Eugene Field was a popular humorist and newspaperman often called the "Poet of Childhood." Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Roswell M. and Frances Reed Field, both of New England ancestry, Field claimed two birthdates--2 and 3 September 1850--in later years so that if friends forgot him on the first day, they could remember him on the second. His father was an attorney and attained some fame after successfully defending Dred Scott, fugitive slave, in Scott's first trial. Field's mother died when he was six, and he and his younger brother Roswell were sent to Amherst, Massachusetts, to be cared for by their paternal cousin Mary Field French until their maturity.

Field began college at Williams in 1868, after barely passing the entrance exams; he left New England the following spring because of the serious illness and subsequent death of his father in St. Louis. In the fall of 1869 he...