Songs and Other Verse by Eugene Field

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THE WORKS OF EUGENE FIELD

Vol. IX

THE WRITINGS IN PROSE AND VERSE OF EUGENE FIELD

SONGS AND OTHER VERSE

INTRODUCTION

"It is about impossible for a man to get rid of his Puritan grandfathers,
and nobody who has ever had one has ever escaped his Puritan grandmother;"
so said Eugene Field to me one sweet April day, when we talked together of
the things of the spirit. It is one of his own confessions that he was
fond of clergymen. Most preachers are supposed to be helplessly tied up
with such a set of limitations that there are but a few jokes which they
may tolerate, and a small number of delights into which they may enter.
Doubtless many a cheerful soul likes to meet such of the clergy, in order
that the worldling may feel the contrast of liberty with bondage, and
demonstrate by bombardment of wit and humor, how intellectually thin are
the walls against which certain forms of skepticism and fun offend. Eugene
Field did not belong to these. He called them "a tribe which do unseemly
beset the saints." Nobody has ever had a more numerous or loving clientage
of friendship among the ministers of this city than the author of "The
Holy Cross" and "The Little Yaller Baby." Those of this number who were
closest to the full-hearted singer know that beneath and within all his
exquisite wit and ludicrous raillery--so often directed against the
shallow formalist, or the unctuous hypocrite--there were an aspiration
toward the divine, and a desire for what is often slightingly called
"religious conversation," as sincere as it was resistless within him. My
own first remembrance of him brings back a conversation which ended in a
prayer, and the last sight I had of him was when he said, only four days
before his death, "Well, then, we will set the day soon and you will come
out and baptize the children."

Some of the most humorous of his letters which have come under the
observation of his clerical friends, were addressed to the secretary of
one of them. Some little business matters with regard to his readings and
the like had acquainted him with a better kind of handwriting than he had
been accustomed to receive from his pastor, and, noting the finely
appended signature, "per ---- ----," Field wrote a most effusively
complimentary letter to his ministerial friend, congratulating him upon
the fact that emanations from his office, or parochial study, were "now
readable as far West as Buena Park." At length, nothing having appeared in
writing by which he might discover that ---- ---- was a lady of his own
acquaintance, she whose valuable services he desired to recognize was made
the recipient of a series of beautifully illuminated and daintily written
letters, all of them quaintly begun, continued, and ended in
ecclesiastical terminology, most of them having to do with affairs in
which the two gentlemen only were primarily interested, the larger number
of them addressed in English to "Brother ----," in care of the minister,
and yet others directed in Latin:

Ad Fratrem ---- ----
In curam, Sanctissimi patris ----, doctoris divinitatis,
Apud Institutionem Armouriensem,
CHICAGO,
ILLINOIS.

{Ab Eugenic Agro, peccatore misere}

Even the mail-carrier appeared to know what fragrant humor escaped from
the envelope.

Here is a specimen inclosure:

BROTHER ----: I am to read some of my things before the senior class of
the Chicago University next Monday evening. As there is undoubtedly more
or less jealousy between the presidents of the two south side institutions
of learning, I take it upon myself to invite the lord bishop of
Armourville, our holy pere, to be present on that occasion in his
pontifical robes and followed by all the dignitaries of his see, including
yourself. The processional will occur at 8 o'clock sharp, and the
recessional circa 9:30. Pax vobiscum. Salute the holy Father with a kiss,
and believe me, dear brother,

Your fellow lamb in the old Adam,
EUGENIO AGRO.

(A. Lamb) SEAL.

The First Wednesday after Pay day,
September 11, 1895.

On an occasion of this lady's visit to the South-west, where Field's
fancied association of cowboys and miners was formed, she was fortunate
enough to obtain for the decoration of his library the rather
extraordinary Indian blanket which often appears in the sketches of his
loved workshop, and for the decoration of himself a very fine necktie made
of the skin of a diamond-back rattlesnake. Some other friend had given his
boys a "vociferant burro." After the presentation was made, though for two
years he had met her socially and at the pastor's office, he wrote to the
secretary, in acknowledgment, as follows:

DEAR BROTHER ----: I thank you most heartily for the handsome specimens of
heathen manufacture which you brought with you for me out of the land of
Nod. Mrs. Field is quite charmed--with the blanket, but I think I prefer
the necktie; the Old Adam predominates in me, and this pelt of the serpent
appeals with peculiar force to my appreciation of the vicious and the
sinful. Nearly every morning I don that necktie and go out and twist the
supersensitive tail of our intelligent imported burro until the profane
beast burthens the air with his ribald protests. I shall ask the holy
father--Pere ---- to bring you with him when he comes again to pay a
parochial visit to my house. I have a fair and gracious daughter into
whose companionship I would fain bring so circumspect and diligent a young
man as the holy father represents you to be. Therefore, without fear or
trembling accompany that saintly man whensoever he says the word. Thereby
you shall further make me your debtor. I send you every assurance of
cordial regard, and I beg you to salute the holy father for me with a
kiss, and may peace be unto his house and unto all that dwell therein.

Always faithfully yours,

EUGENE FIELD.

CHICAGO, MAY 26, 1892.

He became acquainted with the leading ladies of the Aid Society of the
Plymouth Church, and was thoroughly interested in their work. Partly in
order to say "Goodbye" before his leaving for California in 1893, and
partly, no doubt, that he might continue this humorous correspondence, as
he did, he hunted up an old number of Peterson's Magazine, containing a
very highly colored and elaborate pattern for knit slippers, such as
clergymen received at Christmas thirty years ago, and, inclosing it with
utmost care, he forwarded it to the aforesaid "Brother ----" with this
note:

DEAR BROTHER ----: It has occurred to me that maybe the sisters of our
congregation will want to make our dear pastor a handsome present this
Christmas; so I inclose a lovely pattern for slippers, and I shall be glad
to ante up my share of the expense, if the sisters decide to give our dear
pastor this beautiful gift. I should like the pattern better if it had
more red in it, but it will do very nicely. As I intend to go to
California very soon, you'll have to let me know at once what the
assessment _per cap._ is, or the rest of the sisters will be compelled to
bear the full burthen of the expense. Brother, I salute you with an holy
kiss, and I rejoice with you, humbly and meekly and without insolent
vaunting, that some of us are not as other men are.

Your fellow-lamb,

EUGENE FIELD,

BUENA PARK, ILL., DECEMBER 4, 1893.

This was only one phase of the life of this great-hearted man, as it came
close to his friends in the ministry. Other clergymen who knew him well
will not forget his overflowing kindness in times of sickness and
weariness. At least one will not forget the last day of their meeting and
the ardor of the poet's prayer. Religion, as the Christian life, was not
less sacred to him because he knew how poorly men achieve the task of
living always at the best level, nor did the reality of the soul's
approach to God grow less noble or commanding to him because he knew that
too seldom do we lift our voices heavenward. I am permitted to copy this
one letter addressed to a clerical friend, at a time when Eugene Field
responded to the call of that undying puritanism in his blood:

DEAR, DEAR FRIEND: I was greatly shocked to read in the Post last night of
your dangerous illness. It is so seldom that I pray that when I do God
knows I am in earnest. I do not pester Him with small matters. It is only
when I am in real want that I get down on my wicked knees and pray. And
I prayed for you last night, dear friend, for your friendship--the help
that it is to me--is what I need, and I cannot be bereft of it. God has
always been good to me, and He has said yes to my prayer, I am sure.
Others, too--thousands of them--are praying for you, and for your
restoration to health; none other has had in it more love and loyalty than
my prayer had, and none other, dear friend, among the thousands whom you
have blessed with your sweet friendship, loves you better than I do.

EUGENE FIELD.
BUENA PARK, NOVEMBER 15, 1893.

I am still sick abed and I find it hard to think out and write a letter.
Read between the lines and the love there will comfort you more than my
faulty words can.

I have often thought, as I saw him through his later years espousing the
noblest causes with true-hearted zeal, of what he once said in the old
"Saints' and Sinners' Corner" when a conversation sprang up on the death
of Professor David Swing. His words go far to explain to me that somewhat
reckless humor which oftentimes made it seem that he loved to imitate and
hold in the pillory of his own inimitable powers of mimicry some of the
least attractive forms of the genus _parson_ he had seen and known. He
said: "A good many things I do and say are things I have to employ to keep
down the intention of those who wanted me to be a parson. I guess their
desire got into my blood, too, for I have always to preach some little
verses or I cannot get through Christmastide."

He had to get on with blood which was exquisitely harmonious with the
heart of the Christ. He was not only a born member of the Society for the
Prevention of Sorrow to Mankind, but he was by nature a champion of a
working Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. This society was
composed of himself. He wished to enlarge the membership of this latter
association, but nobody was as orthodox in the faith as to the nobility of
a balky horse, and he found none as intolerant of ill-treatment toward any
and every brute, as was he. Professor Swing had written and read at the
Parliament of Religions an essay on the Humane Treatment of the Brutes,
which became a classic before the ink was dry, and one day Field proposed
to him and another clergyman that they begin a practical crusade. On those
cold days, drivers were demanding impossible things of smooth-shod horses
on icy streets, and he saw many a noble beast on his knees, "begging me,"
as he said, "to get him a priest." Field's scheme was that the delicate
and intelligent seer, David Swing, and his less refined and less gentle
contemporary should go with him to the City Hall and be sworn in as
special policemen and "do up these fellows." His clear blue eye was like a
palpitating morning sky, and his whole thin and tall frame shook with
passionate missionary zeal. "Ah," said he, as the beloved knight of the
unorthodox explained that if he undertook the proposed task he would
surely have to abandon all other work, "I never was satisfied that you
were orthodox." His other friend had already fallen in his estimate as to
fitness for such work. For, had not Eugene Field once started out to pay a
bill of fifteen dollars, and had he not met a semblance of a man on the
street who was beating a lengthily under-jawed and bad-eyed bull-dog of
his own, for some misdemeanor? "Yea, verily," confessed the poet-humorist,
who was then a reformer. "Why didn't you have him arrested, Eugene?" "Why,
well, I was going jingling along with some new verses in my heart, and I
knew I'd lose the _tempo_ if I became militant. I said, 'What'll you take
for him?' The pup was so homely that his face ached, but, as I was in a
hurry to get to work, I gave him the fifteen dollars, and took the beast
to the office." For a solitary remark uttered at the conclusion of this
relation and fully confirmed as to its justness by an observation of the
dog, his only other human prop for this enterprise was discarded. "Oh, you
won't do," he said.

Christianity was increasingly dear to him as the discovery of childhood
and the unfolding of its revelations. Into what long disquisitions he
delighted to go, estimating the probable value of the idea that all
returning to righteousness must be a child's returning. He saw what an
influence such a conception has upon the hard and fast lines of habit and
destiny to melt them down. He had a still greater estimate of the
importance of the fact that Jesus of Nazareth came and lived as a child;
and the dream of the last year of his life was to write, in the mood of
the Holy-Cross tale, a sketch of the early years of the Little Galilean
Peasant-Boy. This vision drifted its light into all his pictures of
children at the last. He knew the "Old Adam" in us all, especially as he
reappeared in the little folk. "But I don't believe the depravity is
total, do you?" he said, "else a child would not care to hear about Mary's
Little One;"--and then he would go on, following the Carpenter's Son about
the cottage and over the hill, and rejoicing that, in following Him thus,
he came back to his own open-eyed childhood, "But, you know," said he,
"my childhood was full of the absurdities and strenuosities" (this last
was his word) "of my puritan surroundings. Why, I never knew how naturally
and easily I can get back into the veins of an old puritan grandfather
that one of my grandmothers must have had--and how hard it is for me to
behave there, until I read Alice Morse Earle's 'The Sabbath in New
England.' I read that book nearly all night, if haply I might subdue the
confusion and sorrows that were wrought in me by eating a Christmas pie on
that feast-day. The fact is, my immediate ecclesiastical belongings are
Episcopalian. I am of the church of Archbishop Laud and King Charles of
blessed memory. I like good, thick Christmas pie, 'reeking with sapid
juices,' full-ripe and zealous for good or ill. But my 'Separatist'
ancestors all mistook gastric difficulties for spiritual graces, and,
living in me, they all revolt and want to sail in the Mayflower, or hold
town-meetings inside of me after feast-day."

Then, as if he had it in his mind,--poor, pale, yellow-skinned sufferer,--
to attract one to the book he delighted in, he related that he fell asleep
with this delicious volume in his hand, and this is part of the dream he
sketched afterward:

"I went alone to the meeting-house the which those who are sinfully
inclined toward Rome would call a 'church,' and it was on the Sabbath day.
I yearned and strove to repent me of the merry mood and full sorry humors
of Christmastide. For did not Judge Sewall make public his confession of
having an overwhelming sense of inward condemnation for having opposed the
Almighty with the witches of Salem? I fancied that one William F. Poole
of the Newberry Library went also to comfort me and strengthen, as he
would fain have done for the Judge. Not one of us carried a cricket,
though Friend Poole related that he had left behind a 'seemly brassen
foot-stove' full of hot coals from his hearthstone. On the day before,
Pelitiah Underwood, the wolf-killer, had destroyed a fierce beast; and now
the head thereof was 'nayled to the meetinghouse with a notice thereof.'
It grinned at me and spit forth fire such as I felt within me. I was glad
to enter the house, which was 'lathed on the inside and so daubed and
whitened over workmanlike.' I had not been there, as it bethought me,
since the day of the raising, when Jonathan Strong did 'break his thy,'
and when all made complaint that only L9 had been spent for liquor, punch,
beere, and flip, for the raising, whereas, on the day of the ordination,
even at supper-time, besides puddings of corn meal and 'sewet baked
therein, pyes, tarts, beare-stake and deer-meat,' there were 'cyder,
rum-bitters, sling, old Barbadoes spirit, and Josslyn's nectar, made of
Maligo raisins, spices, and syrup of clove gillyflowers'--all these given
out freely to the worshippers over a newly made bar at the church door--
God be praised! As I mused on this merry ordination, the sounding-board
above the pulpit appeared as if to fall upon the pulpit, whereon I read,
after much effort: '_Holiness is the Lord's_.' The tassels and carved
pomegranates on the sounding-board became living creatures and changed
themselves into grimaces, and I was woefully wrought upon by the red
cushion on the pulpit, which did seem a bag of fire. As the minister was
heard coming up the winding stairs unseen, and, yet more truly, as his
head at length appeared through the open trap-doorway, I thought him
Satan, and, but for friend Poole, I had cried out lustily in fear. Terror
fled me when I considered that none might do any harm there. For was not
the church militant now assembled? Besides, had they not obeyed the law of
the General Court that each congregation should carry a 'competent number
of pieces, fixed and complete with powder and shot and swords, every
Lord's-day at the meeting-house?' And, right well equipped 'with
psalm-book, shot and powder-horn' sat that doughty man, Shear Yashub
Millard along with Hezekiah Bristol and four others whose issue I have
known pleasantly in the flesh here; and those of us who had no pieces wore
'coats basted with cotton-wool, and thus made defensive against Indian
arrows.' Yet it bethought me that there was no defence against what I had
devoured on Christmas day. I had rather been the least of these,--even he
who 'blew the Kunk'--than to be thus seated there and afeared that the
brethren in the 'pitts' doubted I had true religion. That I had found a
proper seat--even this I wot not; and I quaked, for had not two of my kin
been fined near unto poverty for 'disorderly going and setting in seats
not theirs by any means,' so great was their sin. It had not yet come upon
the day when there was a 'dignifying of the meeting.' Did not even the
pious Judge Sewall's second spouse once sit in the foreseat when he
thought to have taken her into 'his own pue?' and, she having died in a
few months, did not that godly man exclaim: 'God in his holy Sovereignity
put my wife out of the Foreseat'? Was I not also in recollection by many
as one who once 'prophaned the Lord's Day in ye meeting-house, in ye times
of ye forenoone service, by my rude and Indecent acting in Laughing and
other Doings by my face with Tabatha Morgus, against ye peace of our
Sovereign Lord ye King, His crown and Dignity?'"

At this, it appears that I groaned in my sleep, for I was not only asleep
here and now, but I was dreaming that I was asleep there and then, in the
meeting-house. It was in this latter sleep that I groaned so heavily in
spirit and in body that the tithing-man, or awakener, did approach me from
behind, without stopping to brush me to awakening by the fox-taile which
was fixed to the end of his long staffe, or even without painfully
sticking into my body his sharp and pricking staffe which he did sometimes
use. He led me out bodily to the noone-house, where I found myself fully
awakened, but much broken in spirit. Then and there did I write these
verses, which I send to you:

"Mother," says I, "is that a pie?" in tones akin to scorning;
"It is, my son," quoth she, "and one full ripe for Christmas morning!
It's fat with plums as big as your thumbs, reeking with sapid juices,
And you'll find within all kinds of sin our grocery store produces!"
"O, well," says I,
"Seein' it's _pie_
And is guaranteed to please, ma'am,
By your advice,
I'll take a slice,
If you'll kindly pass the cheese, ma'am!"

But once a year comes Christmas cheer, and one should then be merry,
But as for me, as you can see, I'm disconcerted, very;
For that pesky pie sticks grimly by my organs of digestion,
And that 't will stay by me till May or June I make no question.
So unto you,
Good friends and true,
I'll tip this solemn warning:
At every price,
Eschew the vice
Of eating pie in the morning.

FRANK W. GUNSAULUS.
Chicago, March, 1896.

THE CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK

THE SINGING IN GOD'S ACRE

THE DREAM-SHIP

TO CINNA

BALLAD OF WOMEN I LOVE

SUPPOSE

MYSTERIOUS DOINGS

WITH TWO SPOONS FOR TWO SPOONS

MARY SMITH

JESSIE

TO EMMA ABBOTT

THE GREAT JOURNALIST IN SPAIN

LOVE SONG--HEINE

THE STODDARDS

THE THREE TAILORS

THE JAFFA AND JERUSALEM RAILWAY

HUGO'S "POOL IN THE FOREST"

A RHINE-LAND DRINKING SONG

DER MANN IM KELLER

TWO IDYLLS FROM BION THE SMYRNEAN

THE WOOING OF THE SOUTHLAND

HYMN

STAR OF THE EAST

TWIN IDOLS

TWO VALENTINES

MOTHER AND SPHINX

A SPRING POEM FROM BION

BERANGER'S "To MY OLD COAT"

BEN APFELGARTEN

A HEINE LOVE SONG

UHLAND'S "CHAPEL"

THE DREAMS

IN NEW ORLEANS

MY PLAYMATES

STOVES AND SUNSHINE

A DRINKING SONG

THE LIMITATIONS OF YOUTH

THE BOW-LEG BOY

THE STRAW PARLOR

A PITEOUS PLAINT

THE DISCREET COLLECTOR

A VALENTINE

THE WIND

A PARAPHRASE

WITH BRUTUS IN ST. JO

THE TWO LITTLE SKEEZUCKS

PAN LIVETH

DR. SAM

WINFREDA

LYMAN, FREDERICK, AND JIM

BE MY SWEETHEART

THE PETER-BIRD

SISTER'S CAKE

ABU MIDJAN

ED

JENNIE

CONTENTMENT

"GUESS"

NEW-YEAR'S EVE

OLD SPANISH SONG

THE BROKEN RING

IN PRAISE OF CONTENTMENT

THE BALLAD OF THE TAYLOR PUP

AFTER READING TROLLOPE'S HISTORY OF FLORENCE

A LULLABY

"THE OLD HOMESTEAD"

CHRISTMAS HYMN

A PARAPHRASE OF HEINE

THE CONVALESCENT GRIPSTER

THE SLEEPING CHILD

THE TWO COFFINS

CLARE MARKET

A DREAM OF SPRINGTIME

UHLAND'S WHITE STAG

HOW SALTY WIN OUT

THE SINGING IN GOD'S ACRE

Out yonder in the moonlight, wherein God's Acre lies,
Go angels walking to and fro, singing their lullabies.
Their radiant wings are folded, and their eyes are bended low,
As they sing among the beds whereon the flowers delight to grow,--

"Sleep, oh, sleep!
The Shepherd guardeth His sheep.
Fast speedeth the night away,
Soon cometh the glorious day;
Sleep, weary ones, while ye may,
Sleep, oh, sleep!"

The flowers within God's Acre see that fair and wondrous sight,
And hear the angels singing to the sleepers through the night;
And, lo! throughout the hours of day those gentle flowers prolong
The music of the angels in that tender slumber-song,--

"Sleep, oh, sleep!
The Shepherd loveth His sheep.
He that guardeth His flock the best
Hath folded them to His loving breast;
So sleep ye now, and take your rest,--
Sleep, oh, sleep!"

From angel and from flower the years have learned that soothing song,
And with its heavenly music speed the days and nights along;
So through all time, whose flight the Shepherd's vigils glorify,
God's Acre slumbereth in the grace of that sweet lullaby,--

"Sleep, oh, sleep!
The Shepherd loveth His sheep.
Fast speedeth the night away,
Soon cometh the glorious day;
Sleep, weary ones, while ye may,--
Sleep, oh, sleep!"

THE DREAM-SHIP

When the world is fast asleep,
Along the midnight skies--
As though it were a wandering cloud--
The ghostly dream-ship flies.

An angel stands at the dream-ship's helm,
An angel stands at the prow,
And an angel stands at the dream-ship's side
With a rue-wreath on her brow.

The other angels, silver-crowned,
Pilot and helmsman are,
And the angel with the wreath of rue
Tosseth the dreams afar.

The dreams they fall on rich and poor;
They fall on young and old;
And some are dreams of poverty,
And some are dreams of gold.

And some are dreams that thrill with joy,
And some that melt to tears;
Some are dreams of the dawn of love,
And some of the old dead years.

On rich and poor alike they fall,
Alike on young and old,
Bringing to slumbering earth their joys
And sorrows manifold.

The friendless youth in them shall do
The deeds of mighty men,
And drooping age shall feel the grace
Of buoyant youth again.

The king shall be a beggarman--
The pauper be a king--
In that revenge or recompense
The dream-ship dreams do bring.

So ever downward float the dreams
That are for all and me,
And there is never mortal man
Can solve that mystery.

But ever onward in its course
Along the haunted skies--
As though it were a cloud astray--
The ghostly dream-ship flies.

Two angels with their silver crowns
Pilot and helmsman are,
And an angel with a wreath of rue
Tosseth the dreams afar.

TO CINNA

Cinna, the great Venusian told
In songs that will not die
How in Augustan days of old
Your love did glorify
His life and all his being seemed
Thrilled by that rare incense
Till, grudging him the dreams he dreamed,
The gods did call you hence.

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