Despite her prayers the heated spell
    Descended not on mead and wold—­
  Instead of turning hot as—­well,
    The weather turned severely cold,
  The Lake dashed up its icy spray
    And breathed its chill o’er all the plain—­
  Cynthia stays at home all day
    And wears the faded-out delaine!

  So is Chicago at this time—­
    She stands where icy billows roll—­
  She wears her beauteous head sublime,
    While cooling zephyrs thrill her soul. 
  But were she tempted to complain,
    Methinks she’d bid the zephyrs lull,
  That she might doff her old delaine
    And don her charming India mull!_

But there was another feature of Chicago that from the day of his arrival to the day of his departure to that land where dust troubleth not and soot and filth are unknown, filled his New England soul and nostrils with ineffable disgust.  He never became reconciled to a condition in which the motto in hoc signo vinces on a bar of soap had no power to inspire a ray of hope.  He had not been here a month before his muse began to wield the “knotted lash of sarcasm” above the strenuous but dirty back of Chicago after this fashion: 

  Brown, a Chicago youth, did woo
    A beauteous Detroit belle,
  And for a month—­or, maybe, two—­
    He wooed the lovely lady well.

  But, oh! one day—­one fatal day—­
    As mused the belle with naught to do,
  A local paper came her way
    And, drat the luck! she read it through.

  She read of alleys black with mire—­
    A river with a putrid breath—­
  Streets reeking with malarial ire—­
    Inviting foul disease and death.

  Then, with a livid snort she called
    Her trembling lover to her side—­
  “How dare you, wretched youth,” she bawled,
    “Ask me to be your blushing bride?

  Go back unto your filthy town,
    And never by my side be seen,
  Nor hope to make me Mrs. Brown,
    Until you’ve got your city clean!"_

Eugene Field made his first appearance in the column of the Morning News August 15th, 1883, in the most modest way, with a scant column of paragraphs such as he had contributed to the Denver Tribune, headed “Current Gossip” instead of “Odds and Ends.”  The heading was only a makeshift until a more distinctive one could be chosen in its stead.  On August 31st, 1883, the title “Sharps and Flats” was hoisted to the top of Field’s column, and there it remained over everything he wrote for more than a dozen years.

There have been many versions of how Field came to hit upon this title, so appropriate to what appeared under it.  The most ingenious of these was that evolved by John B. Livingstone in “An Appreciation” of Eugene Field, published in the Interior shortly after his death.  In what, on the whole, is probably the best analysis of Field’s genius and work extant, Mr. Livingstone goes on to say: