logical one.

Uncle says to tell you that my conduct has his approval throughout.

DICK.

To which letter my father promptly replied:

PHILADELPHIA. February 25th, 1882.

DEAR OLD BOY:

I'm glad the affair ended so well. I don't want you to fight, but if
you have to fight a cuss like that do it with all your might, and don't
insist that either party shall too strictly observe the Markis O'
Queensbury rules. Hit first and hardest so that thine adversary shall
beware of you.

DAD.

At that time the secret societies played a very important part in the
college life at Lehigh, and while I do not believe that Richard shared
the theory of some of the students that they were a serious menace to
the social fabric, he was quite firm in his belief that it was
inadvisable to be a member of any fraternity. In a general way he did
not like the idea of secrecy even in its mildest form, and then, as
throughout his life, he refused to join any body that would in any way
limit his complete independence of word or action. In connection with
this phase of his college life I quote from an appreciation which M. A.
De W. Howe, one of Richard's best friends both at college and in
after-life, wrote for The Lehigh Burr at the time of my brother's death:

"To the credit of the perceptive faculty of undergraduates, it ought to
be said that the classmates and contemporaries of Richard Harding Davis
knew perfectly well, while he and they were young together, that in him
Lehigh had a son so marked in his individuality, so endowed with
talents and character that he stood quite apart from the other
collegians of his day. Prophets were as rare in the eighties as they
have always been, before and since, and nobody could have foreseen that
the name and work of Dick Davis would long before his untimely death,
indeed within a few years from leaving college, be better known
throughout the world than those of any other Lehigh man. We who knew
him in his college days could not feel the smallest surprise that he
won himself quickly a brilliant name, and kept a firm hold upon it to
the last.

"What was it that made him so early a marked man? I think it was the
spirit of confidence and enthusiasm which turned every enterprise he
undertook into an adventure,--the brave and humorous playing of the
game of life, the true heart, the wholesome body and soul of my friend
and classmate. He did not excel in studies or greatly, in athletics.