make a good witness, but she died in 1911. Mrs. Whiffle knew nothing of any importance whatever about her son. Since his death I have interrogated her in vain. She was, indeed, very much astonished at the little I told her and she will read this book, I think, with real amazement. The report of Clara Barnes, too, was negligible. Edith Dale has supplied me with a few facts which I have inserted where they chronologically belong. Most of my other friends, Phillip Moeller, Alfred Knopf, Edna Kenton, Pitts Sanborn, Avery Hopwood, Freddo Sides, Joseph Hergesheimer, even my wife, Fania Marinoff, never met Peter. Louis Sherwin walked up Fifth Avenue with us one day, but Peter was unusually silent and after he had left us at the corner of Fifty-seventh Street, Louis was not sufficiently curious to ask any questions concerning him. I doubt if Louis could even recall the incident today. I have inserted advertisements in the Paris, New York, and Toledo newspapers, begging any one with pertinent facts or letters in his possession to communicate with me, but as yet I have received no replies. I have never seen a photograph of my friend and his mother informs me that she doubts if he ever sat for one.
The record, therefore, of Peter's literary life, at the conclusion of this chapter, will be as complete as I can make it. I have tried to set down the truth as I saw it, leaving out nothing that I remember, even at the danger of becoming unnecessarily gar-
