are all changed now—and dug up a little 198 pine tree, about as tall as we were, and planted it in a tub. On the night of Christmas Day, just when we were dancing around the tree, making merry and having a high-old-jinks of a time, the way children will, grandma came in and looked at us. ‘Will this popery never cease?’ was all she said, and out she flounced.”

“Yes, that was the old Puritan idea of it. But did live——”

“Now hold on,” he interrupted. “I want to finish. We planted that tree near the corner of Sunset Avenue and Amity Street, and it’s there now, a magnificent tree. Sometime when I’m East I’m going to go up there with my brother and put a tablet on it—‘Pause, busy traveller, and give a thought to the happy days of two Western boys who lived in old New England, and make resolve to render the boyhood near you happier and brighter,’ or something like that.”

“That’s a pretty idea,” Garland agreed. He felt something fine and tender in the man’s voice which was generally hard and dry but wonderfully expressive.

“Now, this sermon I had bound just for the sake of old times. If I didn’t have it right here, I wouldn’t believe I ever wrote such stuff. I tell you, a boy’s a queer combination,” he ended, referring to the book again.

“You’ll see that I signed my name, those days, ‘E. P. Field.’ The ‘P.’ stands for Phillips.

“As I grew old enough to realize it, I was much chagrined to find I had no middle name like the rest of the boys, so I took the name of Phillips. I was a great admirer of Wendell Phillips, am yet, though I’m not a reformer. You’ll see here,”—he pointed at the top of the pages,—“I wrote the word ‘sensual.’ Evidently I was struck with the word, and was seeking a chance to ring it in somewhere, but failed.” They both laughed over the matter while Field put the book back.

“Are you a college man?” asked Garland. “I’ve noticed your deplorable tendency toward the classics.”

“I fitted for college when I was sixteen. My health was bad, or I should have entered right off. I had pretty nearly everything that was going in the way of diseases,” this was said with a comical twist voice, “so I didn’t get to Williams till I was eighteen. My health improved right along, but I’m sorry to say that of the college did not.” He smiled again, a smile that meant a very great deal.

“What happened then?”

“Well, my father died, and I returned West. I went to live with my guardian, Professor Burgess, of Knox College. This college is situated at Galesburg, Illinois. This is the college that has lately conferred A. M. upon me. The Professor’s guardianship was merely nominal, however. I did about as I pleased.

“I next went to the State University 199 at Columbia, Missouri. It was an old slave-holding town, but I liked it. I’ve got a streak of Southern feeling in me.” He said abruptly, “I’m an aristocrat. I’m looking for a Mæcenas. I have mighty little in common with most of the wealthy, but I like the idea of wealth in the abstract.” He failed to make the distinction quite clear, but he went on as if realizing that this might be a thin spot of ice.

“At twenty-one, I came into sixty thousand dollars, and I went to Europe, taking a friend, a young fellow of about my own age, with me. I had a lovely time!” he added, and again the smile conveyed vast meaning.

Garland looked up from his pad.

“You must have had. Did you ‘blow in the whole business’?”

“Pretty near. I swatted the money around. Just think of it!” he exclaimed, warming with the recollection. “A boy of twenty-one, without father or mother, and sixty thousand dollars. Oh, it was a lovely combination! I saw more things and did more things than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio,” he paraphrased, looking at his friend with a strange expression of amusement, and pleasure, and regret. “I had money. I paid it out for experience—it was plenty. Experience was laying around loose.”

“Came home when the money gave out, I reckon?”

“Yes. Came back to St. Louis, and went to work on the ‘Journal,’ I had previously tried to ‘enter journalism’ as I called it then. About the time I was twenty-one, I went to Stilson Hutchins, and told him who I was, and he said:

“‘All right. I’ll give you a chance, but we don’t pay much.’ Of course, I told him pay didn’t matter.

“‘Well!’ he said, ‘go down to the Olympia, and write up the play there to-night,’ I went down, and I brought most of my critical acumen to bear upon an actor by the name of Charley Pope, who was playing Mercutio for Mrs. D. P. Bowers. His wig didn’t fit, and all my best writing centred about that wig. I sent the critique in, blame fine as I thought, with illuminated initial letters, and all that. Oh, it was lovely! and the next morning I was deeply pained and disgusted to find it mutilated,—all that about the wig, the choicest part, was cut out. I thought I’d quit journalism forever. I don’t suppose Hutchins connects Eugene Field with the —— fool that wrote that critique. I don’t myself,” he added with a quick half-smile, lifting again the corner of his solemn mouth. It was like a ripple on a still pool.

“Well, when did you really get into the work?” his friend asked, for he seemed about to go off into another by-path.

“Oh, after I came back from Europe I was busted, and had to go to work. I met Stanley Waterloo about that time, and his talk induced me to go to work for the ‘Journal’ as a 200 reporter. I soon got to be city editor, but I didn’t like it. I liked to have fun with people. I liked to have my fun as I went along. About this time I married the sister of the friend who went with me to Europe, and feeling my new responsibilities, I went up to St. Joseph as city editor.” He mused for a moment in silence. “It was terrific hard work, but I wouldn’t give a good deal for those two years.”

“Have you ever drawn upon them for material?” asked Garland with a novelist’s perception of their possibilities.

“No, but I may some time. Things have to get pretty misty before I can use ’em. I’m not like you fellows,” he said, referring to the realists. “I got thirty dollars a week; wasn’t that princely?”

“Nothing else, but you earned it, no doubt.”

“Earned it? Why, Great Scott! I did the whole business except turning the handle of the press.

“Well, in 1877 I was called back to the ‘Journal’ in St. Louis, as editorial writer of paragraphs. That was the beginning of my own line of work.”

“When did you do your first work in verse?” asked Garland.

The tall man brought his feet down to the floor with a bang and thrust his hand out toward his friend. “There! I’m glad you said verse. For heaven’s sake don’t ever say I call my stuff poetry. I never do. I don’t pass judgment on it like that.” After a little he resumed. “The first that