Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

148

MEMOIRS OF AN EDITOR

bilities as an original Chicago product a well known lyric
of the poet whose name, according to Field, was generally
pronounced by the Chicago intellectuals so as to rhyme
with teeth? I had forgotten the incident, but the key to
it is contained in an already published letter to Slason
Thompson, dated a month after the foregoing:
I have begun to surmise that my remarks about Literary Life
will lead to Miss Cleveland's retirement from the editorship
of that delectable mush bucket. The signs all point that way
now. I enclose you a letter to my friend Mitchell of The Sun.
Tell him about the Goethe poem. I promised to send him a
copy of it when Literary Life printed it.
Field was evidently actuated in this enterprise not by a
desire to persecute an estimable lady but by a sort of
fierce contempt for the publication which sought to advertise itself by employing the President's sister. His
satire soon brought about the retirement of the editor
and this was followed by the demise of Literary Life itself.
Passing another period of two years I find a note which
starts more memories:
DEAR MITCHELL: I know that you are interested in modern
art; so I send you a sketch representing Mr. Dana's famous
drive in Kidney Bill's hack. I am going to visit New York in
February, and then you and I will ransack Bouton's old bookstore together. Ever sincerely yours, EUGENE FIELD.
Chicago, August the 21st, 1888.
The scene of the drive in Kidney Bill's hack was Milwaukee, whither Mr. Dana had gone to deliver before the
Wisconsin Editorial Association his lecture on "The
Modern American Newspaper." The picture is by Eugene

Field's friend and favorite cartoonist Selanders, as are
the two other drawings reproduced. Of these, one represents Mr. Dana's visit to the office of the Daily News
when passing through Chicago on that occasion. It sug