To those of us who were closely associated with Eugene Field personally
or in his work, it was evident during the years from 1887 until after
his return from Europe that a radical change was taking place in his
methods of life and thought. His friend Cowen has ascribed this change
to settling down "in the must and rust of bibliomania"; but I fancy
that that settling down was more than half the result of the failing
health which warned him that he must conserve his powers. He felt the
shadows creeping up the mountain, and realized he had much to do while
yet it was day.

In Eugene Field's case it would be difficult to distinguish the line
where his bibliomania, that was an inherited infatuation for
collecting, ended, and the carefully cultivated affectation of the
craze for literary uses began. He was unquestionably a victim of the
disease about which he wrote so roguishly and withal so charmingly. But
though it was in his blood, it never blinded his sense of literary
values or restrained his sallies at the expense of his demented
fellows. He had too keen a sense of the ridiculous to go clean daft on
the subject. He yielded to the fascinating pursuit of rare and curious
editions, of old prints of celebrities, and of personal belongings of
distinguished individuals; but how far these impulses were irresistible
and how much he was mad only in craft, like Hamlet, it is impossible to
say. The bibliomaniacs claim him for their scribe and poet, the
defender of their faith, the high-priest of their craft. The scoffers
find a grimace in everything he ever wrote upon the subject, from "The
Bibliomaniac's Prayer," with its palpable reflection of Watts and its
ill-concealed raillery, down to the gentle, yet none the less
discernible, mockery of the "Love Affairs." It would be a bootless
task to follow the gradual evolution from the frequent authorship of
such quatrains as--

_In Cupid's artful toils I roll
And thrice ten thousand pangs I feel,
For Susie's eyes have ground my soul
Beneath their iron heel._

And:

_O thou, who at the age of three
Grew faint and weak and ill,
O'ertaken by the bitter pill
Of cold adversity!_

which frolic through his column as late as June, 1888; to such bits
as this:

_Oh, for a booke and a shady nooke
Eyther in doore or out,
With the greene leaves whispering overhead,
Or the streete cryes all about;
Where I maie read all at my ease
Both of