--"until I saw it again when we came down
with the army." A tolerant smile--he might have explained that it is
always so on revisiting scenes that have impressed us deeply in our
earlier days, but he let the smile do that. One of his charms as
companion was that restful ability not to talk if you knew it, too.

The picture people began their film with a showing of the "mountains
which jutted out into the ocean and suggested roughly the five knuckles
of a giant's hand clenched and lying flat upon the surface of the
water." That formation of the sea wall is just outside of Santiago.
"The waves tunnelled their way easily enough until they ran up against
those five mountains and then they had to fall back." How natural for
one of us to be unimpressed by such a feature of the landscape, and yet
how characteristic of Dick Davis to see the elemental fight that it
recorded and get the hint for the whole of the engineering struggle
that is so much of his book!

We went over those mountains together, where two decades before he had
planted his banner of romance. We visited the mines and the railroads,
and everywhere found some superintendent or foreman or engineer who
remembered Davis. He had guessed at nothing. Everywhere he had
overlaid the facts with adventure and with beauty, but he had been on
sure footing all the time. His prototype of MacWilliams was dead.
Together we visited the wooden cross with which the miners had marked
his grave.

One is tempted to go choosing through his book again and rob its
surprises by reminiscence--but I refrain. Yet it is only justice to
point out that for "Soldiers of Fortune," as for the "Men of Zanzibar,"
"Three Gringos in Venezuela," "The King's Jackal," "Ranson's Folly,"
and his other books, he got his structure and his color at first hand.
He was a writer and not a rewriter. And another thing we must note in
his writing is his cleanliness. It is safe stuff to give to a young
fellow who likes to take off his hat and dilate his nostrils and feel
the wind in his face. Like water at the source, it is undefiled.

DAVIS AND THE ROUGH RIDERS

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

I knew Richard Harding Davis for many years, and I was among the number
who were immediately drawn to him by the power and originality of
"Gallegher," the story which first made his reputation.

My intimate association with him, however, was while he was with my
regiment in Cuba, He joined us immediately a