Field never dreamed of fulfilling that condition of his probation which required him to become established in business. If he had done so the date of his marriage would have been indefinitely postponed. He returned from Europe, as we have seen, sans the better part of his patrimony, in the spring of 1873, and instead of attempting to establish himself in business, immediately set himself to secure an abridgment of his term of waiting. The years between fourteen and eighteen run slow. To every true lover Time moves with leaden feet. As Rosalind tells us, "Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the contract of her marriage and the day it is solemnized: if the interim be but a se'nnight, Time's pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven year." What wonder then if the four years they were pledged to wait seemed an eternity, and that both set themselves to abridge it by all the arts and persuasion of young lovers. They pleaded and contrived so cunningly and successfully that the obdurate parents finally acceded to their wishes, and Eugene Field and Julia Sutherland Comstock were married at St. Joseph on October 16th, 1873. The bride "at that time was a girl of sixteen," is the laconic and only comment of the "Auto-Analysis." This he supplemented with the further information, "we have had eight children--three daughters and five sons." [Illustration: MRS. EUGENE FIELD.] But this is jumping from Saint Jo into the future more than a score of years in advance of our story. The young couple spent their honeymoon in the East. Field took especial delight in showing his bride of sixteen the wonders of New York and in playing practical jokes upon her unsophisticated nature, thereby keeping her in a perpetual state of amazement or of terror as to what he would do next. He sought to make her at home at Delmonico's by ordering "boiled pig's feet à la Saint Jo," with a gravity of countenance that tested the solemnity of the waiters and provoked the protest, "Oh, Eugene!" that was to be the feminine accompaniment to his boyish humor throughout their married life. No matter how often Field played his antics before or on his wife, they always seemed to take her by surprise and evoked a remonstrance in which pride over his mirthfulness mollified all displeasure. By the time Field returned to St. Louis his ready funds were exhausted and he had to appeal to Mr. Gray to raise more by mortgaging the balance of his interest in his father's property. This is as good a place as any to take leave of the patrimony that came to Field at the death of his father, for he was never to see any more dividends from that source. When the loans fell due there were no funds to pay them, nor equity in the land to justify their renewal. So the land was sold and bid in by Mr. Gray, who holds it yet and would gladly dispose of it for what he paid out of his pocket and the goodness of his heart.