But all the care, study, and exercise Field put upon his prose stories bore fruit in the gradual improvement in tone and style of his daily composition.  His study of old English ballads started him about this time on the production of a truly remarkable series of lullabies, while his work began to show more and more the influence of Father Prout.  But the old Field continued to show itself in such occasional quatrains as this: 

  For there was Egypt in her eye—­
    The languor of the South—­
  Persia was in her perfumed sigh,
    And Turkey in her mouth.

Along in January, 1889, began the frequent paraphrases from Horace.  “Wynken, Blynken and Nod,” over which Field expended more than the usual pains he bestowed on his verse, was printed in March of the same year.  One day in April, in 1889, Field surprised and delighted the readers of the News with the publication of the following amazing array of verse in one issue:  “Our Two Opinions,” Horace I, 4; Heine’s “Love Song,” Horace I, 20; Hugo’s “Pool in the Forest,” Horace I, 5; Beranger’s “Broken Fiddle,” Horace I, 28; “Chloe”; Uhland’s “Three Cavaliers,” and Horace IV, 11.

It must not be imagined that this was the result of one day’s or one week’s work.  He had been preparing for it for months; and each piece of versification was as perfect as he could make it.  The amazement and widely expressed admiration with which this broadside of verse was received encouraged Field to a still greater tour de force, upon the preparation of which he bent all his energies and spare time for more than three months.  What Field described in a letter to Cowen as “The ‘Golden Week’ in my newspaper career,” consisted in “the paper running a column of my (his) verse per diem—­something never before attempted in American journalism.”  The titles of the verse printed during the “Golden Week” testify alike to his industry and versatility: 

  THE GOLDEN WEEK, JULY 15TH-20TH, 1889.

  Monday, July 15, “Prof.  Vere de Blaw.”

  Tuesday, “Horace to His Patron,” “Poet and
  King,” “Alaskan Lullaby,” “Lizzie,” “Horace I,
  30.”

  Wednesday, “The Conversazzhyony.”

  Thursday, “Egyptian Folk Song,” Beranger’s
  “To My Old Coat,” “Horace’s Sailor and Shade,”
  “Uhland’s Chapel,” “Guess,” “Alaskan Balladry.”

  Friday, “Marthy’s Younkit,” “Fairy and Child,”
  “A Heine Love Song,” “Jennie,” “Horace I, 27.”

  Saturday, “The Happy Isles of Horace,” Beranger’s
  “Ma Vocation,” “Child and Mother,” “The
  Bibliomaniac’s Bride,” “Alaskan Balladry, No. 2,”
  “Mediaeval Eventide Song.”

Upon some of these now familiar poems Field had been at work for more than a month.  He read to me portions of “Marthy’s Younkit” as early as the spring of 1887.  Among the letters which his guardian, Mr. Gray, kindly placed at my disposal, I find the following bearing on “The Golden Week.”  It is written from the Benedict Farm, Genoa Junction, Wis., some sixty miles from Chicago, to which Field had retired to recuperate after having provided enough poetry in advance to fill his column during the week of his absence: