aturely at sixty-one. He had made a name and fame for himself, but
had not stored any of the harvest his writings were beginning to yield.
He could write, as he did, that he expected to do his best literary
work when a grandfather, but he had no belief that he would live to
enjoy that happy Indian summer of paternity. He was tired of being
moved from rented flat to rented house with his accumulated belongings,
and he yearned with the "sot" New England yearning for a permanent
home, a roof-tree that he could call his own, a patch of earth in which
he could "slosh around," with no landlord to importune for grudging
repairs.

And so Field's life during his last years has to be considered as a
struggle with physical exhaustion, fighting off the inevitable
reckoning until he could provide himself and his family with a home
and leave to his dear ones the means of retaining it, with the
opportunities of education for the juniors. And bravely and cheerily he
faced the situation. Neither in his social relations nor in his daily
task was there observable any trace of the tax he was putting upon his
over-strained energy. He could not afford to make the study of classics
a delightful pastime, as his father did, but he made it contribute a
constant and delightful fund of reference and allusion in his column.
His first books were selling steadily, and he worked assiduously to
make hay while the sun was still above the horizon. In quick
succession, "Echoes from the Sabine Farm," "With Trumpet and Drum," the
"Second Book of Verse," "The Holy Cross and Other Tales," and "Love
Songs of Childhood," with few exceptions, collected from his daily
contributions to the Chicago Record, were issued from the press in both
limited and popular editions.

On the top of his regular work, which in collected form began to be
productive beyond his fondest expectations, Field allowed himself to be
over-persuaded into entering the platform field. The managers of
reading-bureaus had been after him for years; but he had resisted their
alluring offers, because he would not make a show of himself, and the
exertion fagged him. But in the later years of his life they came at
him again, with the promise of more pay per night than he could get by
writing in a week, and he reluctantly made occasional engagements,
which were a drain on his vitality as well as an offence to his
peculiar notions of personal dignity. After each of these excursions
into the platform