Eugene Field "not smoke tobacco"! He was one of the most inveterate smokers in America. If he had been given his choice between giving up pie or tobacco, I verily believe he would have thrown away the pie and stuck to the soothing weed out of which he sucked daily and hourly comfort. He had acquired the Yankee habit of ruminating with a small quid of tobacco in his cheek when a good cigar was not between his teeth. He consumed not only all the cigars that fell to his share in a profession where cigars are the invariable concomitants of every chance meeting, every social gathering, and every public function, but also those that in the usual round of our life fell to me. And I was not his only abetter in despoiling the Egyptians who thought to work the freedom of the press with a few passes of the narcotic weed. It is a curious fact that Field's pretended aversion to tobacco persists through all his writings, from the Denver Primer sketches down. In those we find him attributing the authorship of this warning to children to S.J. Tilden: _Oh, children, you Must never chew Tobacco--it is Awful! The Juice will Quickly make you Sick If once you get your Maw Full._ He never ceased having discussions with himself over the wording or authorship of the famous lines attributed to "Little Robert Reed," as in the following: Lo and behold! This is the way the St. Louis Republican mangles an old, quaint, beautiful, and popular poem: _"I would not use tobacco," said Little Robert Reed. "I would not use tobacco, for 'Tis a nasty weed."_ We protest against this brutal mutilization of a grand old classic. The quatrain should read, as in the original, thus: _"I'll never chew tobacco--no, It is a filthy weed; I'll never put it in my mouth," Said little Robert Reed._ By the way, who was the author of the poem of which the foregoing is the first stanza? I need scarcely refer the reader to Field's confession in his letter of December 12th, 1891, to Mr. Gray of his struggle to give up the use of tobacco, and to the photograph of Field at work, to indicate that his "I do not smoke tobacco" was but one more of those harmless hoaxes he took such pains to carry through at the expense of an ever-credulous public. Only one more point in regard to the "Auto-Analysis," and I am through with that whimsical concoction; and that is in reference to his attitude toward children. Knowing full well that his inquiring admirers expected him to rhapsodize upon his love for children, he deliberately set about disappointing them with: I do not love all children. I have tried to analyze my feelings toward children, and I think I discover that I love them in so far as I can make pets of them.