The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Holy Cross and Other Tales, by Eugene
Field, Illustrated by S. W. Van Schaik

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Title: The Holy Cross and Other Tales

Author: Eugene Field

Release Date: June 11, 2007 [eBook #21807]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOLY CROSS AND OTHER TALES***

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The Works of Eugene Field

Vol. V

The Writings in Prose and Verse of Eugene Field

THE HOLY CROSS AND OTHER TALES

[Frontispiece: "Presently the whole company was moved by a gentle
pity." Drawn by S. W. Van Schaik.]

Charles Scribner's Sons
New York
1911

Copyright, 1893, by
Eugene Field.

Copyright, 1896, by
Julia Sutherland Field.

DEDICATED WITH LOVE

AND GRATITUDE TO

ROSWELL MARTIN FIELD

NOTE.

To this volume as it was originally issued have been added five Tales,
beginning with "The Platonic Bassoon," which are characteristic of the
various moods, serious, gay, or pathetic, out of which grew the best
work of the author's later years.

INTRODUCTION

ALAS, POOR YORICK!

In paying a tribute to the mingled mirth and tenderness of Eugene
Field--the poet of whose going the West may say, "He took our daylight
with him"--one of his fellow journalists has written that he was a
jester, but not of the kind that Shakespeare drew in Yorick. He was
not only,--so the writer implied,--the maker of jibes and fantastic
devices, but the bard of friendship and affection, of melodious lyrical
conceits; he was the laureate of children--dear for his "Wynken,
Blynken and Nod" and "Little Boy Blue"; the scholarly book-lover,
withal, who relished and paraphrased his Horace, who wrote with delight
a quaint archaic English of his special devising; who collected rare
books, and brought out his own "Little Books" of "