1931 Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Stevens Crockett

OldWaldorf Bar Days publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer, would drop in during his frequent New York sojourns. Occasionally in the throng of long ago might be seen Richard Harding Davis, the author, who, starting his career as a newspaper reporter, became so successful as a fiction writer and novelist, that heaven knows how many cub reporters of the period were impelled to emulate his example! Davis' manner, partly acquired from familiar– ity with London drawing-rooms and contacts with many socially prominent as well as intelligent people in many parts of the world, stamped him to many as a snob. Knowing him well over a period of years, and now con– fessing to have been among the cubs eager to follow in his footsteps, I may mention that this was a sensitive point with him. Particularly did it distress him that many newspaper reporters looked askance at him. He himself was disposed to be helpful to any newspaperman to whom he thought he could do a favor. And if he saw in a newspaper a stor y that struck him as particularly good, he made a practice of writing to the editor and saying so. Davis sometimes did curious things. He was romantic. Once he and the young woman he was courting were an ocean and more apart, and what did he do but send a messenger boy from one side of the Atlantic to the other- in fact, all the way from London to Chicago– with a message, or package, for her!'That was back in I 899. The boy, a lad by the name of Thomas Jaggers, was taken up when he arrived here, entertained, and showeredwith a publicity that mus't have proved startling to him, and back in London. And possibly Davis's books did not lose in sale on account of.the roman tic errand. [32]