And now of the man himself as I first saw him.  He was at that time in his thirty-third year, my junior by a year.  If Eugene Field had ever stood up to his full height he would have measured slightly over six feet.  But he never did and was content to shamble through life, appearing two inches shorter than he really was.  Shamble is perhaps hardly the word to use.  But neither glide nor shuffle fits his gait any more accurately.  It was simply a walk with the least possible waste of energy.  It fitted Dr. Holmes’s definition of walking as forward motion to prevent falling.  And yet Field never gave you the impression that he was about to topple over.  His legs always acted as if they were weary and would like to lean their master up against something.  As to what that something might be, he would probably have answered, “Pie.”

Field’s arms were long, ending in well-shaped hands, which were remarkably deft and would have been attractive had he not at some time spoiled the fingers by the nail-biting habit.  His shoulders were broad and square, and not nearly as much rounded as might have been expected from his position in writing.  It was not the stoop of his shoulders that detracted from his height, but a certain settling together, if I may so say, of the couplings of his backbone.  He was large-boned throughout, but without the muscles that should have gone with such a frame.  He would probably have described himself as tall, big, gangling.  He had no personal taste or pride in clothing, and never to my knowledge came across a tailor who took enough interest in his clothes to give him the benefit of a good fit or to persuade him to choose a becoming color.  For this reason he looked best-dressed in a dress suit, which he never wore when there was any possibility of avoiding it.  His favorite coat was a sack, cut straight, and made from some cloth in which the various shades of yellow, green, and brown struggled for mastery.

But it was of little consequence how Field’s body was clothed.  He wore a 7 3-8 hat and there was a head and face under it that compelled a second glance and repaid scrutiny in any company.  The photographs of Field are numerous, and some of them preserve a fair impression of his remarkable physiognomy.  None of the paintings of him that I have seen do him justice, and the etchings are not much of an improvement on the paintings.  The best photographs only fail because they cannot retain the peculiar deathlike pallor of the skin and the clear, innocent china blue of the large eyes.  These eyes were deep set under two arching brows, and yet were so large that their deep setting was not at first apparent.  Field’s nose was a good size and well shaped, with an unusual curve of the nostrils strangely complementary to the curve of the arch above the eyes.  There was a mole on one cheek, which Field always insisted on turning to the camera and which the photographer very generally insisted on retouching out in the finishing.  Field was wont to say that no photograph of him was genuine unless that mole was “blown in on the negative.”  The photographs all give him a good chin, in which there was merely the suggestion of that cleft which he held marred the strength of George William Curtis’s lower jaw.