A great many newspaper men lie awake night after night mentally debating whether they will leave their property to some charitable institution or spend it the next day for something with a little lemon in it.

It was during his earlier connection with the St. Louis Journal that Field was assigned the duty of misreporting Carl Schurz, when that peripatetic statesman stumped Missouri in 1874 as a candidate for re-election to the United States Senate.  Field in later years paid unstinted tribute to the logic, eloquence, and patriotic force of Mr. Schurz’s futile appeals to the rural voters of Missouri.  But during the trip his reports were in nowise conducive to the success of the Republican and Independent candidate.  Mr. Schurz’s only remonstrances were, “Field, why will you lie so outrageously?” It was only by the exercise of careful watchfulness that Mr. Schurz’s party was saved from serious compromise through the practical jokes and snares which Field laid for the grave, but not revered Senator.  On one occasion when a party of German serenaders appeared at the hotel where the party was stopping, before Mr. Schurz had completed a necessary change of toilet Field stepped out on the veranda, and, waving the vociferous cornet and trombone to silence, proceeded to address the crowd in broken English.  As he went on the cheering soon subsided into amazed silence at the heterodox doctrines he uttered, until the bogus candidate was pushed unceremoniously aside by the real one.  Mr. Schurz had great difficulty in saving Field from the just wrath of the crowd, which had resented his broken English more than his political heresies.

On another occasion when there was a momentary delay on the part of the gentleman who was to introduce Mr. Schurz, Field stepped to the front and with a strong German accent addressed the gathering as follows: 

LADIES AND SHENTLEMEN:  I haf such a pad colt dot et vas not bossible for me to make you a speedg to-night, but I haf die bleasure to introduce to you my prilliant chournatistic friend Euchene Fielt, who will spoke you in my blace.

It was all done so quickly and so seriously that the joke was complete before Mr. Schurz could push himself into the centre of the stage.  Annoyance and mirth mingled in the explanations that followed.  A love of music common to both was the only thing that made Field tolerable to his serious-minded elder.

Regarding Eugene Field’s work upon the St. Jo Gazette, it was local in character and of the most ephemeral nature.  There is preserved in the pocket-books of some old printers in the West the galley proof of a doggerel rhyme read by him at the printers’ banquet, at St. Joseph, Mo., January 1st, 1876.  It details the fate of a “Rat” printer, who, in addition to the mortal offence of “spacing out agate” type with brevier, sealed his doom by stepping on the tail of our old friend, the French poodle McSweeny.  The execution of the victim’s sentence was described as follows: