But not until Field reclaimed his child and published "The Wanderer" as his own, in "A Little Book of Western Verse," was the verse-reading public satisfied to give the Polish comedienne a long rest from importunities concerning it.
CHAPTER X
ANECDOTES OF LIFE IN DENVER
No story of Eugene Field's life would be true, no study of his personality complete, if it ignored or even glossed over "the mad wild ways of his youthful days" in Denver. He never wearied of telling of the constant succession of harum-scarum pranks that made the Tribune office the storm-centre for all the fun-loving characters in Colorado. Not that Field ever neglected his work or his domestic duties for play, but it was a dull day for Denver when his pen or his restless spirit for mischief did not provide some fresh cause for local amazement or merriment. His associates and abettors in all manner of frolics, where he was master of the revels, were kindred spirits among the railway managers, agents, politicians, mining speculators, lawyers, and doctors of the town. Into this company a fresh ingredient would be introduced every week from the theatrical troupes which made Denver the western limit of their circuits or a convenient break in the long overland jump.
Field's office was a fitting retreat for the genius of disorder. It had none of the conveniences that are supposed to be necessary in the rooms of modern managing editors. It was open and accessible to the public without the intermediary of an office-boy or printer's devil. Field had his own way of making visitors welcome, whether they came in friendly guise or on hostile measures bent. Over his desk hung the inhospitable sign, "This is my busy day," which he is said to have invented, and on the neighboring wall the motto, "God bless our proof-reader, He can't call for him too soon." But his crudest device, "fatal," as his friend E.D. Cowen writes, "to the vengeance of every visitor who came with a threat of libel suit, and temporarily subversive of the good feeling of those friends he lured into its treacherous embrace, was a bottomless black-walnut chair." Its yawning seat was always concealed by a few exchanges carelessly thrown there—the floor being also liberally strewn with them. As it was the only chair in the room except the one Field occupied himself, his caller, though never asked to do so, would be sure to see in Field's suave smile an invitation to drop into the trap and thence ingloriously to the floor. Through this famous chair, on his first visit to the Tribune office, "Bill" Nye dropped into a lifelong friendship with Eugene Field. When the victim happened to be an angry sufferer from a too personal reference to his affairs in the paper, Field would make the most profuse apologies for the scant furnishings of the office, which he shrewdly ascribed to the poverty of the publishing company, and tender his own chair as some small compensation for the mishap.
I have spoken of Edgar W.—more familiarly known as "Bill"—Nye's unceremonious introduction to Field's friendship. This followed upon what was virtually the discovery of Nye by Field. The former was what old-time printers described as "plugging along" without recognition on the Laramie Boomerang. His peculiar humor caught the attention of Field, who, with the intuition of a born journalist, wrote and got Nye to contribute a weekly letter to the Tribune. At first Nye was paid the princely stipend of $5 a week for these letters. This was raised to $10, and when Field informed Nye that he was to receive $15 per letter, the latter promptly packed his grip and took the first train for Denver, to see what sort of a newspaper Croesus presided over the order-blank of the Tribune. When he appeared before Field he was whiskered like a western farmer and his head had not pushed its way through a thick growth of hair. He was altogether a different looking personage from the bald-headed, clean-shaven humorist with whose features the world was destined to become so well acquainted.
After the incident of the chair nothing would do Field but a dinner at the St. James Hotel, given in honor of Bill Nye. The affair started after the Tribune had gone to press and lasted all night. At five o'clock in the morning the company escorted their guest to his room and departed, with elaborate professions of good-will. They waited in the hotel office long enough for Nye to get to bed, and then sent up cards, requesting his presence down-stairs on immediate business. But Nye was equal to his tormentors, and the bell-boy returned, bearing a shot-gun, with the message that it would speak for him. When Nye first visited Field in Chicago, his presence in town was heralded with the following paragraph:
The latest news from Bill Nye is to the effect that he has discovered a coal mine on his little farm near Hudson, Wis. Ten days ago he was spading over his garden—an exercise recommended by his physician—and he struck a very rich vein of what is called rock coal. Nye paid $2,000 for this farm, and since the development of this coal deposit on the premises he has been offered $10,000 for five acres. He believes that he has a great fortune within his grasp.
As illustrative of how impossible it was for Field to keep money, it is related that on one occasion he coaxed F.J.V. Skiff, then business manager of the Tribune, to advance "just another" $10 to meet some urgent domestic demands. Scarcely had Mr. Skiff time to place the order in the cash drawer, ere Field stood before him once more, pleading in forma pauperis for "another X." He was asked what had become of the ten he had just received.