he finest landau in town and was driven through
the streets in a caricature verisimilitude of the poet of the sunflower
and the flowing hair.

The impersonation of Wilde a la Bunthorne in Gilbert and Sullivan's
opera, "Patience," was well calculated to deceive all who were not in
the secret. Field's talent as a farceur and a mimic enabled him to
assume and carry out the expression of bored listlessness which was the
popular idea of the leader of aesthetes. Nobody in the curious,
whooping, yelling crowd assembled along the well-advertised route
suspected the delusion, and after an hour's parade Field succeeded in
making his exit from public gaze without betraying his identity.

When Wilde turned up the next day he was not a little mystified to
learn that he had created a sensation driving around Denver in the
raiments of Bunthorne, while in reality travelling over the prairie in
a palace-car. It was Field himself who relieved his curiosity with a
highly amusing narrative of the experience of the joker lounging in the
seat of honor in the landau.

Wilde, it is related, saw nothing funny in the affair, nor was he
provoked at it. His only comment was, "What a splendid advertisement
for my lecture."

It was while in Denver that Field had numerous and flattering offers to
leave journalism for the stage, and more than once he was sorely
tempted to make the experiment. In the natural qualifications for the
theatrical profession he was most richly endowed. In the arts of
mimicry he had no superior. He had the adaptable face of a comedian,
was a matchless raconteur, and a fine vocalist. At a banquet or in a
parlor he was an entertainer of truly fascinating parts. During his
life in St. Louis and Kansas City his inclination had led him to seek
the society of the green-room, and in Denver his position enlarged the
circle of his acquaintance with the theatrical profession, until it
embraced almost every prominent actor and actress in America, and was
subsequently extended to include the more celebrated artists of
England. Among his favorites was Madame Bernhardt, whose several visits
to the United States afforded him an opportunity for some of the most
entertaining sketches that ever delighted his Chicago readers. None of
these contained more pith in little than that brief paragraph with
which he opened his column one day, to the effect that "An empty cab
drove up to the stage-door of the Columbia Theatre last night, from
which