ome of Mrs. Peter? His children?

I arrived only to find a home atmosphere destroyed as by a wind that
puts out a light. There was Peter, stiff and cold, and in the other
rooms his babies, quite unconscious of what had happened, prattling as
usual, and Mrs. Peter practically numb and speechless. It had come so
suddenly, so out of a clear sky, that she could not realize, could not
even tell me at first. The doctor was there--also a friend of his, the
nearest barber! Also two or three representatives from his paper, the
owner of the bowling alley, the man who had the $40,000 collection of
curios. All were stunned, as I was. As his closest friend, I took
charge: wired his relatives, went to an undertaker who knew him to
arrange for his burial, in Newark or Philadelphia, as his wife should
wish, she having no connection with Newark other than Peter.

It was most distressing, the sense of dull despair and unwarranted
disaster which hung over the place. It was as though impish and pagan
forces, or malign ones outside life, had committed a crime of the
ugliest character. On Monday, the day he saw me, he was well. On Tuesday
morning he had a slight cold but insisted on running out somewhere
without his overcoat, against which his wife protested. Tuesday night
he had a fever and took quinine and aspirin and a hot whiskey.
Wednesday morning he was worse and a doctor was called, but it was not
deemed serious. Wednesday night he was still worse and pneumonia had set
in. Thursday he was lower still, and by noon a metal syphon of oxygen
was sent for, to relieve the sense of suffocation setting in. Thursday
night he was weak and sinking, but expected to come round--and still, so
unexpected was the attack, so uncertain the probability of anything
fatal, that no word was sent, even to me. Friday morning he was no worse
and no better. "If he was no worse by night he might pull through." At
noon he was seized with a sudden sinking spell. Oxygen was applied by
his wife and a nurse, and the doctor sent for. By one-thirty he was
lower still, very low. "His face was blue, his lips ashen," his wife
told me. "We put the oxygen tube to his mouth and I said 'Can you speak,
Peter?' I was so nervous and frightened. He moved his head a little to
indicate 'no.' 'Peter,' I said, 'you mustn't let go! You must fight!
Think of me! Think of the babies!' I was a little crazy, I think, with
fear. He looked at me very fixedly. He stiffened and gritted his te