Echoes from the Sabine Farm

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Echoes from the Sabine Farm, by
Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Echoes from the Sabine Farm
Author: Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
Release Date: October 27, 2004 [eBook #13885]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ECHOES
FROM THE SABINE FARM***
E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Melissa Er-Raqabi, Leah Moser,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
The Writings in Prose and Verse of Eugene Field
ECHOES FROM THE SABINE FARM
by
ROSWELL MARTIN FIELD AND EUGENE FIELD
1899
[Illustration]
INTRODUCTION
One Sunday evening in the winter of 1890 Eugene Field and the writer

were walking in Lake View, Chicago, on their way to visit the library
of a common friend, when the subject of publishing a book for Field
came up for discussion.
The Little Book of Western Verse and The Little Book of Profitable
Tales had been privately printed the year before at Chicago, and Field
had been frequently reminded that the writer was ready and willing to
stand sponsor for any new volume he, Field, might desire to bring out.
"The only thing I have on hand that might make a book," said Field,
"are some few paraphrases of the Odes of Horace which my brother,
'Rose,' and I have been fooling over, and which, truth to tell, are
certainly freely rendered. There are not enough of them, but we'll do
some more, and I'll add a brief Life of Horace as a preface or
introduction."
It is to be regretted that Field never carried out his intention with
respect to this last, for he had given much thought and study to the
great Roman satirist, and what Eugene Field could have said upon the
subject must have been of interest. It is my belief that as he thought
upon the matter it grew too great for him to handle within the space he
had at first determined, and that tucked away within the recesses of his
literary intentions was the determination, nullified by his early death, to
write, con amore, a life of Quintus Horatius Flaccus.
This determination to write separately an extended account of Horace
greatly reduced the bulk of the material intended for the Sabine Echoes,
and it was with respect to this that Field apologetically and, as was his
wont, humorously wrote:
"The volume may be rather thin in corpore, but think how hefty it will
be intellectually."
When it came to the discussion of how many copies should be printed
it was suggested that the edition be an exceedingly limited one, in order
to cause as much scrambling and heartburning as possible among our
bibliophilic brethren. And never shall I forget the seriousness of the
man's face, nor the roars of laughter that followed, when he suggested

that fifty copies only should be made, and that we should reserve one
each and burn the other forty-eight!
It was a biting cold night and we had been loitering by the way,
stopping to debate each point as it arose--but now we plunged on with
excess of motion to keep ourselves warm, breaking out with occasional
peals of laughter as we thought of our plan to make the publication
what the booksellers call "excessively rare."
Field, elsewhere, has said he did not know why the original intention as
to the destruction of the forty-eight copies was not carried out, but the
answer is not far away. As the time for publication approached it was
found impossible that such and such a friend should be forgotten in the
matter of a copy, and so it went on until it was deemed prudent to add
fifty to the number originally intended to be issued, and that decision,
in the light of what followed, proved to be an eminently wise one.
More than once some to me unknown friend of Field would write a
pleasant lie as a reason to gain possession of the book, and up in a
corner of the letter would be found an endorsement of the request after
this fashion:
What's writ below
I'd have you know
Nor falsehood nor romance
is;
It's solemn truth,
So grant the youth
The boon he seeks, dear
Francis.
EUGENE FIELD.
It is perhaps unnecessary to add that, however flimsy the pretext upon
which the request for a copy was made, it never failed of its object if it
brought with it Field's endorsement. Among many pleasant utterances
on this subject Field has said that but for the writer the Horatian verses
would not have been