Roswell Field tells an interesting story of how their father's land speculation went out of sight in the queer mutations that befall real estate. In the year before Roswell the elder died, he took his younger son for a drive in the country south of St. Louis, where the property lies unimproved to this day. "Rosy," said the father, "hold on to your Carondelet property. In fifteen years it will be worth half a million dollars, and, very likely, a million and a half." That was thirty-three years ago when the Carondelet iron furnaces were in full blast and the city seemed stretching southward. In 1869 the property was appraised at $125,000. The panic came on and St. Louis changed its mind and headed toward the west, where the best part of the city now rears its mansions and wonders how it ever dreamed of going south. There Carondelet still bakes in the sun, on the far side of a slough which has diverted a fortune from the sons of the sanguine Roswell M. Field, the elder. More provident than his brother, Roswell lived comfortably on his share for nearly seven years, only in the end to envy the superior shrewdness of Eugene, who, putting his portion into cash, realized more from it, and spent it like a lord while it lasted. I must confess that I share Roswell's views, for the investment which Eugene Field made in the two years after coming of age in spending $20,000 on experience, returned to him many fold in the profession he was finally driven to adopt, not as a pastime, but to earn a livelihood for himself and his growing family. Having shot his bolt, Field went to work as a reporter on the St. Louis Evening Journal. He was not much of a success as a reporter for the simple reason that his fancy was more active than his legs and he was irresistibly disposed to save the latter at the expense of the former. The best pen picture I have been able to secure of Field at this period of his career is from his life-long friend, William C. Buskett, the hero of "Penn Yan Bill," to whom Field dedicated "Casey's Table d'Hôte," the first poem in "A Little Book of Western Verse."