To-day, at the age of thirty-eight, just at the entrance to full-blown life, Mr. Davis is widely admired and honored. He has pleased the light-hearted with his pretty romantic tales, and he has satisfied the strong of heart with his many examples of an unerring sense of the true comedy and the true pathos of life, and, moreover, of his remarkable personal fearlessness. Perhaps the term which a friend applied to him is most fitting--perhaps he may best be called a "sublimated reporter"; for your sublimated reporter must be at once an imperturbable philosopher and an artist holding the mirror up to nature. * * * * * The author's marriage to Miss Cecil Clark of Chicago, at Marion, Massachusetts, on May 4, 1899, was an event remarkable for its jollity. Last year Mrs. Davis accompanied her husband to South Africa. She is said to be as skillful with the pencil as he is with the pen. [Illustration: Photo by Hollinger, N. Y. JOHN KENDRICK BANGS.] JOHN KENDRICK BANGS A dozen years or so ago, when Mr. Bangs faced at home an audience, which had gathered to hear his address on "The Evolution of the Humorist," he said: "I was born in and have resided in Yonkers for a number of years; I have braved the perils of life in this community, and have endured, without a murmur, the privations common to all of us." A modest biography, and withal an illustration of Mr. Bangs's philosophy. He takes things as they come--and leaves his imprint on them. Comparisons of skill aside, no man could do more. John Kendrick Bangs was born in Yonkers, New York, in May, 1862. His father, Francis N. Bangs, was a prominent New York lawyer, in fact, one of the most prominent lawyers the New York bar has ever known. His grandfather was the Rev. Nathan Bangs, D.D., the first historian of the Methodist Church in this country, the first editor of a Methodist paper, and for many years president of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.