at a breach of propriety or a breach of the peace, or that invited a libel suit.  There was no power of final rejection in Ballantyne’s blue pencil.  That was left for Mr. Stone’s own decision.  It was well that it was so, for Mr. Ballantyne’s appreciation of humor was so rigid that, had it been the arbiter as to which of Field’s paragraphs should be printed, I greatly fear me there would often have been a dearth of gayety in the “Sharps and Flats.”  The relations in which Ballantyne and I found ourselves to Field can best be told in the language of Mr. Cowen, whose own intimate relations with Field antedated ours and continued to the end: 

“Coming immediately under the influence of John Ballantyne and Slason Thompson, respectively managing editor and chief editorial writer of the News—­the one possessed of Scotch gravity and the other of fine literary taste and discrimination—­the character of Field’s work quickly modified, and his free and easy, irregular habits succumbed to studious application and methodical labors.  Ballantyne used the blue pencil tenderly, first attacking Field’s trick fabrications and suppressing the levity which found vent in preceding years in such pictures of domestic felicity as: 

Baby and I the weary night
Are taking a walk for his delight,
I drowsily stumble o’er stool and chair
And clasp the babe with grim despair,
For he’s got the colic
And paregoric
Don’t seem to ease my squalling heir.

Baby and I in the morning gray
Are griping and squalling and walking away—­
The fire’s gone out and I nearly freeze—­
There’s a smell of peppermint on the breeze. 
Then Mamma wakes
And the baby takes
And says, “Now cook the breakfast please."_

“The every-day practical joker and entertaining mimic of Denver recoiled in Chicago from the reputation of a Merry Andrew, the prospect of gaining which he disrelished and feared.  He preferred to invent paragraphic pleasantries for the world at large and indulge his personal humor in the office, at home, or with personal friends.  Gayety was his element.  He lived, loved, inspired, and translated it, in the doing which latter he wrote, without strain or embarrassment, reams of prose satire, contes risques, and Hudibrastic verse.”

It is a singular illustration of the irony and mutations of life that one of the early paragraphs Field wrote for the “Sharps and Flats” column was inspired by what was supposed to be a fatal assault on his friend by a notorious political ruffian in Leadville.  The paragraph, which appeared on September 12th, 1883, is interesting as a specimen of Field’s style at that period, and as showing in what esteem he held Cowen, with whom he had been associated on the Denver Tribune and whose name recurs in these pages from time to time: