If there were any other visitors present, Modjeska always insisted on Field’s giving his imitation of herself in Camille, in which he rendered her lines with exaggerated theatrical sentiment and with the broken-English accent, such as Modjeska permitted herself in the freedom of private life.  She would give him Armand’s cues for particular speeches and his impassioned “Armo, I lof, I lof you!” never failed to convulse her, while his pulmonary cough was so deep and sepulchral that it rang through the hotel corridors, making other guests think that Modjeska herself was in the last stages of a disease she simulated unto death nightly.  After Field had added colored inks to his stock in trade, these fits of coughing were succeeded by a handkerchief act, in which the dying Camille appeared to spit blood in carmine splotches.  No burlesque that I have seen of a play frequently burlesqued ever approached the side-splitting absurdity of these rehearsals for the benefit of the heroine of “Modjesky as Cameel.”

An’, while Modjesky stated we wuz somewhat off our base, I half opined she liked it by the look upon her face, I rekollect that Hoover regretted he done wrong In throwin’ that there actor through a vista ten miles long.

When Field went to California in search of health, in the winter of 1893-94, Madame Modjeska placed her ranch, located ten miles from the railway, half-way between San Diego and Los Angeles, at his disposal.  The ranch contained about a thousand acres, and he was given carte blanche to treat it as his own during his stay—­a privilege he would have hastened to invite all his friends to share had his health been equal to the opportunity to indulge in merry-making.

[Illustration:  TWO PROFILES OF EUGENE FIELD. The upper one drawn in pencil by Field himself; the lower one by Modjeska.  Reproduced from a fly-leaf of Mrs. Thompson’s volume of autograph verse.]

At a breakfast given to Modjeska at Kinsley’s, April 22d, 1886, Field read the following poem in honor of the guest: 

  TO HELENA MODJESKA

  In thy sweet self, dear lady guest, we find
    Juliet’s dark face, Viola’s gentle mien,
    The dignity of Scotland’s martyr’d queen—­
  The beauty and the wit of Rosalind. 
    What wonder, then, that we who mop our eyes
    And sob and gush when we should criticise—­

  Charmed by the graces of your mien and mind—­
    What wonder we should hasten to proclaim
    The art that has secured thy deathless fame? 
    And this we swear:  We will endorse no name
  But thine alone to old Melpomene,
  Nor will revolve, since rising sons are we,
  Round any orb, save, dear Modjeska, thee
  Who art our Pole star, and will ever be._

As originally written by Field, the rhymes in the first four lines of this tribute fell alternately, the lines being transposed so that they ran in order first, third, fourth, and second of the poem as it appears above.  For the fifth and sixth lines of his first version Field wrote: