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Title: Adventures and Letters

Author: Richard Harding Davis

Release Date: January 25, 2008 [EBook #405]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVENTURES AND LETTERS ***

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