two copies of each volume (unnumbered) to secure the
copyright, and when the certificate is received, will send it to you.
These copies are over and above the 250 copies sent to you.

Regretting the delay incident to the bringing out of two such volumes,
and hoping that the author and his friends may be gratified and
pleased with their mechanical execution, we are,

Respectfully yours,

JOHN WILSON & SON.

It is needless to say that both the author and his friends were
gratified and pleased with the mechanical execution of the "Little
Books," while Field's admirers have never wearied in their admiration
of their contents. Every cent of the fund subscribed for these books
went to pay for their printing; and as Field started for Europe before
they were received from Cambridge, the task of numbering them, as well
as the cost of forwarding them to subscribers, fell to my lot.

These two books contained not only the best of what Field had written
up to that time, but their contents were selected with such care that
they continue to represent the best he ever wrote. Much that he
rejected at that time went to make up subsequent volumes of his works.
The popular editions from the subscription plates of "A Little Book
of Western Verse" and "A Little Book of Profitable Tales" had a
phenomenal sale, and made a handsome return in royalties to him who
sent them forth with the words:

_"Go, little book; and if any one would speak thee ill, let him
bethink him that thou art the child of one who loves thee well."_

CHAPTER VI

HIS SECOND VISIT TO EUROPE

From 1889 Field's life was one long struggle with dyspepsia, an
inherited weakness which he persisted in aggravating by indulgence in
those twin enemies of health--pastry and reading in bed. During our
intimate association I had exercised a wholesome restraint on his pie
habit and reduced his hours of reading in bed to a minimum. As the
reader may remember, our pact concerned eating and walking. When we
ate, we talked, and while we walked, Field could not lie in bed
browsing amid his favorite books, burning illuminating gas and the
candle of life at the same time. So long as his study of life was
pursued among men he retained his health. As soon as he began to
retire more and more to the companionship of books and from the daily
activities and associations of the newspaper office his assimilation
of food failed to nourish his body as it did his brain. The buoya