say of those deplorable "personal interviews" which appear in
the newspapers, and in which the important person interviewed
is made by the cub reporter to say things which he never said,
or thought, or dreamed of--"You can't expect a fifteen-dollar-
a-week brain to describe a thousand-dollar-a-week brain."

There is, however, one question which I should attempt to
answer. No two men are alike. In what one salient thing did
R. H. D. differ from other men--differ in his personal
character and in the character of his work? And that question
I can answer off-hand, without taking thought, and be sure
that I am right.

An analysis of his works, a study of that book which the
Recording Angel keeps will show one dominant characteristic to
which even his brilliancy, his clarity of style, his excellent
mechanism as a writer are subordinate; and to which, as a man,
even his sense of duty, his powers of affection, of
forgiveness, of loving-kindness are subordinate, too; and that
characteristic is cleanliness. The biggest force for
cleanliness that was in the world has gone out of the
world--gone to that Happy Hunting Ground where "Nobody hunts
us and there is nothing to hunt."



BY BOOTH TARKINGTON


To the college boy of the early nineties Richard Harding Davis