I have said that Denver at that time was the centre of all the railway interests of Colorado and the far West.  Being also the capital, it was the place where legislators and railway agents wrestled with problems of regulating tariffs and granting privileges to what may be called their mutual benefit.  It was from his experience in Denver that Field learned that two-thirds of the business of a western legislature consisted in causing legislative hold-ups, of which the transportation companies were the victims, and the most vociferously impeccable statesmen the chief beneficiaries.  The secret service funds of the railway companies doing business in Colorado paid out a hundred dollars for protection from notorious sandbagging bills and resolutions to every dollar they spent for special favors in grants and franchises.

This by way of preface to a story in which Eugene Field and a railway official, who, as I write, holds a high position in the transportation world, figure.  This official was at that time the superintendent of the Southwestern Division of the Pullman system, with head-quarters at St. Louis.  In those days every session of the Colorado legislature saw its anti-Pullman rate reduction bill, which Wickersham, as I shall call him, because that is not his name, was commissioned to checkmate, strangle, or make away with in committee by the aid of annual passes, champagne, and the mysterious potency of the national bank-note.  As was remarked by E.D.  Cowen, to whose notes I am indebted for refreshing my memory of Field’s tales, Wickersham never failed in generalship, principally because he was bold in his methods and picturesquely lavish with his munitions of war.  The Pullman Company did not then enjoy the royalty and defensive alliance which now protects it against rate legislation throughout the West, and so Wickersham was kept continually on the go, making alliances and friendships among legislators and journalists against the days of reckoning.

Field, as the managing editor of the Tribune, was a special favorite with Wickersham, as he was of every professional and commercial visitor having an axe to grind at the capital of the state.  Pullman’s representative had the wit to appreciate Field, both for his personal qualities and the assistance he could render through the columns of the newspaper.  Field reciprocated the personal friendship, but, so far as the Tribune was concerned, took a grim satisfaction in giving Wickersham to understand that though he could use its freedom he could not abuse it or count upon its aid beyond what was strictly legitimate.  Field’s stereotyped introduction of Wickersham—­one calculated to put him on a pleasant business footing with every practical politician, was “He’s a good fellow and a thoroughbred.”  So his coming was invariably celebrated by a general round-up of all the good fellows in Denver, and his departure left the aching heads and parched recollections that from the days of Noah have distinguished the morning after.