Richard Harding Davis was born in Philadelphia on April
18, 1864, but, so far as memory serves me, his life and mine
began together several years later in the three-story brick
house on South Twenty-first Street, to which we had just
moved. For more than forty years this was our home in all
that the word implies, and I do not believe that there was
ever a moment when it was not the predominating influence in
Richard's life and in his work. As I learned in later years,
the house had come into the possession of my father and mother
after a period on their part of hard endeavor and unusual
sacrifice. It was their ambition to add to this home not only
the comforts and the beautiful inanimate things of life, but
to create an atmosphere which would prove a constant help to
those who lived under its roof — an inspiration to their
children that should endure so long as they lived. At the
time of my brother's death the fact was frequently commented
upon that, unlike most literary folk, he had never known what
it was to be poor and to suffer the pangs of hunger and
failure. That he never suffered from the lack of a home was
certainly as true as that in his work he knew but little of
failure, for the first stories he wrote for the magazines
brought him into a prominence and popularity that lasted until
the end. But if Richard gained his success early in life and
was blessed with a very lovely home to which he could always
return, he was not brought
up in a manner which in any way could be called lavish.
Lavish he may have been in later years, but if he was it was
with the money for which those who knew him best knew how very
hard he had worked.
In a general way, I cannot remember that our life as boys
differed in any essential from that of other boys. My brother
went to the Episcopal Academy and his weekly report never
failed to fill the whole house with an impenetrable gloom and
ever-increasing fears as to the possibilities of his future.
At school and at college Richard was, to say the least, an
indifferent student. And what made this undeniable fact so
annoying, particularly to his teachers, was that morally he
stood so very high. To "crib," to lie, or in any way to cheat
or to do any unworthy act was, I believe, quite beyond his
understanding. Therefore, while his constant lack of interest
in his studies goaded his teachers to despair, when it came to
a question of stamping out wrongdoing on the part of the
student body he was invariably found aligned on the side of
the faculty. Not that Richard in any way resembled a prig or
was even, so far as I know, ever so considered by the most
reprehensible of his fellow students. He was altogether too
red-blooded for that, and I believe the students whom he
antagonized rather admired his chivalric point of honor even
if they failed to imitate it. As a schoolboy he was
aggressive, radical, outspoken, fearless, usually of the
opposition and, indeed, often the sole member of his own
party. Among the students at the several schools he attended
he had but few intimate friends; but of the various little
groups of which he happened to be a member his aggressiveness
and his imagination usually made him the leader. As far back
as I
can remember, Richard was always starting something — usually a
new club or a violent reform movement. And in school or
college, as in all the other walks of life, the reformer must,
of necessity, lead a somewhat tempestuous, if happy,
existence. The following letter, written to his father when
Richard was a student at Swarthmore, and about fifteen, will
give an idea of his conception of the ethics in the case:
