To tell the story of the publication of Field’s two “Little Books,” unique as it was in the making of books, requires that I say a few words of the change that had come over our personal relations, though not in our friendship.  Two causes operated to make this change—­my marriage in the spring of 1887, which drew from Field “Ye Piteous Appeal of a Forsooken Habbit” and the manuscript volumes of the best of his verse prior to that event, and my retirement from the staff of the Daily News, to assist in the foundation of the weekly political and literary journal called America.  It was through my persuasion that we secured from Field his now famous “Little Boy Blue” for the initial number of the new periodical.  Many stories are extant as to how this affecting bit of child verse was written, and many fac-similes of copies of it in Field’s handwriting have been printed as originals.  But the truth is, “Little Boy Blue” was written without any special suggestion or personal experience attending its conception and composition.  It was an honest child, begotten of the freest and best genius of Field’s fancy—­the genius of a master craftsman who had the instinct to use only the simplest means to tell the significant story of the little toy dog that is covered with dust and the little toy soldier that is red with rust in so many a home.

Field handed his original copy of “Little Boy Blue” to me in the Daily News office.  We read it over carefully together, and there I, with his consent, made the change in the seventh line of the last verse, that may be noted in the fac-simile.  With my interlineation the copy went to the printer, who had orders to return it to me, which was accordingly done, and it has been in my possession ever since.

Field made several other noteworthy contributions to the pages of America, including such important verse or articles as “Apple Pie and Cheese,” “To Robin Goodfellow,” “A Proper Trewe Idyll of Camelot,” “The Shadwell Folio,” “Poe, Patterson, and Oquawka,” “The Holy Cross,” and “The Three Kings.”  The most remarkable of these was undoubtedly “The Shadwell Folio,” which ran through two issues of America and afforded a prose setting for the following proofs of Field’s versatility:  “The Death of Robin Hood,” “The Alliaunce,” “Madge:  Ye Hoyden,” “The Lost Schooner,” “Ye Crewel Sassinger Mill,” “The Texas Steere,” “A Vallentine,” “Waly, Waly,” “Ailsie, My Bairn,” “Ye Morris Daunce,” “Ye Battaile Aux Dames,” “How Trewe Love Won Ye Battel,” “Lollaby” (old English).

The first section of the “Shadwell Folio” appeared in the issue of America of October 25th, 1888.  It was one of those conceits in which Field took the greatest pleasure and in the preparation of which he grudged no labor.  It purported to be a parchment folio discovered in an old hair trunk by Colonel John C. Shadwell, “a wealthy and aristocratic contractor,” while laying certain main and sewer pipes in the cellar of a deserted frame house at 1423 Michigan Street, Chicago.  This number would have located the cellar well out in Lake Michigan.  Colonel Shadwell presented this incomparable folio to “The Ballad and Broadside Society of Cook County, Illinois, for the Discovery of Ancient Manuscripts and for the Dissemination of Culture (limited).”  On receipt of the folio, this society immediately adopted the following resolutions: