Before leaving St. Louis, however, Eugene Field was to strike one of the notes that was to vibrate so sweetly and surely to his touch unto the end. He had lost one baby son in St. Jo, and Melvin was a mere large-eyed infant when his father was moved at Christmas-time, 1878, to write his "Christmas Treasures," which he frequently, though incorrectly, declared to be "the first verse I ever wrote." He probably meant by this that it was the first verse he ever wrote "that he cared to preserve," those specimens I have introduced being only given as marking the steps crude and faltering by which he attained a facility and technique in the art of versification seldom surpassed. In Mr. Field's "Auto-Analysis" will be found the following reference to this early specimen of his verse: I wrote and published my first bit of verse in 1879: It was entitled "Christmas Treasures" [see "Little Book of Western Verse"]. Just ten years later I began suddenly to write verse very frequently. Which merely indicates what little track Field kept of how, when, or where he wrote the verse that attracted popular attention and by which he is best remembered. I need hardly say that with a few noteworthy exceptions his most highly-prized poems were written before 1888, as a reference to the "Little Book of Western Verse," above cited, and which was published in 1889, will clearly show. In the year 1880 Field received and accepted an offer of the managing editorship of the Kansas City Times, a position which he filled with singular ability and success, but which for a year put an almost absolute extinguisher on his growth as a writer. Under his management the Times became the most widely-quoted newspaper west of the Mississippi. He made it the vehicle for every sort of quaint and exaggerated story that the free and rollicking West could furnish or invent. He was not particular whether the Times printed the first, fullest, or most accurate news of the day so long as its pages were racy with the liveliest accounts and comments on the daily comedy, eccentricity, and pathos of life. Right merrily did he abandon himself to the buoyant spirits of an irrepressible nature. Never sparing himself in the duties of his exacting position on the Times, neither did he spare himself in extracting from life all the honey of comedy there was in it. His salary did not begin to keep pace with his tastes and his pleasures. But he faced debts with the calm superiority of a genius to whom the world owed and was willing to pay a living.