But he did not confine himself to the duties of directing the work of others. He started a column headed "Odds and Ends," to which he was the principal and, by all odds, the most frequent contributor. He had not been in the city many months before he began the occasional publication of those skits which, under the title of "The Tribune Primer," were gathered into his first unpretentious book of forty-eight pages, and which in its original form is now one of the most sought after quarries of the American bibliomaniac. Writing of these sketches in 1894, he said: The little sketches appeared in the Denver Tribune in the Fall of 1881 and winter of 1882. The whole number did not exceed fifty. I quit writing them because all the other newspapers in the country began imitating the project. In fact the series began October 10th, 1881, and ended December 19th of the same year. Edward B. Morgan, of Denver, in an introductory note to a few of the sketches omitted from the original "Tribune Primer," printed in the Cornhill Booklet for January, 1901, gives the following version of how the skits began: Of the origin of these sketches a story is told--although the writer cannot vouch for it--that on the Sunday evening preceding their first publication the "printer's devil" was dispatched post-haste to Field's home for copy which his happy-go-lucky manner of working had not produced. We may perhaps picture him engaged in what was always nearest and dearest to his heart, the amusement of his children, and perhaps reading to them or more likely composing for them primer sketches which he on the spur of the moment parodied for older readers. He has probably expressed his own feelings in the third one of the skits which he then wrote: THE REPORTER ON SUNDAY Is this Sunday? Yes, it is a Sunday. How peaceful and quiet it is. But who is the man? He does not look peaceful. He is a reporter and he is swearing. What makes him swear? Because he has to work on Sunday? Oh no! he is swearing because he has to Break the Fourth Commandment. It is a sad thing to be a Reporter. According to Mr. Cowen, however, the inspiration of the primer compositions was a libel suit brought against the Tribune by Governor Evans. In ridiculing the governor and his action Field three times used the old primer method--with illustrations after the fashion of John Phoenix--and the success of these little sarcasms undoubtedly encouraged him to elaborate the idea. Field also had a column of unsigned verse and storyettes in the Tribune under the heading, "For the Little Folks."