Monson] considerably moved and interested personally in a religious
awakening, and speaking earnestly in meeting and urging the young to a
religious life. Great credit for the remarkable success of Eugene is
due to his Aunt Jones, Miss Mary French, and his guardian, Professor
John Burgess, who were a continual and living influence about him until
he arrived at maturity."

In 1868, at the age when his father was admitted to the bar of Vermont,
Eugene Field, according to Mr. Tufts, was barely able to pass the
examination for entrance at Williams "with some conditions." The only
evidence preserved in the books of the college that he passed at all is
the following entry:

Eugene Field, aged 18, September 5, 1868, son of R.M. Field,
St. Louis.

[Illustration: THE REV. JAMES TUFTS.]

Among the professors and residents of Williamstown there is scarcely a
tradition or trace of his presence. He did not fit into the treadmill
of daily lessons and lectures. He was impatient of routine and
discipline. There is a story extant, which is a self-evident
fabrication, that President Mark Hopkins, meeting him on the street one
day, asked him how he was getting along with his studies. Field replied
that he was doing very well. Thereupon President Hopkins, in kindly
humor, remarked: "I am glad to hear it, for, remember, you have the
reputation of three universities to maintain." This apocryphal story is
greatly relished in Williamstown, where, among the professors, there
seems to linger a strange feeling of resentment that Field was not
recognized as possessing the budding promise that is better worth
cultivating than the mediocrity of the ninety-and-nine orderly youths
who pursue the uneventful tenor of college life to a diploma--and are
never heard of afterward. There is a bare possibility, however, that
President Hopkins might have referred to the fact that Eugene's
grandfather held an A.B. from Williams and the honorary degree of A.M.
from Dartmouth, while his father was an alumnus of Middlebury. It is
more probably an after--and a merry--thought built upon Field's own
unfinished career at Williams, Knox, and the University of Missouri.

From personal inquiry at Williamstown I find that none of the
professors at Williams saw an encouraging gleam of aptitude for
anything in the big-eyed, shambling youth whom Mr. Tufts had
assiduously coached to meet the requirements of matriculation. There is
a shadowy tradition that he did fai