The Holy Cross and Other Tales | Page 3

himself. It must have
required days for the mechanical execution, and certainly I would not
now exchange it for its weight in diamonds. This was the way our
friendship began. It was soon strengthened by meetings and
correspondence, and never afterwards broken.
Some years ago, however, I visited Chicago, to lecture, at the invitation
of its famous social and literary "Twentieth Century Club." This was
Eugene's opportunity, and I ought not to have been as dumfounded as I
was, one day, when our evening papers copied from the "Chicago
Record" a "very pleasant joke" at the expense of his town and myself!
It was headed: "Chicago Excited! Tremendous Preparations for His
Reception," and went on to give the order and route of a procession that
was to be formed at the Chicago station and escort me to my
quarters--stopping at Armour's packing-yards and the art-galleries on
the way. It included the "Twentieth Century Club" in carriages, the
"Browning Club" in busses, and the "Homer Club" in drays; ten
millionnaire publishers, and as many pork-packers, in a chariot drawn
by white horses, followed by not less than two hundred Chicago poets
afoot! I have no doubt that Eugene thought I would enjoy this kind of
advertisement as heartily as he did. If so, he lacked the gift of putting

himself in the other man's place. But his sardonic face, a-grin like a
school-boy's, was one with two others which shone upon me when I did
reach Chicago, and my pride was not wounded sufficiently to prevent
me from enjoying the restaurant luncheon to which he bore me off in
triumph. I did promise to square accounts with him, in time, and this is
how I fulfilled my word. The next year, at a meeting of a suburban
"Society of Authors," a certain lady-journalist was chaffed as to her
acquaintanceship with Field, and accused of addressing him as "Gene."
At this she took umbrage, saying: "It's true we worked together on the
same paper for five years, but he was always a perfect gentleman. I
never called him 'Gene.'" This was reported by the press, and gave me
the refrain for a skit entitled "Katharine and Eugenio:"
Five years she sate a-near him Within that type-strewn loft; She handed
him the paste-pot, He passed the scissors oft; They dipped in the same
inkstand That crowned their desk between, Yet--he never called her
Katie, She never called him "Gene."
Though close--ah! close--the droplight That classic head revealed, She
was to him Miss Katharine, He--naught but Mister Field; Decorum
graced his upright brow And thinned his lips serene, And, though he
wrote a poem each hour, Why should she call him "Gene?"
She gazed at his sporadic hair-- She knew his hymns by rote; They
longed to dine together At Casey's table d'hôte; Alas, that Fortune's
"hostages"-- But let us draw a screen! He dared not call her Katie; How
could she call him "Gene?"
I signed my verses "By one of Gene's Victims"; they appeared in The
Tribune, and soon were copied by papers in every part of the country.
Other stanzas, with the same refrain, were added by the funny men of
the southern and western press, and it was months before 'Gene' saw
the last of them. The word "Eugenio," which was the name by which I
always addressed him in our correspondence, left him in no doubt as to
the initiator of the series, and so our "Merry War" ended, I think, with a
fair quittance to either side.
Grieving, with so many others, over Yorick's premature death, it is a

solace for me to remember how pleasant was our last interchange of
written words. Not long ago, he was laid very low by pneumonia, but
recovered, and before leaving his sickroom wrote me a sweetly serious
letter--with here and there a sparkle in it--but in a tone sobered by
illness, and full of yearning for a closer companionship with his friends.
At the same time he sent me the first editions, long ago picked up, of
all my earlier books, and begged me to write on their fly-leaves. This I
did; with pains to gratify him as much as possible, and in one of the
volumes wrote this little quatrain:
TO EUGENE FIELD
Death thought to claim you in this year of years, But Fancy cried--and
raised her shield between-- "Still let men weep, and smile amid their
tears; Take any two beside, but spare Eugene!"
In view of his near escape, the hyperbole, if such there was, might well
be pardoned, and it touched Eugene so manifestly that--now that the
eddy indeed has swept him away, and the Sabine Farm mourns for its
new-world Horace--I cannot be too thankful that such was my last
message to him.
Eugene Field was