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Title: The House
An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice

Author: Eugene Field

Release Date: June 11, 2007 [eBook #21808]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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The Works of Eugene Field

Vol. VIII

The Writings in Prose and Verse of Eugene Field

THE HOUSE

An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife
Alice

[Frontispiece: The House. Drawn by E. H. Garrett.]

Charles Scribner's Sons
New York
1911

Copyright, 1896, by
Julia Sutherland Field.

INTRODUCTION

The story that is told in this volume is as surely an autobiography as
if that announcement were a part of the title: and it also has the
peculiar and significant distinction of being in some sort the
biography of every man and woman who enters seriously upon the business
of life.

In its pages is to be found the history of the heart's desire of all
who are disposed to take the partnership of man and woman seriously.
The instinct--the desire--call it what you will--that is herein set
forth with such gentle humor is as old as humanity, and all literature
that contains germs of permanence teems with its influence. But never
before has it had so painstaking a biographer--so deft and subtle an
interpreter.

We are told, alas! that the story of Alice and Reuben Baker wanted but
one chapter to complete it when Eugene Field died. That chapter was to
have told how they reached the fulfilment of their heart's desire. But
even here the unities are preserved. The chapter that is unwritten in
the book is also unwritten in the lives of perhaps the great majority
of men and women.

The stor