That gave me such a Cousin Kate.
From Denver to New York this pretty conceit carried the epistle just as safely and directly as if it had borne the most prosaic superscription the postal authorities could exact, and I venture to say that it was handled with a smiling solicitude never bestowed on the humdrum epistles that travel neither faster nor surer for being marked "important and immediate." This was before Field had formed the habit of illuminating everything he wrote with colored inks, or the missive to his Cousin Kate would have expressed his variegated fancies in all the colors of the rainbow, especially red.
In a short sketch, entitled "Eugene Field in Denver," Wolfe Londoner speaks of his friend as a "bright ray of laughing sunshine across this shadowy vale, a mine of sentiment and charity, an avalanche of fun and happiness," but one who "never in all the run of his merry, joyous career was known to wake up with a cent." Why?
Here is the explanation given by Mr. Londoner, who was familiar with every phase of Eugene Field's life in Denver:
"The course of one short day was ever long enough to drain his open purse, and his boon companions were as welcome to its contents, while it could stand the strain, as its careless, happy owner. The bright side of life attracted his laughing fancy, and with stern and unalterable determination he studiously avoided all seriousness and shadow. There was no room in his happy composition for aught of sorrow or sadness, and a quick and merry wit always extricated him from every embarrassing position or perplexing dilemma."
Mr. Londoner rightly says that an inert Eugene Field was an impossibility, and at that time he was only supremely happy when busily engaged in playing some practical joke on his ever-suspecting but never sufficiently wary friends. Of course Mr. Londoner himself was victimized, and more than once. During one campaign, as chairman of the Republican County Central Committee, Mr. Londoner was delegated to work up enthusiasm among the colored voters of Denver, and in an unguarded moment he took Field into his confidence and boasted of his flattering progress. The next morning the following advertisement, displayed with all the prominence of glaring scare-heads, appeared:
WANTED!!
EVERY COLORED MAN IN THE CITY.
To call at Wolfe Londoner's Store.
A Car load of Georgia Watermelons
Just received For a special distribution
Among his Colored Friends.
Call Early and get Your Melon!!!
It is needless to say that when Mr. Londoner's store opened in the morning an ever-increasing cloud of dusky humanity, with teeth that glistened with the juice of anticipation, gathered about the entrance. Business in the store was at a standstill and travel on the street was blocked. No explanation could appease the rising anger of that dark multitude. It was melons, or a riot. Melons, or that unheard-of thing—a colored landslide to the democracy. Mr. Londoner was at his wits' ends. There were no melons in the market, and none expected. Just as Londoner was preparing to abandon his store to the wrath of the justly incensed melon-maniacs, a car-load of magnificent melons dropped into one of the freight sidings, and Londoner and the Republican party were saved. Nobody ever knew how or whence that pink-hearted manna came. The price was exorbitant, but that did not matter. Londoner paid it with the air of a man who had ordered melons and was indignant that the railway company had disappointed him in not delivering them the day before. There was not a crack in the solid black Republican column on election day.