r of the gifts Field bestowed on Russell "as
from an exhaustless urn":

Sol Smith Russell's luck is almost as great as his art. Last week his
little son Bob was digging in the back yard of the family residence
in Minneapolis, and he developed a vein of coal big enough to supply
the whole state of Minnesota with fuel for the next ten years. Mr.
Russell was away from home at the time, but his wife (who has plenty
of what the Yankees call faculty) had presence of mind not to say
anything about the "Find" until, through her attorney, she had
secured an option on all the real estate in the locality.

They never had any differences of opinion like "me 'nd Jim."

_So after all it's soothin' to know
That here Sol stays 'nd yonder's Jim--
He havin' his opinyin uv Sol,
'Nd Sol havin' his opinyin uv him._

CHAPTER XIV

BEGINNING OF HIS LITERARY EDUCATION

Before he came to Chicago, pretty much all that Eugene Field knew of
literature and books had been taken in at the pores, as Joey Laddle
would say, through association with lawyers, doctors, and actors. His
academic education, as we have seen, was of the most cursory and
intermittent nature. When he left the University of Missouri it was
without a diploma, without studious habits, and without pretensions to
scholarship. His trip to Europe dissipated his fortune, and his early
marriage rendered it imperative that he should stop study as well as
play and go to work. His father's library was safely stored in St.
Louis for the convenient season that was postponed from year to year,
until a score were numbered ere the nails were drawn from the precious
boxes. Every cent of the salary that might have been squandered(?) in
books was needed to feed and clothe the ravenous little brood that came
faster than their parents "could afford," as he has told us. What time
was not devoted to them and to the daily round of newspaper writing was
spent in conversing with his fellows, studying life first hand,
visiting theatres and enjoying himself in his own way generally. All
the advance that Field had made in journalism before the year 1883 was
due to native aptitude, an unfailing fund of humor and an inherited
turn for literary expression. Without ever having read that author, he
followed Pope's axiom that "the proper study of mankind is man." This
he construed to include women and children. The latter he had every
opportunity to study early and often i