And relative to this period I could other tales unfold. He and Peter, long before I had arrived on the scene, had surrounded themselves with a company of wayfarers of their own: down-and-out English army officers and grafting younger sons of good families, a Frenchman or two, one of whom was a poet, several struggling artists who grafted on them, and a few weird and disreputable characters so degraded and nondescript that I could never make out just what their charm was. At least two of these had suitable rooms, where, in addition to Dick’s and mine, we were accustomed to meet. There were parties, Sunday and evening walks or trips, dinners. Poems, on occasion, were read, original, first-hand compositions; Dick’s stories, as Peter invariably insisted, were “inflicted,” the “growler” or “duck” (a tin bucket of good size) was “rushed” for beer, and cheese and crackers and hot crawfish, sold by old ambling negroes on the streets after midnight, were bought and consumed with gusto. Captain Simons, Captain Seller, Toussaint, Benèt—these are names of figures that are now so dim as to be mere wraiths, ranged about a smoky, dimly lighted room in some downtown rooming-house. Both Dick and Peter had reached that distinguished state where they were the center of attraction as well as supports and props to these others, and between them got up weird entertainments, knockabout Dutch comedian acts, which they took down to some wretched dance-hall and staged, each “doing a turn.” The glee over the memory of these things as they now narrated them to me!
Wood was so thin physically and so vigorous mentally that he was fascinating to look at. He had an idea that this bohemianism and his story work were of the utmost importance; and so they were if they had been but a prelude to something more serious, or if his dreams could only have been reduced to paper and print. There was something that lay in his eye, a ray. There was an aroma to his spirit which was delicious. As I get him now, he was a rather underdone Poe or de Maupassant or Manet, and assuredly a portion of the makings was certainly there. For at times the moods he could evoke in me were poignant, and he saw beauty and romance in many and strange ways and places. I have seen him enter a dirty, horrible saloon in one of St. Louis’s lowest dive regions with the air of a Prince Charming and there seat himself at some sloppy table, his patent leather low-quarters scraping the sanded or sawdusted floor, order beer and then, smiling genially upon all, begin to transcribe from memory whole sections of conversations he had heard somewhere, in the street perhaps, all the while racking his brain to recall the exact word and phrase. Unlike myself, he had a knack of making friends with these shabby levee and underworld characters, syphilitic, sodden, blue-nosed bums mostly, whom he picked up from Heaven knows where. And how he seemed to prize their vile language, their lies and their viler thoughts!