ouis his ready funds were exhausted
and he had to appeal to Mr. Gray to raise more by mortgaging the
balance of his interest in his father's property. This is as good a
place as any to take leave of the patrimony that came to Field at the
death of his father, for he was never to see any more dividends from
that source. When the loans fell due there were no funds to pay them,
nor equity in the land to justify their renewal. So the land was sold
and bid in by Mr. Gray, who holds it yet and would gladly dispose of
it for what he paid out of his pocket and the goodness of his heart.

Roswell Field tells an interesting story of how their father's land
speculation went out of sight in the queer mutations that befall real
estate. In the year before Roswell the elder died, he took his younger
son for a drive in the country south of St. Louis, where the property
lies unimproved to this day. "Rosy," said the father, "hold on to your
Carondelet property. In fifteen years it will be worth half a million
dollars, and, very likely, a million and a half." That was
thirty-three years ago when the Carondelet iron furnaces were in full
blast and the city seemed stretching southward. In 1869 the property
was appraised at $125,000. The panic came on and St. Louis changed its
mind and headed toward the west, where the best part of the city now
rears its mansions and wonders how it ever dreamed of going south.
There Carondelet still bakes in the sun, on the far side of a slough
which has diverted a fortune from the sons of the sanguine Roswell M.
Field, the elder.

More provident than his brother, Roswell lived comfortably on his
share for nearly seven years, only in the end to envy the superior
shrewdness of Eugene, who, putting his portion into cash, realized
more from it, and spent it like a lord while it lasted. I must confess
that I share Roswell's views, for the investment which Eugene Field
made in the two years after coming of age in spending $20,000 on
experience, returned to him many fold in the profession he was finally
driven to adopt, not as a pastime, but to earn a livelihood for
himself and his growing family.

Having shot his bolt, Field went to work as a reporter on the St.
Louis Evening Journal. He was not much of a success as a reporter for
the simple reason that his fancy was more active than his legs and he
was irresistibly disposed to save the latter at the expense of the
former.

The best pen picture I have been a