iations of men. Mankind continued to interest him
as much as ever, but books wearied him less, and in his home were more
easily within reach. This home was now at 420 Fullerton Avenue, an
old-fashioned house on the northern limit of old Chicago, rather off
the beaten track. It was the fifth place the Field household had set up
its lares and penates since coming to Chicago. In consequence of his
collecting mania, his impedimenta had become a puzzle to house and a
domestic cataclysm to move.

By 1891 Field realized, as none of his family or friends did, that his
health would never be better, and that it behooved him to put his house
in order and make the most of the strength remaining. If he needed the
words of a mentor to warn him, he could have found them in the brief
memoir his uncle, Charles Kellogg, had written of his father. In that I
find this remarkable anticipation of what befell his son, written of
Roswell M. Field--who, be it remembered, started in life with a healthy
and vigorous body, whereas uncertain health and a rebellious stomach
were Eugene Field's portion all the days of his life.

He [Field's father] made the perusal of the Greek and Latin classics
his most delightful pastime. In fact, he resorted to this scientific
research, particularly in the department of mathematics, for his
chief mental recreation. It is greatly to be regretted that he
neglected to combine, with his cessation from professional labor,
some employment which would have revived and strengthened his
physical frame. He was averse to active exercise, and for some years
before his death he lived a life of studious seclusion which would
have been philosophical had he not violated, in the little care he
took of his health, one of the most important lessons which
philosophy teaches. At a comparatively early age he died of physical
exhaustion, a deterioration of the bodily organs, and an incapacity,
on their part, to discharge the vital functions--a wearing out of
the machine before the end of the term for which its duration was
designed. He was eminently qualified to serve, as well as to adorn,
society, and in all likelihood he would have found in a greater
variety of occupation some relief from the monotonous strain under
which his energies prematurely gave way.

But the conditions that confronted Eugene Field at the age of forty-one
were very different from those under which his father succumbed
prem