R

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS.

ICHARD HARDING DAVIS has shown a marvelous skill in seeing the world, in travel, and of describing it as he sees it. He is not a profound student of the mystery of the human mind, but he possesses in high degree and in rare quality an instinct of selection, a clear sense of an artistic situation in a group of more or less ordinary circumstances and a gift in interesting description. He is, in short, a very clever newspaper reporter who has transferred his field of service from the region of the actual to the realm of the imaginary. His reputation, however, is about equally divided between his works of description and travel and his stories of a more imaginative order, though in both classes of writings, he is above everything else a describer of what he has seen.

He was born in Philadelphia in 1864, the son of L. Clark Davis, an editor of reputation, and Rebecca Harding Davis, the author of many good stories, so that the child had a literary inheritance and an hereditary bent for letters. He studied for three years in Lehigh University and one year in Johns Hopkins, after which he began his interesting career as a journalist, serving successively "The Record," "Press," and "Telegraph" of Philadelphia. On his return from a European trip, he became connected with the New York "Evening Sun," for which he wrote the famous series of "Van Bibber Sketches."

The story, however, which gave him his first real fame was "Gallegher," the scene of which is laid in Philadelphia, though, as is true of all his stories, locality plays but little part in his tales, modes of life and not scenery being the main feature.

He describes the happy-go-lucky life of the young club man, adventures in saloons, and scenes among burglars with remarkable realism, for as reporter he lived for a time among the "reprobates," in disguise, to make a careful study of their manner of life. Again when he describes "The West from a Car Window," he is giving scenes which he saw and types of life which he closely observed. His books always have the distinctive mark of spirit; they are full of life and activity, everything moves on and something "happens." This is as true of his books of travel as of his stories. He has traveled extensively, and he has given descriptions of most of his journeys.

Beside "The West from a Car Window" he has written, with the same reportorial skill and fidelity to observed facts, a book of descriptions of life and manners in the East, with scenes and incidents at Gibraltar and Tangiers, in Cairo, Athens and Constantinople.

"We make no choice among the varied paths where art and letters seek for truth."

THE ORIGIN OF A TYPE OF THE AMERICAN GIRL

BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS.

With original illustrations by Charles Dana Gibson.

As I know nothing of art, I must suppose that when I was asked to tell something of Charles Dana Gibson, it was as a man that I was expected to write of him, and not as an artist. As he is quite as much of a man as he is an artist, which is saying a very great deal, I cannot complain of lack of subject-matter. But on the other hand, it is always much easier to write about an individual one knows only by reputation than of a man one knows

all that is said of him. and as a friend, you tell

as a friend, because in the former place one goes to the celebrity for the facts, and he supplies them himself, and so has to take the responsibility of

But when you know a man intimately
of those things which you personally
have found most interesting in him, and the responsibility of
the point of view rests entirely on your own shoulders.
The most important thing about Mr.

Gibson, outside of his art, is his extreme
youth. This is not only interesting in it-
self, but because it promises to remain with
him for such a very long time. When I first
met Gibson he was twenty-four years old.
That was in London, five years ago, and he
is now "twenty-five years old, going on
twenty-four," so that if he keeps on
growing at that rate, he will still be
the youngest successful black and
white artist in this country for
twenty years to come, as he will
even then, in 1914, have only
reached his thirtieth year. Of
course this may be an error of the
newspaper paragraphers, or a mistake
on the part of Gibson himself, who

CONFIDENCES.

But

having been called the Boy Artist for so long dislikes to give up his crimson sash and knickerbockers. in any event, it is most demoralizing to his friends, as it has kept several of them to my certain knowledge at the age of twenty-eight for the last five years, none of them caring to grow older until Gibson was ready to make the first move.

It is always interesting to tell of the early struggles of great men, but Gibson's difficulties were not very severe, and were soon overcome. When he recounts them now, to show that he as well as others has had to toil for recognition, he leaves troubled his spirit most in those days was not that his drawings were rejected, the impression with you that what but that he had to climb so many flights of stairs to get them back. His work then was in the line of illustrated advertisements which no one wanted, and it was not until he knocked at the door of the office of Life that he met with a welcome and with encouragement. Gibson has lately erected and presented to that periodical a very fine eleven-story In return for this early recognition, Mr.