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
apparently delighted in regaling its readers with most astounding
concoctions of this kind, and the snake he was drawing was most
disturbingly vital and reptilian, beady-eyed, with distended jaws,
extended tongue, most fatefully coiled.

"My," I commented in passing, for I was in to see him about another
matter, "what a glorious snake!"

"Yes, you can't make 'em too snaky for the snake-editor up front," he
returned, rising and dusting tobacco from his lap and shirtfront, for he
was in his shirt-sleeves. Then he expectorated not in but to one side of
a handsome polished brass cuspidor which contained not the least
evidence of use, the rubber mat upon which it stood being instead most
disturbingly "decorated." I was most impressed by this latter fact
although at the time I said nothing, being too new. Later, I may as well
say here, I discovered why. This was a bit of his clowning humor, a
purely manufactured and as it were mechanical joke or ebullience of
soul. If any one inadvertently or through unfamiliarity attempted to
expectorate in his "golden cuspidor," as he described it, he was always
quick to rise and interpose in the most solemn, almost sepulchral
manner, at the same time raising a hand. "Hold! Out--not in--to one
side, on the mat! That cost me s