and disposition of my children, that they “are inclined to evil and that continually,” can you wonder that I write with severity to them?  Our hopes are blasted as relates to Charles and Roswell, and you cannot conceive the trouble which they have given us.  Your mother is almost crazy about them; nor are we without fears as to you.  I say now, as I said in my former letter, that I wish my children were all at home at work.  I am convinced that an education will only prove injurious to them.  If I had as many sons as had the patriarch Jacob not one should ever again go nigh a college.  It is not a good calculation to educate children for destruction.  The boys’ conduct has already brought a disgrace upon our family which we can never outgrow.  They undoubtedly possess respectable talents and genius, but what are talents worth when wholly employed in mischief?

I have expended almost two thousand dollars in educating the boys, and now just at the close they are sent off in disgrace and infamy.  The money is nothing in comparison to the disgrace and ruin that must succeed.  Mary, think of these things often, and especially when you feel inclined to be gay and airy.  Let your brother’s fate be a striking lesson to you.  For you may well suppose that you possess something of the same disposition that he does, but I hope that you will exercise more prudence than he has.  You must now return home with a fixed resolution to become a steady, sober, and industrious girl.  Give up literary pursuits and quietly and patiently follow that calling which I am convinced is most proper for my children.

It does appear to me that if children would consider how much anxiety their parents have for them they would conduct themselves properly, if it was only to gratify their parents.  But it is not so.  Many of them seem determined not only to wound the feelings of the parents in the most cruel manner but also to ruin themselves.

  Remember us respectfully to Dr. and Mrs. Willard, and I am your
  affectionate father

  MARTIN FIELD.

That Mary did return home to be the mediator between her incensed and stern father and his wayward and mischievous, but not incorrigible sons, is part of the sequel to this letter.  What her daughter, Mary Field French, afterwards became to the sons of the younger of the reprehensible pair of youthful collegians will appear later on in this narrative.  It is beautifully acknowledged in the dedication of Eugene Field’s “Little Book of Western Verse,” which I had the honor of publishing for the subscribers in 1889, more than three score years after the date of the foregoing letter.  In that dedication, with the characteristic license of a true artist, Field credited the choice of Miss French for the care of his youthful years to his mother: 

  A dying mother gave to you
    Her child a many years ago;
  How in your gracious love he grew,
    You know dear, patient heart, you know.