erate choosing, often after
many hours of hankering and renunciation, he smoked his cigar. He smoked
it with delight, with a sense of being rewarded, and he used all the
smoke there was in it.

He dearly loved the best food, the best champagne, and the best Scotch
whiskey. But these things were friends to him, and not enemies. He had
toward food and drink the Continental attitude; namely, that quality is
far more important than quantity; and he got his exhilaration from the
fact that he was drinking champagne and not from the champagne. Perhaps
I shall do well to say that on questions of right and wrong he had a
will of iron. All his life he moved resolutely in whichever direction
his conscience pointed; and, although that ever present and never
obtrusive conscience of his made mistakes of judgment now and then, as
must all consciences, I think it can never once have tricked him into
any action that was impure or unclean. Some critics maintain that the
heroes and heroines of his books are impossibly pure and innocent young
people. R. H. D. never called upon his characters for any trait of
virtue, or renunciation, or self-mastery of which his own life could not
furnish examples.

Fortunately, he did not have for his friends the same conscience that he
had for himself. His great gift of eyesight and observation failed him
in his judgments upon his friends. If only you loved him, you could get
your biggest failures of conduct somewhat more than forgiven, without
any trouble at all. And of your mole-hill virtues he made splendid
mountains. He only interfered with you when he was afraid that you were
going to hurt some one else whom he also loved. Once I had a telegram
from him which urged me for heaven's sake not to forget that the next
day was my wife's birthday. Whether I had forgotten it or not is my
own private affair. And when I declared that I had read a story which I
liked very, very much and was going to write to the author to tell him
so, he always kept at me till the letter was written.

Have I said that he had no habits? Every day, when he was away from her,
he wrote a letter to his mother, and no swift scrawl at that, for, no
matter how crowded and eventful the day, he wrote her the best letter
that he could write. That was the only habit he had. He was a slave to
it.

Once I saw R. H. D. greet his old mother after an absence. They threw
their arms about each other and rocked to and fro for a long time. And