t person that ever came among presse of knights; and thou
were the meekest man and the gentlest that ever eate in hall among
ladies; and thou were the sternest knight to thy mortall foe that ever
put speare in the rest."

Then there was weeping and dolour out of measure.

If I have interpreted the story of "The Good Knight's" life aright, the
reader will comprehend the relation there is in my mind between the
scene at the death of the knightliest knight of romance and that of him
who moved in our modern life, steeped and imbued with the thoughts,
fancies, and speech of the age of chivalry. For the age of shield, and
spear, and tourney, he would have been the unlikeliest man ever born of
woman; but with his "sweet pen" he waged unceasing battle for all
things beautiful, and true, and pure in this modern world. That is why
his best songs sing of mother's love and childhood and of the eternal
bond between them. He hated sham, and humbug, and false pretence, and
that is why his daily paragraphs gleam and sparkle with the relentless
satire and ridicule; he detested the solemn dulness of conventional
life, and that is why he scourged society with the "knotted lash of
sarcasm" and dissipated melancholy with the unchecked effrontery of his
mirth. And so his songs were full of sweetness, and his words were
words of strength; and his last message to the children of his pen was:

Go forth, little lyrics, and sing to the hearts of men. This
beautiful world is full of song, and thy voices may not be heard of
all--but sing on, children of ours; sing to the hearts of men, and
thy song shall at least swell the universal harmony that bespeaketh
God's love and the sweetness of humanity.

And so is it any wonder that when the tidings of his death was borne
throughout the land "there was weeping and dolour out of measure," and
that a wave of sympathy swept over the country for the bereft family of
the silent singer?

I have often been asked what was Eugene Field's religious belief--a
question I cannot answer better than in the language of the Rev. Frank
M. Bristol in his funeral address:

I have said of my dear friend that he had a creed. His creed was
love. He had a religion. His religion was kindness. He belonged to
the church--the church of the common brotherhood of man. With all
the changes that came to his definitions and formulas, he never lost
from his heart of hearts the reverence for sacred things learned