hanging over his desk
until all other noises sank into dismayed silence. Then he would
resume "sawing wood" for his "Sharps and Flats."

If Field had not quite worked off his surplus stock of horse-play on
his associates, he would vent it upon the compositor in some such
apostrophe as the following:

_By my troth, I'll now begin ter
Cut a literary caper
On this pretty tab of paper
For the horney-handed printer;
I expect to hear him swearing
That these inks are very wearing
On his oculary squinter._

Or this:

We desire to announce that Mademoiselle Rhea, the gifted Flanders
maid, who has the finest wardrobe on the stage, will play a season
of bad brogue and flash dresses in this city very soon. This
announcement, however, will never see the dawn of November 13th,
and we kiss it a fond farewell as we cheerfully submit it as a sop
to Cerberus.

Field had a theory that Ballantyne, the managing editor, would not
consider that he was earning his salary, and that Mr. Stone would not
think that he was exercising the full authority of editorship, unless
something in his column was sacrificed to the blue pencil of a
watchful censorship. Coupled with this was the more or less cunning
belief that it was good tactics to write one or two outrageously
unprintable paragraphs to draw the fire, so to speak, of the blue
pencil, and so to divert attention from something, about which there
might be question, which he particularly wished to have printed.
Ballantyne, as I have said, was a very much more exacting censor than
Stone, for the reason that the humor of a story or paragraph often
missed his Scotch literalness, while Stone never failed to let
anything pass on that score.

By six o'clock Field's writing for the day was done, and he generally
went home for dinner. But that this was not always the case the
following notes testify:

GOOD AND GENTLE KNIGHT:

If so be ye pine and so hanker after me this night I pray you come
anon to the secret lair near the moat on the next floor, and there
you will eke descry me. There we will discourse on love and other
joyous matters, and until then I shall be, as I have ever been,

Your most courteous friend,

E. FIELD.

* * * * *

An' it please the good and gentle knight, Sir Slosson Thompson, his
friend in very sooth, the honest knight will arrive at his castle
this day at the 8th hour, being m