With great and sumptous cheer and with
Joyous discourse, the good knight
Slosson regaleth the good knight
Eugene sans peur et sans monie.
Having regaled ourselves with this sumptuous cheer to "repletion," we would walk three blocks to McClurg's book-store and replenish our stock of English, sacred and profane, defiled and undefiled. I am writing now of the days before Field made the old-book department famous throughout the country as the browsing ground of the bibliomaniacs. After loitering there long enough to digest our lunches and to nibble a little literature, we would retrace our steps to the office, where Field resumed his predatory actions until he was ready to go to work. Then peace settled on the establishment for about three hours. If any noisy visitor or obstreperous reporter in the local room did anything to disturb the "literary atmosphere" that brooded around the office, Field would bang on the tin gong hanging over his desk until all other noises sank into dismayed silence. Then he would resume "sawing wood" for his "Sharps and Flats."
If Field had not quite worked off his surplus stock of horse-play on his associates, he would vent it upon the compositor in some such apostrophe as the following:
By my troth, I'll now begin ter
Cut a literary caper
On this pretty tab of paper
For the horney-handed printer;
I expect to hear him swearing
That these inks are very wearing