Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis
by
Various Authors of Some Repute
APPRECIATIONS
Gouverneur Morris
Booth Tarkington
Charles Dana Gibson
E. L. Burlingame
Augustus Thomas
Theodore Roosevelt
Irvin S. Cobb
John Fox, Jr
Finley Peter Dunne
Winston Churchill
Leonard Wood
John T. McCutcheon
R. H. D.
BY GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
"And they rise to their feet as He passes by, gentlemen unafraid."
He was almost too good to be true. In addition, the gods loved him,and so he had to die young. Some people think that a man of fifty-twois middle-aged. But if R. H. D. had lived to be a hundred, he wouldnever have grown old. It is not generally known that the name of hisother brother was Peter Pan.
Within the year we have played at pirates together, at the taking ofsperm whales; and we have ransacked the Westchester Hills for gunsitesagainst the Mexican invasion. And we have made lists of guns, andmedicines, and tinned things, in case we should ever happen to goelephant-shooting in Africa. But we weren't going to hurt theelephants. Once R. H. D. shot a hippopotamus and he was always ashamedand sorry. I think he never killed anything else. He wasn't that kindof a sportsman. Of hunting, as of many other things, he has said thelast word. Do you remember the Happy Hunting Ground in "The BarSinister"?—"where nobody hunts us, and there is nothing to hunt."
Experienced persons tell us that a manhunt is the most exciting of allsports. R. H. D. hunted men in Cuba. He hunted for wounded men whowere out in front of the trenches and still under fire, and found someof them and brought them in. The Rough Riders didn't make him anhonorary member of their regiment just because he was charming and afaithful friend, but largely because they were a lot of daredevils andhe was another.
To hear him talk you wouldn't have thought that he had ever done abrave thing in his life. He talked a great deal, and he talked evenbetter than he wrote (at his best he wrote like an angel), but I havedusted every corner of my memory and cannot recall any story of his inwhich he played a heroic or successful part. Always he was running attop speed, or hiding behind a tree, or lying face down in a foot ofwater (for hours!) so as not to be seen. Always he was getting theworst of it. But about the other fellows he told the whole truth withlightning flashes of wit and character building and admiration orcontempt. Until the invention of moving pictures the world had nothingin the least like his talk. His eye had photographed, his mind haddeveloped and prepared the slides, his words sent the light throughthem, and lo and behold, they were reproduced on the screen of your ownmind, exact in drawing and color. With