write on, unwilling to give the word of dismissal to the book
whose preparation had been a work of such love and solace?

During the afternoon of Saturday, November 2, the nineteenth
instalment of ``The Love Affairs'' was written. It was the
conclusion of his literary life. The verses supposably
contributed by Judge Methuen's friend, with which the chapter
ends, were the last words written by Eugene Field. He was at
that time apparently quite as well as on any day during the fall
months, and neither he nor any member of his family had the
slightest premonition that death was hovering about the
household. The next day, though still feeling indisposed, he
was at times up and about, always cheerful and full of that
sweetness and sunshine which, in his last years, seem now to have
been the preparation for the life beyond. He spoke of the
chapter he had written the day before, and it was then that he
outlined his plan of completing the work. One chapter only
remained to be written, and it was to chronicle the death of the
old bibliomaniac, but not until he had unexpectedly fallen heir
to a very rare and almost priceless copy of Horace, which
acquisition marked the pinnacle of the book-hunter's conquest.
True to his love for the Sabine singer, the western poet
characterized the immortal odes of twenty centuries gone the
greatest happiness of bibliomania.

In the early morning of November 4 the soul of Eugene Field
passed upward. On the table, folded and sealed, were the memoirs
of the old man upon whom the sentence of death had been
pronounced. On the bed in the corner of the room, with one arm
thrown over his breast, and the smile of peace and rest on his