so here I sit in this box trying to kill the time. I see
very little of Cowen. A disreputable looking friend of his from the
West is here dead-broke and hunting work; Cowen is feeding and
sleeping him _ad interim_, and I think the fellow has an evil
influence over our friend....

I am, as ever, your friend,

FIELD.

VII

CHICAGO, Sunday, September 19th, 1886.

My dear Old Boy:--This man Reilly whom you have put upon me has just
played upon me the most shamefulest trick I ever heard tell of. He
invited me out to supper and told me he had only eighty cents. He
ordered twenty cents worth and made me scrimp along on sixty cents.
When he came to pay the check he produced a five-dollar bill! I
never felt so humiliated in all my life. I pine for the return of
the sweet friend who seeks not by guile to set limit to my appetite.

My children insisted upon going to bed last night with pieces of
Gussie's wedding cake under their pillows. Dady had the presence of
mind to wake up in the night and eat his piece. He told me this
morning that he dreamed that he was married to Mr. Cowen. Last
evening I wandered down town in a furious rainstorm and tried to
find somebody I knew. Failing in this, I meandered home and went to
bed without saying my prayers, conscious of having spent an ill day.

At the theatre this week: Columbia, "Pepita"; McVicker's, Lotta;
Grand, Kate Castleton; Hooley's, "Private Secretary." Dock is trying
to get me to go to the Columbia to-night, but your pale face looms
up in my mind's eye and warns me not to go, or, at least, not to sit
in a box if I do go.

The conclusion of this letter has been sacrificed to the importunity
of some autograph fiend from whose tribe I have had the greatest
difficulty in preserving its fellows.

VIII

CHICAGO, Monday, September the 20th, 1886.

The envious old Dock, who has never had an emotion, an ambition or a
hope beyond a quart bottle of Ike Cook's Imperial, said to me but
just now: "Why do you waste your time writing to that man Thompson?
He will never thank you for it; he will put up none the more
liberally when he returns." Then he added, with a bitter look: "You
never wrote to me while I was at Springfield!" Ah, how little he
knows of you, this peevish old glutton who cares for naught above
pandering to his dyspeptic maw! But my writing to you has caused a
great deal of scandal he