The determination to found a story or a series of sketches on the delights, adventures, and misadventures connected with bibliomania did not come impulsively to my brother. For many years, in short during the greater part of nearly a quarter of a century of journalistic work, he had celebrated in prose and verse, and always in his happiest and most delightful vein, the pleasures of book-hunting. Himself an indefatigable collector of books, the possessor of a library as valuable as it was interesting, a library containing volumes obtained only at the cost of great personal sacrifice, he was in...

Sing, Christmas bells Say to the earth this is the morn Whereon our Savior-King is born; Sing to all men, -the bond, the free, The rich, the poor, the high, the low, The little child that sports in glee, The aged folk that tottering go, - Proclaim the morn That Christ is born, That saveth them and saveth m

The Rock-a-By Lady from Hushaby street Comes stealing; comes creeping; The poppies they hang from her head to her

Whilst you were sleeping, little Dear-my-soul, strange things happened; but that I saw and heard them, I should never have believed them. The clock stood, of course, in the corner, a moonbeam floated idly on the floor, and a little mauve mouse came from the hole in the chimney corner and frisked and scampered in the light of the moonbeam upon the floor.

When those we love have passed away; when from our lives something has gone out; when with each successive day we miss the presence that has become a part of ourselves, and struggle against the realization that it is with us no more, we begin to live in the past and thank God for the gracious boon of memory.

It was either Plato the Athenian, or Confucius the Chinese, or Andromachus the Cretan-or some other philosopher whose name I disremember-that remarked once upon a time, and the time was many centuries ago, that no woman was happy until she got herself a home. It really makes no difference who first uttered this truth, the truth itself is and always has been recognized as one possessing nearly all the virtues of an axiom.

In paying a tribute to the mingled mirth and tenderness of Eugene Field-the poet of whose going the West may say, "He took our daylight with him"-one of his fellow journalists has written that he was a jester, but not of the kind that Shakespeare drew in Yorick. He was not only, -so the writer implied, -the maker of jibes and fantastic devices, but the bard of friendship and affection, of melodious lyrical conceits; he was the laureate of children-dear for his "Wynken, Blynken and Nod" and "Little Boy Blue"; the scholarly book-lover, withal, who relished and paraphrased his Horace, who wrote...

We've come from Indiany, five hundred miles or more, Supposin' we wuz goin' to get the nominashin, shore; For Col. New assured us (in that noospaper o' his) That we cud hev the airth, if we'd only tend to biz. But here we've been a-slavin' more like bosses than like men To diskiver that the people do not hanker arter Ben; It is fur Jeems G. Blaine an' not for Harrison they shout- And the gobble-uns 'el git us

From whatever point of view the character of Eugene Field is seen, genius-rare and quaint presents itself is childlike simplicity. That he was a poet of keen perception, of rare discrimination, all will admit. He was a humorist as delicate and fanciful as Artemus Ward, Mark Twain, Bill Nye, James Whitcomb Riley, Opie Read, or Bret Harte in their happiest moods.

Eugene Field was a 19th century writer who's best remembered today for poetry that was popular with young readers.