ourageous--absurdly so--and, in spite of his
high-strung temperament, always calm and cool. At El Paso hill, the
day after the fight, the rest of us scurried for tree-trunks when a few
bullets whistled near; but Dick stalked out in the open and with his
field-glasses searched for the supposed sharpshooters in the trees.
Lying under a bomb-proof when the Fourth of July bombardment started, I
saw Dick going unhurriedly down the hill for his glasses, which he had
left in Colonel Roosevelt's tent, and unhurriedly going back up to the
trenches again. Under the circumstances I should have been content
with my naked eye. A bullet thudded close to where Dick lay with a
soldier.

"That hit you?" asked Dick. The soldier grunted "No," looked sidewise
at Dick, and muttered an oath of surprise. Dick had not taken his
glasses from his eyes. I saw him writhing on the ground with sciatica
during that campaign, like a snake, but pulling his twisted figure
straight and his tortured face into a smile if a soldier or stranger
passed.

He was easily the first reporter of his time--perhaps of all time. Out
of any incident or situation he could pick the most details that would
interest the most people and put them in a way that was pleasing to the
most people; and always, it seemed, he had the extraordinary good
judgment or the extraordinary good luck to be just where the most
interesting thing was taking place. Gouverneur Morris has written the
last word about Richard Harding Davis, and he, as every one must, laid
final stress on the clean body, clean heart, and clean mind of the man.
R. H. D. never wrote a line that cannot be given to his little daughter
when she is old enough to read, and I never heard a word pass his lips
that his own mother could not hear. There are many women in the world
like the women in his books. There are a few men like the men, and of
these Dick himself was one.

BY FINLEY PETER DUNNE

In the articles about Mr. Davis that have appeared since his death, the
personality of the man seems to overshadow the merit of the author. In
dealing with the individual the writers overlook the fact that we have
lost one of the best of our story-tellers. This is but natural. He
was a very vivid kind of person. He had thousands of friends in all
parts of the world, and a properly proportionate number of enemies, and
those who knew him were less interested in the books than in the man
himself--the generous,