From what has been said, it is easy to understand how Field’s abilities were diverted into a new and deeper channel in 1883.  “Stricken by dyspepsia,” writes Mr. Cowen, “so severely that he fell into a state of chronic depression and alarm, he eagerly accepted the timely offer of Melville E. Stone, then surrounding himself with the best talent he could procure in the West, of a virtually independent desk on the Chicago Morning News.  There he quickly regained health, although he never recovered from his ailment.”

How Mr. Stone came to be the “Fairy Godmother” to Field at this turning-point in his life may be briefly related, and partly in Mr. Stone’s own words.  He and Victor F. Lawson had made a surprising success in establishing the Chicago Daily News, in December, 1875, the first one-cent evening paper in Chicago.  It is related that in the early days of their enterprise they had to import the copper coins for the use of their patrons—­the nickle being up to that time the smallest coin in use in the West, as the dime, or “short bit,” was until a more recent date on the Pacific coast.  The Daily News was more distinguished for its enterprise in gathering news and getting it out on the street before the comparative blanket sheets of the early eighties than for its editorial views or literary features.

In January, 1881, Messrs. Lawson & Stone conceived the idea of printing a morning edition of their daily, to be called the Morning News.  As it was to be sold for two cents, it was their purpose to make it better worth the price by a more exacting standard in the manner of presenting its news and by the employment of special writers for its editorial page.  Just then, however, the crop of unemployed writers of demonstrated ability or reputation was unusually short, and the foundation of the Chicago Herald in May of the same year, by half a dozen energetic journalists of local note, did not tend to overstock the market with the talent sought for by Messrs. Lawson & Stone.  It was the rivalry between the Morning News (afterwards the Record) and the Herald, that sent Mr. Stone so far afield as Denver for a man to assist him in realizing the idea cherished by him and his associate.  An interesting story could be told of that rivalry, which has just ended by the consolidation of the two papers (March, 1901) into the Chicago Record-Herald, but only so much of it as affects the life and movements of Eugene Field concerns us here.

In the early summer of 1883 Mr. Stone, who had been watching with appreciative newspaper sense the popularity of the Tribune Primer skits, cast an acquisitive net in the direction of Denver.  He had known Field in St. Louis, and describes their first meeting thus:  “I entered the office of the Dispatch to see Stillson Hutchins, the then proprietor of that paper.  It was in the forenoon, the busy hour for an afternoon newspaper.  A number of people were there, but as to the proprietor, clerks, and customers, none