put it, there was more liberty and fewer literary
"fellers" out West, and a man had more chance to be judged on his
merits and "grow up with the country."

The Chicago to which Eugene Field came in 1883 was a city of something
over six hundred thousand inhabitants, and pulsing with active
political and commercial life. It had been rebuilt, physically, after
the fire with money borrowed from the East, and was almost too busy
paying interest and principal to have much time to read books, much
less make them, except in the wholly manufacturing sense. It had
already become a great publishing centre, but not of the books that
engage the critical intelligence of the public. The feverish devotion
of its citizens to business during the day-time drove them to bed at
an unseasonably early hour, or to places of amusement, from which they
went so straight home after the performances that there was not a
single fashionable restaurant in the city catering to supper parties
after the play. Whether this condition, making theatre-going less
expensive here than in other large cities, conduced to the result or
not, it was a fact that in the early eighties Chicago was the best
paying city on the continent for theatrical companies of all degrees
of merit. The losses which the best artists and plays almost
invariably reported of New York engagements were frequently recouped
in Chicago.

Chicago never took kindly to grand opera, and probably for the same
reason that it patronized the drama. It sought entertainment and
amusement, and grand opera is a serious business. As Field said of
himself, Chicago liked music "limited"; and its liking was generally
limited to light or comic opera and the entertainments of the Apollo
Club, until Theodore Thomas, with admirable perseverance, aided by the
pocket-books of public-spirited citizens rather than by enthusiastic
music-lovers, succeeded in cultivating the study and love of music up
to a standard above that of any other American city, with the possible
exception of Boston.

I have referred to the theatrical and musical conditions in Chicago in
1883, because it was in them that Eugene Field found his most
congenial atmosphere and associations when he came hither that year.
These were the chief reminders of the life he had left behind when he
turned his back on Denver, and I need scarcely say that they continued
to afford him the keenest pleasure and the most unalloyed recreation
to the end.

Ar