Therefore it is not to be wondered at that his collection of strange and fantastic, odd and curious, things filled his library and overflowed and clustered every nook and corner of the Sabine Farm.  Here was a “thumb” Bible, there the smallest dictionary in the world.  In one corner was stacked a freakish lot of canes—­some bought because they were freaks, some with a story behind their acquisition, and more presented to him because Field let it be known that he had a penchant for canes—­which, by the way, he never carried.  In one room there was a shelf of empty bottles of every conceivable shape, size, and “previous condition of servitude”; in another was a perfect menagerie of mechanical toy animals.  As he could not decide which he liked best, hideous pewter mugs or delicate china dishes, he “annexed” them indiscriminately, and stored them cheek by jowl, much to the annoyance of his more orderly wife.  The old New England pie-plate was a dearer article of vertu to him than the most fragile vase, unless the latter was a rare specimen of a forgotten art.  He had a genuine affection for clocks of high and low degree.  He loved them for their friendly faces, and endowed them with personal idiosyncrasies, according to their tickings, by which he distinguished them.  And so the Sabine Farm had old-fashioned clocks and new-fangled clocks in the halls and bedrooms, on the stairs and mantels, in the cellars beneath and in the garret above—­all ticking merrily or sedately, as became their respective makes and natures.  But keeping time?  Never!

Of books there was no end.  Books he had inherited, books he had bought with money pinched from household expenses, and presentation books by the score.  All were jumbled together in a confusion that delighted him, but which would have been the despair of an orderly mind.  His rare and well-nigh complete collection of books on Horace and of editions of the poet had the place of honor in his library, with the rest nowhere in particular and everywhere in general.  Hundreds of his books bear the autographs of their respective authors, while the walls of the house were covered with autograph letters from many of the celebrities and not a few of the notorieties of the world.  Even the nonentities found lodgement there.  Such another collection as Field’s is not to be met with under any roof in this country; nor could its like be duplicated anywhere, because it reflects the man in all his personal contradictions and predispositions.  It is queer and sui generis—­but mostly “queer”—­which word to him always conveyed a sense of inimitable incongruity.

When Field returned from Holland he wore on his third finger a hideous silver ring, that looked like pewter, in which shone, but did not sparkle, a huge green crystal.  It was a gorgeous travesty on an emerald.  Beauty it had none, nor even quaintness of design.  It was just plain ugly; but he had become attached to it because it was conspicuous and had some association with Dutch life connected with it.  From this it may be inferred that Field’s taste in jewelry was barbaric; but, happily for Mrs. Field, it was a taste he seldom indulged.