the party to a grand gala picnic which he proposed
to give in August in Melville Park, Glencoe. He would order a basket
of chicken sandwiches, a gallon of iced tea, and three pink
umbrellas, and they would have a royal time of it.

Mr. Thompson moved, out of respect to the Greatest of Modern
Fishermen, to strike out "chicken" and insert "sardine." Mr. Stone
accepted the suggestion, and thus amended, the invitation was
hilariously accepted.

After adopting a resolution instructing Mr. Stone to buy the
sardines and tea at Brother Franklin MacVeagh's, the party adjourned
for one week.

Field was very fond of describing himself as a martyr to the Mugwump
vapors and megrims that prevailed in the editorial rooms of the Daily
News. He would say that the imperishable crowns won by the heroes of
Fox's "Book of Martyrs" were nothing to what he, a stanch Republican
partisan, earned by enduring and associating daily with the piping,
puling independents who infested that "ranch." He said that he
expected a place high up in the dictionary of latter-day saints and in
the encyclopedia of nineteenth-century tribulations, because of the
Christian fortitude with which he endured and forgave the stings and
jibes of his puny tormentors.

There was a great scene in the reporters' room of the Morning News the
day after Cleveland's first election. The News had been one of the
first of the independent newspapers of the country to bolt the
nomination of Mr. Blaine. It had favored the renomination of President
Arthur, and had convincing evidence of a shameful deal by which
certain members of the Illinois delegation, elected as Arthur men,
were seduced into the Blaine camp. But this alone would not have
decided the course of the paper--that was dictated by the widespread
mistrust felt throughout the country as to Mr. Blaine's entire
impeccability in the matter of the Little Rock bonds. Field,
throughout the campaign, stood by Blaine and Logan and defied the
Mugwumps to do their worst. So on the morning after the election he
was in a thoroughly disgusted mood. He scoffed at the idea of becoming
a Mugwump, but declared himself ready to renounce his Republicanism
and become a Democrat. To that end he prepared a formal renunciation.
It consisted of a flamboyant denunciation of the past glories and
present virtues of the Republican party and an enthusiastic eulogy of
the crimes, blunders, and base methods of the Democratic part