Peter
A Doer of the Word
My Brother Paul
The County Doctor
Culhane, the Solid Man
A True Patriarch
De Maupassant, Junior
The Village Feudists
"Vanity, Vanity," Saith the Preacher
The Mighty Rourke
A Mayor and His People
W.L.S.
In any group of men I have ever known, speaking from the point of viewof character and not that of physical appearance, Peter would stand outas deliciously and irrefutably different. In the great waste of Americanintellectual dreariness he was an oasis, a veritable spring in thedesert. 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 howsuch 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 Natureunafraid, is aware of its own weaknesses, its strengths; examines itsown and the creative impulses of the universe and of men with a kindlyand non-dogmatic eye, in fact kicks dogma out of doors, and yetdeliberately and of choice holds fast to many, many simple and humanthings, 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 comedown from Chicago to work on the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and he wasa part of the art department force of that paper. At that time—and henever seemed to change later even so much as a hair's worth until hedied in 1908—he was short, stocky and yet quick and even jerky in hismanner, with a bushy, tramp-like "get-up" of hair and beard, mostswiftly and astonishingly disposed of at times only to be regrown atothers, and always, and intentionally, I am sure, most amusing tocontemplate. In addition to all this he had an air of well-being, forceand alertness which belied the other surface characteristics as anythingmore than a genial pose or bit of idle gayety.
Plainly he took himself seriously and yet lightly, usually with an airof suppressed gayety, as though saying, "This whole business of livingis a great joke." He always wore good and yet exceedingly mussy clothes,at times bespattered with ink or, worse yet, even soup—an amazinggrotesquery that was the dismay of all who knew him, friends andrelatives especially. In addition he was nearly always liberallybesprinkled with tobacco dust, the source of which he used in all forms:in pipe, cigar and plug, even cigarettes when he could obtain nothingmore substantial. One of the things about him which most impressed me atthat time and later was this love of the ridiculous or the grotesque, inhimself or others, which would not let him take anything in a dull orconventi