served with difficult gravity by the waiters to an appreciative company.  The bill promised some rare and appropriate wine for each course, and the table flashed with the club’s full equipment of cut glass for each plate.  But alas and alack-a-day! when the waiters came to serve the choicest vintages from the correctly labelled bottles, they gave forth nothing but Waukesha spring water.  Not even “lemonade of a watery grade” did we have to wash down our luncheon, where every dish was seasoned to the taste of a salted codfish.  But we had all the water we could drink, and before we were through we needed it.  Sol Smith Russell was among the guests that day, and he and Field gave imitations of each other, which left the company in doubt as to which was the original.

It was on an occasion somewhat similar to this, given in the early winter, that Field perpetrated one of his most characteristic jokes, with the assistance of Mr. Stone, by this time manager of the Associated Press.  The latter, at no little trouble, had provided as luscious a dessert of strawberries as the tooth of epicure ever watered over.  They were the first of the season, and fragrant with the fragrance that has given the berry premiership in the estimation of others besides Isaac Walton.  While everybody was proving that the berries tasted even better than they looked, and exclaiming over the treat, Field was observed to push his saucer out of range of temptation.  At last Stone remarked Field’s action, and asked:  “What’s the matter, Gene, don’t you like strawberries?”

“Like them?” said Field; “I fairly adore strawberries!  They are the only fruit I prefer to pie.”

“Then why don’t you eat yours?” queried Stone.

“B-because,” answered Field, with a deep quaver in his voice, “b-because I’m afraid it would s-s-spoil my appetite for p-prunes.”

Through these years Field was also the central figure in the entertainments of the Fellowship Club, and contributed more to the reputation these attained for wit and mirth-provoking scenes than all other participators combined.  But he had begun to weary of the somewhat forced play of such gatherings, and found more pleasure watching the children romping in the Waller lot, or pottering about and overseeing the planting in his own new front yard.  He had arrived at the time when he wanted to get away from the city and into the country as far as the engagements of his profession would permit.  This spirit is dominant in these lines to his friend Louis Auer: 

The August days are very hot, the vengeance of the sky Has sapped the groves’ vitality and browned the meadows dry; Creation droops, and languishes, one cannot sleep or eat—­ Dead is the city market-place, and dead the city street!  It is the noontime of the year, when men should seek repose Where rustic lakes go rippling and the water-lily grows; Come, let us swerve a season from the dusty urban track, And off with Louis Auer to his Lake