principal paper for some time. Some quarrel or dissatisfaction with the
director of his department caused him, without other notice, to paste
some crisp quotation from one of the poets on his desk and depart! In
Newark, a city to which before this I had paid not the slightest
attention, he found himself most happy; and I, living in New York close
at hand, felt that I possessed in it and him an earthly paradise.
Although it contained no more than 300,000 people and seemed, or had, a
drear factory realm only, he soon revealed it to me in quite another
light, because he was there. Very swiftly he found a wondrous canal
running right through it, under its market even, and we went walking
along its banks, out into the woods and fields. He found or created out
of an existing boardinghouse in a back street so colorful and gay a
thing that after a time it seemed to me to outdo that one of
Philadelphia. He joined a country club near Passaic, on the river of
that name, on the veranda of which we often dined. He found a Chinese
quarter with a restaurant or two; an amazing Italian section with a
restaurant; a man who had a $40,000 collection of rare Japanese and
Chinese curios, all in his rooms at the Essex County Insane Asylum, for
he was the chemist there; a man who was a playwright and manager in New
York; another who owned a newspaper syndicate; another who directed a
singing society; another who was president of a gun club; another who
owned and made or rather fired pottery for others. Peter was so restless
and vital that he was always branching out in a new direction. To my
astonishment he now took up the making and firing of pottery for
himself, being interested in reproducing various Chinese dishes and
vases of great beauty, the originals of which were in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. His plan was first to copy the design, then buy, shape or
bake the clay at some pottery, then paint or decorate with liquid
porcelain at his own home, and fire. In the course of six or eight
months, working in his rooms Saturdays and Sundays and some mornings