“Among the pranks that Eugene used to play upon his wife in those days was that of appearing at some of our rehearsals on a warm evening in a costume that never failed to tease her.  He would walk into the parlor and say:  ’Well, boys, let us take off our coats and take it easy; it’s too hot.’  We would all proceed to do so.  When Eugene would remove his coat he would display a red flannel undershirt, having pinned his cuffs to his coat sleeves and his necktie and collar to his shirt.  He placed no limit on his humor.”

Who of those at all intimate with Field will forget the enjoyment he took in trolling forth, in a quaint, quavering, cracked, but tuneful recitative, one stanza of “Ossian’s Serenade”: 

I’ll chase the antelope over the plain The tiger’s cub I’ll bind with a chain, The wild gazelle with its silvery feet I’ll give to thee as a playmate sweet.  Then come with me in my light canoe, While the sea is calm and the sky is blue, For I’ll not linger another day For storms may rise and love decay.

Well, this was a snatch that lingered in his memory from the old days in Adams Street, St. Louis, where he first caught it from the lips of Mr. Buskett, in whose family it was an heirloom.  Field finally traced it to its source through persistent letters written to himself in his “Sharps and Flats” column in the Chicago Record.

The glad wild days of which Mr. Buskett testifies were passed in St. Louis after Field’s return from a brief experience as city editor of the St. Joseph Gazette in 1875-76.  The time is fixed by the presence of “Trotty” in the gypsy circle, who was the best bit of news he “managed to acquire” in the days whereof he wrote: 

  Oh, many a peck of apples and of peaches did I get
  When I helped ’em run the local on the “St. Jo Gazette."

Judge Henry W. Burke, of St. Joseph, is authority for this story of the time when he was associated with Field on the Gazette:  Burke had been sent out to report a “swell society event” in the eastern part of the city.  Nearly all the prominent people of St. Joseph were present and the names of all were published.  Burke’s story of the affair was a column long, and after it was written Field got hold of the copy and at the end of the list of those present added, “and last but not least the handsome and talented society editor of the Gazette, H.W.  Burke.”  The feelings of the young reporter and embryo judge may be imagined.

But a few months of “whooping up locals on the St. Jo Gazette” were enough for Eugene, who pined for the broader field and more congenial associations of St. Louis.  Thither he returned in the spring of 1876, and the Evening Journal, being by this time consolidated with the Times, he became an editorial writer and paragrapher on the hyphenated publication.  He also resumed the eccentric semi-bohemian life which Mr. Buskett has rather suggested than described.  He had little or no business ability, had no use for money except to spend it, and therefore early adopted the plan of leaving to Mrs. Field the management of their household expenditures.  To her, then, as throughout his life, was paid his weekly stipend—­often depleted by the drafts for the “usual V” or the “necessary X” which he was wont to draw in advance from the cashier almost every week.