, therefore, to this incandescent crematory this week,
let us recognize her not only as the reigning queen of ignition,
diathermancy, and transcalency, but also as the promoter of many of
the ingenious and philanthropic boons the public now enjoys.

This was written in November, 1883, and is worthy of remark as an
illustration of how in that day Field began deliberately to multiply
words, each having a slight difference of meaning, as an exercise in
the use of English--a practice that eventually gave him a vocabulary
of almost unlimited range and marvellous accuracy.

The patience of the reader forbids that I should attempt an enumeration
of all Field's friendships with stage folk, or of the unending flow of
good-natured raillery and sympathetic comment that kept his favorites
among them ever before the public eye. When it came Field's time, all
untimely, to pay the debt we all must pay, it was left for Sir Henry
Irving, the dean of the English-speaking profession, to acknowledge in
a brief telegram his own and its debt to the departed poet and
paragrapher in these words:

The death of Eugene Field is a loss not only to his many friends, but
to the world at large. He was distinctly a man of genius, and he was
dowered with a nature whose sweetness endeared him to all who knew
him. To me he was a loved and honored friend, and the world seems
vastly the poorer without him.

Of what singular materials and contradictory natures was their
friendship compact. From the day Henry Irving first landed in New York
until Field's pen was laid aside forever the actor's physical
peculiarities and vocal idiosyncrasies were the constant theme of
diverting skits and life-like vocal mimicry. Field, however, always
managed to mingle his references to Mr. Irving's unmatched legs and
eccentric elocution with some genuine and unexpected tribute to his
personal character and histrionic genius. Nat Goodwin and Henry Dixey
were the two comedians whose imitations of Mr. Irving's peculiarities
of voice and manner were most widely accepted as lifelike, while
intensely amusing. But neither of them could approach Field in
catching the subtile inflection of Henry Irving's "Naw! Naw!" and
"Ah-h! Ah-h!" with which the great actor prefixed so many of his
lines. With a daring that would have been impertinent in another,
Field gave imitations of Mr. Irving in Louis XI and Hamlet in his
presence and to his intense enjoyment. It is a pity,