Coming back I peep in at the window and behold baby Dock in his high-chair weeping lustily, whilst baby Cowen has crept out of his chair, toddled to the wall and is reaching for his bottle!  Betwixt the hysterics of the one babe and the bottle of t’other I am well-nigh exhausted.  Come back and take care of your babies yourself!

[Illustration:  A SCENE IN THE DAILY NEWS OFFICE. From a drawing by Eugene Field.]

I do not see that any effort is being made to get out a better paper.  The sheet has been simply rotten, and everybody says so—­even the dogs are barking about it.  Meanwhile I am sawing wood.  I am reading a great deal.  Read Mrs. Gordon’s Life of Christopher North, parts of Burns’s poems, life of Dr. Faustus, and Morte D’Arthur since you left, and hope to read Goethe’s poems, Life of Bunyan, Homer’s works, Sartor Resartus and Rasselas before you get back.  I have about made up my mind to do little outside writing for four or five months and to do a prodigious amount of reading instead.

My wife will be back to-morrow evening; as I am to meet her at the station, I may not have time to write you your daily note.  She writes me that she has had a bad cold ever since she reached St. Louis and is heartily glad that she is coming home.  Dunlap, of the McCaul Company, invites me to be his guest at the Southern Hotel while the company sings in St. Louis, but that sort of thing is out of the question.  Do you intend to go to Indianapolis with me?  E——­ W——­ has been very friendly of late.  I suspect he is getting hard up.  B——­’s latest fad is to organize a Friday night club to discuss literature, art, science, etc.  Hearing him talk about it to-day gave the old Dock a violent attack of nausea.  Speaking of nausea reminds me that P——­ has been seriously indisposed for two days as the consequence of eating nine peaches, two apples, and a pound of grapes!  He is satisfied, however, that this variable fall weather is very trying.  Shackelford is off on his vacation, but I do not complain, since I find Rogers, his substitute, a pleasant gentleman to do Saturday business with....

  Affectionately yours,

  EUGENE FIELD.

An interesting point in this letter is its reference to his proposed first appearance as a reader after coming to Chicago before the convention of Western Association of Writers at Indianapolis.  Previous to this, during our acquaintance he had repeatedly declined requests to appear upon the platform.  But in this case he was persuaded by Richard Lew Dawson, the secretary of the association, to make an exception in its favor.  In a letter to Mr. Dawson, under date of September 3d, 1886, Field gives the following interesting estimate of some of his own work: 

  “Since reading your last letter, I have thought that it might be
  wise for me to contribute to your programme the following pieces,
  which exhibit pretty nearly all styles of my work: