s when he was sent by the Journal to
Jefferson City to report the proceedings of the Missouri State
Legislature, what his paper got was not an edifying summary of that
unending grist of mostly irrelevant and immaterial legislation through
the General Assembly hopper, but a running fire of pungent comment on
the Idiosyncrasies of its officers and members. He would attach himself
to the legislators whose personal qualities afforded most profitable
ammunition for sport in print. He shunned the sessions of Senate and
House and held all night sessions of story and song with the choice
spirits to be found on the floors and in the lobbies of every western
legislature. I wonder why I wrote "western" when the species is as
ubiquitous in Maine as in Colorado? From such sources Field gleaned the
infinite fund of anecdote and of character-study which eventually made
him the most sought-for boon companion that ever crossed the lobby of
a legislature or of a state capital hotel in Missouri, Colorado, or
Illinois. He was a looker-on in the legislative halls, and right
merrily he lampooned everything he saw. Nothing was too trivial for
his notice, nothing so serious as to escape his ridicule or satire.

There was little about his work at this time that gave promise of
anything beyond the spicy facility of a quick-witted, light-hearted
western paragrapher. Looking back it is possible, however, to
discover something of the flavor of the inextinguishable drollery
that persisted to his last printed work in such verses as these in
the St. Louis Journal:

_THE NEW BABY

We welcome thee, eventful morn
Since to the poet there is born
A son and heir;
A fuzzy babe of rosy hue,
And staring eyes of misty blue
Sans teeth, sans hair.

Let those who know not wedded joy
Revile this most illustrious boy--
This genial child!
But let the brother poets raise
Their songs and chant their sweetest lays
To him reviled.

Then strike, O bards, your tuneful lyres,
'Awake, O rhyming souls, your fires,
And use no stint!
Bring forth the festive syrup cup--
Fill every loyal beaker up
With peppermint!

March, 1878._

In the spring of 1879 the St. Louis Times-Journal printed the following
April verses by Field, which were copied without the author's name by
London Truth, and went the rounds of the papers in this country,
credited to that misnamed paper, and attributed, much to