A great many newspaper men lie awake night after night mentally debating whether they will leave their property to some charitable institution or spend it the next day for something with a little lemon in it.

It was during his earlier connection with the St. Louis Journal that Field was assigned the duty of misreporting Carl Schurz, when that peripatetic statesman stumped Missouri in 1874 as a candidate for re-election to the United States Senate. Field in later years paid unstinted tribute to the logic, eloquence, and patriotic force of Mr. Schurz's futile appeals to the rural voters of Missouri. But during the trip his reports were in nowise conducive to the success of the Republican and Independent candidate. Mr. Schurz's only remonstrances were, "Field, why will you lie so outrageously?" It was only by the exercise of careful watchfulness that Mr. Schurz's party was saved from serious compromise through the practical jokes and snares which Field laid for the grave, but not revered Senator. On one occasion when a party of German serenaders appeared at the hotel where the party was stopping, before Mr. Schurz had completed a necessary change of toilet Field stepped out on the veranda, and, waving the vociferous cornet and trombone to silence, proceeded to address the crowd in broken English. As he went on the cheering soon subsided into amazed silence at the heterodox doctrines he uttered, until the bogus candidate was pushed unceremoniously aside by the real one. Mr. Schurz had great difficulty in saving Field from the just wrath of the crowd, which had resented his broken English more than his political heresies.

On another occasion when there was a momentary delay on the part of the gentleman who was to introduce Mr. Schurz, Field stepped to the front and with a strong German accent addressed the gathering as follows:

LADIES AND SHENTLEMEN: I haf such a pad colt dot et vas not bossible for me to make you a speedg to-night, but I haf die bleasure to introduce to you my prilliant chournatistic friend Euchene Fielt, who will spoke you in my blace.

It was all done so quickly and so seriously that the joke was complete before Mr. Schurz could push himself into the centre of the stage. Annoyance and mirth mingled in the explanations that followed. A love of music common to both was the only thing that made Field tolerable to his serious-minded elder.

Regarding Eugene Field's work upon the St. Jo Gazette, it was local in character and of the most ephemeral nature. There is preserved in the pocket-books of some old printers in the West the galley proof of a doggerel rhyme read by him at the printers' banquet, at St. Joseph, Mo., January 1st, 1876. It details the fate of a "Rat" printer, who, in addition to the mortal offence of "spacing out agate" type with brevier, sealed his doom by stepping on the tail of our old friend, the French poodle McSweeny. The execution of the victim's sentence was described as follows:

There is not much suggestion, or even promise, in this doggerel, of the Eugene Field whose verses of occasion were destined within a dozen years to be sought for in every newspaper office in America.

Long before Field learned the value of his time and writing, he began to appreciate the value of printer's ink and showed much shrewdness in courting its favor. He did not wait for chance to bring his wares into notice, but early joined the circle of busy paragraphers who formed a wider, if less distinguished, mutual admiration society than that free-masonry of authorship which at one time almost limited literary fame in the United States to Henry James, William Dean Howells, Charles Dudley Warner, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Robert J. Burdette is about the only survivor of the coterie of paragraphers, who, a quarter of a century ago, made such papers as the Burlington Hawkeye, the Detroit Free Press, the Oil City Derrick, the Danbury News, and the Cincinnati Saturday Night, widely quoted throughout the Union for their clever squibs and lively sallies. Field put himself in the way of the reciprocating round of mutual quotation and spicy comment, and before he left St. Louis his "Funny Fancies" in the Times-Journal had the approval of his fellow-jesters if they could not save that paper from its approaching doom.

Before leaving St. Louis, however, Eugene Field was to strike one of the notes that was to vibrate so sweetly and surely to his touch unto the end. He had lost one baby son in St. Jo, and Melvin was a mere large-eyed infant when his father was moved at Christmas-time, 1878, to write his "Christmas Treasures," which he frequently, though incorrectly, declared to be "the first verse I ever wrote." He probably meant by this that it was the first verse he ever wrote "that he cared to preserve," those specimens I have introduced being only given as marking the steps crude and faltering by which he attained a facility and technique in the art of versification seldom surpassed.

In Mr. Field's "Auto-Analysis" will be found the following reference to this early specimen of his verse:

I wrote and published my first bit of verse in 1879: It was entitled "Christmas Treasures" [see "Little Book of Western Verse"]. Just ten years later I began suddenly to write verse very frequently.

Which merely indicates what little track Field kept of how, when, or where he wrote the verse that attracted popular attention and by which he is best remembered. I need hardly say that with a few noteworthy exceptions his most highly-prized poems were written before 1888, as a reference to the "Little Book of Western Verse," above cited, and which was published in 1889, will clearly show.

In the year 1880 Field received and accepted an offer of the managing editorship of the Kansas City Times, a position which he filled with singular ability and success, but which for a year put an almost absolute extinguisher on his growth as a writer. Under his management the Times became the most widely-quoted newspaper west of the Mississippi. He made it the vehicle for every sort of quaint and exaggerated story that the free and rollicking West could furnish or invent. He was not particular whether the Times printed the first, fullest, or most accurate news of the day so long as its pages were racy with the liveliest accounts and comments on the daily comedy, eccentricity, and pathos of life.

Right merrily did he abandon himself to the buoyant spirits of an irrepressible nature. Never sparing himself in the duties of his exacting position on the Times, neither did he spare himself in extracting from life all the honey of comedy there was in it. His salary did not begin to keep pace with his tastes and his pleasures. But he faced debts with the calm superiority of a genius to whom the world owed and was willing to pay a living.

There lived in Kansas City, when Field was at the height of his local fame there, one George Gaston, whose café and bar was the resort of all the choice spirits of the town. He fairly worshipped Field, who made his place famous by entertainments there, and by frequent squibs in the Times. Although George had a rule suspending credit when the checks given in advance of pay day amounted to more than a customer's weekly salary, he never thought of enforcing it in the case of 'Gene. More than once some particularly fine story or flattering notice of the good cheer at Gaston's sufficed to restore Field's credit on George's spindle. At Christmas-time that credit was under a cloud of checks for two bits (25 cents), four bits, and a dollar or more each to the total of $135.50, when, touched by some simple piece that Field wrote in the Times, Gaston presented his bill for the amount endorsed "paid in full." When the document was handed to Field he scanned it for a moment and then walked over to the bar, behind which George was standing smiling complacently and eke benevolently.

"How's this, George?" said Field.

"Oh, that's all right," returned George.

"But this is receipted," continued the ex-debtor.

"Sure," said the gracious creditor.

"Do I understand," said Field, with a gravity that should have warned his friend, "that I have paid this bill?"

"That's what," was George's laconic assurance.

"In full?"

"In full's what I said," murmured the unsuspecting philanthropist, enjoying to the full his own magnanimity.

"Well, sir," said Field, raising his voice without relaxing a muscle, "Is it not customary in Missouri when one gentleman pays another gentleman in full to set up the wine?"

George could scarcely respire for a moment, but gradually recovered sufficiently to mumble, "Gents, this is one on yours truly. What'll you have?"

And with one voice Field's cronies, who were witnesses to the scene, ejaculated, "Make it a case." And they made a night of it, such as would have rejoiced the hearts of the joyous spirits of the "Noctes Ambrosianæ."

From such revels and such fooling Field often went to work next day without an hour's sleep.

While in Kansas City Field wrote that pathetic tale of misplaced confidence that records the fate of "Johnny Jones and his sister Sue." It was entitled "The Little Peach" and has had a vogue fully as wide, if not as sentimental, as "Little Boy Blue." Field's own estimate of this production is somewhat bluntly set out in the following note upon a script copy of it made in 1887:

Originally printed in the Kansas City Times, recited publicly by Henry E. Dixey, John A. Mackey, Sol Smith Russell, and almost every comedian in America. Popular but rotten.

The last word is not only harsh but unjust. The variation of the closing exclamation of each verse is as skilful as anything Field ever did. Different, indeed, from the refrain in "Wynken, Blynken and Nod," but touching the chords of mirth with certainty and irresistible effect. Field might have added, that none of the comedians he has named ever gave to the experience of "Johnny Jones and His Sister Sue" in public recitation the same melancholy humor and pathetic conclusion as did the author of their misfortunes and untimely end himself. As a penance, perhaps, for the injustice done to "The Little Peach" in the quoted comment, Field spent several days in 1887 in translating it, so to speak, into Greek characters, in which it appears in the volume given to Mrs. Thompson, which is herewith reproduced in facsimile as a specimen of one of the grotesque fancies Field indulged:

For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the Greek characters, I have retranslated this poem into corresponding English, which the reader can compare with his version of "The Little Peach."

CHAPTER IX

IN DENVER, 1881-1883

It was in Denver that Eugene Field entered upon and completed the final stage of what may be called the hobble-de-hoy period in his life and literary career. He went to the capital of Colorado the most indefatigable merry-maker that ever turned night into day, a past-master in the art of mimicry, the most inveterate practical joker that ever violated the proprieties of friendship, time, and occasion to raise a laugh or puncture a fraud. As his friend of those days, E.D. Cowen, has written, "as a farceur and entertainer no professional could surpass him."

Field was tempted to go to Denver by the offer of the managing editorship of the Tribune, which was owned and controlled by the railroad and political coalition then dominant in Colorado. It was run on a scale of extravagance out of all proportion to its legitimate revenue, its newspaper functions being altogether subordinate to services as a railroad ally and political organ. The late O.H. Rothacker, one of the ablest and most versatile writers in the country, was at the head of its editorial staff, and Fred J.V. Skiff, now head of the Field Columbian Museum, was its business manager. These men, with Field, were given carte blanche to surround themselves with a staff and news-gathering equipment to make the Tribune "hum." And they did make it hum, so that the humming was heard far beyond the borders of the centennial state.

In studying the character of Eugene Field and his doings in Denver, it must be borne in mind that we are considering a period in the life of that city years ago, when the conditions were very different from those prevailing there now or from those to be met with to-day in any other large city in the country. Denver in 1881 was very much what San Francisco was under the influence of the gold rush of the early fifties, only complicated with the struggles of rival railway companies. All the politics, railway, and mining interests of the newly created state centred in Denver. The city was alive with the throbbing energy of strife and speculation over mines, railway grants, and political power. Life was rapid, boisterous, and rough. Nothing had settled into the conventional grooves of habit. The whole community was fearless in its gayety. It had not learned to affect the sobriety and demureness of stupidity lest its frivolity should be likened to the crackling of thorns under a pot.

Into this civilization of the mining camp and smelter, just emerging into that of the railway, political, and financial centre of a vast and wealthy territory, came Eugene Field at the age of thirty-one, as free from care, warm-hearted, and open-handed as the most reckless adventurer in Colorado. Although a husband and a father, devoted as ever to his family, he threw himself into the bohemian life of Denver with the abandon of a youth of twenty. It is almost inconceivable where Field found the time and strength for the whirl of work and play in which there was no let up during his two years' stay in Denver. His duties as managing editor of the Tribune would have taxed the energies and resources of the strongest man, for he did not spare himself to fulfil the purpose of his engagement—to make the paper "hum." He mapped out and directed the work of the staff with a comprehensive shrewdness and keen appreciation of what his public, as well as his employers, wanted that left no room for criticism. He kept the whole city guessing what sensation or reputation would be exploded next in the Tribune.

But he did not confine himself to the duties of directing the work of others. He started a column headed "Odds and Ends," to which he was the principal and, by all odds, the most frequent contributor. He had not been in the city many months before he began the occasional publication of those skits which, under the title of "The Tribune Primer," were gathered into his first unpretentious book of forty-eight pages, and which in its original form is now one of the most sought after quarries of the American bibliomaniac. Writing of these sketches in 1894, he said:

The little sketches appeared in the Denver Tribune in the Fall of 1881 and winter of 1882. The whole number did not exceed fifty. I quit writing them because all the other newspapers in the country began imitating the project.

In fact the series began October 10th, 1881, and ended December 19th of the same year. Edward B. Morgan, of Denver, in an introductory note to a few of the sketches omitted from the original "Tribune Primer," printed in the Cornhill Booklet for January, 1901, gives the following version of how the skits began:

Of the origin of these sketches a story is told—although the writer cannot vouch for it—that on the Sunday evening preceding their first publication the "printer's devil" was dispatched post-haste to Field's home for copy which his happy-go-lucky manner of working had not produced. We may perhaps picture him engaged in what was always nearest and dearest to his heart, the amusement of his children, and perhaps reading to them or more likely composing for them primer sketches which he on the spur of the moment parodied for older readers. He has probably expressed his own feelings in the third one of the skits which he then wrote:

THE REPORTER ON SUNDAY

Is this Sunday? Yes, it is a Sunday. How peaceful and quiet it is. But who is the man? He does not look peaceful. He is a reporter and he is swearing. What makes him swear? Because he has to work on Sunday? Oh no! he is swearing because he has to Break the Fourth Commandment. It is a sad thing to be a Reporter.

According to Mr. Cowen, however, the inspiration of the primer compositions was a libel suit brought against the Tribune by Governor Evans. In ridiculing the governor and his action Field three times used the old primer method—with illustrations after the fashion of John Phoenix—and the success of these little sarcasms undoubtedly encouraged him to elaborate the idea. Field also had a column of unsigned verse and storyettes in the Tribune under the heading, "For the Little Folks."

Mr. Morgan discredits Field's statement that the whole number of the Primers issued did not exceed fifty, because of the unlikelihood of printing such a small edition of a book to be sold for twenty-five cents and advertising it daily a month in advance, with a foot-note, "Trade supplied at Special Rates." Which merely shows that Mr. Morgan applied to Field's acts the same rule of thumb that would be applicable to ninety-nine out of a hundred reasonable publishers. But Field was a rule unto himself, and he could be counted on to be the one hundredth and unique individual where the other ninety-and-nine were orthodox and conventional. The fact that only seven or eight copies of the original Primer are known to book collectors tends to confirm Field's statement, which receives side light and support from his suggestion to Francis Wilson that the first edition of "Echoes from the Sabine Farm," which Mr. Wilson issued in such sumptuous form nearly ten years later, should consist of only fifty copies, and that each of the two should reserve one and that they should "burn the other forty-eight."

I have not the slightest doubt that the same disposition was made of all copies of "The Tribune Primer" over the first fifty, which were supplied to the favored few at "Special Rates." This was just such a freak as would have occurred to Field, and in Denver there was no restraint upon the act following upon any wild thought that flitted through his topsy-turvy brain.

The jocose spirit in which Field at this time viewed the methods, duties, and responsibilities of journalism may be gleaned from the following specimens taken at random from his "Tribune Primer" sketches:

THE REPORTER

What is that I see? That, my Child, is the News Interviewer and he is now interviewing a Man. But where is the Man? I can see no Man. The Man, my Child, is in his Mind.

A RECHERCHÉ AFFAIR

This is a recherché Affair. Recherché Affairs are sometimes met with in Parlors and Ball Rooms. But more Generally in the Society Department of newspapers. A Recherché Affair is an Affair where the Society Editor is invited to the refreshment table. When the Society Editor is told his Room is Better than his Company, the Affair is not Recherché.

THE STEAM PRESS

Is this not a Beautiful Steam Press? The Steam is Lying Down on the Floor taking a Nap. He came from Africa and is Seventy Years Old. The Press prints Papers. It can Print Nine Hundred papera an Hour. It takes One Hour and Forty Minutes to Print the Edition of the Paper. The Paper has a circulation of Thirty-seven thousand. The business Manager says so.

It was indeed a happy departure from the ruder fooling of the newspaper paragrapher of that day to clothe satire on current events and every-day affairs in the innocent simplicity of the nursery. But the vast majority of these Primer paragraphs were by no means as innocent as those quoted. Many of them had a sting more sharp than that of the wasp embalmed in one of them:

See the Wasp. He has pretty yellow stripes around his Body, and a darning needle in his tail. If you will Pat the Wasp upon the Tail, we will Give you a nice Picture Book.

Very many of them seemed inspired by an irrepressible desire to incite little children to deeds of mischief never dreamed of in Baxter's Saints' Rest. Here are a precious pair of paragraphs, each calculated to bring the joy that takes its meals standing into any home circle where youthful incorrigibles were in need of outside encouragement to their infant initiative:

THE NASTY TOBACCO

What is that Nasty looking object? It is a Chew of Tobacco. Oh, how naughty it is to use the Filthy weed. It makes the teeth black, and spoils the Parlor Carpet. Go Quick and Throw the Horrid Stuff Away. Put it in the Ice Cream Freezer or in the Coffee Pot where Nobody can see it. Little Girls you should never chew Tobacco.

THE MUCILAGE

The Bottle is full of Mucilage. Take it and Pour some Mucilage into Papa's Slippers. Then when Papa comes Home it will be a Question whether there will be more Stick in the Slippers than on your Pants.

But whoever wishes to learn of the peculiar side of Child life that appealed most strongly to Eugene Field when his own earlier born children were still in the nursery age, should get a copy of "The Tribune Primer" and read, not only the sketches themselves, but between the lines, where he will find much of the teasing spirit that kept his whole household wondering what he would do next. In these sketches will be found frequent references to the Bugaboo, a creation of his fancy, "With a big Voice like a Bear, and Claws as long as a Knife." His warning to the little children then was, "If you are Good, Beware of the Bugaboo." In later life he reserved the terror of the Bugaboo for naughty little boys and girls.

His first poem to his favorite hobgoblin, as it appeared in the Denver Tribune, was the following:

It is a far cry in time and a farther one in literary worth from "The Awful Bugaboo" of 1883 to "Seein' Things" of 1894. The sex of the victim is different, and the spirit of the incorrigible western tease gives way to the spirit of Puritanic superstition, but there can be no mistaking the persistence of the Bugaboo germ in the later verse:

In all that Field wrote, whether in prose or rhyme, for the Denver Tribune nothing contributed to his literary reputation or gave promise of the place in American letters he was to attain, save one little bit of fugitive verse, which was for years to justify its title of "The Wanderer." It contains one of the prettiest, tenderest, most vitally poetic ideas that ever occurred to Eugene Field. And yet he deliberately disclaimed it in the moment of its conception and laid it, like a little foundling, at the door of Madame Modjeska. The expatriation of the Polish actress, between whom and Field there existed a singularly warm and enduring friendship, formed the basis for the allegory of the shell on the mountain, and doubtless suggested to him the humor, if not the sentiment, of attributing the poem to her and writing it in the first person. The circumstances of its publication justify its reproduction here, although I suppose it is one of the most familiar of Field's poems. I copy it from his manuscript:

I have seen it stated that Madame Modjeska regarded the liberty taken with her name in this connection with feelings of displeasure, and Hamlin Garland has reported a conversation with Field, during the summer of 1893, when the latter, speaking of his work in Denver, and of "The Tribune Primer" as the most conspicuous thing he did there, said: "The other thing which rose above the level of my ordinary work was a bit of verse, 'The Wanderer,' which I credited to Modjeska, and which has given her no little annoyance." In his note to Mrs. Thompson's manuscript copy of "The Wanderer," Field says:

These verses appeared in the Denver Tribune credited to Helena Modjeska. They were copied far and wide over Modjeska's name. Modjeska took the joke in pretty good part. The original publication was June, 1883.

Madame Modjeska not only took the joke in "pretty good part," but esteemed its perpetrator all the more highly for the light in which it placed her before the public, which she was then delighting with her exquisite impersonations of Rosalind and Mary Stuart. For years after its publication Madame Modjeska, wherever she appeared throughout the country, was reminded of this joke by the scores of letters sent to her room, as soon as she registered, requesting autograph copies of "The Wanderer," or the honor of her signature to a clipping of it neatly pasted in the autograph hunter's album. Nor were autograph hunters the only ones imposed on by the signature to "The Wanderer." In August, 1883, Professor David Swing, writing in the Weekly Magazine, gave it as his opinion that the alleged Modjeska poem was indeed written by Modjeska, and concluded: "The conversation and tone of her thoughts as expressed among friends betrays a mind that at least loves the poetic, and is quite liable to attempt a verse. The child-like simplicity of this little song is so like Modjeska that no demand arises for any outside help in the matter." And Field, like the true fisherman he was, having secured a fine rise, proceeded to remark: "It will, perhaps, pain the Professor to learn that Madame Modjeska now denies ever having seen the verses until they appeared in print."

But not until Field reclaimed his child and published "The Wanderer" as his own, in "A Little Book of Western Verse," was the verse-reading public satisfied to give the Polish comedienne a long rest from importunities concerning it.

CHAPTER X

ANECDOTES OF LIFE IN DENVER

No story of Eugene Field's life would be true, no study of his personality complete, if it ignored or even glossed over "the mad wild ways of his youthful days" in Denver. He never wearied of telling of the constant succession of harum-scarum pranks that made the Tribune office the storm-centre for all the fun-loving characters in Colorado. Not that Field ever neglected his work or his domestic duties for play, but it was a dull day for Denver when his pen or his restless spirit for mischief did not provide some fresh cause for local amazement or merriment. His associates and abettors in all manner of frolics, where he was master of the revels, were kindred spirits among the railway managers, agents, politicians, mining speculators, lawyers, and doctors of the town. Into this company a fresh ingredient would be introduced every week from the theatrical troupes which made Denver the western limit of their circuits or a convenient break in the long overland jump.

Field's office was a fitting retreat for the genius of disorder. It had none of the conveniences that are supposed to be necessary in the rooms of modern managing editors. It was open and accessible to the public without the intermediary of an office-boy or printer's devil. Field had his own way of making visitors welcome, whether they came in friendly guise or on hostile measures bent. Over his desk hung the inhospitable sign, "This is my busy day," which he is said to have invented, and on the neighboring wall the motto, "God bless our proof-reader, He can't call for him too soon." But his crudest device, "fatal," as his friend E.D. Cowen writes, "to the vengeance of every visitor who came with a threat of libel suit, and temporarily subversive of the good feeling of those friends he lured into its treacherous embrace, was a bottomless black-walnut chair." Its yawning seat was always concealed by a few exchanges carelessly thrown there—the floor being also liberally strewn with them. As it was the only chair in the room except the one Field occupied himself, his caller, though never asked to do so, would be sure to see in Field's suave smile an invitation to drop into the trap and thence ingloriously to the floor. Through this famous chair, on his first visit to the Tribune office, "Bill" Nye dropped into a lifelong friendship with Eugene Field. When the victim happened to be an angry sufferer from a too personal reference to his affairs in the paper, Field would make the most profuse apologies for the scant furnishings of the office, which he shrewdly ascribed to the poverty of the publishing company, and tender his own chair as some small compensation for the mishap.

I have spoken of Edgar W.—more familiarly known as "Bill"—Nye's unceremonious introduction to Field's friendship. This followed upon what was virtually the discovery of Nye by Field. The former was what old-time printers described as "plugging along" without recognition on the Laramie Boomerang. His peculiar humor caught the attention of Field, who, with the intuition of a born journalist, wrote and got Nye to contribute a weekly letter to the Tribune. At first Nye was paid the princely stipend of $5 a week for these letters. This was raised to $10, and when Field informed Nye that he was to receive $15 per letter, the latter promptly packed his grip and took the first train for Denver, to see what sort of a newspaper Croesus presided over the order-blank of the Tribune. When he appeared before Field he was whiskered like a western farmer and his head had not pushed its way through a thick growth of hair. He was altogether a different looking personage from the bald-headed, clean-shaven humorist with whose features the world was destined to become so well acquainted.

After the incident of the chair nothing would do Field but a dinner at the St. James Hotel, given in honor of Bill Nye. The affair started after the Tribune had gone to press and lasted all night. At five o'clock in the morning the company escorted their guest to his room and departed, with elaborate professions of good-will. They waited in the hotel office long enough for Nye to get to bed, and then sent up cards, requesting his presence down-stairs on immediate business. But Nye was equal to his tormentors, and the bell-boy returned, bearing a shot-gun, with the message that it would speak for him. When Nye first visited Field in Chicago, his presence in town was heralded with the following paragraph:

The latest news from Bill Nye is to the effect that he has discovered a coal mine on his little farm near Hudson, Wis. Ten days ago he was spading over his garden—an exercise recommended by his physician—and he struck a very rich vein of what is called rock coal. Nye paid $2,000 for this farm, and since the development of this coal deposit on the premises he has been offered $10,000 for five acres. He believes that he has a great fortune within his grasp.

As illustrative of how impossible it was for Field to keep money, it is related that on one occasion he coaxed F.J.V. Skiff, then business manager of the Tribune, to advance "just another" $10 to meet some urgent domestic demands. Scarcely had Mr. Skiff time to place the order in the cash drawer, ere Field stood before him once more, pleading in forma pauperis for "another X." He was asked what had become of the ten he had just received.

"Just my luck, Fred," Field replied. "As I was leaving the office whom should I meet but one of my old printer boys, dead broke. The X was all I had, and he told me he had to have it, and he had to." It is needless to say that Field got the second advance and succeeded in dodging all impecunious "old boys" on the way home.

I have said that Denver at that time was the centre of all the railway interests of Colorado and the far West. Being also the capital, it was the place where legislators and railway agents wrestled with problems of regulating tariffs and granting privileges to what may be called their mutual benefit. It was from his experience in Denver that Field learned that two-thirds of the business of a western legislature consisted in causing legislative hold-ups, of which the transportation companies were the victims, and the most vociferously impeccable statesmen the chief beneficiaries. The secret service funds of the railway companies doing business in Colorado paid out a hundred dollars for protection from notorious sandbagging bills and resolutions to every dollar they spent for special favors in grants and franchises.

This by way of preface to a story in which Eugene Field and a railway official, who, as I write, holds a high position in the transportation world, figure. This official was at that time the superintendent of the Southwestern Division of the Pullman system, with head-quarters at St. Louis. In those days every session of the Colorado legislature saw its anti-Pullman rate reduction bill, which Wickersham, as I shall call him, because that is not his name, was commissioned to checkmate, strangle, or make away with in committee by the aid of annual passes, champagne, and the mysterious potency of the national bank-note. As was remarked by E.D. Cowen, to whose notes I am indebted for refreshing my memory of Field's tales, Wickersham never failed in generalship, principally because he was bold in his methods and picturesquely lavish with his munitions of war. The Pullman Company did not then enjoy the royalty and defensive alliance which now protects it against rate legislation throughout the West, and so Wickersham was kept continually on the go, making alliances and friendships among legislators and journalists against the days of reckoning.

Field, as the managing editor of the Tribune, was a special favorite with Wickersham, as he was of every professional and commercial visitor having an axe to grind at the capital of the state. Pullman's representative had the wit to appreciate Field, both for his personal qualities and the assistance he could render through the columns of the newspaper. Field reciprocated the personal friendship, but, so far as the Tribune was concerned, took a grim satisfaction in giving Wickersham to understand that though he could use its freedom he could not abuse it or count upon its aid beyond what was strictly legitimate. Field's stereotyped introduction of Wickersham—one calculated to put him on a pleasant business footing with every practical politician, was "He's a good fellow and a thoroughbred." So his coming was invariably celebrated by a general round-up of all the good fellows in Denver, and his departure left the aching heads and parched recollections that from the days of Noah have distinguished the morning after.

After one of Wickersham's calls, Field determined that the sobriety and severe morality of Denver were being scandalized by these periodical visitations, and he issued orders to the Tribune staff that when next the "good fellow and thoroughbred" appeared on the scene he should be given a wide berth, or, as Field put it, should be left to "play a lone hand in his game." So when Wickersham next swung around the legislative circle to Denver, not a man about the editorial rooms would go out with him, listen to his stories, accept a cigar at his hands, or associate with him in any of the ways that had been their cheerful wont. The coldness and loneliness of the situation excited Wickersham's thirst for revenge and also for what is known as the wine of Kentucky. Having succeeded in getting up a full head of steam, he started out for an explanation or a counter demonstration. Arriving at the Tribune office, when the desks were vacated at the evening dinner-hour, he interpreted it as a further affront and challenge, which he proceeded to answer by destroying every last scrap of copy in sight for the morrow's paper. He then converted himself into a small cyclone, and went through every desk, strewed their litter on the floor, broke all the pens and pencils, and, in the language of an eye-witness, "ended by toning the picture of editorial desolation with the violet contents of all the ink bottles he could find."

Then he retired in hilarious satisfaction from the scene of devastation he had made. Consternation reigned in that office until Field returned, when he quickly dispelled the gloom with a promise of revenge, and set the staff at work to patch up the ruin the envious Wickersham had made. But they were not permitted to do this in peace, for their enemy, returning in the dark of night, bombarded the windows of the editorial rooms with the staves of old ash-barrels he had found conveniently by.

While Wickersham was engaged in this second assault, with windows smashing to right of them and to left of them, with glass falling all around them, and the staves of old ash-barrels playing a devil's tattoo about them, the devoted band of editors, reporters, and copy-readers worked nobly on. They had confidence in their leader that their hour would come. Their first duty was to get out the paper. After that they looked for the deluge.

When Wickersham had expended his last stave and fiercest epithet on the shattered windows he retired in bad order to his apartments at the St. James Hotel.

Now began Field's revenge, planned with due deliberation and executed with malicious thoroughness. He first sent for "'Possum Jim," an aged and very serious colored man, who worshipped "Mistah Fiel'" because of the sympathy Eugene never withheld from the dark-skinned children of the race. "'Possum Jim" spent most of his existence on the same street corner, waiting for a job, which invariably had to come to him. His outfit consisted of an express wagon strung together with telegraph wire, and a nondescript four-footed creature that once bore the similitude of a horse. Whenever Field had an odd job to be done about his household he would go out of his way to let "old 'Possum Jim" earn the quarter—partly to do an act of kindness to "Jim," but chiefly to tease Mrs. Field by the appearance of the broken-down equipage lingering in front of their dwelling.

Just before the Tribune went to press, a sergeant of police called on Field in response to a summons by telephone. After a whispered conference he left, with a broad smile struggling under his curling mustache. In company with a number of his staff Field next made the round of the all-night haunts and gathered to his aid as fine a collection of bohemian "thoroughbreds" as ever made the revels of Mardi Gras look like a Sunday-school convention. He installed them at the resort of a Kentucky gentleman named Jones, opposite the St. James. As one who was there reports, "The amber milk of the Blue-grass cow flowed in plenty." Bidding his associates await his return, Field, armed with a single bottle, crossed the street to the hotel in search of the enemy.

For half, an hour they waited, in growing fear that Wickersham had retired for the night, with orders the night clerk dared not disobey, that he was not to be disturbed, even if the hotel was on fire. Just as expectation had grown heavy-eyed, Field appeared crossing the street with Wickersham on his arm, very happy, more of a good fellow than ever and more than ever ready for red-eyed anarchy of any sort.

"After a swift hour"—I quote from one who was there and whose account tallies with Field's own—"and as the morning opened out Field insisted on breaking for sunlight and fresh air. Wickersham was always a leader, even in the matter of making a noise. He sang; everyone else applauded. He shrieked and shouted; all approved. Windows went up across the way in the hotel, and night-capped heads protruded to investigate. The frantic din of the electric-bells could be heard. The clerk appeared to protest." What attention might have been paid to his protest will never be known, for just then "'Possum Jim's" gothic steed and rattletrap cart rounded the corner.

"I say, old man," shouted Field, "we want your rig for an hour; what's it worth?"

Jim played his part slyly, and the bargain was finally struck for $2.50, the owner to present no claim for possible damages. Wickersham was so delighted with the shrewdness of the deal that he insisted on paying the bill. The horse, which could scarcely stand on his four corners, was quickly unharnessed and hitched to a telegraph pole, and before he realized what the madcaps were about, Wickersham was himself harnessed into the shafts. The novelty of his position suited his mood. He pranced and snorted, and pawed the ground and whinnied, and played horse in fine fettle until the word go. Field, with a companion beside him, held the reins and cracked the whip. The others helped the thoroughbred in harness the best they could by pushing.

In this manner, and all yelling like Comanche Indians, twice they made the circuit of the block. All the guests in front of the big hotel were leaning out of the windows, when the police sergeant popped in sight with a squad of four men. Field, who had been duly apprised of their approach, gave the signal, and the crowd, making good their retreat to Jones's, abandoned Wickersham to his fate. He was quickly, but roughly, disentangled from the intricacies of "'Possum Jim's" rope-yarn harness. The more he protested and expostulated, the more inexorable became the five big custodians of the outraged peace, until the last word of remonstrance and explanation died upon his well-nigh breathless lips. Then he tried cajoling and "connudling" and those silent, persuasive arts so often efficacious in legislative lobbies; but there were too many witnesses to his crime, and bribes were not in order.

When at last Wickersham, from sheer despair and physical exhaustion, sank limp in the arms of his captors, the sergeant, on the pretext of seeking the aiders and abettors in the riot, half carried, half led the prisoner into Jones's resort.

A quarter of an hour later the police squad made its exit by the back door, and less than an hour afterward Wickersham's special was bearing him southward toward Texas.

But Field's revenge was not fully sated yet. He caused a $2 Pullman rate-bill, making a sixty per cent. reduction, to be prepared in the Tribune office, and secured its introduction in the legislature by the chairman of the House committee on railways. The news was immediately flashed East, and Wickersham came posting back to Denver with the worst case of monopoly fright he had ever experienced. The day after his arrival the Tribune had something to say in every department of his nefarious mission, and every reference to him bristled with biting irony and downright accusation. Never was a "good fellow and a thoroughbred" so mercilessly scarified.

For the remaining six weeks of the session Wickersham did not leave Denver, nor did he dare look at the Tribune until after breakfast. Every member of the legislature received a Pullman annual. Champagne flowed, not by the bottle, but by the dray-load. Wickersham begged for quarter, but his appeals fell like music on ears that heard but heeded not. Nor did he find out that the whole affair was a put-up job until the bill was finally lost in the Senate committee.

One of the familiar stories of Field's rollicking life in Denver was at the expense of Oscar Wilde, then on his widely advertised visit to America. As the reader may remember, this was when the aesthetic craze and the burlesques inseparable from it were at their height. Anticipating Wilde's appearance in Denver by one day, and making shrewdly worded announcements through the Tribune in keeping with his project, Field secured the finest landau in town and was driven through the streets in a caricature verisimilitude of the poet of the sunflower and the flowing hair.

The impersonation of Wilde à la Bunthorne in Gilbert and Sullivan's opera, "Patience," was well calculated to deceive all who were not in the secret. Field's talent as a farceur and a mimic enabled him to assume and carry out the expression of bored listlessness which was the popular idea of the leader of aesthetes. Nobody in the curious, whooping, yelling crowd assembled along the well-advertised route suspected the delusion, and after an hour's parade Field succeeded in making his exit from public gaze without betraying his identity.

When Wilde turned up the next day he was not a little mystified to learn that he had created a sensation driving around Denver in the raiments of Bunthorne, while in reality travelling over the prairie in a palace-car. It was Field himself who relieved his curiosity with a highly amusing narrative of the experience of the joker lounging in the seat of honor in the landau.

Wilde, it is related, saw nothing funny in the affair, nor was he provoked at it. His only comment was, "What a splendid advertisement for my lecture."

It was while in Denver that Field had numerous and flattering offers to leave journalism for the stage, and more than once he was sorely tempted to make the experiment. In the natural qualifications for the theatrical profession he was most richly endowed. In the arts of mimicry he had no superior. He had the adaptable face of a comedian, was a matchless raconteur, and a fine vocalist. At a banquet or in a parlor he was an entertainer of truly fascinating parts. During his life in St. Louis and Kansas City his inclination had led him to seek the society of the green-room, and in Denver his position enlarged the circle of his acquaintance with the theatrical profession, until it embraced almost every prominent actor and actress in America, and was subsequently extended to include the more celebrated artists of England. Among his favorites was Madame Bernhardt, whose several visits to the United States afforded him an opportunity for some of the most entertaining sketches that ever delighted his Chicago readers. None of these contained more pith in little than that brief paragraph with which he opened his column one day, to the effect that "An empty cab drove up to the stage-door of the Columbia Theatre last night, from which Madame Bernhardt alighted."

Among the celebrities who visited Denver while Field was in what he would have called his perihelion was Miss Kate Field, with whose name he took all the liberties of a brother, although there was no blood relationship between them thicker than the leaves of a genealogical compendium. He took especial pains to circulate the report through all the West that Miss Field had brought a sitz-bath with her to alleviate the dust and hardships of travel in the "Woolly West," where, as he represented, she thought running water was a luxury and stationary bath-tubs were unknown. But he atoned for this by one of the daintiest pleasantries that ever occurred to his playful mind. When Miss Field was preparing for her lecture tour in Mormon land she started an inquisitive correspondence with her namesake, whose Tribune Primer was then spreading his fame through the exchanges. The two soon discovered that they were cousins, no matter how many times removed, but near enough to inspire Field to entrust a letter to Uncle Sam's mail addressed thus: