting, and the men who pulled us up the Pyramid had to rest because
they had not eaten or drunk all day.  At six a sheik called from the
village and all the donkey--boys and guides around the Sphinx ran to
get water and coffee and food.  Think of that--of two men running
through the street to say that they had seen the new moon in a well,
when every shop sells Waterbury watches and the people who passed them
were driving dogcarts with English coachmen in top-boots behind.  Is
there any other place as incongruous as this, as old and as new?

DICK.


ATHENS, March 30, 1893.

DEAR MOTHER:

I am now in Athens, how I got here is immaterial.  Suffice it to say
that never in all my life was I so ill as I was in the two days
crossing from Alexandria to Piraeus, which I did with two other men in
the same cabin more ill than I and praying and swearing and groaning
all the time.  "It was awful."


     "I have crossed in many ships upon the seas
          And some of them were good and some were not;
          In German, P & O's and Genoese,
          But the Khedive's was the worst one of the lot.
          We never got a moment's peace in her
          For everybody'd howl or pray or bellow;
          She threw us on our heads or on our knees,
          And turned us all an unbecoming yellow."


Athens is a small town but fine.  It is chiefly yellow houses with red
roofs, and mountains around it, which remind you of pictures you have
seen when a youth.  Also olive trees and straight black pines and the
Acropolis.  There is not much of it left as far as I can see from the
city, but what there is is enough to make you wish you had brushed up
your Greek history.  I have now reached the place where Pan has a cave,
where the man voted against Aristides because he was humanly tired of
hearing him called the Just and where the Minotaur ate young women.

What was in the Isle of Crete but the rock from which the father of
Theseus threw himself--is still here!  Also the hill upon which Paul
stood and told the Athenians they were too superstitious.  You can
imagine my feelings at finding all of these things are true.  After
this I am going to the North Pole to find Santa Claus and so renew my
youth.

I regret to say that it is raining very hard and Athens is not set for
a rainstorm.  It is also cold but as I have not been warm since I
crossed the North River with Chas. amid cakes of ice that is of no
consequence.  When I come here again I come in the summer.  The good
old rule that it is cold in winter and warm in summer is a good enough
rule to follow.  You have only to travel to find out how universally
cold winter is.  last night I was in Cairo, I got in a carriage and
drove out alone to the Pyramids.  It was beautiful moonlight.  I got a
donkey and rode up around them and then walked over to the Sphinx.  I
had never understood or seen it before.  It was the creepiest and most
impressive thing I ever had happen to me, I do believe.  There was no
one except the two donkey-boys and myself and the Sphinx.  All about
was the desert and above it the purple sky and the white stars and the
great negro's head in front of you with its paws stretched out, and the
moonlight turning it into shadows and white lines.  I think I stood
there so long that I got sort of dizzy.  It was just as if I had been
the first man to stumble across it, and I felt that I was way back
thousands of years and that the ghosts of Caesar and Napoleon and
Cleopatra and the rest were in the air.  That was worth the entire trip
to me.  This place promises to be most exciting, the New York artists
are all here, they are the most jauntily dull people I ever met.  Do
you know what I mean?  They are very nice but so stupid.  I don't let
them bother me.  Who was the chap who wrote about the bottle of
Malvoisie? because I got a bottle of it for BREAKFAST and it is NO
GOOD.  It is like sweet port.  But on account of the poem and its being
vin du pays I got it.

Dear Mother, I wish you were here now and enjoying all these beautiful
things.  I got you a present in Cairo that will amuse you.  Had I
stayed on in Cairo I should have had much and many marks of distinction
from the English.  Lady Gower-Browne, who found out from them that I
had called and that they had done nothing except to be rude, raised a
great hue and cry and everything changed.  What she said of me I don't
know but it made a most amusing difference.  General Walker galloped a
half mile across the desert to give me his own copy of the directions
for the sham battle, and I was to have met Cromer at dinner
tete-a-tete, and General Kitchener sent apologies by two other generals
and all the subalterns called on me in a body.  That was the day before
I left.  I don't know what Lady Gower-Browne said, but it made a change
which I am sorry I could not avail myself of as I want politics as well
as memories.

The next time I come I shall go to even fewer places and see more
people.

If the Harpers don't look out our interests will clash.  I look at it
like this.  I can always see the old historical things and take my
children up the Nile, but I want now to make friends with the Mammon of
unrighteousness and the men of the hour.  I may want to occupy an hour
or two myself some day and they can help me.  If America starts in
annexing islands she will need people to tell her how it is generally
done and it is generally done, I find, by the English.  I may give up
literature and start annexing things like Alexander and Caesar and
Napoleon.  They say there will be another crisis in Cairo in a month or
so.  If that be true I am all right and solid with both parties.  But
it has got to be worth while of course or I won't go back.  There is a
king living in a fine palace across the square from my window, one of
his officers is now changing the guard in the rain.  I hope to call on
the king because I like his guard.  They wear petticoats and toes
turned up in front.  Don't you mind what I say about liking politics
and don't think I am not enjoying the show things.  I have a capacity
for both that is so far unsatisfied, and I am now going out in the rain
to try and find the post-office.  Lots of love.

                                             DICK.

I am well and have been well (except sea sick) since February

P. S.--A funeral is just passing the window with the corpse exposed to
view as is the quaint custom here, to add to its horror they rouge the
face of the corpse and everybody kisses it.  In the Greek church they
burn candles for people and the number of candles I have burnt for you
would light St. Paul's, and you ought to be good with so much war being
expended all over Athens for you.  You buy candles instead of tipping
the verger or putting it in the poor box, or because you are
superstitious and think it will do some good, as I do.


Orient Express.  Somewhere in Bulgaria on the way to London.

April 14th, 1893.

DEAR MOTHER:

Tuesday I wrote you a letter in the club at Constantinople telling you
how glad I would be to get out of that City on April 17th on the Orient
Express which only leaves twice a week on Thursdays and Mondays.  So
any one who travels by the Orient is looked upon first as a millionaire
and second, if he does not break the journey at Vienna, as a greater
traveller than Col. Burnaby on his way to Khiva.  Imagine a Kansas City
man breaking the journey to New York.  After I wrote you that letter I
went in the next room and read of the Nile Expedition in search of
Gordon--this went through three volumes of The Graphic and took some
time, so that when I had reached the picture which announced the death
of Gordon it was half past five and I had nothing more to do for four
days-- It was raining and cold and muddy and so I just made up my mind
I would get up and get out and I jumped about for one hour like a
kangaroo and by seven I was on the Orient with two Cook men to help me
and had shaken my fist at the last minaret light of that awful city.
So, now it is all over and it is done-- I have learned a great deal in
an imperfect way of the juxtaposition of certain countries and of the
ease with which one can travel without speaking any known languages and
of the absolute necessity for speaking one, French.  I am still
disappointed about the articles but selfishly I have made a lot out of
the trip.  You have no idea how hard it is not to tell about strange
things and yet you know people do not care half as much for them as
things they know all about-- No matter, it is done and with the
exception of the last week it was F I N E.


"I'm going back to London, to 'tea' and long frock coats
     I'm done with Cook and seeing sights
     I'm done with table d'hotes
     So clear the track you signal man
     From Sofia to Pless, I'm going straight for London
     On the Orient Express.

I'm going straight for London O'er Bulgaria's heavy sands To Rotten Row
and muffins, soles, Chevalier and Brass Bands Ho' get away you bullock
man You've heard the whistle blowed a locomotive coming down the Grand
Trunk Road."


This is a great country and I want to ask all the natives if they know
"Stenie" Bonsal.  They are all his friends and so are the "Balkans,"
and all the little Balkans.  Nobody wears European clothes here.  They
are all as foreign and native and picturesque as they can be, the women
with big silver plates over their stomachs and the men in sheepskin and
tights and the soldiers are grand.  We have been passing all day
between snow covered mountains and between herds of cattle and red
roofed, mud villages and long lakes of ice and snow-- It is a beautiful
day and I am very happy. (Second day out) 15th---We are now in Hungary
and just outside of Buda Pesth "the wickedest city in the world," still
in spite of that fact I am going on.  I am very glad I came this way--
The peasants and soldiers are most amusing and like German
picture-papers with black letter type-- I shall stop a day in Paris now
that I have four extra days.

DICK.


In sight of Paris--April 16, 1893.

DEAREST MOTHER:

has been the most beautiful day since February 4th.  It is the first
day in which I have been warm.  All through I have had a varnish of
warmth every now and again but no real actual internal warmth--I am now
in sight of Paris and it is the 16th of April, in the eleven weeks
which have elapsed since the 4th of February I have been in Spain,
France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey,
Greece, Egypt and Morocco.  I have sat on the Rock of Gibraltar, sailed
on the Nile and the Suez Canal and crossed through the Dardanelles,
over the Balkans, the steppes of Hungary and the Danube and Rhine.  I
have seen the sphinx by moonlight, the Parthenon and the Eiffel Tower
and in two days more I shall have seen St. Paul's.  What do you think I
should like to see best now?  YOU.  I have been worrying of late as to
whether or not I should not come home now and leave Paris for another
time because it seems so rough on you to leave you without either of
your younger sons for so long.  But I have thought it over a great deal
and I think it better that I should do Paris now and leave myself clear
for the rest of the year.  I promise you one thing however that I shall
not undertake to stay away so long again; it is too long and one grows
out of things.  But nothing I feel, will be so easy or so amusing as
Paris and I intend to get through with it soon and trot home to you by
the middle of August AT THE VERY LATEST.  So, please write me a
deceitful letter and say you do not miss me at all and that my being so
near as Paris makes a great difference and that I am better out of the
way and if Chas goes to London I shall be near him in case he forgets
to put on his overshoes or involves us in a war with G. B.  Now, mother
dear, do write me a cheerful letter and say that you do not mind
waiting until the middle of August for me and when I come back this
time I shall make a long stay with you at Marion and t

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