[Illustration:  WILLIAM J. FLORENCE.]

Whereupon, according to Field, “Joe” Jefferson broke in incredulously:  “Just to illustrate the folly of all that talk, I’ll tell you what I saw last night.  When I returned to the hotel, after the play, I went up to Billy’s room and found Billy and the President of the Philadelphia Catnip Club at supper.  What do you suppose they had?  Stewed terrapin and frapped champagne!”

“That’s all right enough,” exclaimed Mr. Florence.  “Terrapin and champagne never hurt anybody; I have had ’em all my life.  What I maintain is that people of my age should not and cannot indulge in extravagance of diet.  The utmost simplicity must be the rule of their life.  If Joe would only eat terrapin and drink champagne he wouldn’t be grunting around with dyspepsia all the time.  He lives on boiled mutton and graham bread, and the public call him ’the reverend veteran Joseph Jefferson.’  I stick to terrapin, green turtle, canvasbacks, and the like, and every young chap in the land slaps me on the back, calls me Billy, and regards me as a contemporary.  But I ain’t; I’m getting old—­not too old, but just old enough!”

A dozen years with the boys had done for Field’s digestion what the robust Florence was dreading after sixty, and to the day of his death, Field, from the rigid practice of his self-denial, pitied and sympathized with the unhappy wight who had received the warning given to Florence, “You must quit training with the boys, otherwise it will do you up.”  But he had no more obeyed the warning as to coffee and pie than Florence did as to the injunction of Sir Morell against terrapin and champagne.

[Illustration:  COMMODORE CRANE. From a drawing by Eugene Field.]

Another “Billy,” William H. Crane, was one of Field’s favorites, and the one with whose name he took the greatest liberties in his column of “Sharps and Flats.”  His waggish mind found no end of humor in creating a son for Mr. Crane, who was christened after his father’s stage partner, Stuart Robson Crane.  This child of Field’s sardonic fancy was gifted with all the roguish attributes that are the delight and despair of fond parents.  Scarcely a month, sometimes hardly a week, went by that Field did not print some yarn about the sayings or doings of the obstreperous Stuart Robson Crane.  Every anecdote that he heard he adapted to the years and supposed circumstances of “Master Crane.”  The close relations which existed between Field and the Cranes—­for he included Mrs. Crane within the inner circle of his good-fellowship—­may be judged from the following tribute: 

  MRS. BILLY CRANE

  A woman is a blessing, be she large or be she small,
  Be she wee as any midget, or as any cypress tall: 
  And though I’m free to say I like all women folks the best,
  I think I like the little women better than the rest—­
  And of all the little women I’m in love with I am fain
  To sing the praises of the peerless Mrs. Billy Crane.