, the exchange editor,
and I were sandwiched in between them. The rest of the floor was given
up to the city staff. The telegraph editor had a space railed off for
his accommodation in the composing room. If a fire had broken out in
the central building in those days, along about ten P.M., the
subsequent proceedings of Eugene Field and of others then employed on
the Morning News would probably not have been of further interest,
except to the coroner.

Of the three rooms mentioned, Field's was the only one having any
pretensions to decoration. Its floor and portions of the wall were
stained and grained a rich brown with the juice of the tobacco plant.
In one corner Field had a cupboard-shaped pigeon-file, alphabetically
arranged, for the clippings he daily made--almost all relating some bit
of personal gossip about people in the public eye. Scattered about the
floor were dumb-bells, Indian clubs, and other gymnastic apparatus
which Field never touched and which the janitor had orders not to
disturb in their disorder. Above Field's desk for some time hung a
sheet of tin, which he used as a call bell or to drown the noise of the
office boy poking the big globe stove which was the primitive, but
generally effective, way of heating the whole floor in winter. That it
was not always effective, even after steam was introduced, may be
inferred from the following importunate note written by Field to
Collins Shackelford, the cashier, on one occasion when the former had
been frozen almost numb:

DEAR MR. SHACKELFORD: There has been no steam in the third-floor
editorial rooms this afternoon. Somebody must be responsible for this
brutal neglect, which is of so frequent occurrence that forbearance
has ceased to be a virtue. I appeal to you in the hope that you will
be able to correct the outrage. Does it not seem an injustice that
the writers of this paper should be put at the mercy of sub-cellar
hands, who are continually demonstrating their incompetency for the
work which they are supposed to do and for which they are paid?

Yours truly,

EUGENE FIELD.
January 11, 1887.

To those familiar with the internal economy of newspaper offices it
will be no news to learn that death by freezing in the editorial rooms
would be regarded as a matter of small moment compared to a temperature
in the press room that chilled the printing ink in the fountains to the
slow consistency of molasses in January.

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