In his own estimation Field was distinctively a Western poet; he gave to his poetry the name "Western verse"; and he refused the offers of Dana and others because he was not at all in sympathy with the Eastern ideals. To quote his biographer, he felt that Chicago "was as far East as he could make his home without coming within the influence of those social and literary conventions that have squeezed so much of genuine literary flavor out of our literature."[144] What New York might have made of Field we may learn, perhaps, from the career of Henry Cuyler Bunner, for nearly twenty years the most brilliant poetic wit in the East. He, too, had approached literature from the journalistic entrance. At eighteen he had left school to begin an apprenticeship on the brilliant but short-lived _Arcadian_, and at twenty-two he was editor of the newly established _Puck_, a position that he held until his death at forty-one. No man ever turned off verse and prose with more facility or in greater quantity. "The staff of the paper was very small, and little money could be spent for outside contributions; and there were many weeks when nearly half the whole number was written by Bunner."[145] Like Field, he could write a poem while the office boy, who had brought the order, stood waiting for the copy to carry back with him. For more than ten years he furnished nearly all the humorous verse for the periodical, besides numberless paragraphs, short stories, and editorials. But he was more fastidious than Field, inasmuch as he kept this journalistic material strictly unconnected with his name. It was a thing alone of the editorial office, no more to be mingled with his more literary product than Charles Lamb's India office books were to be brought into his _Elia_ essays. The greater number of those who laughed over the verses of the whimsical "V. Hugo Dusenberry, professional poet," never once dreamed that he was H. C. Bunner, author of the exquisite lyrics in _Airs from Arcady_ and _Rowen_, and the carefully wrought stories--French in their atmosphere and their artistic finish--_Short Sixes_ and _Love in Old Cloathes_. The skilful parodies and timely renderings, the quips and puns--all the voluminous mélange, indeed, of the poetic Yorick--lie buried now in the files of _Puck_. Their creator refused to republish them, and we to-day can but yield to his wish and judge him only by that which he himself selected for permanence.