Up another long, narrow, dark stairway was the office of Mr. Ballantyne, the managing editor.  He occupied what had been a rear hall bedroom, 7 x 10 feet.  He was six feet two tall, and if he had not been of an orderly nature, there would not have been room in that back closet, with its one window and flat-topped desk, for his feet and the retriever, Snip—­the only dog Field ever thoroughly detested.  Ballantyne’s room was evidently arranged to prevent any private conferences with the managing editor.  It boasted a second chair, but when the visitor accepted the rare invitation to be seated, his knees prevented the closing of the door.  The remainder of this floor of the centre building and the whole of the same floor of the next building south were taken up by the composing room.  A door had been cut in the wall of the building to the north, just by Mr. Ballantyne’s room, through which, and down three steps, was the space devoted to the editorial and reportorial staff of the Morning News.  The front end of this space was partitioned off into three rooms, 7 x 12 feet each.  Field claimed one of these boxes, the dramatic critic and solitary artist of the establishment one, and Morgan Bates, the exchange editor, and I were sandwiched in between them.  The rest of the floor was given up to the city staff.  The telegraph editor had a space railed off for his accommodation in the composing room.  If a fire had broken out in the central building in those days, along about ten P.M., the subsequent proceedings of Eugene Field and of others then employed on the Morning News would probably not have been of further interest, except to the coroner.

Of the three rooms mentioned, Field’s was the only one having any pretensions to decoration.  Its floor and portions of the wall were stained and grained a rich brown with the juice of the tobacco plant.  In one corner Field had a cupboard-shaped pigeon-file, alphabetically arranged, for the clippings he daily made—­almost all relating some bit of personal gossip about people in the public eye.  Scattered about the floor were dumb-bells, Indian clubs, and other gymnastic apparatus which Field never touched and which the janitor had orders not to disturb in their disorder.  Above Field’s desk for some time hung a sheet of tin, which he used as a call bell or to drown the noise of the office boy poking the big globe stove which was the primitive, but generally effective, way of heating the whole floor in winter.  That it was not always effective, even after steam was introduced, may be inferred from the following importunate note written by Field to Collins Shackelford, the cashier, on one occasion when the former had been frozen almost numb: 

DEAR MR. SHACKELFORD:  There has been no steam in the third-floor editorial rooms this afternoon.  Somebody must be responsible for this brutal neglect, which is of so frequent occurrence that forbearance has ceased to be a virtue.  I appeal to you in the hope that you will be able to correct the outrage.  Does it not seem an injustice that the writers of this paper should be put at the mercy of sub-cellar hands, who are continually demonstrating their incompetency for the work which they are supposed to do and for which they are paid?

  Yours truly,