In the year 1880 Field received and accepted an offer of the managing editorship of the Kansas City Times, a position which he filled with singular ability and success, but which for a year put an almost absolute extinguisher on his growth as a writer.  Under his management the Times became the most widely-quoted newspaper west of the Mississippi.  He made it the vehicle for every sort of quaint and exaggerated story that the free and rollicking West could furnish or invent.  He was not particular whether the Times printed the first, fullest, or most accurate news of the day so long as its pages were racy with the liveliest accounts and comments on the daily comedy, eccentricity, and pathos of life.

Right merrily did he abandon himself to the buoyant spirits of an irrepressible nature.  Never sparing himself in the duties of his exacting position on the Times, neither did he spare himself in extracting from life all the honey of comedy there was in it.  His salary did not begin to keep pace with his tastes and his pleasures.  But he faced debts with the calm superiority of a genius to whom the world owed and was willing to pay a living.

There lived in Kansas City, when Field was at the height of his local fame there, one George Gaston, whose cafe and bar was the resort of all the choice spirits of the town.  He fairly worshipped Field, who made his place famous by entertainments there, and by frequent squibs in the Times.  Although George had a rule suspending credit when the checks given in advance of pay day amounted to more than a customer’s weekly salary, he never thought of enforcing it in the case of ’Gene.  More than once some particularly fine story or flattering notice of the good cheer at Gaston’s sufficed to restore Field’s credit on George’s spindle.  At Christmas-time that credit was under a cloud of checks for two bits (25 cents), four bits, and a dollar or more each to the total of $135.50, when, touched by some simple piece that Field wrote in the Times, Gaston presented his bill for the amount endorsed “paid in full.”  When the document was handed to Field he scanned it for a moment and then walked over to the bar, behind which George was standing smiling complacently and eke benevolently.

“How’s this, George?” said Field.

“Oh, that’s all right,” returned George.

“But this is receipted,” continued the ex-debtor.

“Sure,” said the gracious creditor.

“Do I understand,” said Field, with a gravity that should have warned his friend, “that I have paid this bill?”

“That’s what,” was George’s laconic assurance.

“In full?”

“In full’s what I said,” murmured the unsuspecting philanthropist, enjoying to the full his own magnanimity.

“Well, sir,” said Field, raising his voice without relaxing a muscle, “Is it not customary in Missouri when one gentleman pays another gentleman in full to set up the wine?”