IRVIN COBB-THE MAN WHO STAYED
DISCOVERED: Being Some Extracts from an
Appreciation by Robert H. Davis in the New York
Sun, October 19, 1912.

It is not for me to indicate when the big events in his life will
occur or to lay the milestones of the route along which he
will travel. I know only that they are in the future, and that,
regardless of any of his achievements in the past, Irvin Cobb
has not yet come into' his own.
                         
I know of no single instance where one man has shown such
fecundity and quality as Irvin Cobb has so far evinced, and it
is my opinion that at fifty his complete works will contain more
good humor, more good short stories, and at least one bigger
novel than the works of any other single contemporaneous
writer.
                         
One is impressed not only with the beauty and simplicity of his
prose, but with the tremendous power of his tragic concep-
tions and his art in dealing with terror. There appears to be
no phase of human emotion beyond his pen. Without an effort
he rises from the level of actualities to the high peaks of bound-
less imagination, invoking laughter or tears at will.
                        8 
He writes in octaves, striking instinctively all the chords of
humor, tragedy, pathos, and romance with either hand. Ob-
serve this man, in his thirty-seventh year, possessing gifts the
limitations of which even he himself has not yet recognized.
                       Y  
There seem to be no pinnacles along the horizon of the liter-
ary future that are beyond him.  If he uses his pen for an
Alpine stock, the Matterhorn is his.
Some critics and reviewers do not entirely agree with me con-
cerning Cobb; but they will.