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, however, that Sir Henry could not have been behind the screen some night at Billy Boyle’s to hear Field and Dixey in a rivalry of imitations of himself in his favorite roles.  Dixey was the more amusing, because he did and said things in the Irvingesque manner which the original would not have dreamed of doing, whereas Field contented himself with mimicking his voice and gesture to life.

When Irving reached Chicago, Field and I, with the connivance of Mr. Stone, lured him into a newspaper controversy over his conception and impersonation of Hamlet, which ended in an exchange of midnight suppers and won for me the sobriquet of “Slaughter Thompson” from Mistress Ellen Terry, who enjoyed the splintering of lances where all acknowledged her the queen of the lists.

I have reserved for latest mention the one actor who throughout Field’s life was always dearest to his heart.  Apart, they seemed singularly alike; together, the similarities of Eugene Field and Sol Smith Russell were overshadowed by their differences.  There was a certain resemblance of outline in the general lines of their faces and figures.  Both were clean-shaven men, with physiognomies that responded to the passing thought of each, with this difference—­Field’s facial muscles seemed to act in obedience to his will, while Russell’s appeared to break into whimsical lines involuntarily.  Russell has a smile that would win its way around the world.  Field could contort his face into a thunder-cloud which could send children almost into convulsions of fear.  There was one story which they both recited with invariable success, that gave their friends a great chance to compare their respective powers of facial expression.  It was of a green New England farmer who visited Boston, and of course climbed up four flights of stairs to a skylight “studio” to have his “daguerotype took.”  After the artist had succeeded in getting his subject in as stiff and uncomfortable position as possible, after cautioning him not to move, he disappeared into his ill-smelling cabinet to prepare the plate.  When this was ready he stepped airily out to the camera and bade his victim “look pleasant.”  Failing to get the impossible response the artist bade his sitter to smile.  Then the old farmer with a wrathful and torture-riven contortion of his mouth ejaculated, “I am smiling!”