Fortunately, he did not have for his friends the same conscience that he had for himself.His great gift of eyesight and observation failed him in his judgments upon his friends.If only you loved him, you could get your biggest failures of conduct somewhat more than forgiven, without any trouble at all.And of your mole-hill virtues he made splendid mountains.He only interfered with you when he was afraid that you were going to hurt some one else whom he also loved.Once I had a telegram from him which urged me for heaven's sake not to forget that the next day was my wife's birthday.Whether I had forgotten it or not is my own private affair.And when I declared that I had read a story which Iliked very, very much and was going to write to the author to tell him so, he always kept at me till the letter was written.
Have I said that he had no habits? Every day, when he was away from her, he wrote a letter to his mother, and no swift scrawl at that, for, no matter how crowded and eventful the day, he wrote her the best letter that he could write.That was the only habit he had.He was a slave to it.
Once I saw R.H.D.greet his old mother after an absence.
They threw their arms about each other and rocked to and fro for a long time.And it hadn't been a long absence at that.
No ocean had been between them; her heart had not been in her mouth with the thought that he was under fire, or about to become a victim of jungle fever.He had only been away upon a little expedition, a mere matter of digging for buried treasure.We had found the treasure, part of it a chipmunk's skull and a broken arrow-head, and R.H.D.had been absent from his mother for nearly two hours and a half.
I set about this article with the knowledge that I must fail to give more than a few hints of what he was like.There isn't much more space at my command, and there were so many sides to him that to touch upon them all would fill a volume.
There were the patriotism and the Americanism, as much a part of him as the marrow of his bones, and from which sprang all those brilliant headlong letters to the newspapers; those trenchant assaults upon evil-doers in public office, those quixotic efforts to redress wrongs, and those simple and dexterous exposures of this and that, from an absolutely unexpected point of view.He was a quickener of the public conscience.That people are beginning to think tolerantly of preparedness, that a nation which at one time looked yellow as a dandelion is beginning to turn Red, White, and Blue is owing in some measure to him.
R.H.D.thought that war was unspeakably terrible.He thought that peace at the price which our country has been forced to pay for it was infinitely worse.And he was one of those who have gradually taught this country to see the matter in the same way.
I must come to a close now, and I have hardly scratched the surface of my subject.And that is a failure which I feel keenly but which was inevitable.As R.H.D.himself used to 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 offhand, 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."GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.
