Yes, Peter woke people up.  He could convey or spread a sense of ease and good nature and give and take among all.  Wise as he was and not so good-looking, he was still attractive to girls, very much so, and by no means unconscious of their beauty.  He could always, and easily, break down their reserve, and was soon apparently on terms of absolute friendship, exchanging all sorts of small gossip and news with them about this, that and the other person about whom they knew.  Indeed he was such a general favorite and so seemingly impartial that it was hard to say how he came close to any, and yet he did.  At odd tete-a-tete moments he was always making confessions as to “nights” or “afternoons.”  “My God, Dreiser, I’ve found a peach!  I can’t tell you—­but oh, wonderful!  Just what I need.  This world’s a healthy old place, eh?  Let’s have another drink, what?” and he would order a stein or a half-schoppen of light German beer and pour it down, grinning like a gargoyle.

It was while he was in Philadelphia that he told me the beginnings of the love affair which eventually ended in his marrying and settling down into the homiest of home men I have ever seen and which for sheer naivete and charm is one of the best love stories I know anything about.  It appears that he was walking in some out-of-the-way factory realm of North Philadelphia one Saturday afternoon about the first or second year of his stay there, when, playing in the street with some other children, he saw a girl of not more than thirteen or fourteen who, as he expressed it to me, “came damned near being the prettiest thing I ever saw.  She had yellow hair and a short blue dress and pink bows in her hair—­and say, Dreiser, when I saw her I stopped flat and said ‘me for that’ if I have to wait fifteen years!  Dutchy—­you never saw the beat!  And poor!  Her shoes were clogs.  She couldn’t even talk English yet.  Neither could the other kids.  They were all sausage—­a regular German neighborhood.

“But, say, I watched her a while and then I went over and said, ’Come here, kid.  Where do you live?’ She didn’t understand, and one of the other kids translated for her, and then she said, ’Ich sprech nicht English,’” and he mocked her.  “That fixed her for me.  One of the others finally told me who she was and where she lived—­and, say, I went right home and began studying German.  In three months I could make myself understood, but before that, in two weeks, I hunted up her old man and made him understand that I wanted to be friends with the family, to learn German.  I went out Sundays when they were all at home.  There are six children and I made friends with ’em all.  For a long time I couldn’t make Madchen (that’s what they call her) understand what it was all about, but finally I did, and she knows now all right.  And I’m crazy about her and I’m going to marry her as soon as she’s old enough.”

“How do you know that she’ll have you?” I inquired.