A Study in Heredity and Contradictions. Slason Thompson
With here and there an auxiliary—
The Marshal awakes and stalks around
With an air importantly profound,
And seizing on a luckless wight
Who quietly stayed at home all night
On a charge of not preserving order,
Drags him before the just Recorder.
In vain the hapless youth denies it;
A barroom loafer testifies it.
"Fine him," the court-house rabble shout
(This is the latest jury out).
So when his pocketbook is eased
Most righteous justice is appeased.
The Doctor lay in his little bed,
His night-cap 'round his God-like head,
With a blanket thick and snowy sheet
Enveloped his l—— pshaw! and classical feet,
And he cleared his throat and began: "My dear,
As well in Indiana as here—
I always took a morning ride,
With you, my helpmeet, by my side.
"This morning is so clear and cool,
We'll ride before it's time for school.
Holloa, there John! you lazy cuss!
Bring forth my horse, Bucephalus!"
So spake the man of letters. Straight
Black John went through the stable gate,
But soon returned with hair on end,
While terror wings his speed did lend,
And out he sent his piteous wail:
"O boss! Old Bucky's lost his tail!"
Down went the night-cap on the ground,
Hats, boots and clothing flying round;
In vain his helpmeet cried "Hold on!"
He went right through that sable John.
Sing, sing, O Muse, what deeds were done
This morn by God-like Peleus' son;
Descend, O fickle Goddess, urge
My lyre to his bombastic splurge.
Boots and the man I sing, who first
Those Argive machinations cursed;
His swimming eyes did Daniel raise
To that sad tail of other days,
And cried "Alas! what ornery cuss
Has shaved you, my Bucephalus?"
Then turning round he gently sighed,
"We will postpone our morning ride."
In wrath I smite my quivering lyre,
Come once again, fair Muse, inspire
My song to more heroic acts
Than these poor simple, truthful facts.
Cursed be the man who hatched the plot!
Let dire misfortune be his lot!
Palsied the hand that struck the blow!
Blind be the eyes that saw the show!
Hated the wretch who ruthless bled
This innocent old quadruped.
Subpreps, a word of caution, please;
Better prepare your A, B, C's
Than prowl around at dead of night.
Don't rouse the beast in Daniel's breast;
Perhaps you'll come out second best.
Dear, gentle reader, pardon, pray,
I'm thinking now I hear you say,
"Oh, nonsense! what a foolish fuss
About a horse, Bucephalus."
This is no better verse, and possibly no worse, than much of the adolescent doggerel that is so often preserved by fond parents to prove that their child early gave signs of poetic and literary genius.
CHAPTER VI
CHOICE OF A PROFESSION
Eugene Field was in his twenty-first year when he turned his back upon the colleges and faced life. Roswell M. Field, Sr., had been dead two years, and the moderate fortune which he had left, consisting mostly of realty valued at about $60,000, had not yet been distributed among the legatees, Eugene and Roswell M. Field and Mary French Field. To the last named one-fifth had been willed in recognition of the loving care she had bestowed upon the testator's two motherless sons, each of whom was to receive two-fifths of the father's estate. Eugene therefore looked forward to the possession of property worth something like $25,000. In St. Louis, in 1871, this was regarded as quite a large fortune. It would have been ample to start any young man, with prudence, regular habits, and a small modicum of business sense, well along in any profession or occupation he might adopt. But it was and would have been a bagatelle to Eugene though ten times the amount, unless surrounded with conditions as impenetrable as chilled steel to a pewter chisel to resist the seductive ingenuity of his spendthrift nature.
On first going to St. Louis to live, Eugene Field was peculiarly fortunate in being taken into the home and enduring friendship of Melvin L. Gray, the executor of his father's estate, and of Mrs. Gray. To the memory of the latter, on her death several years since, Eugene contributed a memorial from which I have already quoted and which in some respects is the most sincerely beautiful piece of prose he ever wrote. In that he refers to his first coming to St. Louis in the following terms:
My acquaintance with Mrs. Gray began in 1871. I was at that time just coming of age, and there were many reasons why I was attracted to the home over which this admirable lady presided. In the first-place Mrs. Gray's household was a counterpart of the households to which my boyhood life in New England had attracted me. Again both Mr. and Mrs. Gray were old friends of my parents; and upon Mr. Gray's accepting the executorship of my father's estate, Mrs. Gray felt, I am pleased to believe, somewhat more than a friendly interest in the two boys, who, coming from rural New England life into the great, strange, fascinating city, stood in need of disinterested friendship and prudent counsel. I speak for my brother and myself when I say that for the period of twenty years we found in Mrs. Gray a friend as indulgent, as forbearing, as sympathetic, as kindly suggestive and as disinterested as a mother, and in her home a refuge from temptation, care and vexation.
In the subscription edition of "A Little Book of Western Verse," of which I had all the labor and none of the fleeting fame of publisher, Field dedicated his paraphrase of the Twenty-third Psalm to Mr. Gray, and it was to this constant friend of his youth and manhood, who still survives (1901), that Field indited the beautiful dedication of "The Sabine Farm":
Come dear old friend! and with us twain
To calm Digentian groves repair;
The turtle coos his sweet refrain
And posies are a-blooming there,
And there the romping