Of the origin of these sketches a story is told—although the writer cannot vouch for it—that on the Sunday evening preceding their first publication the "printer's devil" was dispatched post-haste to Field's home for copy which his happy-go-lucky manner of working had not produced. We may perhaps picture him engaged in what was always nearest and dearest to his heart, the amusement of his children, and perhaps reading to them or more likely composing for them primer sketches which he on the spur of the moment parodied for older readers. He has probably expressed his own feelings in the third one of the skits which he then wrote:
THE REPORTER ON SUNDAY
Is this Sunday? Yes, it is a Sunday. How peaceful and quiet it is. But who is the man? He does not look peaceful. He is a reporter and he is swearing. What makes him swear? Because he has to work on Sunday? Oh no! he is swearing because he has to Break the Fourth Commandment. It is a sad thing to be a Reporter.
According to Mr. Cowen, however, the inspiration of the primer compositions was a libel suit brought against the Tribune by Governor Evans. In ridiculing the governor and his action Field three times used the old primer method—with illustrations after the fashion of John Phoenix—and the success of these little sarcasms undoubtedly encouraged him to elaborate the idea. Field also had a column of unsigned verse and storyettes in the Tribune under the heading, "For the Little Folks."
Mr. Morgan discredits Field's statement that the whole number of the Primers issued did not exceed fifty, because of the unlikelihood of printing such a small edition of a book to be sold for twenty-five cents and advertising it daily a month in advance, with a foot-note, "Trade supplied at Special Rates." Which merely shows that Mr. Morgan applied to Field's acts the same rule of thumb that would be applicable to ninety-nine out of a hundred reasonable publishers. But Field was a rule unto himself, and he could be counted on to be the one hundredth and unique individual where the other ninety-and-nine were orthodox and conventional. The fact that only seven or eight copies of the original Primer are known to book collectors tends to confirm Field's statement, which receives side light and support from his suggestion to Francis Wilson that the first edition of "Echoes from the Sabine Farm," which Mr. Wilson issued in such sumptuous form nearly ten years later, should consist of only fifty copies, and that each of the two should reserve one and that they should "burn the other forty-eight."
I have not the slightest doubt that the same disposition was made of all copies of "The Tribune Primer" over the first fifty, which were supplied to the favored few at "Special Rates." This was just such a freak as would have occurred to Field, and in Denver there was no restraint upon the act following upon any wild thought that flitted through his topsy-turvy brain.
The jocose spirit in which Field at this time viewed the methods, duties, and responsibilities of journalism may be gleaned from the following specimens taken at random from his "Tribune Primer" sketches:
THE REPORTER
What is that I see? That, my Child, is the News Interviewer and he is now interviewing a Man. But where is the Man? I can see no Man. The Man, my Child, is in his Mind.
A RECHERCHÉ AFFAIR