Mr. Curtis's progressive tendencies, according to Field, quickly involved him in trouble with the government; his paper was suppressed, and he was banished from Jerusalem. When the special firmin of the Sultan expelling Mr. Curtis from Turkish dominions was published, it caused a great sensation in Chicago, where the Church of the New Jerusalem was very strong, and created an immediate rivalry between William Penn Nixon, editor of the Inter Ocean, and Melville E. Stone, editor of the Morning News, to secure his services. Mr. Nixon sent him a cablegram in Hebrew which was written by a Hebrew gentleman to whom Nixon sold old clothes, while Mr. Stone's cablegram was prepared by his father, the Rev. Mr. Stone, and was expressed in scriptural phraseology which was not understood in Jerusalem as well as it was at Galesburg, where Mr. Stone was then professor of the Hebrew language and literature. Curtis accepted the offer couched in the language of the Hebrew vender of old clothes and became a member of the editorial staff of the Inter Ocean. His first effective work on that newspaper was to convert Jonathan Young Scammon, then its owner, to the New Jerusalem faith (Mr. Scammon, whose real name was John, was the most prominent Swedenborgian in Chicago). Mr. Scammon was so grateful for his conversion from infidelity that in a moment of religious exaltation he raised Mr. Curtis's salary from $18 to $20. And thus the biography of Mr. Curtis proceeded along lines that gave the truth a wide berth, for Field held, with the old English jurists, that the greater the truth the greater the libel. At one time in our association Field, as seriously as he could, entertained the thought of furnishing me with materials for an extended sketch of his life, and I still have several envelopes on which the inscription "For My Memoirs" bears witness to that purpose. But after serving as a source of eccentric and roguish humor for several months, the idea was suffered to lapse, only to be revived in suggestive references as he consigned some bit of manuscript to my care or criticism. Any study of Field's life and character based on such materials as he thus furnished would have been absolutely misleading. It would have eliminated fact entirely and substituted the most fantastic fiction in its stead. It would have built up a grotesque caricature of a staid, church-going, circumspect citizen and author instead of the ever-fascinating bundle of contradictions and irresponsibility Field was to his legion of associates and friends.