it hadn't been a long absence at that. No ocean had been between them;
her heart had not been in her mouth with the thought that he was under
fire, or about to become a victim of jungle fever. He had only been away
upon a little expedition, a mere matter of digging for buried treasure.
We had found the treasure, part of it a chipmunk's skull and a broken
arrow-head, and R. H. D. had been absent from his mother for nearly two
hours and a half.

I set about this article with the knowledge that I must fail to give
more than a few hints of what he was like. There isn't much more space
at my command, and there were so many sides to him that to touch
upon them all would fill a volume. There were the patriotism and the
Americanism, as much a part of him as the marrow of his bones, and from
which sprang all those brilliant headlong letters to the newspapers;
those trenchant assaults upon evil-doers in public office, those
quixotic efforts to redress wrongs, and those simple and dexterous
exposures of this and that, from an absolutely unexpected point of view.
He was a quickener of the public conscience. That people are beginning
to think tolerantly of preparedness, that a nation which at one time
looked yellow as a dandelion is beginning to turn Red, White, and Blue
is owing in some measure to him.

R. H. D. thought that war was unspeakably terrible. He thought that
peace at the price which our country has been forced to pay for it was
infinitely worse. And he was one of those who have gradually taught this
country to see the matter in the same way.

I must come to a close now, and I have hardly scratched the surface
of my subject. And that is a failure which I feel keenly but which
was inevitable. As R. H. D. himself used to say of those deplorable
"personal interviews" which appear in the newspapers, and in which the
important person interviewed is made by the cub reporter to say things
which he never said, or thought, or dreamed of--"You can't expect a
fifteen-dollar-a-week brain to describe a thousand-dollar-a-week brain."

There is, however, one question which I should attempt to answer. No two
men are alike. In what one salient thing did R. H. D. differ from other
men--differ in his personal character and in the character of his work?
And that question I can answer offhand, without taking thought, and be
sure that I am right.

An analysis of his works, a study of that book which the Recording
Angel keeps will show o