From this as the rock of all his political prejudices, Field was immovable. But happily, for the pleasure of his friends and the entertainment of his readers, he took politics no more seriously than he did many of the other responsibilities of life. As early as 1873, in a letter already published, he announced that he had "given over all hope of rescuing my torn and bleeding country from Grant and his minions," and from that time on he devoted his study of politics to the development of satirical and humorous paragraphs at the expense of the two classes of prominent and practical politicians.
For more than a decade, and until he became enamoured of books and bibliomania, Field was the most widely quoted political paragrapher in America. It was not in vain that he mingled with the "statesmen" frequenting the capitals of Missouri, Colorado, and Illinois, attended state and national conventions, and spent many weeks in the lobby of the capitol, and of the lobbies of the hotels in Washington. It was the comprehension of men, and not of measures, he was after, and he got what he sought. In St. Louis, Kansas City, and Denver his sketches, notes, and Primer stories attracted more attention and caused more talk among politicians than all the serious reports and discussions of the issues of the times. He had the gift of putting distorted statements in the form of innocent facts so artfully developed that his victims had difficulty in disputing the often compromising inferences of his paragraphs.
Many a time and oft have I known every one of the paragraphs in Field's column in the News, sometimes numbering as high as sixty, to relate to something of a political nature, and most of them containing a personal pin-prick. With the assistance of the printer, let me reconstruct here in the type and narrow measure of the Morning News a column of specimens of Field's political paragraphs. The reader must allow for the lapse of time. Only those referring to persons or matters of national note are, for obvious reasons, preserved. The first one has the peculiar interest of being the initial paragraph in "Sharps and Flats." In point of time they ran all the way from 1883 to 1895, thus covering the entire period of Field's work on the News and Record:
SHARPS AND FLATS
Senator Dawes has been out among the Sioux Indians too. They call him Ne-Ha-Wo-Ne-To—which, according to our office dictionary, is the Indian for Go-To-Sleep-Standing-Up.
Sol Smith Russell, the comedian, is reported to have contributed $5,000 to the National Prohibition campaign fund.
The suspicion is still rife that when the Democratic party wakes up on Christmas morning it will find S.J. Tilden in its stocking.
