John Smith, U.S.A.

Excerpt

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.  Within him ran a poetic vein, capable of being worked in
any direction, and from which he could, at will, extract that which
his imagination saw and felt most.  That he occasionally left the
child-world, in which he longed to linger, to wander among the older
children of men, where intuitively the hungry listener follows him into
his Temple of Mirth, all should rejoice, for those who knew him not, can
while away the moments imbibing the genius of his imagination in the
poetry and prose here presented.