by the Journal to Jefferson City to report the proceedings of the Missouri State Legislature, what his paper got was not an edifying summary of that unending grist of mostly irrelevant and immaterial legislation through the General Assembly hopper, but a running fire of pungent comment on the Idiosyncrasies of its officers and members. He would attach himself to the legislators whose personal qualities afforded most profitable ammunition for sport in print. He shunned the sessions of Senate and House and held all night sessions of story and song with the choice spirits to be found on the floors and in the lobbies of every western legislature. I wonder why I wrote "western" when the species is as ubiquitous in Maine as in Colorado? From such sources Field gleaned the infinite fund of anecdote and of character-study which eventually made him the most sought-for boon companion that ever crossed the lobby of a legislature or of a state capital hotel in Missouri, Colorado, or Illinois. He was a looker-on in the legislative halls, and right merrily he lampooned everything he saw. Nothing was too trivial for his notice, nothing so serious as to escape his ridicule or satire.
There was little about his work at this time that gave promise of anything beyond the spicy facility of a quick-witted, light-hearted western paragrapher. Looking back it is possible, however, to discover something of the flavor of the inextinguishable drollery that persisted to his last printed work in such verses as these in the St. Louis Journal:
THE NEW BABY
We welcome thee, eventful morn
Since to the poet there is born
A son and heir;
A fuzzy babe of rosy hue,
And staring eyes of misty blue
Sans teeth, sans hair.
Let those who know not wedded joy
Revile this most illustrious boy—
This genial child!
But let the brother poets raise
Their songs and chant their sweetest lays
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
