(Plaintively)

  Ach! weh das Niebelrungen spott
    Ach! weh das Maedchein Turnverein
  Und unser Meister lieben Gott—­
    Ach! weh das Weinerwurst und Wein! 
  Ach! weh das Bricht zum kleiner Geld—­
  Ach! weh das Schlabbergasterfeldt!_

Ever after this Walters gallery incident it was my duty, so he thought, to keep Field’s desk supplied with inks, not only of every color of the rainbow, but with lake-white, gold, silver, and bronze, and any other kind which his whim deemed necessary to give eccentric emphasis to some line, word or letter in whatever he chanced to be composing.  His peremptory requests were generally preferred in writing, addressed “For the Lusty Knight, Sir Slosson Thompson, Office,” and delivered by his grinning minion, the office factotum.  Sometimes they were in verse, as in the following: 

  "Who spilt my bottle of ink?” said Field,
    “Who spilt my bottle of ink?”
  And then with a sigh, said Thompson, “’Twas I—­
    I broke that bottle of ink,
        I think,
    And wasted the beautiful ink.”

  “Who’ll buy a bottle of ink?” asked Field,
    “Who’ll buy a bottle of ink?”
  With a still deeper sigh his friend replied, “I—­
    I’ll buy a bottle of ink
        With chink,
    I’ll buy a bottle of ink!”

  “Oh, isn’t this beautiful ink!” cried Field,
    “Beautiful bilious ink!”
  He shook the hand of his old friend, and
    He tipped him a pleasant wink,
        And a blink,
    As he went to using that ink._

While Field insisted on a variegated assortment of inks he did not demand a separate pen for each color.  In lieu of these he possessed himself of an old linen office coat, which he donned when it was cool enough for a coat and used for a pen-wiper.  When the temperature rendered anything beyond shirt-sleeves superfluous, this linen affair was hung so conveniently that he could still use it for what he regarded as its primary use.  In warm weather I wore a presentably clean counterpart of Field’s Joseph’s coat of many colors.  As often as necessary this went to the laundry.  One day when it had just returned from one of these periodical visits, I was startled, but not surprised, to find that Field had appropriated my spotless linen duster to his own inky uses and left his own impossible creation hanging on my hook in its stead.  Field’s version of what then occurred is beautifully, if not truthfully, portrayed in the accompanying “Proper Sonet” and life-like portraits.

If the reader will imagine each mark on the coat, of which “Nompy” bootlessly complains, done in different colors, he will have some idea of the infinite pains Field bestowed on the details of his epistolary pranks.