Hit first and hardest so that thine adversary shall beware of you.
DAD.
At that time the secret societies played a very important part in the college life at Lehigh, and while I do not believe that Richard shared the theory of some of the students that they were a serious menace to the social fabric, he was quite firm in his belief that it was inadvisable to be a member of any fraternity.

In a general way he did not like the idea of secrecy even in its mildest form, and then, as throughout his life, he refused to join any body that would in any way limit his complete independence of word or action.

In connection with this phase of his college life I quote from an appreciation which M.A.
De W.Howe, one of Richard's best friends both at college and in after-life, wrote for The Lehigh Burr at the time of my brother's death: "To the credit of the perceptive faculty of undergraduates, it ought to be said that the classmates and contemporaries of Richard Harding Davis knew perfectly well, while he and they were young together, that in him Lehigh had a son so marked in his individuality, so endowed with talents and character that he stood quite apart from the other collegians of his day.

Prophets were as rare in the eighties as they have always been, before and since, and nobody could have foreseen that the name and work of Dick Davis would long before his untimely death, indeed within a few years from leaving college, be better known throughout the world than those of any other Lehigh man.

We who knew him in his college days could not feel the smallest surprise that he won himself quickly a brilliant name, and kept a firm hold upon it to the last.
"What was it that made him so early a marked man?
I think it was the spirit of confidence and enthusiasm which turned every enterprise he undertook into an adventure,--the brave and humorous playing of the game of life, the true heart, the wholesome body and soul of my friend and classmate.