He organized a company of his own in conjunction with his friend, Marvin Eddy, who tells of a comedy Field wrote in which the heroines were impersonated by Field himself to the heroes of the only other acting member of the cast—­Mr. Eddy.  A Madame Saunders was the orchestra, or rather the pianist, and Monsieur Saunders painted the posters which announced the coming of the “great and only” entertainment.  Rehearsals were held in the hotel dining-rooms.  While a darky carried a placard of announcement, the result of Saunders’s artistic handiwork, the local band, specially engaged, played in front of the principal places in town.  Mr. Eddy recalls that Field had a sweet bass voice which he used with much effect both in songs and recitations.

The season, confined to such towns in Missouri as Carrollton, Richmond, etc., lasted about two weeks and was what the papers would call a succes d’estime.

Which, being interpreted into the vernacular of the author of “Sharps and Flats,” spelled a popular “frost” and a financial failure.  And thus Missouri closed the door of comedy against Field, as Forrest had shut the gates of tragedy in his pale and intellectual face.

There was still one profession open to him in which he had made a few halting and tentative steps—­that of journalism, with its broad entrance and narrowing perspective into the fair field of letters.  While a sophomore at Knox he had exercised his irrepressible inclination “to shoot folly as it flies” by contributions to the local paper of Galesburg, which had the piquant flavor of personal comment.  His youthful dash at the door of the stage had brought him into the comradeship of Stanley Waterloo and several other young journalists in St. Louis, and he was easily persuaded to try his ’prentice hand as a reporter, under the tutelage of Stanley Huntley, of the “Spoopendyke Papers” fame.

But Eugene Field was yet without the stern incentive of necessity that is the seed of journalism.  Circumstances, however, were ripening that would soon leave him no excuse on that score for not buckling down to “sawing wood,” as for twenty-three years he was wont to consider his daily work.  When he reached his majority he was entitled to his share in the first distribution of his father’s estate.  Before this could be made, Mr. Gray had to dispose of a part of the land which he held as executor of Roswell M. Field.  It was accordingly offered for sale at auction, and enough to realize $20,000 was sold.  Under the will, Eugene’s share of this was $8,000, and he immediately placed himself in the way of investing it where it would be the least incumbrance to him.  While at Columbia he had met Edgar V. Comstock, the brother of his future wife, through whom it was that he made her acquaintance.  Upon the first touch of the cash payment on his share of the executor’s sale, Eugene at once proposed to young Comstock that they visit Europe in company, he bearing the expenses of the expedition.  His friend did not need much persuasion to embark on what promised to be such a lark.  And so, in the fall of 1872, the two, against the prudent counsels of Mr. Gray, set out to see the world, and they saw it just as far as Eugene’s cash and the balance of that $8,000 would go.