I almost forgot my mortification in my admiration for that gracious turning of the tables. He bore no malice, and on the too few occasions when we met, I found him companionable and understanding. The last time I saw Eugene Field was at a dinner at Mrs. John Root’s. He was in great vein and kept us in a gale of laughter till past midnight. John Root, of the firm of Burnham and Root, was already at work making the plans for the Dream City of the World’s Fair. He was a gifted man who had made his mark as an architect. He was a Virginian, a full habited _rosso_, with a magnificent physique, extraordinarily brilliant in his talk as in his profession. He insisted upon putting me in my carriage though it was below zero weather. I can see him now, standing at the carriage door in evening dress, with bare head, while he said some last witty thing. “Go back! You will catch your death of cold,” I chided. The words were prophetic; he took a chill from the exposure and died of pneumonia a few days later. William Pretyman was at this time established in Chicago as an interior decorator; during our stay my husband was associated with him in the decoration of some of the city’s fine houses. The Pretymans built a home at Edgewater, then a suburb of the city. As soon as they had moved into their new home, these generous people invited us to share it with them. I remember the day we took possession. All morning the lake had been veiled by an opal haze. The sun came out just as we arrived and in an instant it was a sheet of palest green, shimmering with blue and violet shadows. To reach the great living room two stories high we went down a flight of stairs. In one corner stood the table spread for dinner, in another Pretyman’s easel and drawing stand, opposite were Jennie Pretyman’s grand piano, her work basket, and bookcase. There was an enormous open fireplace where logs of silver birch blazed and crackled on a pair of ancient andirons. The windows were too high to allow us to look out. When I saw the room I exclaimed: “The world forgetting, by the world forgot!” Pretyman liked this so much that it became the motto of this unique center which was to become a Mecca to the Pilgrims of Art from many lands. The day’s work over, we gathered round the hearth. When he was in the mood, Pretyman, who was a thirteenth-century Crusader in nineteenth-century clothes, told of his adventures among the Head Hunters of North Borneo when he was British Resident. More often than not he brought a stranger home to dinner, some stray Englishman sorely in need of a friend. How _did_ they all find him? Or did he find them? “Chicago is like a sieve,” he used to say, “it is the first place that catches the down-and-out British rancher on his way east.” How many of his stranded countrymen he helped to tide over a bad moment, only he and his wife know.