yful stories, in the rough, of the experiences on all
five continents and seven seas that were the backgrounds of his
published tales.

At Santiago, if an official was to be persuaded to consent to some
unprecedented seizure of the streets, or a diplomat invoked for the
assistance of the Army or the Navy, it was the experience and good
judgment of Dick Davis that controlled the task. In the field there
were his helpful suggestions of work and make-up to the actors, and on
the boat and train and in hotel and camp the lady members met in him an
easy courtesy and understanding at once fraternal and impersonal.

That picture enterprise he has described in an article, entitled
"Breaking into the Movies," which was printed in Scribner's Magazine.

The element that he could not put into the account, and which is
particularly pertinent to this page, is the author of "Soldiers of
Fortune" as he revealed himself to me both with intention and
unconsciously in the presence of the familiar scenes.

For three weeks, with the exception of one or two occasions when some
local dignitary captured the revisiting lion, he and I spent our
evenings together at a cafe table over looking "the great square,"
which he sketches so deftly in its atmosphere when Clay and the
Langhams and Stuart dine there: "At one end of the plaza the
President's band was playing native waltzes that came throbbing through
the trees and beating softly above the rustling skirts and clinking
spurs of the senoritas and officers sweeping by in two opposite circles
around the edges of the tessellated pavements. Above the palms around
the square arose the dim, white facade of the Cathedral, with the
bronze statue of Anduella the liberator of Olancho, who answered with
his upraised arm and cocked hat the cheers of an imaginary populace."

Twenty years had gone by since Dick had received the impression that
wrote those lines, and now sometimes after dinner half a long cigar
would burn out as he mused over the picture and the dreams that had
gone between. From one long silence he said: "I think I'll come back
here this winter and bring Mrs. Davis with me--stay a couple of
months." What a fine compliment to a wife to have the thought of her
and that plan emerge from that deep and romantic background!

And again, later, apropos of nothing but what one guessed from the
dreamer's expressive face, he said: "I had remembered it as so much
larger"--indicating the square