Slason Thompson

“ I do not love all children.
I have tried to analyze my feelings toward children, and I think I discover that I love them, in so far as I can make pets of them.
I believe that, if I live, I shall do my best literary work when I am a grandfather.
So cleverly are truth and fiction dove-tailed together in this "Auto-Analysis" that it would puzzle a jury of his intimate friends to say where Field was attempting to state facts and where he was laughing in his sleeve. ”

“ He knew all that was to be known of the delightful art of the binder, but his most cherished specimen would always be one where a master had made some slip in tooling. For oddities and rarities in all the range of the collector's fever, from books and prints to pewter mugs and rag dolls, his mania was omnivorous and catholic. And strange as it may seem, with his mania was mingled a shrewd appreciation of the commercial side of it all. This is what Mr. Ralph means when he says Field was no ignoramus in his madness. ”

“ Miss Abbott is a lady for whom we have had for a number of years—ever since her debut as a public singer—the highest esteem. She is one of the most conscientious of women in her private walk, conscientious in every relationship and duty and practice that go to make the sum of her daily life. This conscientiousness, involving patience, humility, perseverance, and integrity, has been, we think, the real secret of her success. And no one who has watched her steady rise from poverty to affluence, and from obscurity to fame, will deny the proposition that the woman is genuinely successful ”

“ To his new home, which he christened "The Sabine Farm," were moved all the accumulated treasures of his mania for curiosities and antiques. "I do not think he thought much of art," wrote Edward Everett Hale in his introduction to "A Little Book of Profitable Tales"; and the motley, albeit fascinating, aggregation of rare and outlandish chattels in Eugene Field's house justified that conclusion. Of what the world calls art, whether the creation of the brush, the chisel, the loom, or the potter's oven, he had the most rudimentary conception. ”

“ Field announced that he preferred to be enrolled as a Democrat, and to accept his share in all the obloquy which he laid at the Democratic door rather than affiliate with the Mugwump bolters. He said that he would rather be classed as a thoroughbred donkey than be feared as a mule without pride of pedigree or hope of posterity, whose only virtue lay in its heels. Then he swathed himself in a shroud of newspapers and laid himself out in the centre of the floor in the rôle of a martyred Republican. He bade the rest of us form a procession and walk over him, taking care not to step on the corpse. ”

“ Well, Chicago beat St. Louis to-day and, the gods be glorified! Kansas City beat Detroit! as for New York, Boston whipped her day before yesterday and Washington shut her out to-day! now if Detroit will only lose a game or two to St. Louis! I more than half suspect that your home folk will think that you and I are base-ball mad. ”

“ I never knew another bowler so quick to discover the tricks and peculiarities of an alley or so crafty to master and profit by them. Whenever the hour was ripe for a game Field would send the boy with some such taunt or challenge as is shown in the accompanying fac-simile.
I shall never forget, nor would an elaborately colored score by Field permit me, if I would, his chagrin over the result of one of these matches. He and Willis Hawkins had challenged Cowen and me to a tourney, as he called it, of five strings. ”

“ Field prepared the menu with infinite care, and to the carnal eye it read like a dinner fit for the gods. But in reality it consisted of typical New England dishes, in honor of our New England guest, masquerading in the gay and frivolous lingo of the French capital. Codfish-balls, with huge rashers of bacon, boiled corned beef and cabbage, pork and beans, with slices of soggy Boston brown-bread, corn-bread and doughnuts, the whole topped off with apple-pie and cheese, were served with difficult gravity by the waiters to an appreciative company. ”

“ With the joyousness of a boy about to play a prank, he chased down-stairs at the noon hour when he knew Miss Jeffries was at lunch with Mr. Barrett in the cafe of the Grunewald. Calling a waiter, he sent the huge envelope in to her table. She glanced at it a moment and then gradually drew the package from its envelope, while Field and I stood watching behind the entrance. It spread all over the table as she continued to unfold the enormous sheet, and its rustle attracted the attention of nearly every one in the room. ”

“ I think Field cherished a genuine admiration for Abraham Lincoln, whose whole life, nature, personal appearance, unaffected greatness, manner of speech, and fate appealed to his idea of what "the first American" should be. But strike the names of Newman, Horace, old man Poggio, Walter Scott, and Hans Andersen from the list of his favorites that follow the name of Lincoln, and it gains in truth as it shrinks in length.
Upon the question of extending the right to vote to women, Field wasted no more thought than he did on "Politics," whether so called or not. ”

“ Throughout "Culture's Garland" Field is the unsparing satirist of contemporary humbug and pretence—social, political, and literary—and that perhaps accounts for its failure to achieve an immediate popular success. I, for one, am glad that so late as December, 1893, and after he had tasted the sweets of popular applause, with its attendant royalties, he had the courage to write of it to a friend in Boston, "I am not ashamed of this little book, but, like the boy with the measles, I am sorry for it in spots."
"Culture's Garland" really cleared the way for Field's subsequent literary success. ”

“ Yclept the Waller Lot.
There children play in daytime
And lovers stroll by dark,
For 'tis the goodliest trysting place
In all Buena Park.
Next to owning a homestead, with rolling lawns and groves of old trees and family associations, Field enjoyed having someone else bear the burden of their maintenance for his immediate personal delectation, and the Waller homestead, with its park effects, afforded him that inexpensive pleasure. His windows looked out upon a truly sylvan scene, the gates to which were always invitingly open, southern fashion, to congenial wayfarers. ”

“ Nature smiles once more; the lawns are green, the trees are reviving; the roadsides are beautiful with the grasses, the ferns, and the wild flowers, among which insectivorous life makes cheery music. The rain has arrayed old Mother Earth in a bright new garb.
The month of September is close at hand; the conditions of its coming are favorable. There is fun ahead for all us sentimental people. A beautiful moon is waiting rather impatiently for the clouds to roll by; the moon is always at her best in the full summer-time. ”

“ So Bessie bundled up nice and warm. Then Mary Matilda went out on the porch and launched her two snow-shoes and got into them and harnessed them to her tiny feet.
"Where are you going?" asked Eddie Martin, pausing in his work and leaning his saw against a slab of green maple.
"I am going to take Bessie out for a short walk," replied Mary Matilda.
"Are you not afraid to go alone?" said Eddie Martin. "You know the musquashes are very thick, and this spell of winter weather has made them very hungry and ferocious." ”

“ But one day Field, Ballantyne, and I, from a discussion of the general value of art criticism in a daily newspaper, were led to question whether it conveyed an intelligible impression of the subject, and more particularly of the paintings commented on, to the ordinary reader. The point was raised as to the practicability of artists themselves reproducing any recognizable approach to the original paintings by following Mr. Larned's verbal descriptions. Thereupon we deliberately set about, in a spirit of frolic to be sure, to attempt what we each and all considered a highly improbable feat. ”

“ And then the gas and candles were relit and the punch and sandwiches and apple pie and cheese were served, and with song and story we passed such a night as sinners mark with red letters for saints to envy. If the reader should ever come across Paul du Chaillu, who contributed to the varied pleasures of the occasion, let him inquire of the veracious Paul whether, in all his travels and experiences, he ever knew one man so capable of entertaining a host of wits as Eugene Field proved himself on the eve of New Year, 1891. ”

“ Oh, how red and Vivid the Lightning is! Will the Lightning Strike the Tree? Children, that is a Conundrum; we answer conundrums in our Weekly Edition, but not in our daily.
The next day it was:
The Lightning did not strike the Green Tree. But the Springfield Politicians did. This is Why the Tree is Green.
And then there came what I regard as one of the most telling pieces of political satirical humor ever put into English verse, its literary merit alone justifying its preservation, Field himself considering it worth copying in the presentation volume of his verse written prior to 1887 ”

“ Go forth, little lyrics, and sing to the hearts of men. This beautiful world is full of song, and thy voices may not be heard of all—but sing on, children of ours; sing to the hearts of men, and thy song shall at least swell the universal harmony that bespeaketh God's love and the sweetness of humanity. ”

“ Benjamin Harrison is a good, honest, patriotic man, and we like him. But he never stole second base in all his life and he could not swat Mickey Welch's down curves over the left-field fence. Therefore we say again, as we have said many times before, that much as we revere Benjamin Harrison's purity and amiability, we cannot but accord the tribute of our sincerest admiration, to that paragon of American manhood, Michael J. Kelly. ”

“ How true it is that humanity is ever variable and fickle!
But there was very much less of this sort of thing and of the daily badinage of the paragrapher than in the days of Field's primacy in that line. He was reserving all that was freshest, and sweetest, and most delicate in his fancy for the "Love Affairs."
I spent the summer of 1895 in Evanston, and one night in October, just as the family was thinking of retiring, I was called to the telephone by Field, who asked if we had any pie in the house, for he was coming up to get a slice from the pantry of my Vermont mother-in-law. ”

“ All men, and especially literary men, seem to consider themselves on dress parade in their correspondence, and pose accordingly. Ninety-nine persons out of a hundred are more self-conscious in writing than they are in talking. Even the least conscious seem to imagine that what they put down in black and white is to pass under some censorious eye. The professional writer, whether his reputation be international, like that of a Lowell or a Stevenson, or confined to the circle of his village associates, never appears to pen a line without some affectation. ”

“ New England yearning for a permanent home, a roof-tree that he could call his own, a patch of earth in which he could "slosh around," with no landlord to importune for grudging repairs.
And so Field's life during his last years has to be considered as a struggle with physical exhaustion, fighting off the inevitable reckoning until he could provide himself and his family with a home and leave to his dear ones the means of retaining it, with the opportunities of education for the juniors. ”

“ January 6th, 1894, Saturday evening.
Field kept the promise of this letter, and the memoir of Mrs. Gray then written is a genuine work of love, composed amid "environments," as he wrote, "conducive to the sincerity and the enthusiasm which should characterize such a noble task." Here is his picture of the surroundings, redolent of the incense of sunshine and flowers that fills that favored clime:
A glorious panorama is spread before me—such a picture as the latitude of southern California presents at the time when elsewhere upon this continent of ours the resentment of winter is visited. ”

“ How full of ozone the atmosphere is; how bright the sunshine is, and how blue this noble lake of ours lies under the cloudless sky! It is simply ideal weather. Who does not rejoice in the change from the oppressive heat of last week? Vigor is restored to all. Commerce revives, and humanity is hopeful and cheering again. ”

“ He looked upon Field for many years as a ribald mocker of the conventionalities not only of literature but of life. "Culture's Garland" was an offence to his social instincts and literary tastes. Among all the men with whom Field came in frequent converse, the late lamented General Alexander C. McClurg was the last to succumb to the engaging tormentor. Field's lack of reverence for all earthly things, except womankind, was the barrier between these two. ”

“ Pretty nearly all subjects that interest humanity have engaged his attention. He could no more rest from travel than Ulysses; and he brought to those he associated with all the fruits that faring forth in strange lands could give to a mind singularly alert for education and experience under any and all conditions. His fondness for monologue frequently exposed him to raillery, like the above, in the column where Field daily held a monopoly of table talk. ”

“ Next November the two surviving members of the old guard of three will march, arm in arm, to the polls, and will then and there cast their individual votes for the nominees of the Republican party—it matters not whether they be statesmen or tobacco-signs, so long as they be nominees.
As the blasts do but root a tree more firmly in mother earth, so have the trials to which we Republicans of the Daily News have been subjected for the four years riveted us all the more securely to the faith. ”

“ Later in the winter we will go up to San Francisco and visit Henry Field awhile. I will let you know when we start, and if you can't join us at Kansas City, suppose you come on as soon as you can and join me at San Diego. We go to Los Angeles by the Santa Fe. On receipt of this, telegraph me if you can leave Saturday or Sunday. If you are cramped for finances, what sort of a fix do you suppose I'm in? But we must all live; we cannot afford to die just yet. I went down to dinner for the first time on Thursday; I am feeling pretty brisk. Love to Miss Eva. ”

“ The more Field saw of the Waller lot, the more completely did the old New England hankering after a homestead, with acres instead of square feet of lawn and trees, take possession of him; and the spectre of ten years' rent for inconvenient flats and houses rose in his memory and urged him to buy land and build for himself. ”

“ A city is in the distance; the smoke that curls up therefrom makes dim fantastic figures against the beautiful blue of the sky. There is toil in that place, and the din of busy humanity; but upon this faraway hillside, with the sweetest gifts of Nature about me, I care not for these things. ”

“ I have been with Kate Field all the evening, and we have discussed everything from literature down to Sir Charles Dilke and back again. A mighty smart woman is Kate! My wife returned from St. Louis last Thursday, bringing about fifty of my books with her. They were mostly of the Bohn's Library series, but among them was a set of Boswell's Johnson, Routledge edition of 1859. I want you to have an edition of this kind, and I have sent to New York to see if it can be had (cheap) . I am reading like a race-horse. ”