To him reviled.
Then strike, O bards, your tuneful lyres,
'Awake, O rhyming souls, your fires,
And use no stint!
Bring forth the festive syrup cup—
Fill every loyal beaker up
With peppermint!
March, 1878.
In the spring of 1879 the St. Louis Times-Journal printed the following April verses by Field, which were copied without the author's name by London Truth, and went the rounds of the papers in this country, credited to that misnamed paper, and attributed, much to Field's glee, to William S. Gilbert, then at the height of his Pinafore and Bab Ballad fame:
APRIL VESPERS
The turtles drum in the pulseless bay,
The crickets creak in the prickful hedge,
The bull-frogs boom in the puddling sedge
And the whoopoe whoops its vesper lay
Away
In the twilight soft and gray.
Two lovers stroll in the glinting gloam—
His hand in her'n and her'n in his—
She blushes deep—he is talking biz—
They hug and hop as they listless roam—
They roam—
It's late when they get back home.
Down by the little wicket-gate,
Down where the creepful ivy grows,
Down where the sweet nasturtium blows,
A box-toed parent lies in wait—
In wait
For the maiden and her mate.
Let crickets creak and bull-frogs boom,
The whoopoe wail in the distant dell—
Their tuneful throbs will ne'er dispel
The planted pain and the rooted gloom—
The gloom
Of the lover's dismal doom.
Just by the way of illustrating in fac-simile and preserving the character of the newspaper paragrapher's work in the last century, the following "Funny Fancies," by Field, from the St. Louis Journal of August 3d, 1878, may be of interest:
A green Christmas—No, no, we mean a green peach makes a fat graveyard.
A philanthropic citizen of Memphis has wedded a Miss Hoss. He doubtless took her for wheel or whoa.
We have tried every expedient and we find that the simple legend: "Smallpox in this House" will preserve the most uninterrupted bliss in an editorial room.
There is a moment when a man's soul revolts against the dispensations of Providence, and that is when he finds that his wife has been using his flannel trousers to wrap up the ice in.
To the average Athenian the dearest spot on earth is the Greece spot.
Mr. Deer was hung at Atlanta. Of course he died game.
'Tis pleasant at the close of day
To play
Croquet.
And if your partner makes a miss
Why kiss
The siss.
But if she gives your chin a thwack,
Why whack
Her back!
A great many newspaper men lie awake night after night mentally debating whether they will leave their property to some charitable institution or spend it the next day for something with a little lemon in it.
It was during his earlier connection with the St. Louis Journal that Field was assigned the duty of misreporting Carl Schurz, when that peripatetic statesman stumped Missouri in 1874 as a candidate for re-election to the United States Senate. Field in later years paid unstinted tribute to the logic, eloquence, and patriotic force of Mr. Schurz's futile appeals to the rural voters of Missouri. But during the trip his reports were in nowise conducive to the success of the Republican and Independent candidate. Mr. Schurz's only remonstrances were, "Field, why will you lie so outrageously?" It was only by the exercise of careful watchfulness that Mr. Schurz's party was saved from serious compromise through the practical jokes and snares which Field laid for the grave, but not revered Senator. On one occasion when a party of German serenaders appeared at the hotel where the party was stopping, before Mr. Schurz had completed a necessary change of toilet Field stepped out on the veranda, and, waving the vociferous cornet and trombone to silence, proceeded to address the crowd in broken English. As he went on the cheering soon subsided into amazed silence at the heterodox doctrines he uttered, until the bogus candidate was pushed unceremoniously aside by the real one. Mr. Schurz had great difficulty in saving Field from the just wrath of the crowd, which had resented his broken English more than his political heresies.
On another occasion when there was a momentary delay on the part of the gentleman who was to introduce Mr. Schurz, Field stepped to the front and with a strong German accent addressed the gathering as follows:
LADIES AND SHENTLEMEN: I haf such a pad colt dot et vas not bossible for me to make you a speedg to-night, but I haf die bleasure to introduce to you my prilliant chournatistic friend Euchene Fielt, who will spoke you in my blace.
It was all done so quickly and so seriously that the joke was complete before Mr. Schurz could push himself into the centre of the stage. Annoyance and mirth mingled in the explanations that followed. A love of music common to both was the only thing that made Field tolerable to his serious-minded elder.
Regarding Eugene Field's work upon the St. Jo Gazette, it was local in character and of the most ephemeral nature. There is preserved in the pocket-books of some old printers in the West the galley proof of a doggerel rhyme read by him at the printers' banquet, at St. Joseph, Mo., January 1st, 1876. It details the fate of a "Rat" printer, who, in addition to the mortal offence of "spacing out agate" type with brevier, sealed his doom by stepping on the tail of our old friend, the French poodle McSweeny. The execution of the victim's sentence was described as follows:
His body in the fatal cannon then they force
Shouting erstwhile in accents madly hoarse,
"Death to all Rats"—the fatal match is struck,
The cannon pointed upwards—then kerchuck!
Fiz! Snap! Ker—boom! Slug 14's grotesque form
Sails out to ride a race upon the storm,
Up through the roof, and up into the sky—
As if he sought for "cases" up on high,
Till like a rocket, or like one who's trusted,
He fell again to earth—completely busted.
There is not much suggestion, or even promise, in this doggerel, of the Eugene Field whose verses of occasion were destined within a dozen years to be sought for in every newspaper office in America.
Long before Field learned the value of his time and writing, he began to appreciate the value of printer's ink and showed much shrewdness in courting its favor. He did not wait for chance to bring his wares into notice, but early joined the circle of busy paragraphers who formed a wider, if less distinguished, mutual admiration society than that free-masonry of authorship which at one time almost limited literary fame in the United States to Henry James, William Dean Howells, Charles Dudley Warner, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Robert J. Burdette is about the only survivor of the coterie of paragraphers, who, a quarter of a century ago, made such papers as the Burlington Hawkeye, the Detroit Free Press, the Oil City Derrick, the Danbury News, and the Cincinnati