LITMIR.BIZ

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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."

      THE PEAR

      (In English Equivalent.)

      A little pear in a garden grue

      A little pear of emerald 'ue

      Kissed bi the sun and bathed bi the due,

      It grew.

      One da, going that garden thro'

      That little pear kame to the fue

      Of Thomas Smith and 'is sister Sue

      Those tou!

      Up at the pear a klub tha thrue

      Down from the stem on uikh it grue

      Fell the little pear of emerald 'ue

      Peek-a-boo!

      Tom took a bite and Sue took one too

      And then the trouble began to brue

      Trouble the doktors kouldn't subdue

      Too true (paragorik too?).

      Under the turf fare the daisies grue

      They planted Tom and 'is sister Sue

      And their little souls to the angels flue

      Boo 'oo!

      But as to the pear of emerald 'ue

      Kissed bi the sun and bathed bi the due

      I'll add that its mission on earth is thro'

      Adieu.

      Конец

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