was a great, fine, simple mind. As for
myself, I went to Lafayette College, but did not graduate. I found
mining-engineering not at all to my taste. I preferred base-ball.
Later I attended Syracuse University, where I attempted to study
literature, but found base-ball again much more to my taste. My first
work in fiction was for the New York _Tribune_, when I was eighteen
years old. During this time, one story of the series went into the
_Cosmopolitan_. At the age of twenty I wrote my first novel--_Maggie_.
It never really got on the market, but it made for me the friendship
of William Dean Howells and Hamlin Garland, and since that time I have
never been conscious for an instant that those friendships have at all
diminished. After completing _Maggie_, I wrote mainly for the New York
_Press_ and for _The Arena_. In the latter part of my twenty-first
year I began _The Red Badge of Courage_, and completed it early in my
twenty-second year. The year following I wrote the poems contained in
the volume known as _The Black Riders_. On the first day of last
November I was precisely twenty-nine years old and had finished my
fifth novel, _Active Service_. I have only one pride, and that is that
the English edition of _The Red Badge of Courage_ has been received
with great praise by the English reviewers. I am proud of this simply
because the remoter people would seem more just and harder to win."

In another letter to the same editor he writes about his literary
sincerity:

"The one thing that deeply pleases me is the fact that men of sense
invariably believe me to be sincere. I know that my work does not
amount to a string of dried beans--I always calmly admit it--but I
also know that I do the best that is in me without regard to praise or
blame. When I was the mark for every humorist in the country, I went
ahead; and now when I am the mark for only fifty per cent of the
humorists of the country, I go ahead; for I understand that a man is
born into the world with his own pair of eyes, and he is not at all
responsible for his vision--he is merely responsible for his quality
of personal honesty. To keep close to this personal honesty is my
supreme ambition."

LXXI

EUGENE FIELD

The general public will always remember Eugene Field as the author of
_Little Boy Blue_, the many friends of Field, in addition to their
memory of him as the charming poet of childhood, will always think of
him as the irrepressible prince