vincing attitudes of a wild man seen by accident and unconscious of
his pursuers.

"But you're not eight feet tall!" I interjected at one point.

"A small matter. A small matter," he replied airily. "I will be in the
picture. Nothing easier. We wild men, you know--"

Some of the views were excellent, most striking. He leered most terribly
from arras of leaves or indicated fright or cunning. The man was a good
actor. For years I retained and may still have somewhere a full set of
the pictures as well as the double-page spread which followed the next
week.

Well, the thing was appropriately discussed, as it should have been,
but the wild man got away, as was feared. He went into the nearby canal
and washed away all his terror, or rather he vanished into the dim
recesses of Peter's memory. He was only heard of a few times more in the
papers, his supposed body being found in some town in northeast
Pennsylvania--or in the small item that was "telegraphed" from there. As
for Peter, he emerged from the canal, or from its banks, a cleaner if
not a better man. He was grinning, combing his hair, adjusting his tie.

"What a scamp!" I insisted lovingly. "What an incorrigible trickster!"

"Dreiser, Dreiser," he chortled, "there's nothing like it. You should
not scoff. I am a public benefactor. I am really a creator. I have
created a being as distinct as any that ever lived. He is in many
minds--mine, yours. You know that you believe in him really. There he
was peeking out from between those bushes only fifteen minutes ago. And
he has made, and will make, thousands of people happy, thrill them, give
them a new interest. If Stevenson can create a Jekyll and Hyde, why
can't I create a wild man? I have. We have his picture to prove it. What
more do you wish?"

I acquiesced. All told, it was a delightful bit of foolery and art, and
Peter was what he was first and foremost, an artist in the grotesque and
the ridiculous.

For some time thereafter peace seemed to reign in his mind, only now it
was that the marriage and home and children idea began to grow. From
much of the foregoing it may have been assumed that Peter was out of
sympathy with the ordinary routine of life, despised the commonplace,
the purely practical. As a matter of fact it was just the other way
about. I never knew a man so radical in some of his viewpoints, so
versatile and yet so wholly, intentionally and cravingly, immersed in
the usual as Peter. He was all fo