Songs and Other Verse

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Title: Songs and Other Verse
Author: Eugene Field
Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9889]
[Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on October 28,
2003]
[Date last updated: May 1, 2006]
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0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONGS AND
OTHER VERSE ***
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Charles Bidwell and
PG Distributed Proofreaders
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