stant 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
c