to the expense of
a new cooking range, and I have enough balance at the Record office
to pay for that. I am hoping that we shall be able to move into the
new quarters by May 1. The children are well. Pinny comes home next
Monday for a fortnight's vacation, and we shall be glad to see him.
I had a letter from Carter, _alias_ Rolling-pin, the other day, and
he renews his entreaty for me to join him in his publication venture
in St. Louis--but that is wholly impossible. You have probably seen
by the newspapers how savagely the Republicans swept the board in
Chicago at the elections; the affair was practically unanimous. I
can't see that there is much left of the party which Emory Storrs
once designated "an organized appetite." We all unite in
affectionate remembrances to you and Miss Eva. We shall be able and
glad this summer to have you with us for a while.

Affectionately yours,

EUGENE FIELD.
1033 Evanston Ave., Station X, Chicago,
April 9th, 1895.

"The house" upon which Field devoted so much thought at this time, and
every dollar he could raise by forestalling his income, was a
commodious, old-fashioned building in Buena Park, which stood well back
from Clarendon Avenue in a grove of native oaks within sight of Lake
Michigan. Its yard was mostly a sand waste, which needed a liberal top
dressing of black earth to produce the semblance to a lawn. The
remodelling of the house and the process of converting sand into a
green sward with flower-beds and a kitchen garden furnished light
employment and a never-failing subject for quips and bucolic
absurdities to its owner, to whom land ownership seemed to give a new
grip on life. The story of the remaking of this building into a
comfortable modern house and of converting the sandy soil surrounding
it into a land of horticulture promise is told by Field in whimsical
style in "The House," a work unfinished at the time of his death. The
first instalment of this story appeared in "Sharps and Flats" on May
15th. Eighteen chapters followed on successive days without a break. By
August 15th, when the last instalment was printed, a vexatious series
of disappointments had robbed Field's humor of its natural buoyancy. He
therefore dropped the story in about the same unfinished stage as he
found his new home when his impatience finally took possession of it
before the carpenters and painters were all out. On May 14th he wrote
to his aged Maecenas: