life was spent in flats or rented houses until less than five
months before his death. The photographs taken a few months before his
death of Eugene Field's home and the beautiful library in which he
wrote are ghastly travesties on the nomadic character of his domestic
arrangements for many years before June, 1895--dreams for which he
longed, but only lived to realize for four brief months. All the best
Field wrote previous to 1890--and it includes the best he ever wrote,
except "The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac"--was written in a room to
which many a box stall is palatial, and his sole library was a
dilapidated edition of Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations," Cruden's
"Concordance of the Bible," and a well-thumbed copy of the King James
version of the Bible. He detested the revised version. The genius of
this man at this time did not depend on scholarship or surroundings,
but on the companionship of his fellows and the unconventionality of
his home life.

CHAPTER XII

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

It was in the month of September, after Field's coming to the Morning
News, that a managerial convulsion in the office of the Chicago Herald
threw the majority of its editorial corps and special writers across
Fifth Avenue into the employ of Messrs. Lawson & Stone. They were at
first distributed between the morning and evening editions of the
News, my first work being for the latter, to which I contributed
editorial paragraphs for one week, when Mr. Stone concluded to make me
his chief editorial writer on the Morning News. This brought me into
immediate personal and professional relations with Field. Our rooms
adjoined, being separated by a board partition that did not reach to
the ceiling and over which for four years I was constantly bombarded
with missives and missiles from my ever-restless neighbor. Among the
other recruits from the Herald at that time was John F. Ballantyne,
who, from being the managing editor of that paper, was transferred to
the position of chief executive of the Morning News under Mr. Stone.
One of the first duties of his position was to read Field's copy very
closely, to guard against the publication of such bitter innuendoes
and scandalous personalities as had kept the Denver Tribune in
constant hot water between warlike descents upon the editor and costly
appeals to the courts. Mr. Stone wanted all the racy wit that had
distinguished Field's contributions to the Tribune without the
attendant