Richard Harding Davis was one of the most colorful, daring, and attractive figures in journalism in the late 1800s and early 1900s; he was also highly competent, honest, and dependable. Because of his dashing life-style, which seemed never to impede his ability or credibility, many of his contemporaries dubbed him the "Gibson Boy"--a suave, charming counterpart to artist Charles Dana Gibson's popular Gibson Girls. Those who disliked the image disdained and criticized the man, but seldom, with any justification, his journalistic output.

Davis was born in Philadelphia on 18 April 1864. His father was Lemuel Clarke Davis, editorial writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and later editor of the Public Ledger. The Civil War was not going very well for the North: Grant had not yet made his thrust to Richmond nor Sherman his march to the sea; Gettysburg was just over, and many of its wounded still lay in...