I understand that Stone has sailed out of town again, this time to
Kansas City. Poor man! his slavish devotion to the details of his
newspaper is simply grinding the life out of him.

Mrs. Billings [Field's sister-in-law] has arrived from Washington
and she will go down to St. Louis with Julia and Mrs. Ballantyne
next Monday morning. Later in the fall she will make us a visit.

Cowen pawned his watch to-day for $40 and bet $30 to $21 on the
Chicagos. This is the result by innings: [Here followed another
drawing as shown in the accompanying fac-simile.] The watch retained
its normal size for two innings, but in the third it shrank so sadly
as to become hardly visible to the mind's eye. In the fourth inning,
however, it began to pick up, and in the seventh it had resumed its
normal shape, and in the ninth it was as big as a dinner-plate and
we could hear it tick, although hung in Moses Levy's secluded
retreat on Dearborn Street, two and one-half miles distant. As we
were riding over to the base-ball grounds Cowen's eyes rested on a
vision of female loveliness--a girl he knew--standing on the corner
of Madison and Aberdeen Streets. It was all Hawkins and I could do
to hold him in the car. But I am determined to save this young and
interesting soul if I can. Peattie and his wife start for Colorado
next Monday. 'Tis now 11 o'clock. Where are you that you are not
here to walk with me? Tossing in the "upper ten" [another drawing]
and struggling for fresh air! Well, good-by and bless you, old boy.

Affectionately yours,

EUGENE FIELD.

[Illustration: A LETTER FROM EUGENE FIELD CONTAINING THREE DRAWINGS.]

If the reader is at all curious in such matters, a cursory inspection
of the illustrations of this letter will assure him that its composition
and embellishment must have cost its fanciful writer at least three
hours' work. But this was the kind of work that lightened the toil of
Field's daily grind.

II

(Written in gamboge ink) CHICAGO, Sunday night, September the 12th,
1886.

Dear Nomp:--You have been gone but forty-eight hours--it seems an
age. I have been thinking the matter over and I have come to the
appalling conclusion that I shall starve before you get back,
unless, perchance, in the meantime, Marie Matilda or some fair
unknown sends me truage that can be realized upon.

Dock has returned with an air of rusticity that makes me shiver when