Out of the remarkable series of postal appeals which Field sent to me when I was visiting in New Brunswick grew an animated correspondence between Field and my youngest sister. She bore the good old-fashioned Christian names of Mary Matilda—a combination that struck a responsive chord in Field's taste in nomenclature, while his "come at once, we are starving" aroused her sense of humor to the point of forwarding an enormous raised biscuit two thousand miles for the relief of two Chicago sufferers. The result was an exchange of letters, one of which has a direct bearing on his whimsical adoption of many-colored inks in his writing. It read as follows:
CHICAGO, May the 7th, 1885.
Dear Miss:
I make bold to send herewith a diagram of the new rooms in which your brother Slason is now ensconced. The drawing may be bad and the perspective may be out of plumb, but the motif is good, as you will allow. All that Brother Slason needs now to symmetrize his new abode is a box from home—a box filled with those toothsome goodies which only a kind, loving, indulgent sister can make and donate to an absent brother. Having completed my contribution to the Larned gallery, and having exhibited the pictures in the recent salon, I have a large supply of colored inks on hand, which fact accounts for that appearance of an Easter necktie or a crazy quilt which this note has. In a few days I shall take the liberty of sending you the third volume of the "Aunt Mary Matilda" series—a tale of unusual power and interest. With many reverential obeisances and respectful assurances of regard, I beg to remain,
Your obedient servant,
EUGENE FIELD,
per
William Smith,
Secretary.
This epistle did indeed look like a crazy quilt. There was a change of color at the beginning of each line, as I have endeavored to indicate. It is beautifully written and in many respects besides its variegated aspect is the most perfect specimen of Field's painstaking epistolary handiwork I know of.
The "diagram of Mr. Slason Thompson's New Rooms" accompanying this letter was entirely worthy of it, and must have afforded him hours of boyish pleasure. No description can do it justice. He gave a ground plan of two square rooms with the windows marked in red ink, the doors in green, the bed, with a little figure on it, in blue, the fireplace in yellow, chairs and tables in purple, and the "buttery," as he insisted on calling the bathroom, in brown. As these apartments were in the Pullman Building, on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street, and commanded a glimpse of the lake, Field's diagram included a representation of Lake Michigan by zigzag lines of blue ink, with a single fish as long as a street-car, according to his scale, leering at the spectator from the billowy depths of indigo blue. Everything in the diagram was carefully identified in the key which accompanied it. An idea of the infinite attention to detail Field bestowed on such frivoling as this may be gathered from the accompanying cut of the Pullman Building, from the seventh story of which I am shown waving a welcome to the good but "impecunious knight." The inscription, in Field's handwriting, tells the story.