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THE REPORTER ON SUNDAY

Is this Sunday? Yes, it is a Sunday. How peaceful and quiet it is.
But who is the man? He does not look peaceful. He is a reporter and
he is swearing. What makes him swear? Because he has to work on
Sunday? Oh no! he is swearing because he has to Break the Fourth
Commandment. It is a sad thing to be a Reporter.

According to Mr. Cowen, however, the inspiration of the primer
compositions was a libel suit brought against the Tribune by Governor
Evans. In ridiculing the governor and his action Field three times used
the old primer method--with illustrations after the fashion of John
Phoenix--and the success of these little sarcasms undoubtedly
encouraged him to elaborate the idea. Field also had a column of
unsigned verse and storyettes in the Tribune under the heading, "For
the Little Folks."

Mr. Morgan discredits Field's statement that the whole number of the
Primers issued did not exceed fifty, because of the unlikelihood of
printing such a small edition of a book to be sold for twenty-five
cents and advertising it daily a month in advance, with a foot-note,
"Trade supplied at Special Rates." Which merely shows that Mr. Morgan
applied to Field's acts the same rule of thumb that would be applicable
to ninety-nine out of a hundred reasonable publishers. But Field was a
rule unto himself, and he could be counted on to be the one hundredth
and unique individual where the other ninety-and-nine were orthodox and
conventional. The fact that only seven or eight copies of the original
Primer are known to book collectors tends to confirm Field's statement,
which receives side light and support from his suggestion to Francis
Wilson that the first edition of "Echoes from the Sabine Farm," which
Mr. Wilson issued in such sumptuous form nearly ten years later, should
consist of only fifty copies, and that each of the two should reserve
one and that they should "burn the other forty-eight."

I have not the slightest doubt that the same disposition was made of
all copies of "The Tribune Primer" over the first fifty, which were
supplied to the favored few at "Special Rates." This was just such a
freak as would have occurred to Field, and in Denver there was no
restraint upon the act following upon any wild thought that flitted
through his topsy-turvy brain.

The jocose spirit in which Field at this time viewed the methods,
duties, and responsibilities of journalism may be gleaned from the