Florence delighted in companionship and in the good things and good stories of the table, whether at a noon breakfast which lasted well through the afternoon or at the midnight supper which knew no hour for breaking up, and he never came to Chicago that we did not accommodate our convenience to his late hours for breakfast or supper.  Nothing short of a concealed stenographer could have done these gatherings justice.  Mr. Stone footed the bills, and Field, Florence, Edward J. McPhelim of the Chicago Tribune, poet and dramatic critic, and three or four others of the Daily News staff did the rest.  The eating was good, although the dishes were sometimes weird, the company was better, the stories, anecdotes, reminiscences, songs, and flow of soul beyond compare.  Field, who ate sparingly and touched liquor not at all, unless it was to pass a connoisseurs judgment upon some novel, strange, and rare brand, divided the honors of the hour with the entire company.

In acknowledgment of such attentions, Florence always insisted that before the close of his engagements we should all be his guests at a regular Italian luncheon of spaghetti at Caproni’s, down on Wabash Avenue.  It is needless to say that the spaghetti was merely the central dish, around which revolved and was devoured every delicacy that Florence had ever heard of in his Italian itinerary, the whole washed down with strange wines from the same sunny land.  Florence’s fondness for this sort of thing gave zest to a story Field told of his friend’s experience in London, in the summer of 1890.  The epicurean actor had made an excursion up the Thames with a select party of English clubmen.  Two days later Florence was still abed at Morley’s, and, as he said, contemplated staying there forever.  Sir Morell Mackenzie was called to see him.  After sounding his lungs, listening to his heart, thumping his chest and back, looking at his tongue, and testing his breath with medicated paper, Sir Morell said: 

“As near as I can get at it, you are a victim of misplaced confidence.  You have been training with the young bucks when you should have been ploughing around with the old stags.  You must quit it.  Otherwise it will do you up.”

“Well now,” said Florence, as related by Field, “that was the saddest day of my life.  Just think of shutting down on the boys, after being one of them for sixty years!  But Sir Morell told the truth.  The Garrick Club boys were terribly mad about it; they said Sir Morell was a quack, and they adopted resolutions declaring a lack of confidence in his medical skill.  But my mind was made up.  ‘Billy,’ says I to myself, ’you must let up, you’ve made a record; it’s a long one and an honorable one.  Now you must retire.  Your life henceforth shall be reminiscent and its declining years shall be hallowed by the refulgent rays of retrospection.’  To that resolution I have adhered steadily.  People tell me that I am as young as ever; but no, they can’t fool me, I know better.”