any school or college had to offer. His father, curiously enough, was an
educated Irish-American, a lawyer by profession, and a Catholic. His
mother was an American Catholic, rather strict and narrow. His brothers
and sisters, of whom there were four, were, as I learned later,
astonishingly virile and interesting Americans of a rather wild,
unsettled type. They were all, in so far as I could judge from chance
meetings, agnostic, tense, quick-moving--so vital that they weighed on
one a little, as very intense temperaments are apt to do. One of the
brothers, K----, who seemed to seek me out ever so often for Peter's
sake, was so intense, nervous, rapid-talking, rapid-living, that he
frightened me a little. He loved noisy, garish places. He liked to play
the piano, stay up very late; he was a high liver, a "good dresser," as
the denizens of the Tenderloin would say, an excellent example of the
flashy, clever promoter. He was always representing a new company,
introducing something--a table or laxative water, a shaving soap, a
chewing gum, a safety razor, a bicycle, an automobile tire or the
machine itself. He was here, there, everywhere--in Waukesha, Wisconsin;
San Francisco; New York; New Orleans. "My, my! This is certainly
interesting!" he would exclaim, with an air which would have done credit
to a comedian and extending both hands. "Peter's pet friend, Dreiser!
Well, well, well! Let's have a drink. Let's have something to eat. I'm
only in town for a day. Maybe you'd like to go to a show--or hit the
high places? Would you? Well, well, well! Let's make a night of it! What
do you say?" and he would fix me with a glistening, nervous and what was
intended no doubt to be a reassuring eye, but which unsettled me as
thoroughly as the imminence of an earthquake. But I was talking of
Peter.

The day I first saw him he was bent over a drawing-board illustrating a
snake story for one of the Sunday issues of the _Globe-Democrat_, which