In any group of men I have ever known, speaking from the point of view
of character and not that of physical appearance, Peter would stand out
as deliciously and irrefutably different. In the great waste of American
intellectual dreariness he was an oasis, a veritable spring in the
desert. He understood life. He knew men. He was free--spiritually,
morally, in a thousand ways, it seemed to me.

As one drags along through this inexplicable existence one realizes how
such qualities stand out; not the pseudo freedom of strong men,
financially or physically, but the real, internal, spiritual freedom,
where the mind, as it were, stands up and looks at itself, faces Nature
unafraid, is aware of its own weaknesses, its strengths; examines its
own and the creative impulses of the universe and of men with a kindly
and non-dogmatic eye, in fact kicks dogma out of doors, and yet
deliberately and of choice holds fast to many, many simple and human
things, and rounds out life, or would, in a natural, normal, courageous,
healthy way.

The first time I ever saw Peter was in St. Louis in 1892; I had come
down from Chicago to work on the St. Louis _Globe-Democrat_, and he was
a part of the art department force of that paper. At that time--and he
never seemed to change later even so much as a hair's worth until he
died in 1908--he was short, stocky and yet quick and even jerky in his
manner, with a bushy, tramp-like "get-up" of hair and beard, most
swiftly and astonishingly disposed of at times only to be regrown at
others, and always, and intentionally, I am sure, most amusing to
contemplate. In addition to all this he had an air of well-being, force
and alertness which belied the other surface characteristics as anything