Touch not a thing, but leave them all
  Within this sock upon the wall;
  So when he wakes and comes, he may
  Find all these toys and trinkets gay,
  And thank old Santa that he came
  Up all these stairs with all this game._

If I have succeeded in conveying any true impression of Eugene Field’s nature, the reader can imagine the pleasure he derived from this game, in planning it, in providing the old-fashioned sock, toys, and eatables, and in toiling up six flights of stairs after he knew I was asleep, to see that everything was arranged so as to attract the attention of the passing traveller.  The success of his game was fully reported to him by his friend, the night clerk—­now one of the best known hotel managers in Chicago—­and mightily he enjoyed the report that I had been routed out by the early wayfarer before the light of Christmas broke upon the slumbering city.

CHAPTER II

INTRODUCTION TO COLORED INKS

My room in the Sherman House, then, as now, one of the most conveniently located hotels in the business district of Chicago, was the scene of Eugene Field’s first introduction to the use of colored inks.  His exquisitely neat, small, and beautifully legible handwriting has always been the subject of wondering comment and admiration.  He adopted and perfected that style of chirography deliberately to reduce the labor of writing to a minimum.  And he succeeded, for few pen-men could exceed him in the rapidity with which he produced “copy” for the printer and none excelled him in sending that copy to the compositor in a form so free from error as to leave no question where blame for typographical blunders lay.  In over twenty years’ experience in handling copy I have only known one regular writer for the press who wrote as many words to a sheet as Field.  That was David H. Mason, the tariff expert, whose handwriting was habitually so infinitesimal that he put more than a column of brevier type matter on a single page, note-paper size.

Strange to say, the compositors did not complain of this eye-straining copy, which attracted them by its compactness and stretched out to nearly half a column in the “strings” by which their pay was measured.  From this it may be inferred that there was never any complaint of Field’s manuscript from the most exacting and captious of all newspaper departments—­the composing room.

However, I set out to relate the genesis of Field’s use of the colored inks, with which he not only embellished his correspondence and presentation copies of his verse, but with which he was wont to illuminate his copy for the printer.  It came about in this way: