And so Field's life during his last years has to be considered as a struggle with physical exhaustion, fighting off the inevitable reckoning until he could provide himself and his family with a home and leave to his dear ones the means of retaining it, with the opportunities of education for the juniors. And bravely and cheerily he faced the situation. Neither in his social relations nor in his daily task was there observable any trace of the tax he was putting upon his over-strained energy. He could not afford to make the study of classics a delightful pastime, as his father did, but he made it contribute a constant and delightful fund of reference and allusion in his column. His first books were selling steadily, and he worked assiduously to make hay while the sun was still above the horizon. In quick succession, "Echoes from the Sabine Farm," "With Trumpet and Drum," the "Second Book of Verse," "The Holy Cross and Other Tales," and "Love Songs of Childhood," with few exceptions, collected from his daily contributions to the Chicago Record, were issued from the press in both limited and popular editions. On the top of his regular work, which in collected form began to be productive beyond his fondest expectations, Field allowed himself to be over-persuaded into entering the platform field. The managers of reading-bureaus had been after him for years; but he had resisted their alluring offers, because he would not make a show of himself, and the exertion fagged him. But in the later years of his life they came at him again, with the promise of more pay per night than he could get by writing in a week, and he reluctantly made occasional engagements, which were a drain on his vitality as well as an offence to his peculiar notions of personal dignity. After each of these excursions into the platform field, either in the triple alliance with "Bill" Nye and James Whitcomb Riley, or with George W. Cable, in a most effective combination, Field returned to his home in Chicago richer in pocket and interesting experiences, but distinctly poorer in the vital reserve necessary to prolong the battle with that rebellious stomach. The presidential campaign of 1892 quite revived his interest in politics and politicians, and drew him away from the association with books at home and with the Saints and Sinners at McClurg's. For a time it looked as if he had been weaned from the circle of collectors, and never had his column held up to ridicule so fiercely the humbug and hypocricy of political methods as during that summer. One day after the nomination of Harrison and Reid, at Minneapolis, his column contained no fewer than forty-one political paragraphs, each one "ringing the bell" of mirth or scorn, as the subject warranted.