en he says Field was no ignoramus in his madness.

Therefore it is not to be wondered at that his collection of strange
and fantastic, odd and curious, things filled his library and
overflowed and clustered every nook and corner of the Sabine Farm. Here
was a "thumb" Bible, there the smallest dictionary in the world. In one
corner was stacked a freakish lot of canes--some bought because they
were freaks, some with a story behind their acquisition, and more
presented to him because Field let it be known that he had a penchant
for canes--which, by the way, he never carried. In one room there was a
shelf of empty bottles of every conceivable shape, size, and "previous
condition of servitude"; in another was a perfect menagerie of
mechanical toy animals. As he could not decide which he liked best,
hideous pewter mugs or delicate china dishes, he "annexed" them
indiscriminately, and stored them cheek by jowl, much to the annoyance
of his more orderly wife. The old New England pie-plate was a dearer
article of vertu to him than the most fragile vase, unless the latter
was a rare specimen of a forgotten art. He had a genuine affection for
clocks of high and low degree. He loved them for their friendly faces,
and endowed them with personal idiosyncrasies, according to their
tickings, by which he distinguished them. And so the Sabine Farm had
old-fashioned clocks and new-fangled clocks in the halls and bedrooms,
on the stairs and mantels, in the cellars beneath and in the garret
above--all ticking merrily or sedately, as became their respective
makes and natures. But keeping time? Never!

Of books there was no end. Books he had inherited, books he had bought
with money pinched from household expenses, and presentation books by
the score. All were jumbled together in a confusion that delighted him,
but which would have been the despair of an orderly mind. His rare and
well-nigh complete collection of books on Horace and of editions of the
poet had the place of honor in his library, with the rest nowhere in
particular and everywhere in general. Hundreds of his books bear the
autographs of their respective authors, while the walls of the house
were covered with autograph letters from many of the celebrities and
not a few of the notorieties of the world. Even the nonentities found
lodgement there. Such another collection as Field's is not to be met
with under any roof in this country; nor could its like be duplicated
anywhere, beca