hort stories, and both the
letters and sketches he sent to his parents at the time he regarded in
the light of preparation for his future work. In his studies he was
perhaps less successful than he had been at the Episcopal Academy, and
although he played football and took part in the track sports he was
really but little interested in either. There were half-holidays on
Wednesdays and Saturdays, and when my brother did not come to town I
went to Swarthmore and we spent the afternoons in first cooking our
lunch in a hospitable woods and then playing some games in the open
that Richard had devised. But as I recall these outings they were not
very joyous occasions, as Richard was extremely unhappy over his
failures at school and greatly depressed about the prospects for the
future.

He finished the college year at Swarthmore, but so unhappy had he been
there that there was no thought in his mind or in that of his parents
of his returning. At that time my uncle, H. Wilson Harding, was a
professor at Lehigh University, and it was arranged that Richard should
go to Bethlehem the following fall, live with his uncle, and continue
his studies at Ulrich's Preparatory School, which made a specialty of
preparing boys for Lehigh. My uncle lived in a charming old house on
Market Street in Bethlehem, quite near the Moravian settlement and
across the river from the university and the iron mills. He was a
bachelor, but of a most gregarious and hospitable disposition, and
Richard therefore found himself largely his own master, in a big, roomy
house which was almost constantly filled with the most charming and
cultivated people. There my uncle and Richard, practically of about
the same age so far as their viewpoint of life was concerned, kept open
house, and if it had not been for the occasional qualms his innate
hatred of mathematics caused him, I think my brother would have been
completely happy. Even studies no longer worried him particularly and
he at once started in to make friendships, many of which lasted
throughout his life. As is usual with young men of seventeen, most of
these men and women friends were several times Richard's age, but at
the period Richard was a particularly precocious and amusing youth and
a difference of a few decades made but little difference--certainly not
to Richard. Finley Peter Dunne once wrote of my brother that he
"probably knew more waiters, generals, actors, and princes than any man
who