But this served merely as a prelude to what was to follow. My visit
was cut short by an assignment from the Daily News to visit various
towns in Maine to interview the prominent men who had become
interested, through James G. Blaine, in the Little Rock securities
which played such a part in the presidential campaigns of 1876 and
1884. For ten days I roved all over the state, making my headquarters
at the Hotel North, Augusta, where I was bombarded with postal cards
from Field. They were all couched in ambiguous terms and were well
calculated to impress the inquisitive hotel clerk with the impecuniosity
of my friends and with the suspicion that I was in some way responsible
for their desperate condition. Autograph hunters have long ago stripped
me of most of these letters of discredit, but the following, which has
escaped the importunity of collectors of Fieldiana, will indicate their
general tenor:

CHICAGO, October 10th, 1884.

If you do not hasten back we shall starve. Harry Powers has come to
our rescue several times, but is beginning to weaken, and the
outlook is very dreary. If you cannot come yourself, please send
certified check.

Yours hungrily,

E.F.
J.F.B.

The same postal importunities awaited me at the Parker House while in
Boston, and came near spoiling the negotiations in which I was engaged,
for the News, for the, till then, unpublished correspondence between