holding the position of principal reader for A.C. McClurg & Co. As I
remember, Mr. Browne was favorably disposed toward putting out a
volume of Field's writings, but General McClurg was not enamoured of
the breezy sort of personal persiflage with which Field's name was
then chiefly associated. This was several years before Field made the
Saints' and Sinners' Corner in McClurg's Chicago book-store famous
throughout the bibliomaniac world by fictitious reports relating to it
printed occasionally in his "Sharps and Flats" column. It was not
until 1893 that McClurg & Co. published any of Field's writings.

My work to which Field refers was the collection of newspaper and
periodical verse entitled "The Humbler Poets," which McClurg & Co.
subsequently published.

Enclosed in the letter of July 22d was the following characteristic
account, conveying the impression that while he was willing to waste
all the resources of his colored inks and literary ingenuity on our
friendship, I must pay the freight. I think he had a superstition that
it would cause a flaw in his title of "The Good Knight, _sans peur
et sans monnaie_" if he were to add the price of a two-cent postage
stamp to that waste.

[Illustration: A STAMP ACCOUNT.

Mr. Slosson Thompson.
to Eugene Field, Dr.

To 4 stamps at 2 cts--July 20--.08
To 1 stamp --July 22--.02
Total .10