The season there was not yet in full swing, and after spending a few days in town, journeyed to Oxford, where he settled down to amuse himself and collect material for his first articles on English life as he found it.

In writing of this visit to Oxford, H.J.

Whigham, one of Richard's oldest friends, and who afterward served with him in several campaigns, said: "When we first met Richard Harding Davis he was living, to all practical purposes, the life of an undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford.

Anyone at all conversant with the customs of universities, especially with the idiosyncrasies of Oxford, knows that for a person who is not an undergraduate to share the life of undergraduates on equal terms, to take part in their adventures, to be admitted to their confidence is more difficult than it is for the camel to pass through the eye of a needle or for the rich man to enter heaven.

It was characteristic of Davis that although he was a few years older than the average university "man" and came from a strange country and, moreover, had no official reason for being at Oxford at all, he was accepted as one of themselves by the Balliol undergraduates, in fact, lived in Balliol for at least a college term, and happening to fall in with a somewhat enterprising generation of Balliol men he took the lead in several escapades which have been written into Oxford history.