t of gold. He was
of that college boy's own age, but already an editor--already
publishing books! His stalwart good looks were as familiar to us as
were those of our own football captain; we knew his face as we knew the
face of the President of the United States, but we infinitely preferred
Davis's. When the Waldorf was wondrously completed, and we cut an
exam. in Cuneiform Inscriptions for an excursion to see the world at
lunch in its new magnificence, and Richard Harding Davis came into the
Palm Room--then, oh, then, our day was radiant! That was the top of
our fortune; we could never have hoped for so much. Of all the great
people of every continent, this was the one we most desired to see."

Richard's intimate friends of these days were Charles Dana Gibson, who
illustrated a number of my brother's stories, Robert Howard Russell,
Albert La Montagne, Helen Benedict, now Mrs. Thomas Hastings, Ethel
Barrymore, Maude Adams, E. H. Sothern, his brother, Sam, and Arthur
Brisbane. None of this little circle was married at the time, its
various members were seldom apart, and they extracted an enormous
amount of fun out of life. I had recently settled in New York, and we
had rooms at 10 East Twenty-eighth Street, where we lived very
comfortably for many years. Indeed Richard did not leave them until
his marriage in the summer of 1899. They were very pleasant, sunny
rooms, and in the sitting-room, which Richard had made quite
attractive, we gave many teas and supper-parties. But of all the happy
incidents I can recall at the Twenty-eighth Street house, the one I
remember most distinctly took place in the hallway the night that
Richard received the first statement and check for his first book of
short stories, and before the money had begun to come in as fast as it
did afterward. We were on our way to dinner at some modest resort when
we saw and at once recognized the long envelope on the mantel. Richard
guessed it would be for one hundred and ninety dollars, but with a
rather doubting heart I raised my guess to three hundred. And when,
with trembling fingers, Richard had finally torn open the envelope and
found a check for nine hundred and odd dollars, what a wild dance we
did about the hall-table, and what a dinner we had that night! Not at
the modest restaurant as originally intended, but at Delmonico's! It
was during these days that Seymour Hicks and his lovely wife Ellaline
Terriss first visited America, and