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[Illustration: Portrait of Eugene Field in 1885.]



EUGENE FIELD

A STUDY IN HEREDITY AND CONTRADICTIONS


By SLASON THOMPSON


With Portraits, Views and Fac-Simile Illustrations


VOLUME I


Published, December, 1901
Charles Scribner's Sons
New York

1901




BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION


Not as other memoirs are written would Eugene Field, were he alive,
have this study of his life. He would think more of making it reflect
the odd personality of the man than rehearse the birth, development,
daily life, and works of the author. If he had undertaken to write his
own life, as was once his intention, it would probably have been the
most remarkable work of fiction by an American author that ever
masqueraded in the quaker garments of fact. From title-page to
colophon--on which he would have insisted--the book would have been
one studied effort to quiz and queer (a favorite word of his) the
innocent and willing-to-be-deluded reader. "