For a long time not a week went by that Field did not invent some marvellous tale respecting Emma Abbott, once the most popular light-opera prima donna of the American stage—every yarn calculated to widen the circle of her popularity. Upon an absolutely fictitious autobiography of Miss Abbott he once exhausted the fertility of his fancy in the form of a review,[[1] ] which went the rounds of the press and which, on her death, contributed many a sober paragraph to the newspaper reviews of her life.
To the fame of another opera singer of those days he contributed, by paragraphs of an entirely different flavor from those that extolled the Puritan virtues and domestic felicities of Miss Abbott (Mrs. Wetherell), as may be judged from the following "Love Plaint," written shortly after he came to Chicago:
The tiny birdlings in the tree
Their tuneful tales of love relate—
Alas, no lover comes to me—
I flock alone, without a mate.
Mine eyes are hot with bitter tears,
My soul disconsolately yearns—
But, ah, no wooing knight appears—
In vain my quenchless passion burns.