by the cheerful chirping of a cricket in the chimney, which Field had a superstition was intended solely for him.  The Boston Oyster House had the advantage over Billy Boyle’s that here we could bring “our women folks” after the theatre or concert.  It was through a piece of doggerel, composed and recited by Field with great gusto on one of these occasions, that we first learned of the serious attentions of our managing editor to Mrs. Field’s youngest sister.  One of these stanzas ran thus: 

  A quart taken out of the ice-box,
  A dozen broiled over the fire,
    Then home from the show
    With her long-legged beau,
  What more can our sister desire?

But the ladies were never invited to invade the cricket’s corner, where we were permitted to beguile the hours in gossip, song, and story until the scrub-women had cleaned the rest of the big basement and “the first low swash” of the suds and brush threatened the legs of our chairs.  Then, with a parting anathema on the business of slaves that toiled when honest folk should be abed, we would ascend the stairs and betake ourselves to our several homes.  It was at the Boston that Field varied his diet of pie and coffee with what he was pleased to describe as “the staying qualities as well as the pleasing aspect of a Welsh rabbit.”

During the first years of his connection with the Morning News, Field worked without intermission six days of the week, without a vacation and, except when he transferred his scene of operations to the capitol at Springfield, without leaving Chicago—­with two noteworthy exceptions.  For some reason Field had taken what the Scotch call a scunner to ex-President Hayes, whom he regarded as a political Pecksniff.  The refusal of Mr. Hayes while President to serve wine in the White House Field regarded as a cheap affectation, and so when, through his numerous sources of information, he learned that Mr. Hayes derived a part of his income from saloon property in Omaha, nothing would do Field but, accompanied by the staff artist, he must go to Omaha and investigate himself the story for the News.

He went, found the facts were as represented, and returned with the proofs and a photograph of himself sitting on a beer-keg in a saloon owned by Rutherford B. Hayes.  He also bought the keg, and out of its staves had a frame made for the picture, which he presented to Mr. Ballantyne.

His other notable absence from Chicago in those days was also connected with ex-President Hayes.  This time it involved a visit to the latter’s home at Fremont, O. In all his frequent references to Mr. Hayes, Field had always spoken of Mrs. Hayes with sincere admiration for her womanly qualities and convictions.  So long as these were confined to the ordering of her personal household he deemed them as sacred as they were admirable.  Nor did he blame her for attempting to extend them to rule the actions of her husband in his public relations.  But it was for