Eugene Field, a Study in Heredity and Contradictions — Volume 1Thompson, Slason
General
Eugene Field, a Study in Heredity and Contradictions — Volume 1
Thompson, Slason
Field, Eugene, 1850-1895; Journalists -- United States -- Biography; Poets, American -- 19th century -- Biography
Thus ended his education, so far as it was to be affected by the
environments and instructors of New England. Thenceforth he was
destined to be a western man, with an ineradicable tang of Puritan
prejudices and convictions cropping out unexpectedly and incongruously
in all he thought and wrote.
In the autumn of 1869 Eugene entered the sophomore class at Knox
College, Galesburg, Ill., where Professor John William Burgess, who
had been chosen as his guardian, held the chair of logic, rhetoric,
English literature, and political science. But his career at Knox was
practically a repetition of that at Williams. He chafed under the
restraint of set rules and the requirement of attention to studies
in which he took no interest. If he had been allowed to choose, he
would have devoted his time to reading the Latin classics and
declaiming--that is, as much time as he could spare from plaguing
the professors and interrupting the studies of his companions by
every device of a festive and fertile imagination.
One year of this was enough for the faculty of Knox and for the
restless scholar, so in the autumn of 1870 Eugene joined his brother
Roswell in the junior class at the University of Missouri. Here Eugene
Field ended, without graduating, such education as the school and the
university was ever to give him, for in the spring of 1871 he left
Columbia for St. Louis, never to return--a student at three
universities and a graduate from none.
Of Eugene Field's life in Columbia many stories abound there and
throughout Missouri. From the aged and honored historian of the
university I have the following testimony as to the relations of the
two brothers with that institution, premising it with the fact that all
the official records of students were consumed in the fire that visited
the university in 1892:
Roswell M. Field attended the university as a freshman in 1868-69, as a
sophomore in 1869-70, and as a junior in 1870-71. He was a student of
the institution these three sessions only. His brother Eugene Field was
a student of the junior class, session 1870-71, and never before or
since.
I knew both of them well. Eugene was an inattentive, indifferent
student, making poor progress in the studies of the course--a genial,
sportive, song-singing, fun-making companion. Nevertheless he was
bright, sparkling, entertaining and a leader among "the boys." In truth
he was in intellect above his fellows and a genius along his favorite
lines. He was prolific of harmless pranks and his school life was a big
joke.
[Illustration: THE OLD KNOX COLLEGE BUILDINGS, GALESBURG. ILL.]
There has been preserved the following specimen of the "rigs" Eugene
was in the habit of grinding out at the expense of the faculty--this
being aimed at President Daniel Reed (1868-77). The poem is entitled:
_BUCEPHALUS: A TAIL.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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