"Rosalind of many parts," the virtuous Orlando being John Drew who, though verging on forty, still looked to be a youth of twenty. "The melancholy Jaques" was played by George Clarke, and Audrey, "honest in deed and word," by pretty Isabelle Irving.

James Lewis, the inimitable, was Touchstone; yet upon the first sunny day of a rainy June the part was not to his liking, his legs, though still nimble, being, alas! rheumatic. So, when not making merry as a motley fool, he stood upon a pair of wooden blocks which when it became his cue to cry, "Come apace, good Audrey, I will fetch up your goats," he hid behind a tree. Yet he but cursed beneath his breath the cruel lord and manager who had forced him to play upon wet grass; whereas John Drew, when he appeared in grease-paint in the dazzling glare of a noonday sun, nearly broke up the performance; for when Ada Rehan saw him she burst into laughter. "John," said she in a perfectly audible stage whisper, "you look like a Pawnee." The audience meanwhile joined the chaste Rosalind in her mirth, the actors being unable to play their parts coherently until Orlando had removed his war-paint.

This thought of John Drew, greasepainted in broad daylight, recalls a joyous evening passed with him in the little café which in more convivial days than these was to be found in the tunnel under Congress Street connecting two of Chicago's hotels. There, with a zither-player who made sweet music for us upon his instrument and the waiter who served us from time to time as our sole companions, John and I made good cheer while chatting the whole night through; for when we emerged, the sun was rising over a

wind-swept lake. Alas! I wonder if friendship such as a poet has called "the mysterious cement of the soul" is not doomed to disappear from the face of American earth!

Had Eugene Field never yielded to any worldly temptation, had he been animated solely by a spirit such as the one that caused his ancestors and mine to lash helpless women with bared backs through the streets of New England towns merely because they were Quakers,—a spirit still abroad, I fear,

could he have penned the generous and sympathetic words of this letter received from him at the time my first book, a novel of Chicago, was being slated by the local critics?

"My dear Taylor: If you intend to follow writing as a profession, you must cultivate your skin until it becomes a hide the hide of a pachyderm. I have been all through the experience with which you are beginning. The Herald said of my first book that it was evidently written by a man who lampooned Chicago society because he could n't get into it. I believe it is better to be antagonized than to be patronized. Go right along doing the best work of which you are capable and you are bound to succeed in spite of the ill will of some people. There are in the midst of us many who, incapable of ambitious endeavor, themselves, envy and hate those who do try to do somewhat and to be somebody. Do not let these creatures worry you. After a while they will be only too glad to fawn upon you. With all faith in your future, and with honest regard for your abilities, ambition and pluck, I am and shall be ever your friend, "EUGENE FIELD. "December the tenth, 1891."

I was one of Eugene Field's pallbearers, and whenever I hear his name, sadness enters my heart. Full of sympathy and understanding such as he expresses in this letter, he was a genius both lovable and unaccountable, as true to his friends as he was

tender to children.

His mentor, Dr. Frank W. Reilly, beside whose sanctum Field used to sit with his feet on a desk while writing "Sharps and Flats," is another one whose place in my affection is still vacant. Long before he became the editor of the morning edition of the Chicago "Daily News," and, by frequent and fervent quotation from Horace, the inspirer of Field's love for a Sabine farm, "Doc" Reilly, as his friends used to call him, had served as a surgeon in the Civil War, a mellowing experience that may account for my recollection of him as the most human editor I ever knew. The kindest, too, let me add, since he used to accept my articles, and even trust me with difficult assignments in the days when I was apprenticed to the newspaper craft.

In memory I see Field and Reilly strolling together into the remote and delectable corner of McClurg's bookstore over which for many a year George Millard presided. There sit the Rev. Frank W. Gunsaulus, the Rev. M. Mosely Stryker, and the Rev. Frank M. Bristol, its "Saints," thumbing rare tomes in company with George Armour, Ben Cable, and "Charlie" Barnes, who were its "Sinners."

The fear, alas! of being an unwelcome Philistine kept me from venturing too near this hallowed spot, though I longed to hear the bibliophilic ravings of

"Maniacs shrewd or imbecillic,
Urban, pastoral or idyllic,
Richly clad or dishabillic,"
When, "George Millard is home!"

Fear came upon me, too, and also trembling, when with manuscript in hand I ventured up-stairs to the lair of General Alexander C. McClurg. In wearing gray side-whiskers of the style known as "Burnsides" during the war,

of which they both were veterans, this publisher and bookseller resembled Doctor Reilly. Yet here the likeness ceased, for never did the general sit in an oyster-house at midnight with a plate of Rockaways and a bottle of claret before him; nor did he share the editor's keen sense of humor, since he even looked upon the free advertising Eugene Field gave his rare-book department daily in "Sharps and Flats" as an offense against the dignity of literature. But he was a gentleman of the old school, who in manner was courtliness itself. He published my first book, moreover; hence there is affection for him in my heart; while in my recollection there is a stirring picture of him standing sword in hand before a gray-coated regiment with white cross-belts and immaculate duck trousers, he having been the first commander of Chicago's "Dandy First.”

84

Others who are gone cross the stage of memory like actors after the curtain has fallen: my debonair friends and clever publishers, Herbert S. and Melville E. Stone, Jr., sons of a grand old father, and victims, the one of the Lusitania, the other of a dread disease; Major Lyman B. Glover, the dramatic critic, who, by inducing me to talk upon Molière in a course of lectures he

was arranging for a woman's club, led me unawares into a path in which I wandered for years; and engaging "Biff" Hall, too, newspaper man, justice of the peace, and scintillating president of the Forty Club in the days when every actor in the land who starred enjoyed its hospitality. One by one they pass: William Morton Payne, apostle of good literature; Bert Leston Taylor, with his "Line o' Type or Two" to rival "Sharps and Flats"; Emerson Hough, his glance as keen as that of the pioneer sitting rifle in hand in a covered wagon; and, finally, Charles Francis Browne, the modest painter whose heart was the bravest I have ever known, whose ideals were dimmed only by death.

The most enchanting heart still beats, I am glad to say, though shyly, in the breast of Henry B. Fuller, whose grace of style and whimsicality led James Russell Lowell to exclaim, after reading "The Chevalier of PensieriVani," "A precious book; it tastes of genius." To us (we are, alas! too few) who know his insight, subtlety, and quaint perception, the books of "Henry B.," as we fondly call him, are precious still; and since his mind is of "a diviner pattern" than any of ours, he fulfils for us Horace's conception of a genius.

High up in a sky-scraper that has been profitably consecrated to the fine arts there is a studio leased by Ralph Clarkson, doyen of Chicago painters. On one of its walls hangs "Las Meninas," reproduced by the tenant's skilled hand; and, to invoke with still more incongruity in the midst of a city seething with commerce not only the spirit of Velásquez, but of his land as well, there stands against another wall a Spanish cabinet with rusty lock and a nest of tiny drawers inlaid with

ivory and gold. Into this soothing spot "Henry B." flutters on Friday in his shy way, for while it is a painter's studio six days of the week, on Dies Veneris it is "The Little Room."

A wealth of charming memory lies for me in this name of a club composed of Chicagoans who practise the fine arts, a name derived, I believe, from the title of a story by one of its founders, in which there is a ghostly little room that disappears and reappears at intervals. To me, however, it is Shakspere's "little room confining mighty men." A grandiose phrase, perhaps, with which to describe a studio where the few and lonely artists of a commercial city gather to talk joyfully for an hour, while drinking tea together, a language not of its streets. But if, as Bulwer Lytton says, "The pen is mightier than the sword," those who use it should be mightier than warriors; and if this be so, are not the wielders of both brush and chisel mighty, too, I ask?

But mighty men alone are not to be found in the Little Room. At a table, in fact, where Clara Laughlin is pouring tea from a samovar (if you're going to Paris be sure to make her acquaintance), I see, in memory, Jane Addams sitting beside Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, and surely they are mighty women. Elia W. Peattie, delightful as her stories, perceptive as her book-reviews, sits there, too, in company with valiant Anna Morgan, whose love for Chicago is "a malady without a cure," and upon whose little stage, two floors below, many a play by Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Shaw, Yeats, or Lady Gregory has received at the hands of her clever pupils its first American performance.

In a corner, where there is a divan

beneath a hanging lamp, is Harriet Monroe, founder of "Poetry" and discoverer of poets, and there in "sweet clover," too, sits Clara Louise Burnham, side by side with Edith Wyatt, who is enjoying "great companions," I suspect; for hovering near, with cup in hand, I see Lorado Taft, and Robert Herrick. Of "men of enchanting spirit" there is, indeed, "dear variety": Will Payne, for example; Henry Kitchell Webster; I. K. Friedman; Frederic Clay Bartlett; and "Bob" Peattie, as I am constrained to call him, "Robert Bruce" being far too stately a name for one of his goodfellowship and parts.

Yes, and into that room of dear memory come the McCutcheons, John T., cartoonist and mighty hunter, with his Majesty, George Barr of Graustark; likewise Harrison Rhodes, another delightful friend, who sits afar off to-day upon a reviewing-stand. At the threshold these three are greeted, as is every one, by Ralph Clarkson, most courteous of painters, and in their wake I see George Ade, Rex Beach, and "Mr. Dooley," though they are but occasional visitors rather than habitués of the Little Room. But standing near its steaming samovar of a certainty are Wallace Rice, the poet, and Oliver Dennett Grover, the painter. There of a certainty, too, expounding his views upon art, is Hamlin Garland, "the handsome Westerner," as Mr. Thomas Beer calls him,

who has done fine things besides writing, such as creating the Cliff Dwellers Club, but nothing half so fine as being "the rescuing angel" of Stephen Crane.

Indeed, it is not as the world's butcher that I dream of Chicago, nor as a smoke-ridden Babel where thirty tongues are spoken by as many alien races, and murder is of almost daily occurrence. Rather is it of a city out of which a university sprang fully equipped, like Athens from the head of Zeus, and where from the ashes of a holocaust three libraries have arisen; a city, moreover, where a hall for an orchestra and an auditorium to house a civic opera company have been built by the public spirit of its citizens, as well as one in which a marble museum of natural history and an art institute attended by more students and entered by more visitors than any other in the land are standing where, in boyhood, I sailed with my father in a white-winged sloop. But the Chicago of my deepest affection is under the skylights where the painters, sculptors, musicians, and writers who are my dear friends still strive with might and main to foster and spread abroad the spirit of the idealism that has brought these and other fine things to pass within the material place in which I was born, a city that has grown fifteenfold during my lifetime, and numbers now some three million souls instead of a paltry two hundred thousand.

S

OCIAL life in the Latin countries

is not the free and open institution to which we are accustomed in America and England. The AngloSaxon has his barriers that are more or less easily passed, and, this achieved, social intercourse is so general that it can easily become a cumulative burden, with some a business. To the Frenchman his home is particularly his castle, which he guards most carefully and jealously. He may have "café friendships" with men for long periods without a thought on either side of introductions into the respective homes of the participants. When this finally comes, it may be taken as the best compliment that its donor can bestow.

My first invitation to a Parisian home came from Baron Denaint, who, being half English, was a partial exception to the rule. Another was from a French boy whom I had met casually in Rome, and whose undying gratitude I had won by a trifling loan of a sufficient number of lire to tide him over until his belated allowance arrived. These were pleasant and alluring glimpses into French home life. A third was from a member of the Chamber of Deputies at a time when his family were at their country place; whether this was carefully

timed because of that fact, I do not know.

Paris, which usually dwells in the rosiest chambers of my mind as a city of sunshine, gaiety, and laughter, can at certain seasons rival London in its chill inclemency. On a dismal October day of violent downpour I sat in the writing-room of my hotel answering accumulated letters that I would have joyously neglected were Paris only living up to the reputation that I still reserved for her. Suddenly I was confronted by two men, objects of dripping misery, with hats and umbrellas that seemed to weigh pounds, or kilos if you prefer, because of the moisture that they had absorbed.

"How do you do, my friend?" one of them addressed me. "I am Monsieur Bélugu. We met often at Baron Stoops's in London. My wife sends her most cordial greetings. Do you remember us? I was just passing the Galérie Devambez and saw the posters of your exhibition there. The gallery attendant gave me your address."

I was touched by the kindly interest that braved the weather that I was carefully shunning, and I greeted my visitors with corresponding enthusiasm. The following Sunday found me at M. Bélugu's house for luncheon,