"I next went to the State University at Columbia, Missouri. It was an old slave-holding town, but I liked it. I've got a streak of Southern feeling in me." He said abruptly, "I'm an aristocrat. I'm looking for a Mæcenas. I have mighty little in common with most of the wealthy, but I like the idea of wealth in the abstract." He failed to make the distinction quite clear, but he went on as if realizing that this might be a thin spot of ice. "At twenty-one, I came into sixty thousand dollars, and I went to Europe, taking a friend, a young fellow of about my own age, with me. I had a lovely time!" he added, and again the smile conveyed vast meaning. Garland looked up from his pad. "You must have had. Did you 'blow in the whole business'?" "Pretty near. I _swatted_ the money around. Just think of it!" he exclaimed, warming with the recollection. "A boy of twenty-one, without father or mother, and sixty thousand dollars. Oh, it was a lovely combination! I saw more things and did more things than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio," he paraphrased, looking at his friend with a strange expression of amusement, and pleasure, and regret. "I had money. I paid it out for experience--it was plenty. Experience was laying around loose." "Came home when the money gave out, I reckon?" [Illustration: A BIT OF LIBRARY.] "Yes. Came back to St. Louis, and went to work on the 'Journal,' I had previously tried to 'enter journalism' as I called it then. About the time I was twenty-one, I went to Stilson Hutchins, and told him who I was, and he said: "'All right. I'll give you a chance, but we don't pay much.' Of course, I told him pay didn't matter. [Illustration: THE DINING-ROOM.] "'Well!' he said, 'go down to the Olympia, and write up the play there to-night,' I went down, and I brought most of my critical acumen to bear upon an actor by the name of Charley Pope, who was playing Mercutio for Mrs. D. P. Bowers. His wig didn't fit, and all my best writing centred about that wig. I sent the critique in, blame fine as I thought, with illuminated initial letters, and all that. Oh, it was lovely! and the next morning I was deeply pained and disgusted to find it mutilated,--all that about the wig, the choicest part, was cut out. I thought I'd quit journalism forever. I don't suppose Hutchins connects Eugene Field with the ---- fool that wrote that critique. I don't myself," he added with a quick half-smile, lifting again the corner of his solemn mouth. It was like a ripple on a still pool. "Well, when did you really get into the work?" his friend asked, for he seemed about to go off into another by-path.