Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions

had left, consisting mostly of realty valued at about $60,000, had not yet been distributed among the legatees, Eugene and Roswell M. Field and Mary French Field. To the last named

tart any young man, with prudence, regular habits, and a small modicum of business sense, well along in any profession or occupation he might adopt. But it was and would have been a bagate

his father's estate, and of Mrs. Gray. To the memory of the latter, on her death several years since, Eugene contributed a memorial from which I have already quote

gain both Mr. and Mrs. Gray were old friends of my parents; and upon Mr. Gray's accepting the executorship of my father's estate, Mrs. Gray felt, I am pleased to believe, somewhat more than a friendly interest in the two boys, who, coming from rural New England life into the great, strange, fascinating city, stood in nee

ame of publisher, Field dedicated his paraphrase of the Twenty-third Psalm to Mr. Gray, and it was to this constant frie

friend! and

gentian gr

coos his sw

are a-blo

he romping

raid their lu

ich has several variations in punctuation from the version a

in their lus

iginal as printed above. In that same de

s for our fa

, June 28th, 1891, his intention to

sincere, token of our regard and affection to you, as the friend of our father and as the friend to us. Were our father living, it would please him, we think, to see his sons collaborating as versifie

ating the character of the surroundings o

something more than a competence. But neither Eugene nor his brother Roswell had the slightest predilection for the law. By nature and by a certain inconsequence of fancy they were peculiarly unfitted fo

a wondrous voice, deep, sweet, and resonant, from his father, and had a face so plastic that it could be moulded at will to all the expressions of terror, malignity, and devotion, or anon into the most grotesque and mirth-provoking lines of comedy. His early love for reciting passages from "Spartacus," referred to by the Rev. Mr. Tufts, showed the bent of his mind, and when he became master of his own affairs he sought out Edwin Forrest and confided to him his ambition to go o

er than waste your life on a precarious profession whose successes are few and

hich always recurred in Field's various versions of "Why I did not go on the stage." Eugene returned to St. L

new," preserves the following story of Eugen

aunders was the orchestra, or rather the pianist, and Monsieur Saunders painted the posters which announced the coming of the "great and only" entertainment. Rehearsals were held in the hotel dining-rooms. While a darky carried a placard of announc

arrollton, Richmond, etc., lasted about two weeks a

a popular "frost" and a financial failure. And thus Missouri closed the door of comedy a

d exercised his irrepressible inclination "to shoot folly as it flies" by contributions to the local paper of Galesburg, which had the piquant flavor of personal comment. His youthful dash at the door of the stage had brought him i

rt of the land which he held as executor of Roswell M. Field. It was accordingly offered for sale at auction, and enough to realize $20,000 was sold. Under the will, Eugene's share of this was $8,000, and he immediately placed himself in the way of investing it where it would be the least incumbrance to him. While at Columbia he had met Edgar V. Comstock, the brother of his future wife, through whom it was that he made her acquaintance. Upon the first to

mer to a young lady in St. Jo) were those addressed with business-like brevity to Mr. Gray, calling for more and still more funds to carry the travellers onward. Before they had reached Italy the mails were too slow to convey Field's importunity, and he had recourse to the cable to impress Mr. Gray with the dire immediateness of his impecuniosity. In order to relieve this Mr. Gray was forced to discount the notes for the deferred payments on the sale of the Field land, and when Eugene and his brother-in-law-to-be reached Naples t

furnished so liberally that Eugene promptly invested the surplus in a French poodle, which he carried in triumph back to Missouri as a memento of his sojo

ining a watch, which for more than a decade had been an unredeemed witness to his

ten by him from Rome to a friend in Ireland, in which may be traced the bent of his mind to take a whimsical v

cuing my torn and bleeding country from Grant and his minions, and have resolved to have n

enjoying himself in Italy, with the last remittance

into the crater. It was a glorious sight-nothing else like it in the world! Such a glorious smell of brimstone! Such enlivening whiffs of hot steam and sulphuric fumes! Then too the grand veil of impenetrable white smoke that hung over the yawning abyss! No wonder people rav

dead run," and he "astonished the nativ

hrown suspicion on its genuineness; but Field had not yet begun to reckon life by anniversaries. Neither is there in it a shadow of the