aphies of well-known newspaper writers. It
was arranged that Field and William E. Curtis, the noted Washington
correspondent, should write each the other's biography for the series.
Mr. Curtis executed his sketch of Field in good faith; Field's sketch
of Mr. Curtis was a marvel of waggish invention. Through an actor of
the same name who some years before made quite a reputation as Samuel
of Posen, he traced Mr. Curtis's birth back to Bohemia, and carried
him at an early age to Jerusalem, where Curtis was said to have laid
the foundations of his fame and fortune peddling suspenders. Later he
sold newspapers on the streets, and, by practicing the shrewd and
self-denying habits of his race, quickly became the owner of the paper
for which he worked, which was called the New Jerusalem Messenger, the
recognized organ of the New Jerusalem Church.

Mr. Curtis's progressive tendencies, according to Field, quickly
involved him in trouble with the government; his paper was suppressed,
and he was banished from Jerusalem. When the special firmin of the
Sultan expelling Mr. Curtis from Turkish dominions was published, it
caused a great sensation in Chicago, where the Church of the New
Jerusalem was very strong, and created an immediate rivalry between
William Penn Nixon, editor of the Inter Ocean, and Melville E. Stone,
editor of the Morning News, to secure his services. Mr. Nixon sent him
a cablegram in Hebrew which was written by a Hebrew gentleman to whom
Nixon sold old clothes, while Mr. Stone's cablegram was prepared by
his father, the Rev. Mr. Stone, and was expressed in scriptural
phraseology which was not understood in Jerusalem as well as it was at
Galesburg, where Mr. Stone was then professor of the Hebrew language
and literature. Curtis accepted the offer couched in the language of
the Hebrew vender of old clothes and became a member of the editorial
staff of the Inter Ocean. His first effective work on that newspaper
was to convert Jonathan Young Scammon, then its owner, to the New
Jerusalem faith (Mr. Scammon, whose real name was John, was the most
prominent Swedenborgian in Chicago). Mr. Scammon was so grateful for
his conversion from infidelity that in a moment of religious
exaltation he raised Mr. Curtis's salary from $18 to $20.

And thus the biography of Mr. Curtis proceeded along lines that gave
the truth a wide berth, for Field held, with the old English jurists,
that the greater the truth the greater the libel.