Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis by Various Authors
<< Return to Title Details & Download1
APPRECIATIONS
Gouverneur Morris
Booth Tarkington
Charles Dana Gibson
E. L. Burlingame
Augustus Thomas
Theodore Roosevelt
Irvin S. Cobb
John Fox, Jr
Finley Peter Dunne
Winston Churchill
Leonard Wood
John T. McCutcheon
R. H. D.
BY GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
"And they rise to their feet as He passes by, gentlemen unafraid."
He was almost too good to be true. In addition, the gods loved him, and so he had to die young. Some people think that a man of fifty-two is middle-aged. But if R. H. D. had lived to be a hundred, he would never have grown old. It is not generally known that the name of his other brother was Peter Pan.
Within the year we have played at pirates together, at the taking of sperm whales; and we have ransacked the Westchester Hills for gunsites against the Mexican invasion. And we have made lists of guns, and medicines, and tinned things, in case we should ever happen to go elephant-shooting in Africa. But we weren't going to hurt the elephants. Once R. H. D. shot a hippopotamus and he was always ashamed and sorry. I think he never killed anything else. He wasn't that kind of a sportsman. Of hunting, as of many other things, he has said the last word. Do you remember the Happy Hunting Ground in "The Bar Sinister"?--"where nobody hunts us, and there is nothing to hunt."
Experienced persons tell us that a manhunt is the most exciting of all sports. R. H. D. hunted men in Cuba. He hunted for wounded men who were out in front of the trenches and still under fire, and found some of them and brought them in. The Rough Riders didn't make