Page:Peter Whiffle (1922).djvu/250

 me to Florine Stettheimer's studio to see her pictures, which I was sure would please him, but he refused. He liked to stroll around with me in odd places and he read and played the piano a good deal, but he seemed to have few other interests. He was absolutely ignorant of such matters as politics and government. He never voted and I have heard him refer to the president, and not in jest, as Abraham Wilson. Sports did not amuse him either, but occasionally we went together to see the wrestlers at Madison Square Garden, especially when Stanislaus Zbyszko was announced to appear.

He never went to Europe again although, shortly before he died, he talked of a voyage to Spain. He visited his mother at Toledo several times and he had planned a trip to Florida, the climate of which he found particularly soothing to his malady, in January, 1920. Occasionally he just disappeared, returning again, somewhat mysteriously, without any explanation, without, indeed, any admission that he had been away. I knew him too well to ask questions and, to say truth, there was something very sweet about these little mystifications. Privacy was so dear a privilege to him that even with his nearest friends, of which, assuredly, I was one, perhaps the nearest in this last year, it was essential to his happiness that he should maintain a certain restraint, a certain reserve, I had almost said, a certain mystery, but, curiously, there was nothing theatrical about Peter, even in his most theatrical per-