ll I want is
sugar, chocolate, a pot, a big spoon, and I'll show you the best fudge
you ever ate." Then he would don an apron or towel and go to work in a
manner which would rob any gathering of a sense of stiffness and induce
a naturalness most intriguing, calculated to enhance the general
pleasure an hundredfold.

Yes, Peter woke people up. He could convey or spread a sense of ease and
good nature and give and take among all. Wise as he was and not so
good-looking, he was still attractive to girls, very much so, and by no
means unconscious of their beauty. He could always, and easily, break
down their reserve, and was soon apparently on terms of absolute
friendship, exchanging all sorts of small gossip and news with them
about this, that and the other person about whom they knew. Indeed he
was such a general favorite and so seemingly impartial that it was hard
to say how he came close to any, and yet he did. At odd tete-a-tete
moments he was always making confessions as to "nights" or "afternoons."
"My God, Dreiser, I've found a peach! I can't tell you--but oh,
wonderful! Just what I need. This world's a healthy old place, eh? Let's
have another drink, what?" and he would order a stein or a half-schoppen
of light German beer and pour it down, grinning like a gargoyle.

It was while he was in Philadelphia that he told me the beginnings of
the love affair which eventually ended in his marrying and settling down
into the homiest of home men I have ever seen and which for sheer
naivete and charm is one of the best love stories I know anything about.
It appears that he was walking in some out-of-the-way factory realm of
North Philadelphia one Saturday afternoon about the first or second year
of his stay there, when, playing in the street with some other children,
he saw a girl of not more than thirteen or fourteen who, as he expressed
it to me, "came damned near being the prettiest thing I ever saw. She
had yellow hair and a short blue dress and pink bows in her hair--and
say, Dreiser, when I saw her I stopped flat and said 'me for that' if I
have to wait fifteen years! Dutchy--you never saw the beat! And poor!
Her shoes were clogs. She couldn't even talk English yet. Neither could
the other kids. They were all sausage--a regular German neighborhood.

"But, say, I watched her a while and then I went over and said, 'Come
here, kid. Where do you live?' She didn't understand, and one of the
other kids translated for her, an