The last phase of Peter was as interesting and dramatic as any of the others.  His married life was going forward about as he had planned.  His devotion to his home and children, his loving wife, his multiplex interests, his various friends, was always a curiosity to me, especially in view of his olden days.  One day he was over in New York visiting one of his favorite Chinese importing companies, through which he had secured and was still securing occasional objects of art.  He had come down to me in my office at the Butterick Building to see if I would not come over the following Saturday as usual and stay until Monday.  He had secured something, was planning something.  I should see.  At the elevator he waved me a gay “so long—­see you Saturday!”

But on Friday, as I was talking with some one at my desk, a telegram was handed me.  It was from Mrs. Peter and read:  “Peter died today at two of pneumonia.  Please come.”

I could scarcely believe it.  I did not know that he had even been sick.  His little yellow-haired wife!  The two children!  His future!  His interests!  I dropped everything and hurried to the nearest station.  En route I speculated on the mysteries on which he had so often speculated—­death, dissolution, uncertainty, the crude indifference or cruelty of Nature.  What would become 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