"Oh, yes. Well, my grandmother was a regular old New England Congregationalist. Say, I've got a sermon I wrote when I was nine. The old lady used to give me ten cents for every sermon I'd write. Like to see it?" [Illustration: EUGENE FIELD'S HOME AT BUENA PARK, CHICAGO.] "Well, I should say. A sermon at nine years! Field, you started in well." "Didn't I?" he replied, while getting the book. "And you bet it's a corker." He produced the volume, which was a small bundle of note-paper bound beautifully. It was written in a boy's formal hand. He sat down to read it: "I would remark secondly that conscience makes the way of transgressors hard; for every act of pleasure, every act of Guilt his conscience smites him. The last of his stay on earth will appear horrible to the beholder. Some times, however, he will be stayed in his guilt. A death in a family of some favorite object or be attacked by Some disease himself is brought to the portals of the grave. Then for a little time perhaps he is stayed in his wickedness, but before long he returns to his worldly lust. Oh, it is indeed bad for sinners to go down into perdition over all the obstacles which God has placed in his path. But many I am afraid do go down into perdition, for wide gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction and many there be that go in thereat." He stopped occasionally to look at Garland gravely, as he read some particularly comical phrase: "'I secondly remark'--ain't that great?--'that the wise man remembers even how near he is to the portals of death.' 'Portals of death' is good. 'One should strive to walk the narrow way and not the one which leads to perdition.' I was heavy on quotations, you notice." "Is this the first and last of your sermons?" queried Garland, with an amused smile. "The first and last. Grandmother soon gave me up as bad material for a preacher. She paid me five dollars for learning the Ten Commandments. I used to be very slow at 'committing to memory.' I recall that while I was thus committing the book of Acts, my brother committed that book and the Gospel of Matthew, part of John, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians and the Westminster Catechism. I would not now exchange for any amount of money the acquaintance with the Bible that was drummed into me when I was a boy. At learning 'pieces to speak' I was, however, unusually quick, and my favorites were: 'Marco Bozzaris,' 'Psalm of Life,' Drake's 'American Flag,' Longfellow's 'Launching of the Ship,' Webster's 'Action,' Shakspeare's 'Clarence's Dream' (Richard III.), and 'Wolsey to Cromwell,' 'Death of Virginia,' 'Horatius at the Bridge,' 'Hymn of the Moravian Nuns,' 'Absalom,' 'Lochiel's Warning,' 'Maclean's Revenge,' Bulwer's translation of Schiller's 'The Diver,' 'Landing of the Pilgrims,' Bryant's 'Melancholy Days,' 'Burial of Sir John Moore,' and 'Hohenlinden.'"