or two after the Egyptian manner). In all of these lines he trained
himself after a fashion and worked with skill, although invariably he
insisted that he was little more than a bungler, a poor follower after
the art of some one else. But most of all, at this time and later, he
was interested in collecting things Japanese and Chinese: netsukes,
inros, censors, images of jade and porcelain, teajars, vases, prints;
and it was while he was in Philadelphia and seemingly trifling about
with the group I have mentioned and making love to his little German
girl that he was running here and there to this museum and that and
laying the foundations of some of those interesting collections which
later he was fond of showing his friends or interested collectors. By
the time he had reached Newark, as chief cartoonist of the leading paper
there, he was in possession of a complete Tokaido (the forty views on
the road between Tokio and Kyoto), various prints by Hokusai, Sesshiu,
Sojo; a collection of one hundred inros, all of fifty netsukes, all of
thirty censers, lacquered boxes and teajars, and various other
exceedingly beautiful and valuable things--Mandarin skirts and coats,
among other things--which subsequently he sold or traded around among
one collector friend and another for things which they had. I recall his
selling his completed Tokaido, a labor which had extended over four
years, for over a thousand dollars. Just before he died he was trading
netsukes for inros and getting ready to sell all these latter to a man,
who in turn was going to sell his collection to a museum.

But in between was this other, this ultra-human side, which ran to such
commonplaces as bowling, tennis-playing, golf, billiards, cards and
gambling with the dice--a thing which always struck me as having an odd
turn to it in connection with Peter, since he could be interested in so
many other things, and yet he pursued these commonplaces with as much
gusto at times as one possessed of a mania. At others he seemed not to