deferred to Dick
in the most persuasive manner and seemed to believe at times, though I
knew he did not, that Dick represented all there was to know in matters
artistic.

Among other things at this time, the latter was, or pretended to be,
immensely interested in all things pertaining to the Chinese and to know
not only something of their language, which he had studied a little
somewhere, but also their history--a vague matter, as we all know--and
the spirit and significance of their art and customs. He sometimes
condescended to take us about with him to one or two Chinese restaurants
of the most beggarly description, and--as he wished to believe, because
of the romantic titillation involved--the hang-outs of crooks and
thieves and disreputable Tenderloin characters generally. (Of such was
the beginning of the Chinese restaurant in America.) He would introduce
us to a few of his Celestial friends, whose acquaintance apparently he
had been most assiduously cultivating for some time past and with whom
he was now on the best of terms. He had, as Peter pointed out to me, the
happy knack of persuading himself that there was something vastly
mysterious and superior about the whole Chinese race, that there was
some Chinese organization known as the Six Companions, which, so far as
I could make out from him, was ruling very nearly (and secretly, of
course) the entire habitable globe. For one thing it had some governing
connection with great constructive ventures of one kind and another in
all parts of the world, supplying, as he said, thousands of Chinese
laborers to any one who desired them, anywhere, and although they were
employed by others, ruling them with a rod of iron, cutting their
throats when they failed to perform their bounden duties and burying
them head down in a basket of rice, then transferring their remains
quietly to China in coffins made in China and brought for that purpose
to the country in which they were. The Chinese who had worked for the
builders of the Union Pacific had been supplied by this company, as I
understood from Dick. In regard to all this Peter used to analyze and
dispose of Dick's self-generated romance with the greatest gusto,
laughing the while and yet pretending to accept it all.

But there was one phase of all this which interested Peter immensely.
Were there on sale in St. Louis any bits of jade, silks, needlework,
porcelains, basketry or figurines of true Chinese origin? He was far
m