There is in the makeup of the best type of college undergraduate a wonderful spirit of adventure, an unprejudiced view of life, an almost Quixotic feeling for romance, a disdain of sordid or materialistic motives, which together make the years spent at a great university the most golden of the average man's career.

These characteristics Davis was fortunate enough to retain through all the years of his life.

The same spirit that took him out with a band of Oxford youths to break down an iron barrier set by an insolent landowner across the navigable waters of Shakespeare's Avon carried him, in after years, to the battlefields where Greece fought against the yoke of Turkey, to the insurrecto camps of Cuba, to the dark horrors of the Congo, to Manchuria, where gallant Japan beat back the overwhelming power of Russia, to Belgium, where he saw the legions of Germany trampling over the prostrate bodies of a small people.

Romance was never dead while Davis was alive." That Richard lost no time in making friends at Oxford as, indeed, he never failed to do wherever he went, the following letters to his mother would seem to show: OXFORD--May, 1892.
DEAR FAMILY: I came down here on Saturday morning with the Peels, who gave an enormous boating party and luncheon on a tiny little island.

The day was beautiful with a warm brilliant sun, and the river was just as narrow and pretty as the head of the Squan river, and with old walls and college buildings added.