Eugene Field trod the footpath way to popularity and fame with a
buoyant and merry heart. If there was any abatement of his joyous
spirits I never knew it, and I do not think that his writings disclose
any sweeter strain, as his brother suggests, in the days when
ill-health checked the ardor of his boyish exuberance, but could not
dim the unextinguishable flame of his comedy. The two books that
contain what to the last he considered his choicest work--a judgment
confirmed by their continued popularity and sale, "A Little Book of
Western Verse" and "A Little Book of Profitable Tales"--were compiled
from the writings (1878-1887) that flowed from his pen when he
worshipped most assiduously at the shrine of the goddess of comedy and
social intercourse.

I have been tempted into this digression in order that the reader may
not be at a loss to reconcile the apparent frivolity of Field's life
and the mass of his writings at this period with the winnowed product
as it appeared in the two volumes just mentioned. Out of the comedy of
his nature came the sweetness of his work, and out of his association
with all conditions of his fellow-men came that insight into the
springs of human passion and action that leavens all that he wrote,
from "The Robin and the Violet" (1884) down to "The Love Affairs of a
Bibliomaniac" (1895).

The general character of Eugene Field's life and writing went through
a gradual process of evolution from the time of his arrival in Chicago
to the final chapters of "The Love Affairs," which were his last work.
But it can be safely divided into two periods of six years each, with
the turning point at the publication of his little books of verse and
tales in the year 1889. Nearly all that he wrote previous to that year
was marked by his association with his kind; that which he wrote
subsequently was saturated with his closer association with books.
About all the preparation he needed for his daily "wood-sawing" was a
hurried glance through the local papers and his favorite exchanges,
among which the New York Sun held first place, with the others
unplaced. He insisted that the exchange editor should send to his desk
daily a dozen or more small country sheets from the most out of the
way places--papers that recorded the painting of John Doe's front
fence or that Seth Smith laid an egg on the editor's table with a
breezy "come again, Seth, the Lord loveth a cheerful liar." When Field
had accumulated enough of t