of it.  Yes, I am glad to know that you will get away from business and that implacable crowd who are constantly trying to bleed you of money.  I want to see you enjoying life as far as you can, and I want to see you getting actual benefit from the money which you have earned by your many years of conscientious industry.  To me there is no other spectacle in the world so humiliating as that of people laying themselves out to extort money from others.  Do tear yourself away from the sponges.  You and Miss Eva ought to have a quiet winter in a congenial climate.  I hope you will go to Florida, and, after doing Jacksonville and St. Augustine, why not rent a little furnished cottage and keep house for the winter?  Along in February I will run down and make you a visit.  Now, think this over, and let me know what you think of it.  Mr. Gray, there is no need of there being any sentimentality between us; there never has been.  Yet there is every reason why the bond of affection should be a very strong one.  My father and you were associates many years, and at his death he very wisely constituted you the guardian (to a great extent) of his two boys.  I feel that you have more than executed his wishes; I feel that you have fulfilled those hopes which he surely had that you would be a kind of second father to us, counselling us prudently and succoring us in a timely and generous manner, for which we—­for I speak for us both—­are deeply, affectionately grateful.  It would please me so very much to have you promise me that if ever you are ill or if ever you feel that my presence would relieve your loneliness you will apprise me and let me come to you.  If I could afford to do so, I would cheerfully abandon my daily work and go to live with you, doing such purely literary work as delights me; that would, indeed, be very pleasant to me.  One of my great regrets is that circumstances compel me to grind away at ephemeral work which is wholly averse to my tastes.  But enough of this.  Within a month my new book, “Love Songs of Childhood,” will be out.  I regard it as my best work so far, and am hoping it will be profitable.  I do occasional readings.  This afternoon I appeared at the Art Institute with Joseph Jefferson, Sol Smith Russell, Octave Thanet, and Hamlin Garland.  I recited “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” “Seein’ Things at Night,” and “Our Two Opinions,” and was heartily encored, but declined to do anything further.  Julia, Ida, Posie, and I may drop in on you Saturday morning to spend Sunday.  Would you like it?  Would the child be too much for the peace and dignity of the household?  Dear Mr. Gray, do be good to yourself.  Don’t let the rest of creation worry you one bit.  You are about the only man I have to depend upon, for you know the good that is in me, as well as the folly.  Our love to the Butterflyish Miss Eva, and more love to you—­God bless you!  Ever affectionately yours,

  EUGENE FIELD.
  1033 Evanston Ave., Station X, Chicago,
  October 25th, 1894.