The “diagram of Mr. Slason Thompson’s New Rooms” accompanying this letter was entirely worthy of it, and must have afforded him hours of boyish pleasure.  No description can do it justice.  He gave a ground plan of two square rooms with the windows marked in red ink, the doors in green, the bed, with a little figure on it, in blue, the fireplace in yellow, chairs and tables in purple, and the “buttery,” as he insisted on calling the bathroom, in brown.  As these apartments were in the Pullman Building, on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street, and commanded a glimpse of the lake, Field’s diagram included a representation of Lake Michigan by zigzag lines of blue ink, with a single fish as long as a street-car, according to his scale, leering at the spectator from the billowy depths of indigo blue.  Everything in the diagram was carefully identified in the key which accompanied it.  An idea of the infinite attention to detail Field bestowed on such frivoling as this may be gathered from the accompanying cut of the Pullman Building, from the seventh story of which I am shown waving a welcome to the good but “impecunious knight.”  The inscription, in Field’s handwriting, tells the story.

[Illustration:  THE GOOD KNIGHT SLOSSON’S CASTLE. From a drawing by Eugene Field.

  The good knight Slosson from a watch tower of his castle desenith and
  salutith the good Knight Eugene, sans peur et sans monie.]

[Illustration:  A TRAGEDY IN FIVE ACTS. From drawings by Eugene Field.

  No. 1
  The fair Mary Matilda skimming over the hills and dales of New
  Brunswick.

  No. 2
  Lovelorn Eddie Martin in hot pursuit of same.

  No. 3
  Lone pine in the deserted vale where the musquash watches for his
  prey.

  No. 4
  Horrible discovery made by the fair Mary Matilda upon her return to
  the lone pine in the secluded vale.

  No. 5
  All that is left of poor Eddie.]

Early in the spring of 1885 Field was inspired, by an account I gave him of a snow-shoeing party my sister had described in one of her letters, to compose the series of pen-and-ink tableaux reproduced on pages 30 and 31.

An inkling as to the meaning of these weird pictures may be gleaned from the letter I sent along with them to my sister, in which I wrote: 

I was telling Field the story of your last snow-shoeing party when he was prompted to the enclosed tragedy in five acts.  He hopes that you will not mistake the stars for mosquitoes, nor fail to comprehend the terrible fate that has overtaken Eddy Martin at the mouth of the voracious musquash, whose retreating tail speaks so eloquently of his toothsome repast.  The lone pine tree is a thing that you will enjoy; also the expression of horror on your own face when you behold the empty boots of Eddy.  There is a tragedy too deep for tears in the silent monuments of Field’s ignorance