But Field's acknowledgments of an ever-increasing debt of gratitude to Dr. Reilly were not confined to privately circulated tokens of affection and friendship, as the following stanzas, printed in his column in the News, in February, 1889, testify:

Finally, Dr. Reilly is the Dr. O'Rell of "The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac," whom Field playfully credits with prescribing one or the other—the Noctes or the Reliques—to his patients, no matter what disease they might be afflicted with. He prescribed them to both of us, and Field took to his bed with the Reliques and did not get up until he had "comprehended" the greater part of its five hundred and odd pages of perennial literary stimulant.

CHAPTER XV

METHOD OF WORK

Although Eugene Field was the most unconventional of writers, there was a method in all his ways that made play of much of his work. No greater mistake was ever made than in attributing his physical break-down to exhaustion from his daily grind in a newspaper office. No man ever made less of a grind than he in preparing copy for the printer. He seldom arrived at the office before eleven o'clock and never settled down to work before three o'clock. The interim was spent in puttering over the exchanges, gossiping with visitors, of whom he had a constant stream, quizzing every other member of the staff, meddling here, chaffing there, and playing hob generally with the orderly routine of affairs. He was a persistent, insistent, irrepressible disturber of everything but the good-fellowship of the office, to which he was the chief contributor. No interruption from Field ever came or was taken amiss. From the hour he ambled laboriously up the steep and narrow stairs, anathematizing them at every step, in every tone of mockery and indignation, to the moment he sat down to his daily column of "leaded agate, first line brevier," no man among us knew what piece of fooling he would be up to next.

Something was wrong, Field was out of town, or some old crony from Kansas City, St. Louis, or Denver was in Chicago, if about one o'clock I was not interrupted by a summons from him that the hour for luncheon had arrived. Although I was at work within sound of his voice, these came nearly always in the form of a note, delivered with an unvarying grin by the office-boy, who would drop any other errand, however pressing, to do Field's antic bidding. These notes were generally flung into the waste-paper basket, much to my present regret, for of themselves they would have made a most remarkable exhibit. Sometimes the summons would be in the form of a bar of music like this which I preserved:

But more often it was a note in the old English manner, which for years was affected between us, like this one:

Or, going down to the counting-room, he would summon a messenger to mount the stairs with a formal invitation like this:

Then out we would sally to the German restaurant around the corner, where the coffee was good, the sandwiches generous, and the pie execrable. If there was a German cook in Chicago who could make good pies we never had the good fortune to find him.

With great and sumptous cheer and with
Joyous discourse, the good knight
Slosson regaleth the good knight
Eugene sans peur et sans monie.

Having regaled ourselves with this sumptuous cheer to "repletion," we would walk three blocks to McClurg's book-store and replenish our stock of English, sacred and profane, defiled and undefiled. I am writing now of the days before Field made the old-book department famous throughout the country as the browsing ground of the bibliomaniacs. After loitering there long enough to digest our lunches and to nibble a little literature, we would retrace our steps to the office, where Field resumed his predatory actions until he was ready to go to work. Then peace settled on the establishment for about three hours. If any noisy visitor or obstreperous reporter in the local room did anything to disturb the "literary atmosphere" that brooded around the office, Field would bang on the tin gong hanging over his desk until all other noises sank into dismayed silence. Then he would resume "sawing wood" for his "Sharps and Flats."

If Field had not quite worked off his surplus stock of horse-play on his associates, he would vent it upon the compositor in some such apostrophe as the following:

Or this:

We desire to announce that Mademoiselle Rhea, the gifted Flanders maid, who has the finest wardrobe on the stage, will play a season of bad brogue and flash dresses in this city very soon. This announcement, however, will never see the dawn of November 13th, and we kiss it a fond farewell as we cheerfully submit it as a sop to Cerberus.

Field had a theory that Ballantyne, the managing editor, would not consider that he was earning his salary, and that Mr. Stone would not think that he was exercising the full authority of editorship, unless something in his column was sacrificed to the blue pencil of a watchful censorship. Coupled with this was the more or less cunning belief that it was good tactics to write one or two outrageously unprintable paragraphs to draw the fire, so to speak, of the blue pencil, and so to divert attention from something, about which there might be question, which he particularly wished to have printed. Ballantyne, as I have said, was a very much more exacting censor than Stone, for the reason that the humor of a story or paragraph often missed his Scotch literalness, while Stone never failed to let anything pass on that score.

By six o'clock Field's writing for the day was done, and he generally went home for dinner. But that this was not always the case the following notes testify:

Five nights out of the week Field spent some part of the evening at one of the principal theatres of the town, of which at that time there were five. He was generally accompanied by Mrs. Field and her sister, Miss Comstock, who subsequently became Mrs. Ballantyne. When it was a family party, Ballantyne and I would join it about the last act, and there was invariably a late supper party, which broke up only in time for the last north-bound car. When Field was a self-invited guest with any of his intimates at dinner the party would adjourn for a round of the theatres, ending at that one where the star or leading actor was most likely to join in a symposium of steak and story at Billy Boyle's English chop-house. This resort, on Calhoun Place, between Dearborn and Clark Streets, was for many years the most famous all-night eating-house in Chicago. For chops and steaks it had not its equal in America, possibly not in the world. Long after we had ceased to frequent Boyle's, so long that our patronage could not have been charged with any share in the catastrophe, it went into the hands of the sheriff. This afforded Field an opportunity to write the following sympathetic and serio-whimsical reminiscence of a unique institution in Chicago life:

I have devoted so much space to Billy Boyle's because for several years Field found there the best opportunity of his life "to study human nature" and observe the "ambitions, hopes, purposes, and eccentricities" of his fellow-man.

After the "pernicious activity" of our newspaper work had "put the shutters up" against us in Calhoun Place, we transferred our midnight custom to the Boston Oyster House, on the corner of Clark and Madison streets, which Field selected because of the suggestion of baked beans, brown bread, and codfish in its name. Here we were assigned a special table in the corner near the grill range, and here we were welcomed along about twelve o'clock by the cheerful chirping of a cricket in the chimney, which Field had a superstition was intended solely for him. The Boston Oyster House had the advantage over Billy Boyle's that here we could bring "our women folks" after the theatre or concert. It was through a piece of doggerel, composed and recited by Field with great gusto on one of these occasions, that we first learned of the serious attentions of our managing editor to Mrs. Field's youngest sister. One of these stanzas ran thus:

But the ladies were never invited to invade the cricket's corner, where we were permitted to beguile the hours in gossip, song, and story until the scrub-women had cleaned the rest of the big basement and "the first low swash" of the suds and brush threatened the legs of our chairs. Then, with a parting anathema on the business of slaves that toiled when honest folk should be abed, we would ascend the stairs and betake ourselves to our several homes. It was at the Boston that Field varied his diet of pie and coffee with what he was pleased to describe as "the staying qualities as well as the pleasing aspect of a Welsh rabbit."

During the first years of his connection with the Morning News, Field worked without intermission six days of the week, without a vacation and, except when he transferred his scene of operations to the capitol at Springfield, without leaving Chicago—with two noteworthy exceptions. For some reason Field had taken what the Scotch call a scunner to ex-President Hayes, whom he regarded as a political Pecksniff. The refusal of Mr. Hayes while President to serve wine in the White House Field regarded as a cheap affectation, and so when, through his numerous sources of information, he learned that Mr. Hayes derived a part of his income from saloon property in Omaha, nothing would do Field but, accompanied by the staff artist, he must go to Omaha and investigate himself the story for the News.

He went, found the facts were as represented, and returned with the proofs and a photograph of himself sitting on a beer-keg in a saloon owned by Rutherford B. Hayes. He also bought the keg, and out of its staves had a frame made for the picture, which he presented to Mr. Ballantyne.

His other notable absence from Chicago in those days was also connected with ex-President Hayes. This time it involved a visit to the latter's home at Fremont, O. In all his frequent references to Mr. Hayes, Field had always spoken of Mrs. Hayes with sincere admiration for her womanly qualities and convictions. So long as these were confined to the ordering of her personal household he deemed them as sacred as they were admirable. Nor did he blame her for attempting to extend them to rule the actions of her husband in his public relations. But it was for permitting this that Mr. Hayes earned the scorn of Field. When President Hayes retired from the White House to Fremont, instead of becoming another Cincinnatus at the plough he was overshadowed by the stories of Mrs. Hayes's devotion to her chicken-farm, and the incongruity of the occupation appealed so strongly to Field's sense of the ridiculous that he prevailed on Mr. Stone to let him go down to Fremont to take in its full absurdity with his own eyes.

Before going to Omaha, Field had taken the precaution to write enough "Sharps and Flats" to fill his column until he returned—a precaution he omitted when he started for Fremont, on the understanding that his associates on the editorial page would do his work for him. This was our opportunity, and gladly we availed ourselves of it. The habit had grown on Field of introducing his paragraphic skits with such "country journalisms" as:

This he accompanied with a lavish bestowal of titles that would have done credit to the most courtly days of southern chivalry.

So when Field was safely off for Fremont we started to produce a column that would be a travesty on his favorite expressions at the expense of his titled friends. We opined and violated all the confidences of which we were possessed in regard to Colonel Phocion Howard, of the Batavia frog-farm, Major Moses P. Handy, the flaming sword of the Philadelphia Press, Senator G. Frisbie Hoar, Major Charles Hasbrook, Colonel William E. Curtis, Colonel John A. Joyce, Colonel Fred W. Nye, Major E. Clarence Stedman, and Colonels Dana, Watterson, and Halstead, and we exhausted the flowers of Field's vocabulary in daring encomiums on Madame Modjeska, Lotta, Minnie Maddern, and Marie Jansen. If any of Field's particular friends were omitted from "favorable mention" in that column, it was because we forgot or Mr. Stone's blue pencil came to the rescue of his absent friend. Ballantyne was party to the conspiracy, because he had often remonstrated against the rut of expression into which Field was in danger of falling.

When Field returned that one column had driven all thoughts of Mrs. Hayes's hens from his thoughts. There was a cold glitter in his pale blue eyes and a hollow mock in the forced "ha, ha" with which he greeted some of our "alleged efforts at wit." He said little, but a few days later relieved his pent-up feelings by printing the following:

But the daring violation of Field's confidence effected its purpose. Never again did he employ the type-worn expressions of country journalism, except with set prepense and self-evident satire. He shunned them as he did an English solecism, which he never committed, save as a decoy to draw the fire of the ever-watchful and hopeless grammatical purist.

CHAPTER XVI

NATURE OF HIS DAILY WORK

In the last chapter I have told in general terms how Field employed himself day by day, from which the reader may form the impression that between eleven A.M. and midnight not over one-quarter of his time was actually employed in work, the balance being frittered away in seeming play. In one sense the reader would be right in such an inference. Field worked harder and longer at his play than at what the world has been pleased to accept as the work of a master workman, but out of that play was born the best of all that he has left. His daily column was a crystallization of the busy fancies that were running through his head during all his hours of fooling and nights of light-hearted pleasure. It reflected everything he read and heard and saw. It was a "barren sea from which he made a dry haul"—a dreary and colorless gathering that left him without material for his pen. He did not hunt for this material with a brass band, but went for it with studied persistence. Field never believed that he was sent into the world to reform it. His aim was to amuse himself, and if in so doing he entertained or gratified others, so much the better. "Reform away," he was once reported as saying, "reform away, but as for me, the world is good enough for me as it is. I am a thorough optimist. In temperament I'm a little like old Horace—I want to get all the happiness out of the world that's possible." And he got it, not intermittently and in chunks, but day by day and every hour of the day.

His brother Roswell has said that the "curse of comedy was on Eugene," and "it was not until he threw off that yoke and gave expression to the better and sweeter thoughts within him that, as with Bion, the voice of song flowed freely from the heart."

I do not think it is quite fair to regard comedy as a curse or a yoke. Certainly Eugene Field never suffered under the blight of the one nor staggered under the burden of the other. If there is any curse in comedy, unadulterated by lying, malice, or envy, he never knew it. He knew—none better—that the author who would command the tears that purify and sweeten life must move the laughter that lightens it. What says our Shakespeare?—

Eugene Field trod the footpath way to popularity and fame with a buoyant and merry heart. If there was any abatement of his joyous spirits I never knew it, and I do not think that his writings disclose any sweeter strain, as his brother suggests, in the days when ill-health checked the ardor of his boyish exuberance, but could not dim the unextinguishable flame of his comedy. The two books that contain what to the last he considered his choicest work—a judgment confirmed by their continued popularity and sale, "A Little Book of Western Verse" and "A Little Book of Profitable Tales"—were compiled from the writings (1878-1887) that flowed from his pen when he worshipped most assiduously at the shrine of the goddess of comedy and social intercourse.

I have been tempted into this digression in order that the reader may not be at a loss to reconcile the apparent frivolity of Field's life and the mass of his writings at this period with the winnowed product as it appeared in the two volumes just mentioned. Out of the comedy of his nature came the sweetness of his work, and out of his association with all conditions of his fellow-men came that insight into the springs of human passion and action that leavens all that he wrote, from "The Robin and the Violet" (1884) down to "The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac" (1895).

The general character of Eugene Field's life and writing went through a gradual process of evolution from the time of his arrival in Chicago to the final chapters of "The Love Affairs," which were his last work. But it can be safely divided into two periods of six years each, with the turning point at the publication of his little books of verse and tales in the year 1889. Nearly all that he wrote previous to that year was marked by his association with his kind; that which he wrote subsequently was saturated with his closer association with books. About all the preparation he needed for his daily "wood-sawing" was a hurried glance through the local papers and his favorite exchanges, among which the New York Sun held first place, with the others unplaced. He insisted that the exchange editor should send to his desk daily a dozen or more small country sheets from the most out of the way places—papers that recorded the painting of John Doe's front fence or that Seth Smith laid an egg on the editor's table with a breezy "come again, Seth, the Lord loveth a cheerful liar." When Field had accumulated enough of these items to suit his humor, he would paraphrase them, and, substituting the names of local or national celebrities, as the incongruity tickled his fancy, he would print them in his column under the heading of local, social, literary, or industrial notes, as the case might be. He seldom changed the form of these borrowed paragraphs materially, for he held most shrewdly that no humorist could improve upon the unconscious humor of the truly rural scribe. Field never outgrew the enjoyment and employment of this distinctively American appreciation of humor. As late as October 29th, 1895, "The Love Affairs" had to wait while he regaled the readers of the Chicago Record with his own brand of "Crop Reports from East Minonk," of which the following will serve as specimens:

These solemnly exaggerated crop notes were strung out to the extent of over half a column. Some will question the wit of such fantastic extravagance, but Field had early learned the truth of Puck's exclamation: "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" He knew that there was absolutely no bounds to the gullibility of mankind, and he felt it a part of his mission to cater to it to the top of its bent. One of his most successful impositions was international in its scope. On September 13th, 1886, the following paragraph, based on the current European news of the day, appeared in his column:

Now it must be confessed that this bears a sufficient air of verisimilitude to deceive the casual reader. It is as perfect a specimen of the pure invention which Field delighted to deck out in the form of truth with facts and the names of real personages as he ever wrote. In that year not only Englishmen, but other foreigners, were investing in American real estate. James S. Norton was indeed a well-known attorney of Chicago, as he deserved to be for his wit and professional ability. He was on such friendly terms with Field that the latter thought nothing of taking any liberty he pleased with his name whenever it served to lend credibility to an otherwise unconvincing narrative. In subsequent paragraphs Field answered fictitious inquiries as to Mr. Norton's reality by giving his actual address, with the result that Mr. Norton was pestered with correspondence from all over the union offering opportunities to invest Prince Alexander's funds.

But the success of this hoax was not confined to the American side of the Atlantic, as the following paragraph from London Truth shortly after proves:

I gave some particulars a few weeks ago of the large amount of property which had been extracted from Bulgaria by Prince Alexander, who arrived at Sofia penniless, except for a sum of money which was advanced to him by the late Emperor of Russia. It is now asserted by the American papers that Prince Alexander has made considerable purchases under an assumed name (Alexander Marie Wilhelm Ludwig Maraschkoff) of real estate in Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, and Omaha, and that he is part owner of one of the largest sheep ranches in New Mexico. The Prince's property in America is under the charge of Colonel Norton, a well-known attorney of Chicago. Prince Alexander must be possessed of a true Yankee cuteness if he managed to squeeze the "pile" for these investments out of Bulgaria in addition to the £70,000 to which I referred recently. The Russian papers have accused him of dabbling in stock exchange speculations, and if disposed for such business, his position must have given him some excellent opportunities of making highly profitable bargains.

Thus was Prince Alexander convicted of having burglarized Bulgaria upon an invention which should not have deceived Mr. Labouchere. How that ostentatiously manufactured alias ever imposed on Truth passes comprehension. Is it any wonder that at one of our numerous mid-day lunches "Colonel" Norton fired the following rhyming retort at Field?—

The deep and abiding interest Field felt in the fortunes of Prince Alexander may be inferred from his exclamation, "When Stofsky meets Etrovitch, then comes the tug of Servo-Bulgarian war!"

He took no end of pleasure in starting discussions over the authorship of verses and sayings by wilfully attributing them to persons whose mere name in such connection conveyed the sense of humorous impossibility, and he thoroughly enjoyed such suggestions being taken seriously. Once having started the ball of doubt rolling he never let it stop for want of some neat strokes of his cunning pen. Several noteworthy instances of this form of literary diversion or perversion occur to me. There never was any occasion to doubt the authorship of "The Lost Sheep," which won for Sally Pratt McLean wide popular recognition a decade and a half ago. Its first stanza will recall it to the memory of all:

The very notoriety of the authorship of these lines merely served as an incentive for Field to print the following paragraph calling it in question:

Miss Sally McLean, author of "Cape Cod Folks," claims to have written the dialect poem, "Massa of de Sheep Fold," which the New York Sun pronounces a poetic masterpiece. We dislike to contradict Miss McLean, but candor compels us to say that we have reason to believe that she is not the author of the stanzas in question. According to the best of our recollection, this poem was dashed off in the wine-room of the Gault House, at Louisville, Ky., by Colonel John A. Joyce, from ten to twenty years ago. Joyce was in the midst of a party of convivial friends. After several cases of champagne had been tossed down, a member of the party said to Colonel Joyce, "Come, old fellow, give us an extempore poem." As Colonel Joyce had not utilized his muse for at least twenty minutes, he cordially assented to the proposition, and while the waiter was bringing a fresh supply of wine Colonel Joyce dashed off the dialect poem so highly praised by the New York Sun. We are amazed that he has laid no claim to its authorship since its revival. Unfortunately, all the gentlemen who were present at the time he dashed off the poem are dead, or there would be no trouble in substantiating his claims to its authorship. We distinctly remember he wrote it the same evening he dashed off the pretty poem so violently claimed by, and so generally accredited to, Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

This was written in February, 1885, and though it failed of its ostensible aim of discrediting Miss McLean's authorship of "The Lost Sheep," it succeeded in rekindling throughout the exchanges the smouldering fires of the dispute Field had himself started over that of Ella Wheeler Wilcox's "Solitude," the relevant verse of which runs:

From the day "Solitude" appeared in Miss Wheeler's "Poems of Passion" in 1883, and so long as Field lived, he never ceased to fan this controversy into renewed life, more often than not by assuming a tone of indignation that there should be any question over it, as in the following recurrence to the subject in July, 1885:

And yet whenever his stock of subjects for comment or raillery ran low he would write a letter to himself, asking the address of Colonel John A. Joyce, the author of "Love and Laughter," and manage in his answer to open up the whole controversy afresh. I suppose that to this day there are thousands of good people in the United States whose innocence has been abused by Field's superserviceable defence of Mrs. Wilcox's title to "Laugh and the World Laughs with You." It was delicious fooling to him and to those of us who were on the inside, but I question if Mrs. Wilcox ever appreciated its humorous aspect.

Speaking of his practice of getting public attention for his own compositions through a letter of his own "To the Editor," the following affords a good example of his ingenious method, with his reply:

It is needless to say that the public at large could throw no light on the composition of this imitation of Dr. Watts with which Field was not already possessed, since both poem and "Melissa Mayfield" were creations of Field's fancy.

One of the most characteristic examples of the pains he would take to palm off a composition of his own upon some innocent and unsuspecting public man appeared in the Morning News on January 22d, 1887. It was nothing short of an attempt to father upon the late Judge Thomas M. Cooley the authorship of half a dozen bits of verse of varying styles and degrees of excellence. He professed to have received from Jasper Eastman, a prominent citizen of Adrian, Mich., twenty-eight poems written by Judge Cooley, "the venerable and learned jurist, recently appointed receiver of the Wabash Railroad." These were said to have appeared in the Ann Arbor Daily News when it was conducted by the judge's most intimate friend, between the years 1853 and 1861. Field anticipated public incredulity by saying that "people who knew him to be a severe moralist and a profound scholar will laugh you to scorn if you try to make them believe Cooley ever condescended to express his fancies in verse." Then he went on to describe the judge, at the time of writing the verse, as "a long, awkward boy, with big features, moony eyes, a shock of coarse hair, and the merest shadow of a mustache," in proof of which description he presented a picture of the young man, declared to be from a daguerrotype in the possession of Mr. Eastman. The first "specimen gem" was said to be a paraphrase from Theocritus, entitled "Mortality":