le at
auction, and enough to realize $20,000 was sold. Under the will,
Eugene's share of this was $8,000, and he immediately placed himself
in the way of investing it where it would be the least incumbrance to
him. While at Columbia he had met Edgar V. Comstock, the brother of
his future wife, through whom it was that he made her acquaintance.
Upon the first touch of the cash payment on his share of the
executor's sale, Eugene at once proposed to young Comstock that they
visit Europe in company, he bearing the expenses of the expedition.
His friend did not need much persuasion to embark on what promised to
be such a lark. And so, in the fall of 1872, the two, against the
prudent counsels of Mr. Gray, set out to see the world, and they saw
it just as far as Eugene's cash and the balance of that $8,000 would
go.

In his "Auto-Analysis," Field says: "In 1872 I visited Europe,
spending six months and my patrimony in France, Italy, Ireland, and
England." This is as near the sober truth as anything Field ever wrote
about himself. The youthful spendthrift and his companion landed in
Ireland, and by slow, but extravagant, stages reached Italy, taking
the principal cities and sights of England and France en route. About
the only letters that reached America from Field during this European
trip (always excepting those that went by every mail-steamer to a
young lady in St. Jo) were those addressed with business-like brevity
to Mr. Gray, calling for more and still more funds to carry the
travellers onward. Before they had reached Italy the mails were too
slow to convey Field's importunity, and he had recourse to the cable
to impress Mr. Gray with the dire immediateness of his impecuniosity.
In order to relieve this Mr. Gray was forced to discount the notes for
the deferred payments on the sale of the Field land, and when Eugene
and his brother-in-law-to-be reached Naples their soulful appeals for
more currency with which to continue their golden girdle of the earth
were met with the chilling notice "No funds available." Happily, in
their meteoric transit across Europe, they had invested in many
articles of vertu and convertible souvenirs of the places they had
visited. By the sale, or sometimes by the pledge, of these accumulated
impedimenta of travel, Eugene made good his retreat to America, where
he landed with empty pockets and an inexhaustible fund of mirthful
stories and invaluable experience.

On arriving in New York, Fiel