![]() It should be said in justice to this Admirable Crichton that he defines some of his own actions as “gallery plays.” In like manner, when the cloud of the revolution is about to burst, the heroine appears on the scene, protesting, “ I always ride over to polo alone at Newport, at least with James ” her brother says, “ It reminds me of a football match, when the teams run on the field ” and the hero himself likens it to a scene in a play. When a youth has done all these things, there is no reason why he should not take the further steps, in which we follow him, as the head of an enormous mining enterprise in South America, the temporary, and of course successful, commander in a revolution at Olancho, and the perfectly “ turned out ” man of the world, who soon discovers the superiority of his employer’s younger daughter, and wins her hand without having to ask for it. In a later year, possibly, he was president of an International Congress of Engineers at Madrid but in his casual accounts of himself it is a little difficult to keep track of the years, and to know just where he had time for his visits to Chili and Peru, and incidentally for his experiences as a cowboy on our own plains, and as the builder of the Jalisco and Mexican Railroad. It was presumably later that he built a harbor fort at Rio, and, because it was successfully reproduced on the Baltic, was created a German baron. It must have been in this period of his life that he was an officer in the English army, “ when they were short of officers ” in the Soudan, received a medal from the Sultan of Zanzibar, since “ he was out of cigars the day I called,” and won the Legion of Honor while fighting as a Chasseur d’Afrique against the Arabs. From the diamond fields of South Africa, where he landed from his first voyage, he went on to Madagascar, Egypt, and Algiers. At sixteen he embarked at New Orleans as a sailor before the mast. It is needful only to look at the central figure, a hero such as “ never was on sea or land.” He is defined as “ a tall broad-shouldered youth,” and surely he cannot be far beyond thirty at the utmost. ![]() How strong this appeal must be one realizes when the book’s elements of weakness, through unreality and a failure to convince, are considered even for a moment. Davis’s own Van Bibber is the recognized type. Davis has an excellent gift of narrative, and speaks a language which is especially grateful to many ears, whether by custom or through curiosity, for it is the language of the world of which Mr. It were pitiful if these two qualities of youth and beauty did not touch at least forty thousand of the great public. That they are young, there can be no doubt upon any ground. Davis’s word and our own opinion, but chiefly Mr. To prove that they are beautiful, we have Mr. ![]() It is a story of brave action, performed by persons at once beautiful and young. Richard Harding Davis’s Soldiers of Fortune is not far to seek.
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