Volume 2 - Chapter 9. His "Auto-Analysis"

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_ VOLUME II CHAPTER IX. HIS "AUTO-ANALYSIS"

In the introduction I have said that if Eugene Field had only written his autobiography, as was once his intention, it would probably have been one of the greatest works of fiction by an American. Early in his career he was the victim of that craze that covets the signatures and manuscript sentiments of persons who have achieved distinction, which later he did so much to foster by precept and practice. He was an inveterate autograph-hunter, and toward the close of his life he paid the penalty of harping on the joys of the collector by the receipt of a perfect avalanche of requests for autographs and extracts from his poems in his own handwriting. The nature of his most popular verses also excited widespread curiosity as to the life, habits, and views of the author of "Little Boy Blue" and "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod." The importunities of this last class of admirers became so numerous that during the winter of 1894 he wrote and had printed what he called his "Auto-Analysis." "I give these facts, confessions, and observations," wrote he, "for the information of those who, for one reason or another, are applying constantly to me for biographical data concerning myself." Such was its author's humor, that behind almost every fact in this "Auto-Analysis" lurks either an error or a hoax. Its confessions are half-truths, and its whimsical observations are purposely designed to lead the reader to false conclusions. And withal the whole document is written with the ingeniousness of a mind without guile, which was one of Field's most highly developed literary accomplishments. No study of Field's character and methods would be complete without giving this very "human document":

AN AUTO-ANALYSIS

I was born in St. Louis, Mo., September 3d, 1850, the second and oldest surviving son of Roswell Martin and Frances (Reed) Field, both natives of Windham County, Vt. Upon the death of my mother (1856), I was put in the care of my (paternal) cousin, Miss Mary Field French, at Amherst, Mass.

In 1865 I entered the private school of Rev. James Tufts, Monson, Mass., and there fitted for Williams College, which institution I entered as a freshman in 1868. Upon my father's death, in 1869, I entered the sophomore class of Knox College, Galesburg, Ill., my guardian, John W. Burgess, now of Columbia College, being then a professor in that institution. But in 1870 I went to Columbia, Mo., and entered the State University there, and completed my junior year with my brother. In 1872 I visited Europe, spending six months and my patrimony in France, Italy, Ireland, and England. In May, 1873, I became a reporter on the St. Louis Evening Journal. In October of that year I married Miss Julia Sutherland Comstock (born in Chenango County, N.Y.), of St. Joseph, Mo., at that time a girl of sixteen. We have had eight children--three daughters and five sons.

Ill-health compelled me to visit Europe in 1889; there I remained fourteen months, that time being divided between England, Germany, Holland, and Belgium. My residence at present is in Buena Park, a north-shore suburb of Chicago.

My newspaper connections have been as follows: 1875-76, city editor of the St. Joseph (Mo.) Gazette; 1876-80, editorial writer on the St. Louis Journal and St. Louis Times-Journal; 1880-81, managing editor of the Kansas City Times; 1881-83, managing editor of the Denver Tribune. Since 1883 I have been a contributor to the Chicago Record (formerly Morning News).

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; meanwhile (1883-89) I had labored diligently at writing short stories and tales. Most of these I revised half a dozen times. One, "The Were-Wolf," as yet unpublished, I have rewritten eight times during the last eight years.

My publications have been, chronologically, as follows:

1. "The Tribune Primer," Denver, 1882. (Out of print, very scarce.) ("The Model Primer," illustrated by Hoppin, Treadway, Brooklyn, 1882. A pirate edition.)

2. "Culture's Garland," Ticknor, Boston, 1887. (Out of print.) "A Little Book of Western Verse," Chicago, 1889. (Large paper, privately printed, and limited.) "A Little Book of Profitable Tales," Chicago, 1889. (Large paper, privately printed, and limited.)

3. "A Little Book of Western Verse," Scribners, New York, 1890.

4. "A Little Book of Profitable Tales," Scribners, New York, 1890.

5. "With Trumpet and Drum," Scribners, New York, 1892.

6. "Second Book of Verse," Scribners, New York, 1893.

7. "Echoes from the Sabine Farm" (translations of Horace), McClurg, Chicago, 1893. (In collaboration with my brother, Roswell Martin Field.)

8. Introduction to Stone's "First Editions of American Authors," Cambridge, 1893.

9. "The Holy Cross and Other Tales," Stone & Kimball, Cambridge, 1893.

I have a miscellaneous collection of books, numbering 3,500, and I am fond of the quaint and curious in every line. I am very fond of dogs, birds, and all small pets--a passion not approved by my wife.

My favorite flower is the carnation, and I adore dolls.

My favorite hymn is "Bounding Billows."

My favorites in fiction are Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," "Don Quixote," and "Pilgrim's Progress."

I greatly love Hans Andersen's "Tales," and I am deeply interested in folk-lore and fairy-tales. I believe in ghosts, in witches, and in fairies.

I should like to own a big astronomical telescope and a twenty-four-tune music-box.

My heroes in history are Martin Luther, Mademoiselle Lamballe, Abraham Lincoln; my favorite poems are Koerner's "Battle Prayer," Wordsworth's "We are Seven," Newman's "Lead, Kindly Light," Luther's "Hymn," Schiller's "The Diver," Horace's "Fons Bandusiae," and Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night." I dislike Dante and Byron. I should like to have known Jeremiah, the prophet, old man Poggio, Walter Scott, Bonaparte, Hawthorne, Mademoiselle Sontag, Sir John Herschel, Hans Andersen.

My favorite actor is Henry Irving; actress, Mademoiselle Modjeska.

I dislike "politics," so called.

I should like to have the privilege of voting extended to women.

I favor a system of pensions for noble services in literature, art, science, etc. I approve of compulsory education.

If I had my way, I should make the abuse of horses, dogs, and cattle, a penal offence; I should abolish all dog laws and dog catchers, and I would punish severely everybody who caught and caged birds.

I dislike all exercise, and play all games indifferently.

I love to read in bed.

I believe in churches and schools; I hate wars, armies, soldiers, guns, and fireworks.

I like music (limited).

I have been a great theatre-goer.

I enjoy the society of doctors and clergymen.

My favorite color is red.

I do not care particularly for sculpture or for paintings; I try not to become interested in them, for the reason that if I were to cultivate a taste for them I should presently become hopelessly bankrupt.

I am extravagantly fond of perfumes.

I am a poor diner, and I drink no wine or spirits of any kind; I do not smoke tobacco.

I dislike crowds, and I abominate functions.

I am six feet in height, am of spare build, weigh 160 pounds, and have shocking taste in dress.

But I like to have well-dressed people about me.

My eyes are blue, my complexion pale, my face is shaven, and I incline to baldness.

It is only when I look and see how young, and fair, and sweet my wife is that I have a good opinion of myself.

I am fond of companionship of women, and I have no unconquerable prejudice against feminine beauty. I recall with pride that in twenty-two years of active journalism I have always written in reverential praise of womankind.

I favor early marriage.

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. Even the enumeration of his publications is amazingly inaccurate for a bibliomaniac's reply to the inquiries of his own guild. Francis Wilson's sumptuous edition of "Echoes from the Sabine Farm" preceded that of McClurg, Chicago, 1893, by more than two years, and a limited edition of the "Second Book of Verse" was published privately by Melville E. Stone, Chicago, 1892, more than a year before it was published by the Scribners, as stated in Field's chronological order.

Under ordinary circumstances such lapses in a list of a writer's published works would be a venial fault, and not worth mentioning; but in the case of one who set such store on "special large paper limited editions," they would be inexplicable--if that writer had not been Eugene Field. With him they were simply a notification to his intimates that the whole thing was not to be taken as a serious bibliology of his works or index of his character.

So far as the cyclopedic narrative of his life is concerned, it is intended to be fairly accurate; but Field's notion that he suddenly began to write verse very frequently in 1889 runs contrary to the record in Denver and Chicago from 1881 to 1888, inclusive. The intentional waggery of misinformation masquerading as truth begins where Field leaves the recital of his life to give what purports to be an analysis of his character and sentiments. Here he lets his "winged fancy loose." He mingles fact with his fiction even as

The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
In deepest consequence.

Not that Field had any deep design to betray anyone lurking behind the fictitious and facetious candor of this apparent self-revelation. This "Auto-Analysis" was written in response to the almost innumerable questions which, about that time, were being propounded in the newspapers and on the leaves of sentiment autograph albums. Hence the forms of Field's replies. For instance, to "What is your favorite flower?" he answered, "My favorite flower is the carnation;"--and with utter irrelevancy, added--"and I adore dolls!" Now Field was not particularly fond of flowers, and if he had a favorite, it was the rose, the pansy, or the violet.

Of his three favorites in fiction "Don Quixote" is the only one to which he gave a second thought, although early familiarity with "Pilgrim's Progress" undoubtedly left its impression on his retentive memory. A more truthful answer would have been "The New England Primer," "The Complete Angler," and Father Prout. To another inquirer he said, "My favorite authors of prose are Cervantes, Hawthorne, Andersen, Sir Thomas Mallory," a very much more accurate statement. His love for the fairy-tales of Andersen and Grimm survived from the knee of his little Mormon nurse to the last tale he wrote; but his belief in ghosts, witches, and fairies was all in his literary mind's eye. He took the same delight in employing them in his works as he did flim-flams, flub-dubs, and catamarans. They were a part of his stock in trade, just as wooden animals were of Caleb Plummer's toy-shop. 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. This was a springe to catch the "wimmen folks, God bless them." He seldom took the trouble to vote himself, and ridiculed the idea of women demeaning themselves to enter the dirty strife for public office--as he regarded the beginning, middle, and end of all politics.

Field had the strongest possible aversion to violence or brutality of any kind. He considered capital punishment as barbarous. He was not opposed to it because he regarded it as inaffective as a punishment or a deterrent of crime, but simply because taking life, and especially human life, was abhorrent to him. Hence his "hatred" of wars, armies, soldiers, and guns.

Something more than a paragraph is needed to explain that word "limited" after Field's declaration "I like music." "Like" is a feeble word in this connection, and "limited" by his sense of the absurdity of reducing its enjoyment to an intellectual pursuit. He loved the music that appealed to the heart, the mind, the emotions through the ear. But for years he scoffed at and ridiculed the attempt to convey by the "harmony of sweet sounds" or alternating discords impressions or sentiments of things than can only be comprehended through the eye. He loved both vocal and instrumental music, and was a constant attendant on opera and concert.

I have a unique documentary proof of Eugene Field's taste in music. Written on the folded back of a sheet of foolscap, which, on its face, preserves his original manuscript of "A Noon Tide Hymn," are three suggestions for the "request programmes" with which Theodore Thomas used to vary his concerts in the old Exposition Building in Chicago. Field seldom missed these concerts, and he always made a point of forwarding his choice for the next "request night." This one was as follows:

 
  1. Invitation to Dance       Weber
  2. Spring Song               Mendelssohn
  3. Largho                    Handel
  4. Rhapsody Hongroise(2)     Liszt
  1. Vorspiel                  Lohengrin
  2. Waltz movement            Volkman
  3. Serenade                  Schubert
  4. Ride of Walkures
  1. Sylvia
  2.
  3. Ave Maria                 Bach-Gounod
     Introd. }
  4. Nap.    }                 Wagner.
     March.  }

The only limitation to a liking for music such as is revealed here is that it be good music. Mr. Thomas in those days scarcely ever made up a programme without including in it one of Field's favorites.

Referring to music recalls the fact that Field once seriously contemplated writing a comic opera; and he only failed to carry out his purpose because he could not get the dialogue to suit him; moreover, he realized that he had but a limited grasp of the dramatic action and situations necessary in such work. How completely he had this work mapped out may be judged from the following memoranda, the manuscript of which is before me:

THE BUCCANEERS

Fernando, the Begum--basso.
Paquita, his daughter--soprano.
Christopher, the buccaneer--baritone.
Mercedes, his sister--contralto.
Carlos, a Peruvian lieutenant--tenor.
Gonzales, Begum of Ohnos.
Buccaneers, maidens, ballet, servants, etc.

Time of action--three days, 1860.

Scenes: First and third acts, in garden adjoining Fernando's mansion, suburbs of Piura.

Second act, on board the ship "Perdita," port of Payla.

FIRST ACT

Fernando, the Begum, is about to give a moonlight fete in honor of his daughter's betrothal to Carlos. The young people are not particularly overjoyed at the prospect of their union, Carlos having given his heart, some years previously, to Mercedes, who is now married to a captain in the Chilian army, and Paquita having fallen desperately in love with a handsome young stranger whom she has, upon several occasions, met upon the sea-shore. This stranger is Christopher, who, for his participation in a petty revolt, has been declared an outlaw, and has taken to the life of a buccaneer, joined by numerous lively companions. Overcome by love of Paquita, Christopher manages to get himself and his band introduced at the fete, and in the midst of the festivities the young women are seized and carried aboard the buccaneers' ship.

SECOND ACT

Carlos, who has been taken prisoner with the girls, discovers that Mercedes, the buccaneer captain's sister, is his old fiancee, and is now a widow; explanations ensue and a reconciliation takes place. While debating how they shall advise Paquita of the truth, they overhear a conversation between Christopher and Paquita. Paquita declares that if Christopher really loves her, he will come and woo her as an honorable man should. Christopher is about to release the captives, when Mercedes suggests, that to ensure the safety of the buccaneers Carlos be detained as a hostage. Carlos indorses the suggestion. The young ladies are permitted to go ashore.

THIRD ACT

While Fernando storms over the retention of Carlos, Paquita sadly broods over her love for Christopher. As she soliloquizes at her window Christopher appears. He cannot remain away from the object of his love. A scene ensues between the two. In the meantime Carlos and Mercedes have secretly stolen from the ship and been married by the village priest. They appear while Paquita and Christopher are conversing. (Quartette.) Fernando hears the commotion. (Quintette.) Christopher is discovered and apprehended. The buccaneers appear to rescue their long-absent captain. Explanations. Fernando informs the buccaneers that under the amnesty act of the king they are no longer outlaws. Christopher's estates await him. Carlos and Mercedes appear. Fernando gives Paquita to Christopher.

It will be perceived that the spirited action of this "argument," as Field styled it, practically ends with the first act, a fault which the veriest neophyte in the art of libretto writing knows is fatal. But the most interesting feature of this opera in embryo is the list of songs which Field had planned for it. They were:

SONGS

"Begum of Piura."
"The Crazy Quilt."
"My Life is One Continuous Lie."
"By Day Upon the Billowy Sea."
Lullaby--"Do Not Wake the Baby."
"The Good Old Way."
Barcarolle--"I've Come Across the Water."

TRIO

"He Really Does Not Seem to Know."

DUETS

"My Love Was Fair."
"To the Sea, O Love!"
"O Dearest Love, Through all the Years."
"Into God's Hands."

FEMALE CHORUS

"Down the Forest Pathway."

MALE CHORUS

"From the Farms."
"We are a Band of Gallant Tars."

MIXED CHORUS

"Hail, O Happy Nuptial Day!"
"Ah!"
"Where Turtle Doves are Cooing."
"The Spanish Dance."
"They're Delightful."
"Oh, Can Such Wonders Be?"
"How Sweet to Fly."
"He Really Must Be Ailing."
"Adieu, Sweet Love."

QUARTETTE

"The Old Love."
"The Parent's Voice."

QUINTETTE

"Oh, What Were Life."

Field always insisted that Messrs. Smith and DeKoven got the title, if not some of the inspiration, for their opera "The Begum" from the argument of his "Buccaneer," the scheme of which he showed to Harry B. Smith, then a member of the Morning News staff. But the reason for his failure to carry out his operatic venture is obvious in the argument itself. It is intrinsically deficient in the elements of surprise, novel situations, and dramatic action necessary for stage effect. Field would have made it rich in lyrics, but as has been often proved, lyrics alone cannot make a successful opera. He quickly appreciated this and abandoned the work with "Oh, What Were Life?"

There never was any doubt of Field's "shocking taste in dress," and he never sought to cultivate or reform it. But what will those who knew him say of the statement, "I am a poor diner, and I drink no wine or spirits of any kind; I do not smoke tobacco." Field was, by the common verdict of those who had the pleasure of meeting him at any dinner company, the best diner-out they ever knew. He had a keen enjoyment of the pleasures of the table, and but for that wretched stomach would have been as much of an authority on eating as he came to be on collecting. He loved to discuss the art of dining, although he was forbidden to practise it heartily.

His favorite gift-books "appertained" to the art of cooking, in one of which (Hazlitt's "Old Cooking Books") I find inscribed to Mrs. Thompson:

Big bokes with nony love I send
To those by whom I set no store--
But see, I give to you, sweete friend,
A lyttel boke and love gallore!

E.F.

Field gave up drinking wine and all kinds of alcoholic liquors, as has been related, before coming to Chicago. And yet I have seen him sniff the bouquet of some rare wine or liquor with the quivering nostril of a connoisseur, but--and this was the marvel to his associates--without "the ruby," as Dick Swiveller termed it, being the least temptation to his lips.

Eugene Field "not smoke tobacco"! He was one of the most inveterate smokers in America. If he had been given his choice between giving up pie or tobacco, I verily believe he would have thrown away the pie and stuck to the soothing weed out of which he sucked daily and hourly comfort. He had acquired the Yankee habit of ruminating with a small quid of tobacco in his cheek when a good cigar was not between his teeth. He consumed not only all the cigars that fell to his share in a profession where cigars are the invariable concomitants of every chance meeting, every social gathering, and every public function, but also those that in the usual round of our life fell to me. And I was not his only abetter in despoiling the Egyptians who thought to work the freedom of the press with a few passes of the narcotic weed. It is a curious fact that Field's pretended aversion to tobacco persists through all his writings, from the Denver Primer sketches down. In those we find him attributing the authorship of this warning to children to S.J. Tilden:

Oh, children, you Must never chew
Tobacco--it is Awful!
The Juice will Quickly make you Sick
If once you get your Maw Full.

He never ceased having discussions with himself over the wording or authorship of the famous lines attributed to "Little Robert Reed," as in the following:

Lo and behold! This is the way the St. Louis Republican mangles an old, quaint, beautiful, and popular poem:

"I would not use tobacco," said
Little Robert Reed.
"I would not use tobacco, for
'Tis a nasty weed."

We protest against this brutal mutilization of a grand old classic. The quatrain should read, as in the original, thus:

"I'll never chew tobacco--no,
It is a filthy weed;
I'll never put it in my mouth,"
Said little Robert Reed.

By the way, who was the author of the poem of which the foregoing is the first stanza?

I need scarcely refer the reader to Field's confession in his letter of December 12th, 1891, to Mr. Gray of his struggle to give up the use of tobacco, and to the photograph of Field at work, to indicate that his "I do not smoke tobacco" was but one more of those harmless hoaxes he took such pains to carry through at the expense of an ever-credulous public.

Only one more point in regard to the "Auto-Analysis," and I am through with that whimsical concoction; and that is in reference to his attitude toward children. Knowing full well that his inquiring admirers expected him to rhapsodize upon his love for children, he deliberately set about disappointing them with:

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.

Of course this was received with a chorus of incredulity--as it was intended it should be. The autograph hunters who had formed their conception of Field from his lullabies, his "Little Boy Blue," his "Krinken," his "Wynken," and his score of other poems, all proving his mastery over the strings that vibrate with the rocking of the cradle, at once pronounced this the most delicious hit of their author's humor. They knew that such songs could only emanate from a man whose heart overflowed with the warmest sentiment to all childhood. They were convinced that Field must love all children, and nothing he could say could change their conviction.

And yet those words, "I do not love all children," are the truest six words in his "Auto-Analysis." Field not only did not love all children, he truly loved very few children. His own children were very dear to him, both those that came in his early wedded life and the two who were born to him after his return from Europe. They were a never-failing source of interest and enjoyment to him. They were the human documents he loved best to study. They wore no masks to conceal their emotions, and he hated masks--on others. But above all, they were bone of his bone and flesh of his love, the pledges and hostages he had given to fortune, and they were the children of her to whom he had vowed eternal faith "when their two lives were young." But Field's fondness for other people's children was like that of an entomologist for bugs--for purposes of study, dissection, and classification. He delighted to see the varying shades of emotion chase each other across their little tell-tale faces. This man, who could not have set his foot on a worm, who shrank from the sight of pain inflicted on any dumb animal, took almost as much delight in making a child cry, that he might study its little face in dismay or fright, as in making it laugh, that he might observe its method of manifesting pleasure. He read the construction of child-nature in the unreserved expressions of childish emotions as he provoked or evoked them. Thus he grew to know children as few have known them, and his exceptional gift of writing for and about them was the result of deliberate study rather than of personal sympathy. That his own children were sometimes a trial to their "devoted mother" and "fond father," as he described their parents, may be inferred from the facts which were the basis of such bits of confidence between Field and the readers of his "Sharps and Flats" as this:

An honest old gentleman living on the North Side has two young sons, who, like too many sons of honest gentlemen, are given much to boyish worldliness, such as playing "hookey" and manufacturing yarns to keep themselves from under the maternal slipper. The other day the two boys started out, ostensibly for school, but as they did not come home to dinner and were not seen by their little sister about the school-grounds, the awful suspicion entered the good mother's mind that they had again been truant. Along about dark one of them, the younger, came in blue with cold.

"Why, Pinny," said the mother, "where have you been?"

"Oh, down by the lake, getting warm," said the youngster.

"Down by the lake?"

"Yes; we were cold, and we saw the smoke coming up from the lake, so we went down there to get warm. And," he continued, in a propitiatory tone, "we thought we'd catch some fish for supper."

"Fish?" exclaimed the mother.

"Yes; Melvin's comin' with the fish."

At this juncture the elder boy walked in triumphantly holding up a dried herring tied to the end of a yard or so of twine.

That night, when the honest old gentleman reached home, the young men got a warming without having to go to the steaming lake.

But all of Field's keen analytical comprehension of child-nature is purified and exalted in his writings by his unalloyed reverence for motherhood. The child is the theme, but it is almost always for the mother he sings. Even here, however, he could not always resist the temptation to relieve sentiment with a piece of humor, as in the following clever congratulations to a friend on the birth of a son:

A handsome and lively, though wee body
Is the son of my friend, Mrs. Peabody--
It affords me great joy
That her son is a boy,
And not an absurd little she-body.

More than thirty years since the late Professor John Fiske, when asked to write out an account of his daily life for publication, did very much the same thing as Field palmed off on his correspondents in his "Auto-Analysis." He gave some "sure-enough" facts as to his birth, education, and manner of life, but mixed in with the truth such a medley of grotesque falsehoods about his habits of study, eating, and drinking, that he supposed the whole farrago would be thrown into the waste-paper basket. For thirty years he lived in the serene belief that such had been its fate. But one day he was unpleasantly reminded of his mistake. The old manuscript had been resurrected "from the worm-hole of forgotten years," and he was published widecast as a glutton, not only of work, but in eating, drinking, and sleeping. A man who defied all the laws of hygiene, of moderation, and of rest. And when he died, from heat prostration--an untimely death, that robbed his country of its greatest student mind, while yet his energies were boundless--that thoughtless story of thirty years ago was revived, to justify the "I told you sos" of the public press.

His "Auto-Analysis" was not the only hoax of this description in which Eugene Field indulged. In 1893 Hamlin Garland contributed an article to McClure's Magazine, entitled, "A Dialogue Between Eugene Field and Hamlin Garland." It purported to be an interview which the latter had with the former in his "attic study" in Chicago. Field was represented surrounded by "a museum of old books, rare books, Indian relics, dramatic souvenirs, and bric-a-brac indescribable." The result is a most remarkable jumble of misinformation and fiction, with which Field plied Garland to the top of his bent. What Garland thought were bottom facts were really sky-scraping fiction. As if this were not enough, Garland made Field talk in an approach to an illiterate dialect, such as he never employed and cordially detested. Garland represented Field as discussing social and economic problems--why not the "musical glasses," deponent saith not. The really great and characteristic point in the dialogue was where something Field said caused "Garland to lay down his pad and lift his big fist in the air like a maul. His enthusiasm rose like a flood." The whole interview was a serious piece of business to the serious-minded realist. To Field, at the time, and for months after, it was a huge and memorable joke.

But there are thousands who accept the Eugene Field of the "Auto-Analysis" and of the Garland dialogue as the true presentment of the man, when the real man is only laughing in his sleeve at the reader and the interviewer in both of them. _

Read next: Volume 2: Chapter 10. Last Years

Read previous: Volume 2: Chapter 8. Political Relations

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