applied art: pottery, rugs, pictures, engraving, wood-carving,
jewel-cutting and designing, and I know not what else, yet there was
always room even in his most serious studies for humor of the bizarre
and eccentric type, amounting to all but an obsession. He wanted to
laugh, and he found occasion for doing so under the most serious, or at
least semi-serious, circumstances. Thus I recall that one of the butts
of his extreme humor was this same Dick, whom he studied with the
greatest care for points worthy his humorous appreciation. Dick, in
addition to his genuinely lively mental interests, was a most romantic
person on one side, a most puling and complaining soul on the other. As
a newspaper artist I believe he was only a fairly respectable craftsman,
if so much, whereas Peter was much better, although he deferred to Dick
in the most persuasive manner and seemed to believe at times, though I
knew he did not, that Dick represented all there was to know in matters
artistic.

Among other things at this time, the latter was, or pretended to be,
immensely interested in all things pertaining to the Chinese and to know
not only something of their language, which he had studied a little
somewhere, but also their history--a vague matter, as we all know--and
the spirit and significance of their art and customs. He sometimes
condescended to take us about with him to one or two Chinese restaurants
of the most beggarly description, and--as he wished to believe, because
of the romantic titillation involved--the hang-outs of crooks and
thieves and disreputable Tenderloin characters generally. (Of such was
the beginning of the Chinese restaurant in America.) He would introduce
us to a few of his Celestial friends, whose acquaintance apparently he
had been most assiduously cultivating for some time past and with whom
he was now on the best of terms. He had, as Peter pointed out to me, the
happy knack of persuading himself that there was something vastly