Peter Whiffle by Carl Van Vechten — Read

I left the hospital before Peter. My injuries, indeed, were of so slight a nature that I was confined only a few days, while his were so serious that the physicians despaired of his life, and he was forced to keep to his bed for several months. Following my early discharge, I made daily visits of inquiry to the hospital but it was not until June, 1914, that I was assured that he would recover. With this good news, came a certain sense of relief, and I made plans for another voyage to Europe. The incidents of that voyage -- I was in Paris at the beginning of the war -- are of sufficient interest so that I may recount them in another place, but they bear no relationship to the present narrative.

Subsequent to his recovery, I have learned since from the physician who attended him during his protracted illness, Peter returned to Toledo with his mother. It is probable that he made further literary experiments. It has even occurred to me that the pivot of his being, the explanation for his whole course of action may have escaped me. Although, from the hour of our first meeting, my interest in and my affection for Peter were deep, assuredly I never imagined that I should be writing down the history of his life. For the greater part of the term of our friendship, indeed, I was a writer only in a very modest sense. I was not on the lookout for the kind of "copy" his affairs and ideas offered, for at this period I was a reporter of music and the drama. Even later, when I began to set down my thoughts in what is euphemistically called a more permanent form, the notion of using Peter as a subject never presented itself to me, and if he had asked me to do so during his lifetime, urging me to put aside a pile of unfinished work in his behalf, the request would have astounded me.