courts against his keen-witted and graceless sons, who availed
themselves of every obsolete technicality, quirk, and precedent of
the law to obstruct justice and worry their dignified parent, whom
they addressed as "our learned but erring brother in the law." Not
infrequently these youthful practitioners triumphed in these legal
tilts, to the mortification of their father, who, in his indignation,
could not conceal his admiration for the ingenuity of their
misdirected professional zeal.

[Illustration: ESTHER S. FIELD.
_Eugene Field's Grandmother._]

Two years after his graduation, and when only seventeen years of age,
Eugene Field's father was sufficiently learned in the law to be
admitted to the bar of Vermont. They wasted no time in those good old
days. Before he was thirty, Roswell M. Field had represented his
native town in the General Assembly, had been elected several times
State's Attorney, and in every way seemed destined to play a notable
part in the affairs of Vermont, if not on a broader field. He was not
only a lawyer of full and exact learning, an ingenious pleader, and
a powerful advocate, but an exceptionally accomplished scholar. His
knowledge of Greek, Latin, French, and German rendered their
literature a perennial source upon which to draw for the illumination
and embellishment of the pure and virile English of which he was
master. It was from him that Eugene inherited his delight in queer and
rare objects of vertu and that "rich, strong, musical and sympathetic
voice" which would have been invaluable on the stage, and of which he
made such captivating use among his friends. Would that he had also
inherited that "strong and athletic" frame which, according to his
aged preceptor, enabled Roswell M. Field to graduate at the age of